>> live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage. It's the Cube covering Veum World 2019 brought to you by IBM Wear and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to the Cube. It's the Emerald 2019 our 10th year water wall coverage. Three days, two sets, lots of content. Instrument of my co host is Justin Warren. And one of the big stories coming into the show is VM Wear actually went on an acquisition spree. A hold number of acquisitions. Boston based Carbon Black over $2 billion Pivotal brought back into the fold for also, you know, around that ballpark of money on Happy to Welcome to the program. One of those acquisitions, such and Conti, is sitting to my right. He's the co founder of Hana is also a professor at Stanford University. Thank you so much for joining us and joining us. Also for the segment. Shakeri Air, the executive vice president general manager of Telco Edge Cloud at VM Wear, Shaker said, Yes, there's a lot of acquisitions not to play favorites, but maybe this is his favorite. No question about it. All right. Eso such in, you know, boy, you know the Paolo Alto Stanford connection. We were thinking back, You know, the Founders Of'em where, of course, you know came from Stanford. Many acquisitions over the year, including the mega next era acquisition. You know, quite a few years ago, I came out of Stanford. Give us what was the genesis in the Why of Hana. >> It's actually interesting Stanford Connection to So I've been a faculty at Stanford for the last 10 years on dhe. I have seen the SD and moment very close on up front on one of the dirty secrets of S. T M says it makes the netbooks programmable, but someone still has to write the programs on. So that's usually a very complex task on the pieces beyond the company was, Can we use the eye to learn how to program the network rather than humans having to program the network to do management or optimization? So the division really waas can be built? A network that learned how to optimize itself learns how to manage itself on the technology we're building. Is this a pipeline that basically tries to deliver on that for mobile? >> It's great, Sachin, you know, my background is networking and it feels like forever. We've been hooking well. We need to get people from the cli over to the gooey. But we know in today's rightly complex world, whether it's a I or just automation, humans will not be able to keep up with it. And, you know, we know that that's where a lot of the errors would happen is when we entered humans into doing some of this. So what are some of the key drivers that make this solution possible today that, you know, it might not have been able to do done when when one train was first rolling out the first S t n? >> Yeah, talk about it in three dimensions. The one is, Why do we need it today? Right on. Then what is being what is happening that is enabling this today, right? So, apart from what I talked about Stu and I think the other big driver is, the way I like to think about it is that the Internet is going from a means of consumption to a means of control and interaction. So, increasingly, the application to BC driving the next big decade, our very way of controlling things remotely or the network like a self driving car, or be in interacting but very highly rich visual content like E. R. India. So the applications are becoming a lot more demanding on the Net. At the same time, the network is going through a phase off, opening up on becoming disaggregated network complexity is increasing significantly. So the motivation behind the company and why I thought that was the right time to start the company was these two friends are gonna collide with five coming along the applications that are driving five g and then at the complexity increasing our five. So that's why we started the company. What actually is enabling. This is the fact that we have seen a lot of progress with the eye over the last few years. It hasn't really. It hadn't really been applied at scale to networks and specifically mobile that book. So we definitely saw no, actually there, but increasingly, ah, lot of the infrastructure that is being deployed there was more and more telemetry available. There was more and more data becoming available and that also obviously feet this whole engine. So I think the availability of all of these Big Data Technologies Maur data coming in from the network and the need because of these applications and that complexity. I think there's a perfect confluence >> that there's lots of lots of II floating around at the moment, and there's different flavors of it as well. So this machine learning there's Aye aye, sir. When when you say that there's there's a I behind this What? What particular kind of machine learning or a Y you're using to drive these networks? >> This a few different techniques because the problems we solve our anomaly detection off. Then problems are happening in the network predicting how network conditions are going to evolve. For example, predicting what your devices throughput is gonna be the next 30 seconds. We're also learning how to control the knobs in the neck using AI ai techniques. So each of these has different classes of the eye techniques. So, for example, for control we're using reinforcement learning, which is the same technique that Google used to kind of been on alphago. How do you learn how to play a game basically, but area the game you're playing it optimizing the network. But for the others, it's a record of neural networks to do predictions on Time series data. So I think it's a combination of techniques I wouldn't get to wherever the techniques. It's ultimately. But what is the problem you're trying to solve? And then they picked the right technique to solve it, >> and so on that because the aye aye is actually kind of stupid in that it doesn't know what they wouldn't. What an optimized network looks like. We have to show it what that is. So what? How do you actually train these systems to understand? But what is an optimized network? What? How does how does that tell you? Define this is what my network optimal state should be. >> So that's a great question, because in networking like that, any other discipline that wants to use the eye. There's not a lot of label data. What is the state I want to end up at what is a problem state or what is a good state? All of this is labels that someone has to enter, and that's not available axe kid, and we're never gonna be able to get it at the scale we wanted. So one of our secret sauce is if you will, is semi supervised learning but basic ideas that we're taking a lot of domain knowledge on using that domain knowledge to figure out what should be the right features for these models so that we can actually train these models in a scalable fashion. If you just throw it a lot of data any I model, it just does not converge. Hardly constructive features on the other thing is, how do I actually define what are good kind of end state conditions? What's a good network? And that's coming from domain knowledge to That's how we're making I scale for the stomach. >> I mean, overall, I would say, as you look at that, some of the parameters in terms of what you want to achieve are actually quite obvious things like fewer dropped calls for a cellular network. You know, that's good. So figuring out what the metrics need to be and what the tuning needs before the network, that's where Hana comes in in terms of the right people. >> All right, so shake her. Give us a little bit of an understanding as to where this fits into the networking portfolio. You know, we heard no we heard from Patty or two ago. You know what would have strong push? Networking is on the NSX number. Speaks for itself is what's happening with that portfolio? >> No, absolutely. In fact, what we're doing here is actually broader than networking. It's sort off very pertinent to the network off a carrier. But that is a bulk off their business, if you will. I think if you sort of go back and look at the emirs of any any, any vision, this is the notion of having any cloud in any application land on any cloud and then any device connected to those applications on that any cloud side we are looking at particularly to cloud pools, one which we call the Telco cloud and the other is the edge cloud. And both of these fortuitously are now becoming sort of transforming the context of five G. So in one case, in the telco cloudy or looking at their core and access networks, the radio networks, all of this getting more cloud ified, which essentially leads toe greater agility in service deployment, and then the edge is a much more distributed architecture. Many points over which you can have compute storage network management and security deployed. So if you now think about the sort of thousands off nodes on dhe virtualized clouds, it is just impossible to manage this manual. So what you do need is greater. I mean, orders of magnitude, greater automation in the ability to go and manage and infrastructure like this. So, with our technology now enhanced by Johanna in that network portfolio in the Telco Edge Cloud portfolio, were able to go back to the carriers and tell them, Look, we're not just foundational infrastructure providers. We can also then help you automate help you get visibility into your networks and just help you overall manager networks better for better customer expedience and better performance. >> So what are some of the use coasters that you see is being enabled by five G? There's a lot of hype about five short the moment and not just five jail. So things like WiFi six. Yeah, it would appear to me that this kind of technique would work equally well for five g Your wife. I short a WiFi six. So what are some of the use cases? You see these thieves service providers with Toko Edge clouds using this for? Yeah, So I think overall, first of all, I'd >> say enterprise use cases are going to become a pretty prominent part off five, even though a lot off the buzz and hype ends up being about consumers and how much bandwidth and data they could get in or whether five chicken passing preys or not. But in fact, things like on premise radio on whether that is private. Lt it's 40 or five t. These are the kinds of Uschi cases that were actually quite excited about because these could be deployed literally today. I mean, sometimes they're not regulated. You can go in with, like, existing architectures. You don't need to wait for standardization to break open a radio architecture. You could actually do it, Um, and >> so this sort off going in and >> providing connectivity on an enterprise network that is an enhanced state off where it is today. We've already started that journey, for example, with yellow cloud and branch networking. Now, if we can take that toe a radio based architecture for enterprise networking, So we think, ah, use case like that would be very prominent. And then based on edge architectures distributed networks now becoming the next generation Cdn is an example. That's another application that we think would be very prominent. And then I think, for consumers just sort of getting things like gaming applications off on edge network. Those are all the kinds of applications that would consume this sort off high skill, reliability and performance. >> Can you give a little sketch of the company pre acquisition, you know, is the product all g eight? How many customers you? Can you say what you have there? Sure >> it does us roughly three years old. The company itself so relatively young. We were around 33 people total. We had a product that is already deployed with chairman Telcos. So it is in production deployment with Chairman Telco Ondas in production trials with a couple of other tier one telcos. So we built a platform to scale to the largest networks in the world on If I, if I were to summarize it, be basically can observe, makes sense or in real time about every user in the network, what their experiences like actually apply. I modeled on top of that to optimize each user's expedience because one of the vision bee had was the network today is optimized for the average. But as all off our web expedience personalized netbook experiences, not personalized can be build a network Very your experiences personalized for you for the applications, your running on it. And this was kind of a foundation for that. >> I mean, we In fact, as we've been deploying our telco Cloud and carrier networks, we've also been counting roughly how many subscribers are being served up. Today we have over 800 million subscribers, and in fact, I was talking to someone and we were talking about that does. Being over 10% off the population of the world is now running on the lack of memory infrastructure. And then along comes Johanna and they can actually fine tune the data right down to a single subscriber. Okay, so now you can see the sort of two ends of the scale problem and how we can do this using a I. It's pretty powerful. Excellent. >> So So if we have any problems with our our service fighters, b tech support and I love to hear from both of you, you know what this acquisition position means for the future of the places and obviously VM wear global footprint. A lot of customers and resource is. But you know what I mean to your team in your product. >> I mean, definitely accelerating how quickly we can now start deploying. This and the rest of the world be as a small company, have very focused on a few key customers to prove the technology we have done that on. I think now it's the face to scale it on. Repeat it across a lot of other customers, but I think it also gives us a broader canvas to play that right. So we were focused on one aspect of the problem which is around, if you will, intelligence and subscriber experience. But I think with the cloud on but the orchestration products that are coming out of the ember, we can now start to imagine a full stock that you could build a network of full carrier network code off using using remote technology. So I think it's a broad, more exciting, actually, for us to be able to integrate not just the network data but also other parts of the stock itself. And >> it strikes me that this probably isn't just limited to telcos, either. The service providers and carriers are one aspect of this bit particularly five G and things like deployments into factory automation. Yes, I can see a lot of enterprise is starting to become much in some ways a little bit like a tell go. And they would definitely benefit from this >> kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, in fact, that's the basis of our internal even bringing our telco and EJ and I ot together and a common infrastructure pool. And so we're looking at that. That's the capability for deploying this type of technology across that. So you're exactly right, >> Checker want to give you the last word, you know, Telco space, you know? And then, obviously the broader cloud has been, you know, a large growth area. What, you want people taking away from the emerald 2019 when it comes to your team? >> Yeah, I think. To me, Calico's have a tremendous opportunity to not just be the plumbing and networking providers that they can in fact, be both the clowns of tomorrow as well as the application providers of tomorrow. And I think we have the technology and both organically as well as through acquisitions like Ohana. Take them there. So I'm just super excited about the journey. Because I think while most of the people are talking about five D as this wave, that is just beginning for us, it's just a perfect coming together on many of these architectures that is going to take telcos into a new world. So we're super excited about taking them. >> Shaker. Thank you so much for joining against auction. Congratulations and good luck on the next phase of you and your team's journey along the way. Thank you. Thank you for Justin. Warren comes to Minutemen, Stay with us. Still a bit more to go for VM World 2019 and, as always, thank you for watching the Cube.

>> live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage. It's the Cube covering Veum World 2019 brought to you by VM Wear and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back here on the Cube, we continue our coverage. We're live in San Francisco. Mosconi, North Day to wrapping up Day two of our three days of coverage here, Veum. World 2019 day Volante. John Wall's glad to have you with us here on the Cube. And we're now joined by Kevin Schatz. Camera. Who's the Vice president of service provider Strategy and solutions. A deli. Um, See, Kevin. Good to see this afternoon. Thank you. You as well. And, uh, yeah, Tarazi, Who is the S v p and chief technical officer at Dell Technologies in the heart. Good to see you. Thanks for taking the time to be with us. A couple of telco guys and we've had a lot of telco on and talking about it in terms of progress that you made. This was an area that you got into with a major commitment, some probably three years ago. Kind of bitch market for me then for where you were there on on day one to where you are now today and the progress you've made and maybe the service is that you're about to provide. Yeah, >> sure. So I think if we look over the last three years, our opportunity that we defined early on telecommunications space was the virtual ization, and software to find everything was leaving the data center. And we would see the software to find architecture extend all the way from radio through the core network through the cloud over a period of time. And it started with technologies like network function virtualization. So if we flash back three years ago, where our entire strategy was built on the premise that relationships with the network equipment providers like Nokia and Ericsson, where our primary path to market our primary opportunity, I think what we've realized is we've emerged in this space to a greater detail is that our expertise, our expertise and experience in building I T Networks and Building Cloud has led to the first wave of conversations in the telecommunications industry directly not through the network equipment providers, but that carriers want to engage directly with Delhi emcee for the lessons learned and how did to play. I tr detectors. And now, as we extend towards the edge that they want to engage directly with Del Technologies in terms of how we build cloud architectures. We've had a number of big announcements. Over the last several years. We've announced partnerships and engagements with NTT. We've announced partnerships and engagements with China Unicom. Just in the last three months, we've announced partnerships with our rounds around network EJ out of France and then most recently with 18 C on the automation of EJ infrastructure related to their airship project. I think from a benchmark perspective, it's just been a continued growth opportunity for us and recognition that the more we engaged in, the more we contribute as a productive member of what is a very complex and changing and transforming industry, the more success in relationships that will build, and the more it will translate into opportunity to sell to >> when you think about you have the the modernization of N F. E. For example, as a former technologist inside a large telco, Um, what were some of the challenges? Is it? It's taken a long time. Obviously, when you talk to some of the telcos, they say, Well, you know it affects our infrastructure, but we still get this application mass. I mean, maybe you could add some color and describe for our audience why it's been so challenging. >> Yeah, I think that's an excellent question. Um, going back to my days at Telco on data centers, even S d n and the software defined tools were just beginning to show up. So the biggest challenges where you were basically having toe work with predefined operating system. But he defined hardware. The hardware was not exposed for for GAM ability, the ability to take advantage of it. And then you had to interrogate multiple players of technology in a way where it took significant time, too, not only for software development, but for product development and user experience. Since then, many of those walls have come down, and some of them have come down very hard. When you look at what we're doing, Adele here and we lead for the open networking. Not only do you have the choice of operating system were also pushing hard. Don't new open operating systems for networking like Sonic with Microsoft and bade calm. And then we're taking industry leading steps to expose the silicon chips themselves for four GAM ability. These are all the components that are critical. When you talk about five G, for example, do you really have to have those capabilities? I also would say that the software evolution have made it to infrastructure. The Dev ops and the modern applications we talk about here is also available for infrastructure, which means you really can develop a capability in weeks instead of years and months. Five people can do in amazing parkas. All of this was not possible before, >> so we talked to Shekhar about this in the earlier segment challenges in the telco business. I mean, the one hand you got these quasi monopolies in some cases real monopolies that just chug along and do pretty well. But the same time you got the cost for a bit dramatically coming down, you've got the data growth doing this. You got over the top providers taking advantage of the those those networks, and so new infrastructure allows them to be more more agile. But there's a workforce component to that, and there's a skill set, and that's how they got to transform. I wonder if you could maybe talk about that a little bit. Kevin. >> Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think when we work within this industry, it's not just a technology conversation. It's the ability to consume an operationalized technology. And I think that comes down to a number of different things, comes down to the processes that exist when it comes down to the skill sets that exists to be able to build these new processes around. And I think if we flash back several years ago, the model of how we build networks was that the team that operated it needed to understand networking. Right now, if you look at the team that needs to operate it, they need to understand networking. They need to understand, compute. They need to understand virtualization. They need to understand AP eyes. They need to be able to script and program. They need to understand some level of data science that they can close a loop in the operational models eventually with a I and machine learning technologies. So I think that the teams that are getting built look very different than the single soul capabilities that they've had in the past, right? These air smaller teams they're more agile teams that can develop and have their own more unique processes in each part of the network. Right? And even if we think about the organizational structures, we've always built vertical organizations. Right? When I had an appliance, that was an e p. C. I had an operations team that was focused on an e p. C. And I even broke that into an S gateway P Gateway and Emma, me et cetera. If we look at the world now, that s Gateway P Gateway. Mm E consists of a server consists of the networking that connects at server consists of a virtual ization layer. It consists of a stack of a software application, and all of those need to be automated, orchestrated program toe work as any PC does. So I think that the skill sets have just really expanded in terms of what's expected, >> and this is really important because the process is used to be pretty well known and hardened, so the infrastructure could be hard, and now it's of every every months, the more the market changes right. What kind of what kind of challenges is that bring to the telco provider? But also to the infrastructure provider. >> Yeah, I actually I have a really good way to describe what I think is happening. We heard it from a lot of our customers and not just tell cause but enterprises. I would say the last 5 to 10 years everybody's been dealing with Hybrid Cloud. The Move to Cloud Waas. The Big Challenge. While this remains a key challenge, a new challenge showed up, which is how to succeed in this new modern software development model. You know, are you able to do to move at that speed, which means you have full stack engineers? Can you develop the app beginning to end? It's not a nightie model anymore. Also, you no longer have an operations team. You really have to have saris who, able with software and also the customer service, changed to a softwood Devyn. So we're starting to hear from a lot of our customers. That's the next journey they really need help with. If you think of infrastructure, those challenges are even bigger, and this is where it's important to lean on technology partners who can help you with that, >> and you hit on five G a little bit ago. You have in your initial statement and we've kind of touched on the impact that it can have in terms of you understanding there. They're going to a transformative time, right? I mean, telcos are with new capabilities, and new opportunities in this whole edge is gonna be crazy. So you've got to you've got I would say some learning to do, but you have. You've got to get up to speed on what their new fundamentals are going to be, right? Yeah, I think that's >> true. I think where you know, we we've understood >> their fundamentals because it's the same transition that the IittIe world's gone through. And to a large degree, that cloud world has gone through. I think that the challenge we've we've been working to break through collectively as an industry is the paralysis at the rate of adoption of new technologies because they're so much change so quickly because we talk about virtualization. And then we're talking about kubernetes. We're talking about cloud native we're talking about Ah, bare Metal Service's. We continue to talk about Micro Micro Service's architectures. We see this progression of technology that's happening so fast in various segments of the industry. I think that the telecommunications industry has been somewhat paralyzed in terms of where do they jump in and which do they adopt and how fast they migrate between them. And which of them can be capable of being hardened to be telco grade and fit into their requirements. That they have for being able to offer regulated service >> is paralyzed because it's just too fast. It's too fast for a big amazed, a big decision to make for big. But but things are evolving too quickly. That's that's It's evolving >> too quickly. And they also sometimes have a concern that they get stuck on a dead end path, right, Because things change so quickly it's Do I jump here? Then here, then here, then here, Then here. Where do I follow a logical path and what we tend to find when we work with the telecommunications industry is that, yes, del technologies can define a strategy. Certainly VM wear and L E. M. C can define our individual strategies. Are operators can define their strategies. But there's just not one strategy for this industry. Reality is, is that when you get when you get together with an ecosystem of partners, and you work at a particular telecommunications company. That is a strategy, and you start from scratch when you go to the next right because they're their ability to consume technology. It's just so different the end game, maybe the same across the board. But the path to get there will look different, >> so every customer's different Get that. But clearly some patterns must be emerging. So my question is, where do you start your sitting down with What are you seeing in terms of common starting points and advice you'd give Thio? >> I think that to Maine has everybody starting with First of all, the physical infrastructure. Compute storage Networking is moving to X 86 model of some sort, which means many, many parts of their infrastructure today that is not based on X 86 needs to transition. So what? Seeing big art piece significant discussions of how you take compute and this new programmable networking and put it everywhere like in thousands of locations. So infrastructure wise, that is a known specific thing to be solved at early stages and given you know, that capability he's we've delivered toward enterprises. We have a lot of tools and capabilities to give them, and the 2nd 1 is that a lot of people are approaching this as a network issue. In reality, it's a cloud decision, not a network. You hurt Shaker, talk about it so the tools capabilities you need to build a cloud is completely different. This cloud may not be genetic cloud it needs to be. It needs to support the defense specific platforms under for they want Cloud, and they needed to support the specific capabilities. So that's the two. A year ago, nobody even could articulate. That was the challenge they were facing. But I would say that's what we are today. >> I would add to that that as we kind of think about the infrastructure and then that cloud decision that there's abstractions that exist between those right at the infrastructure layer, there is the need tohave, an automation system that has the ability to support multiple different cloud platforms that sit on top of it. And that's work that we're doing in the deli in seaside and then secondary to that at the cloud layer. It's the ability to support a multi virtualization environment. Virtual machines do exist and will continue to exist. Kubernetes and cloud native containerized applications do exist and will continue to exist. And the challenge becomes. How do I orchestrate an environment that allows those two exist simultaneously and be layered on top of a common building block of infrastructure? And I think that's really the power that the broader Del Technologies has is that we have all of these entities and capabilities in house. >> How long does this take? A telco toe transform is this decade. Is it? Is it Maur can Obviously certain parts can happen faster. But when when you sit down with with customers and they put together their plans, I mean, what what what's their time horizon? >> So I would argue that we define the first NFI standards and 2012. And if we look globally and even within the vast majority of the Indus story and carriers were somewhere in the 10 to 15% range, yeah, >> yeah, that too compelling. Uh, hey, is that enough? Maybe be a forcing function for making some of those decisions. Are the economics on moving toe X 86 are very compelling. It's 10 times the speed to deploy, and it's a massive order of magnitude and costs. Therefore, it's not something that you could wait on as you continue to build capacity. So that's is forcing the infrastructure decision. The second forcing function is that what five G's starting to look like is not network and wireless, independent from enterprise solutions, you really have to collapse. The single infrastructure you know to offer service is and why it lists embedded on That's another forcing function in terms of enterprises is starting to ask for those capabilities. >> You know, you mentioned X 86 couple times and when you think about the Telco Cloud generically what we're talking about here in the in the commercial cloud not to tell ghost no commercial but the mainstream cloud you're getting a lot of offload, you know, hardware offload alternative processing arm uh, GP use F p g a Z even, you know, custom, a six coming back. You've seen the same thing in the Telco club >> for sure, I think I think if if you look at what we've done over the last several years, we've seen this dramatic shift in almost a pendulum swing away from a six and proprietary hardware towards everything on X 86 I think what we've learned over the last several years at X 86 is a platform that has its value. But it's just not for every work with So we've seen things like network slicing and control, user plane separation and technologies that her first moving user playing very high Io applications back onto smart nicks and F PJs and eventually onto merchant silicon with programmable silicate in the network switches. But I think that even if you look at what's happening in in Public Cloud with things like GPU virtualization, they're still largely virtualized in the time domain, which means that they're used by a particular application for a period of time and then the next application scheduled it in the next application schedule. Is it that doesn't work for network workloads? So I think that what we're finding is we go to this Toko Cloud model, especially with offload in the virtual ization of Acceleration Technologies, is that it's an entire set of problems that just aren't solved in public cloud yet. >> Yeah, I would say, based on experience, the vast majority of network workloads have to be x 86 I definitely think arm cores and GPO offloads will play all at some point in the future. But they that's not the heavy duty that you need to offload those functions because most of these network applications were it. And for custom, a sick. That's very high performance that you know, it has high throughput. Security, built in ability to build service is directly into the silicon. So that kind of transition over time you'll feed. You see a lot of distributed applications, it and container formats all the way at the edge. But that transition to that kind of distributed model from what we are today is probably not possible. And I would argue you'll always have their mics off high performance, high throughput. I mean, think about it. If you're trying to activate 20,000 I ot devices instantly, you really need a high core density, you know, x 86 chip with significant memory. You really worry about the data plane and how much data you can put. So it's better >> we didn't even hit I ot dead. Wait, wait Another day, Another conversation. Hey, thanks for the time. We certainly appreciate it. Been a good show I for you all to write for, sir? Good. Good energy. Good vibes and good business. Thanks for the time We appreciate it. >> Thank you, guys. Thank >> you very much for your time. >> Watching the Cube live coverage Here it Veum World 2019 in San Francisco. Thank you.

>> live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage. It's the Cube covering Veum World 2019. Brought to you by VM Wear and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, everyone. Live Cube coverage here in San Francisco, California Mosconi North were in the lobby for VM World 2019. I'm John for a day. Volante are 10 years covering VM World's been exciting, Dave, and we've watched all the changes and our next guest is going to illuminate all the benefits at the top of the stack, as I call the end user experience. Shaker Ire, Who's the V S v. P. And general manager End User Computing within VM, where what that means is, he takes care of all the stuff that we're virtualization creates those efficiencies. I think what Palmer's just called end user computing still, but they still have that name back then, if I remember correctly, >> yeah, you >> know the name is stuck because it's ah, it's sort of income, passes all the technologies and uses use right as digital interface is. So that's why it's and use the computing. It's any digital interface that anybody at work uses. Now, the interesting thing is people don't work in an office anymore, and the interface is no longer just a laptop. >> Well, I want to get into some stupid questions around the work environment cause whether you working at a cafe or at home is all kinds of security issues. Also, user experiences. Collaboration software. But let's first get the news out of the way. Digital work, Space news What's the What's going on? The show? What you guys announcing? Yeah, so >> before we get to >> the news that we met me, frame it up a little bit right? Because when you think about organizations today, especially with the changing demographics, where they're going in terms of new devices, the mobility phenomenon, right, the transformation they're going through in terms of just their own cloud and APS and so on, right it. Every every one of those things effects employees, right. And at the end of the day, you know what organizations want is for the employees to have a great experience all the way, as we call it from higher to retire. Not to do that, you know you need a platform because I can just give you a pretty apt running in the laptop and say, Great, that's That's the end of the employees experience, right? It's fundamentally transforming the own whole environment. That's why it's still retains its term and use the computing. And to do that, you have to hit at least three facets, right? One is, of course, How do you deliver a great experience for the employees where they can get any app, any device, anywhere, any form? Anyway, that's one aspect of it. The second aspect of it is from a nightie standpoint. I've gotta manage all this complexity, right, and it's only growing. It's not shrinking with all the head virginity, so there's a management angle of it, and then the tone angle of it is, you know, security. As you pointed out, right security so important. In fact, what you users want is they don't want any security driven compromises. What is an example of security, even compromise, that I have to go through three passwords because he simply don't trust me? Heck, figure it out. Is what the user's Saito I t especially the millennials. Right. So s So you gotta address that. So the platform that we have workspace one actually addresses all three So we have innovations today and news in all three areas, right? So it's an example. Employ experiences, something we've been driving with enterprises and corporations for at least two years. Now we've upped the ante. We have now introducing a virtual assistant that employees can use either through voice or text to essentially ask questions. Hey, what's how do I get into WiFi? What's my employee directory? Um, you know who I go to first? You know this and that, right? As employed onboard the organization. Those examples of virtual assistant can do it. So we released the virtual assistant. That's a big piece of news in the employ experience. Sadie. Another big piece of news is we are introducing a tech preview of what we call digital employees experience management, which means I t now has a user expedient score that they can look at and say, Hey, is David getting a great expedience? No, it's poor, and I can die right in. I can find out the root cause I can fix the issue, and I could do that automatically. >> KP eyes can come out of that right? Absolutely serviceability. >> Absolutely. And I think you know, I've talked to many Cee Io's and we you know, we drive works based one and they for awhile sort of told me, Hey, this is all good. But >> I don't know how I'm doing all my >> doing with respect to, you know, your best best customer. Um, I ahead and behind and far behind. So this really helps them. >> Here. Let me ask the questions. That's a good point I want because this gets down to the heart of the issue. What is the top requests that you're getting from your customers or top two or three features? That pattern that continued comes back from your customer base when it comes to end user computing. These the experience, >> it spends all three things, right? So the first thing is, they're saying, Listen, I want to be able to deliver a great employee experience some, you know, help me do that. Helping measure and make sure I know what journey, Eman That's one right. Second is I've got to set virginity. I've got this complexity of God. You know, I always phones. I've got android tablets. I've got a you know, Dell laptop. I've got a Mac book. I've got you know a rugged device. I've got some work space I ot devices like printers and ex sector X factor. I've got this head virginity. Just help me manage this complexity in a sort of a unified, seamless, uniform way. Right? And third is help me secure my enterprise. So there's a whole model emerging called zero Trust. Where in the old world, what you do is you just build a huge wall around the enterprise, right? A pedometer, and say I'm inside the wall. I need to be domain joined on that inside the fire world. Therefore, I'm good. I mean, you got to throw that out of the window anymore. >> Doesn't exist in your model, because if a millennial or workaround working at home, that means every single i p device on my network potentially a compromise point. >> Correct. So you have You have to start with that device never ought to be trusted. And every network is hostile, right? If you start out for that reminds, then you build trust over time, right? And how do you build trust? You first say you leverage user identity, You say Okay, Davis who he is, right? And so that becomes an identity. You say this device is trusted or partially trusted. So one of the things we're announcing its part of innovations today is what we call workspace to risk analytic, which means we're able to provide a risk or write for the device. And we can say, Hey, this device is a risk on a score of 1 to 10 of eight, which means I can mostly trust it. Maybe you don't trust the sensitive apse. So therefore, a block access to the most sensitive apse, right? So use a combination of different things. They use things like NSX micro segmentation to your point about how we build on the Via Mary Stack. The carbon black acquisition is phenomenal because it gives us that intelligence. So collectively, we're able to sort of implement the zero trust model. Right. So >> those are the >> three main topics, right? Is employed expedience, unified management and zero trust security are really, really >> important. I want to ask you about your tenure, gm, where coincided with the air watch expedition. And prior to that event theme, we're struggled in this space. Ana Citrix dominated your pre Gerald. You know, your former company kind of fumbling around in air watch now. Air watch, if I recall correctly from wrong was not like the number one player. Just like people are saying carbon blacks, not the number one player. Absolutely. And then you get into the VM where flywheel effect or Sanjay Putin came in and it was great leader. But I wonder if you could sort of describe the ascendancy of the end user computing business at at VM wear. And I'm curious you mentioned carbon black and you kind of replicate that with our end point cloud security, peace. There's obviously a security use case. You clearly just described it, but take us back to >> great, great, great question. So actually, I joined right when literally, maybe a month before the air watch acquisition. Right then. So a Sandy and I and the rest of the team sort of worked this. We said, Hey, listen, a watch is a phenomenal sort of mobile management and security player. We had a very good product and horizon VD I, but it was a little bit isolated, and there were others, like, say, tricks that are sort of motor head in that space. So what? The first thing we did is we have three assets. Actually, the third I said what we had a Fed rated identity asset that we had purchase, but not leverage. So we said he know what the identity really has to get coupled with. You know, the death star pulled the mobile world, so we actually took these three piece parts and started integrating it as he started integrating it. We said, You know, this actually forms a very interesting work space, and we said It's a digital work space to be sort of coined that term and started to really tight together. The experience is a user would have, whether they were in a mobile device, a physical desktop or a virtual desktop right and made that seamless. So that's when the work's based one app was born and this was probably around the 2015 time frame. So we started releasing it, and then we started to stitching together basically all the back and integrations, right, So out >> of >> this out of that was born a workspace. And so, in 2016 with the momentum of the workspace, desktop business came back because now it had it been on. We've done a lot of work on the desktop businesses. Well, we made it very competitive with Citrix. We bought volumes. We integrated that we made it actually the best media solution. The markets, with a tremendous traction by itself in the horizon space and then integrating it works with people, said You know what, I need to get that workspace. And why am I dealing with Citrix this horizon solution within workspace in a more than salts my problem. In fact, it's better in certain areas. So that sort of got momentum going around that we really built that workspace momentum. And that was, I would say, till about 2016 or so. And then we saw these three things coming up. One is Hey, employees, experience matters. We really started pouring effort into the employees experience from, you know, day one day two and beyond. And then recently, including this show, we added divided sort of Day zero and then the off boarding pieces. Well, so employees experience became sort of the lightning rod for why somebody would adopt this workspace one platform which were built by then, right, and then we added on this ability to do modern management, especially on Windows and Mac, which was really starting to take off last year completely. Darden rounded out that portfolio and handsome capability, and then we added Now zero trust model, which is which is now sort of bolstered by the acquisition of carbon black. So you can see this a set off cascading talk, full moves. But we did it in a way where, you know, it was really truly integrated. So when as we come out with carbon black now, one of the most interesting things is right when carbon black comes into the fold, we've already done the integration. We're actually going to show it on my keynote right after this, right? We're actually showing the integration between workspace one intelligence and carbon backs You There you have it. You already have an asset that's completely integrated. >> So the risk or is interesting to me as well, so as endpoint security, because much, much more importantly, no fishing is you know, the big way that people get give up credentials. Does >> any of >> this seep into machines and I ot and edge? >> Yeah, and fabulous question. >> Wonder if you could come. >> Absolutely. I think listen, be if you think about risk oars and if >> you think about >> risks at large and devices they've been largely and Windows devices and not to and blame it on Windows, I think they might accept in a fabulous job of sort of progressing windows. But by far it's the most used operating system in the enterprise, right? But Mobile is getting used there. There, you know, it's starting to make a huge starting take a large part of the real estate of the enterprise. So I think we have a unique opportunity now through the data we collect on mobile devices with workspace one using the underlying air watch technology coupled with some of the, um, you know, data that, you know, data analytics tools we have in the carbon black cloud and the way they do sort of threat analysis and, uh, and determine potential attack vectors. We have an opportunity to leverage that intelligence. And that day, the lake and that technology, coupled with the data, we have to really now build a broader sort of threat surface understanding across multiple devices, and eventually that goes into a I ot. Right. So we're actually going to be working with some of the other technologies we have in Wimmer called Paul's Right. Pulse is very interesting because they have the ability to speak multiple device protocols that nobody does. Okay, so we're gonna take advantage of them potentially to sort of be able to start to poke into devices that are attached to the office, but not quite attached to the office. In the sense they're not mainstream devices you and I would use. But indirectly, you may use it, right? So be able to sort of get a much broader view off a visibility of devices. Second is how to manage them through a combination of workspace, one impulse and third, to get the data so that we can feed it into this federated cloud of workspace one intelligence and carbon black to understand the risk. And that way you have this three prom thing, right? I >> wanna ask you a personal question. Pat gal singer was very prolific this week again. Props of in social Media, Mojo doing a selfie on stage with Craig. Job ate up. Yeah, um, doing a little morning thing, telling people how he prepares for his keynote. Yeah. So how do you prepare for your keynote. Do you like, give it for a M and hit the gym and get a job coming up right after this interview? >> I do. I I I'm not fat. That's incredibly disciplined, I think. I think it's been waking up at 4 a.m. for a long time, so I'm not that much of an early bird. But I prepare because, you know, I've been involved in the construction of the keynote. So for me, it's, um, be started work on this, probably about three months ago, because the story came together. It's very natural to me. Just like you asked me the question. You know, tell me about the evolution. It's just a very natural thing because, like telling you >> on relevant story, not just beady eye. Yeah, it's so much more now. >> It's so much more And, you know, and I've lived through this and I participated in most of the decision making, so, you know, when my head of product marketing company said, Hey, what should we do with the keynote? I said, You know, I have the storyline in mind, right? And sit on the same three or four pillars I'm talking to you about, right? How do we tell the story to the audience about what is the platform? Why should they sort of bet on it? How did they sort of deploy it, show them some real world examples and then basically sprinkling all the innovations? That sounds exciting. So? So because of that story lines always being in my head. So it's not that hard. It's just sometimes you just need to sort of a CZ. You're unstable. >> You're preparing Saul, you're part of Yeah, I was handing it to you. Nobody related it. So >> for me, I think it's just sometimes just rehearsing some of the key parts. And then, of course, the visual cues. And they >> want to slam home the big point. They go. You know, I've been looking at your career. You have to check your technologies, but also, you're pretty much been a product leader. Yeah, and your career definite. So I gotta ask you around from the big movements in the innocent. Like your perspective as a participant. This was a product leaders Well, executive in there and done that. Amazon introduced their first conference around cloud security called reinforces. Here we get Cube coverage there. It was interesting because it wasn't like a typical security conference like black hat. Definitely on our say wasn't so much I t is really about cloud security. And so Dave and I were speculating like, this is the first cloud security show. I mean, dedicated to kind of cloud security didn't say cloud security, but essentially, cloud security. >> What is >> your take on the cloud security? Because a >> little bit >> of a different view, little bit architectural change. If you gotta have the on premises, you're gonna have the cloud if things any working together, some things you're doing and security quite frankly, around isolation to, you know, working in in any environment. You're that year in the middle of it all. >> Yeah. >> What is cloud >> security and why I have a conference isn't relevant with your thoughts. >> That's a >> great question. I think you know, you see many of these trends, I think, you know, listen, many of these conferences, they provoke their thought provoking, so it forces you to think right? So when I think about cloud security now, traditionally when you think about cloud security, you would think about technologies like Cass be light cloud access service broker. You would think about encryption to means much more than I do >> all the usual stuff in the back. If he's there, other people are there. But no. >> Yeah, I mean more than my coffee. I think you know you. It's sort of you think of the the the NL unlocked to cloud securities Data center security where you think of the sort of Amazon cloud living in Amazon Data Center. And, you know, how can we protect the, you know, the data and the egress access into those cloud and in the same technology sort of apply, but to your point that you sort of just touched upon its That cloud is not living in isolation. First of all, that Amazon Cloud is connected to a whole bunch of, you know, applications that are still sitting in the data center. Right. So they were not there. Potentially not moving the Oracle database today isn't there moving some workloads to the cloud, right? That's what most most companies are. Hey, guess what? There's all these end points of the connecting the connecting both the data center in the cloud. You're not gonna proxy to the cloud to get to the data center. So there's gateways. So do me. Cloud security can't be an isolated, you know, sort of technology that companies have to sort of think about now is there Is there opportunity to leverage the cloud to manage security better and get visibility in the security environment to do security? Analytics? Absolutely. So I think to me, that's where it's going. Because security, I think, has been proven, is no longer. You know, the one sing single thing. It's just you have to do multiple things. Every time I go talk to CSO's, they tell me they got this technology. I said, Hey, wait a minute. You you have 20. Did you cut down any yet? We've got down a few, but you know, they're just nervous about cutting down too much. Because of that one piece of software >> insurance policy. They're insecure. >> They cut to the added four, >> another tool. Bullshit. I think I think the architecture will get simpler because it's way too complex, but the same time I think you have to. There's no sustenance, cloud security and network security or endpoint security, and >> maybe there's a whole new group emerging within VM where that you could add to your repertoire en Pointe computing group your end user computing. Why don't have endpoint computing? That's >> what you're holding >> is you know is all about what do we need to do for the user? Both as I t and the end user? Okay. And now he now folks like hr and so on, the securities has to be built into it, right? So much like that. I think when you go build our data centers are the public cloud and build this hybrid clouds, security is to be built into that as >> well. We'll shake our thanks for coming on and sharing your insights. A super important area. We're gonna be covering this. This is cloud to point of this end user computing. This is where the edge of the network is. That's where the people are. They are part of the edge. A thin part of the edge of a big part of the edge. You're gonna be in the middle of it will be following the attraction. Thanks for coming on. You So much for having me having played Cuba, Cuba live here in San Francisco on chopper develop the state tune from or we have two sets. Three days of wall to wall coverage, worldly in day one. Stay with us. We gotta have Michael Dell. Pat Nelson. Come on Tomorrow and a lot more guests coming onto. They stay with us. We'll be right back.

>> Hi, I'm Peter Burris and welcome to another Wikibon Action Item. (upbeat digital music) >> Cameraman: Three, two, one. >> Hi. Once again, we're broadcasting from our beautiful Palo Alto studios, theCUBE studios, and this week we've got another great group. David Floyer in the studio with me along with George Gilbert. And on the phone we've got Jim Kobielus and Ralph Finos. Hey, guys. >> Hi there. >> So we're going to talk about something that's going to become a big issue. It's only now starting to emerge. And that is, what will be the roadmap to automation? Automation is going to be absolutely crucial for the success of IT in the future and the success of any digital business. At its core, many people have presumed that automation was about reducing labor. So introducing software and other technologies, we would effectively be able to substitute for administrative, operator, and related labor. And while that is absolutely a feature of what we're talking about, the bigger issue is ultimately is that we cannot conceive of more complex workloads that are capable of providing better customer experience, superior operations, all the other things a digital business ultimately wants to achieve. If we don't have a capability for simplifying how those underlying resources get put together, configured, or organized, orchestrated, and ultimately sustained delivery of. So the other part of automation is to allow for much more work that can be performed on the same resources much faster. It's a basis for how we think about plasticity and the ability to reconfigure resources very quickly. Now, the challenge is this industry, the IT industry has always used standards as a weapon. We use standards as a basis of creating eco systems or scale, or mass for even something as, like mainframes. Where there weren't hundreds of millions of potential users. But IBM was successful at using that as a basis for driving their costs down and approving a superior product. That's clearly what Microsoft and Intel did many years ago, was achieve that kind of scale through the driving more, and more, and more, ultimately, volume of the technology, and they won. But along the way though, each time, each generation has featured a significant amount of competition at how those interfaces came together and how they worked. And this is going to be the mother of all standard-oriented competition. How does one automation framework and another automation framework fit together? One being able to create value in a way that serves another automation framework, but ultimately as a, for many companies, a way of creating more scale onto their platform. More volume onto that platform. So this notion of how automation is going to evolve is going to be crucially important. David Floyer, are APIs going to be enough to solve this problem? >> No. That's a short answer to that. This is a very complex problem, and I think it's worthwhile spending a minute just on what are the component parts that need to be brought together. We're going to have a multi-cloud environment. Multiple private clouds, multiple public clouds, and they've got to work together in some way. And the automation is about, and you've got the Edge as well. So you've got a huge amount of data all across all of these different areas. And automation and orchestration across that, are as you said, not just about efficiency, they're about making it work. Making it able to be, to work and to be available. So all of the issues of availability, of security, of compliance, all of these difficult issues are a subject to getting this whole environment to be able to work together through a set of APIs, yes, but a lot lot more than that. And in particular, when you think about it, to me, volume of data is critical. Is who has access to that data. >> Peter: Now, why is that? >> Because if you're dealing with AI and you're dealing with any form of automation like this, the more data you have, the better your models are. And if you can increase that amount of data, as Google show every day, you will maintain that handle on all that control over that area. >> So you said something really important, because the implied assumption, and obviously, it's a major feature of what's going on, is that we've been talking about doing more automation for a long time. But what's different this time is the availability of AI and machine learning, for example, >> Right. as a basis for recognizing patterns, taking remedial action or taking predictive action to avoid the need for remedial action. And it's the availability of that data that's going to improve the quality of those models. >> Yes. Now, George, you've done a lot of work around this a whole notion of ML for ITOM. What are the kind of different approaches? If there's two ways that we're looking at it right now, what are the two ways? >> So there are two ends of the extreme. One is I want to see end to end what's going on across my private cloud or clouds. As well as if I have different applications in different public clouds. But that's very difficult. You get end-to-end visibility but you have to relax a lot of assumptions about what's where. >> And that's called the-- >> Breadth first. So the pro is end-to-end visibility. Con is you don't know how all the pieces fit together quite as well, so you get less fidelity in terms of diagnosing root causes. >> So you're trying to optimize at a macro level while recognizing that you can't optimize at a micro level. >> Right. Now the other approach, the other end of the spectrum, is depth first. Where you constrain the set of workloads and services that you're building and that you know about, and how they fit together. And then the models, based on the data you collect there, can become so rich that you have very very high fidelity root cause determination which allows you to do very precise recommendations or even automated remediation. What we haven't figured out hot to do yet is marry the depth first with the breadth first. So that you have multiple focus depth first. That's very tricky. >> Now, if you think about how the industry has evolved, we wrote some stuff about what we call, what I call the iron triangle. Which is basically a very tight relationship between specialists in technology. So the people who were responsible for a particular asset, be it storage, or the system, or the network. The vendors, who provided a lot of the knowledge about how that worked, and therefore made that specialist more or less successful and competent. And then the automation technology that that vendor ultimately provided. Now, that was not automation technology that was associated with AI or anything along those lines. It was kind of out of the box, buy our tool, and this is how you're going to automate various workflows or scripts, or whatever else it might be. And every effort to try to break that has been met with screaming because, well, you're now breaking my automation routines. So the depth-first approach, even without ML, has been the way that we've done it historically. But, David, you're talking about something different. It's the availability of the data that starts to change that. >> Yeah. >> So are we going to start seeing new compacts put in place between users and vendors and OEMs and a lot of these other folks? And it sounds like it's going to be about access to the data. >> Absolutely. So you're going to start. let's start at the bottom. You've got people who have a particular component, whatever that component is. It might be storage. It might be networking. Whatever that component is. They have products in that area which will be collecting data. And they will need for their particular area to provide a degree of automation. A degree of capability. And they need to do two things. They need to do that optimization and also provide data to other people. So they have to have an OEM agreement not just for the equipment that they provide, but for the data that they're going to give and the data they're going to give back. The automatization of the data, for example, going up and the availability of data to help themselves. >> So contracts effectively mean that you're going to have to negotiate value capture on the data side as well as the revenue side. >> Absolutely. >> The ability to do contracting historically has been around individual products. And so we're pretty good at that. So we can say, you will buy this product. I'm delivering you the value. And then the utility of that product is up to you. When we start going to service contracts, we get a little bit different kind of an arrangement. Now, it's an ongoing continuous delivery. But for the most part, a lot of those service contracts have been predicated to known in advance classes of functions, like Salesforce, for example. Or the SASS business where you're able to write a contract that says over time you will have access to this service. When we start talking about some of this automation though, now we're talking about ongoing, but highly bespoke, and potentially highly divergent, over a relatively short period of time, that you have a hard time writing contracts that will prescribe the range of behaviors and the promise about how those behaviors are actually going to perform. I don't think we're there yet. What do you guys think? >> Well, >> No, no way. I mean, >> Especially when you think about realtime. (laughing) >> Yeah. It has to be realtime to get to the end point of automating the actual reply than the actual action that you take. That's where you have to get to. You can't, It won't be sufficient in realtime. I think it's a very interesting area, this contracts area. If you think about solutions for it, I would be going straight towards blockchain type architectures and dynamic blockchain contracts that would have to be put in place. >> Peter: But they're not realtime. >> The contracts aren't realtime. The contracts will never be realtime, but the >> Accessed? access to the data and the understanding of what data is required. Those will be realtime. >> Well, we'll see. I mean, the theorem's what? Every 12 seconds? >> Well. That's >> Everything gets updated? >> That's To me, that's good enough. >> Okay. >> That's realtime enough. It's not going to solve the problem of somebody >> Peter: It's not going to solve the problem at the edge. >> At the very edge, but it's certainly sufficient to solve the problem of contracts. >> Okay. >> But, and I would add to that and say, in addition to having all this data available. Let's go back like 10, 20 years and look at Cisco. A lot of their differentiation and what entrenched them was sort of universal familiarity with their admin interfaces and they might not expose APIs in a way that would make it common across their competitors. But if you had data from them and a constrained number of other providers for around which you would build let's say, these modern big data applications. It's if you constrain the problem, you can get to the depth first. >> Yeah, but Cisco is a great example of it's an archetype for what I said earlier, that notion of an iron triangle. You had Cisco admins >> Yeah. that were certified to run Cisco gear and therefore had a strong incentive to ensure that more Cisco gear was purchased utilizing a Cisco command line interface that did incorporate a fair amount of automation for that Cisco gear and it was almost impossible for a lot of companies to penetrate that tight arrangement between the Cisco admin that was certified, the Cisco gear, and the COI. >> And the exact same thing happened with Oracle. The Oracle admin skillset was pervasive within large >> Peter: Happened with everybody. >> Yes, absolutely >> But, >> Peter: The only reason it didn't happen in the IBM mainframe, David, was because of a >> It did happen, yeah, >> Well, but it did happen, but governments stepped in and said, this violates antitrust. And IBM was forced by law, by court decree, to open up those interfaces. >> Yes. That's true. >> But are we going to see the same type of thing >> I think it's very interesting to see the shape of this market. When we look a little bit ahead. People like Amazon are going to have IAS, they're going to be running applications. They are going to go for the depth way of doing things across, or what which way around is it? >> Peter: The breadth. They're going to be end to end. >> But they will go depth in individual-- >> Components. Or show of, but they will put together their own type of things for their services. >> Right. >> Equally, other players like Dell, for example, have a lot of different products. A lot of different components in a lot of different areas. They have to go piece by piece and put together a consortium of suppliers to them. Storage suppliers, chip suppliers, and put together that outside and it's going to have to be a different type of solution that they put together. HP will have the same issue there. And as of people like CA, for example, who we'll see an opportunity for them to be come in again with great products and overlooking the whole of all of this data coming in. >> Peter: Oh, sure. Absolutely. >> So there's a lot of players who could be in this area. Microsoft, I missed out, of course they will have the two ends that they can combine together. >> Well, they may have an advantage that nobody else has-- >> Exactly. Yeah. because they're strong in both places. But I have Jim Kobielus. Let me check, are you there now? Do we got Jim back? >> Can you hear me? >> Peter: I can barely hear you, Jim. Could we bring Jim's volume up a little bit? So, Jim, I asked the question earlier, about we have the tooling for AI. We know how to get data. How to build models and how to apply the models in a broad brush way. And we're certainly starting to see that happen within the IT operations management world. The ITOM world, but we don't yet know how we're going to write these contracts that are capable of better anticipating, putting in place a regime that really describes how the, what are the limits of data sharing? What are the limits of derivative use? Et cetera. I argued, and here in the studio we generally agreed, that's we still haven't figured that out and that this is going to be one of the places where the tension between, at least in the B2B world, data availability and derivative use and where you capture value and where those profitables go, is going to be significant. But I want to get your take. Has the AI community >> Yeah. started figuring out how we're going to contractually handle obligations around data, data use, data sharing, data derivative use. >> The short answer is, no they have not. The longer answer is, that can you hear me, first of all? >> Peter: Barely. >> Okay. Should I keep talking? >> Yeah. Go ahead. >> Okay. The short answer is, no that the AI community has not addressed those, those IP protection issues. But there is a growing push in the AI community to leverage blockchain for such requirements in terms of block chains to store smart contracts where related to downstream utilization of data and derivative models. But that's extraordinarily early on in its development in terms of insight in the AI community and in the blockchain community as well. In other words, in fact, in one of the posts that I'm working on right now, is looking at a company called 8base that's actually using blockchain to store all of those assets, those artifacts for the development and lifecycle along with the smart contracts to drive those downstream uses. So what I'm saying is that there's lots of smart people like yourselves are thinking about these problems, but there's no consensus, definitely, in the AI community for how to manage all those rights downstream. >> All right. So very quickly, Ralph Finos, if you're there. I want to get your perspective >> Yeah. on what this means from markets, market leadership. What do you think? How's this going to impact who are the leaders, who's likely to continue to grow and gain even more strength? What're your thoughts on this? >> Yeah. I think, my perspective on this thing in the near term is to focus on simplification. And to focus on depth, because you can get return, you can get payback for that kind of work and it simplifies the overall picture so when you're going broad, you've got less of a problem to deal with. To link all these things together. So I'm going to go with the Shaker kind of perspective on the world is to make things simple. And to focus there. And I think the complexity of what we're talking about for breadth is too difficult to handle at this point in time. I don't see it happening any time in the near future. >> Although there are some companies, like Splunk, for example, that are doing a decent job of presenting a more of a breadth approach, but they're not going deep into the various elements. So, George, really quick. Let's talk to you. >> I beg to disagree on that one. >> Peter: Oh! >> They're actually, they built a platform, originally that was breadth first. They built all these, essentially, forwarders which could understand the formats of the output of all sorts of different devices and services. But then they started building what they called curated experiences which is the equivalent of what we call depth first. They're doing it for IT service management. They're doing it for what's called user behavior. Analytics, which is it's a way of tracking bad actors or bad devices on a network. And they're going to be pumping out more of those. What's not clear yet, is how they're going to integrate those so that IT service management understands security and vice versa. >> And I think that's one of the key things, George, is that ultimately, the real question will be or not the real question, but when we think about the roadmap, it's probably that security is going to be early on one of the things that gets addressed here. And again, it's not just security from a perimeter standpoint. Some people are calling it a software-based perimeter. Our perspective is the data's going to go everywhere and ultimately how do you sustain a zero trust world where you know your data is going to be out in the clear so what are you going to do about it? All right. So look. Let's wrap this one up. Jim Kobielus, let's give you the first Action Item. Jim, Action Item. >> Action Item. Wow. Action Item Automation is just to follow the stack of assets that drive automation and figure out your overall sharing architecture for sharing out these assets. I think the core asset will remain orchestration models. I don't think predictive models in AI are a huge piece of the overall automation pie in terms of the logic. So just focus on building out and protecting and sharing and reusing your orchestration models. Those are critically important. In any domain. End to end or in specific automation domains. >> Peter: David Floyer, Action Item. >> So my Action Item is to acknowledge that the world of building your own automation yourself around a whole lot of piece parts that you put together are over. You won't have access to a sufficient data. So enterprises must take a broad view of getting data, of getting components that have data be giving them data. Make contracts with people to give them data, masking or whatever it is and become part of a broader scheme that will allow them to meet the automation requirements of the 21st century. >> Ralph Finos, Action Item. >> Yeah. Again, I would reiterate the importance of keeping it simple. Taking care of the depth questions and moving forward from there. The complexity is enormous, and-- >> Peter: George Gilbert, Action Item. >> I say, start with what customers always start with with a new technology, which is a constrained environment like a pilot and there's two areas that are potentially high return. One is big data, where it's been a multi vendor or multi-vendor component mix, and a mess. And so you take that and you constrain that and make that a depth-first approach in the cloud where there is data to manage that. And the second one is security, where we have now a more and more trained applications just for that. I say, don't start with a platform. Start with those solutions and then start adding more solutions around that. >> All right. Great. So here's our overall Action Item. The question of automation or roadmap to automation is crucial for multiple reasons. But one of the most important ones is it's inconceivable to us to envision how a business can institute even more complex applications if we don't have a way of improving the degree of automation on the underlying infrastructure. How this is going to play out, we're not exactly sure. But we do think that there are a few principals that are going to be important that users have to focus on. Number one is data. Be very clear that there is value in your data, both to you as well as to your suppliers and as you think about writing contracts, don't write contracts that are focused on a product now. Focus on even that product as a service over time where you are sharing data back and forth in addition to getting some return out of whatever assets you've put in place. And make sure that the negotiations specifically acknowledge the value of that data to your suppliers as well. Number two, that there is certainly going to be a scale here. There's certainly going to be a volume question here. And as we think about where a lot of the new approaches to doing these or this notion of automation, is going to come out of the cloud vendors. Once again, the cloud vendors are articulating what the overall model is going to look like. What that cloud experience is going to look like. And it's going to be a challenge to other suppliers who are providing an on-premises true private cloud and Edge orientation where the data must live sometimes it is not something that they just want to do because they want to do it. Because that data requires it to be able to reflect that cloud operating model. And expect, ultimately, that your suppliers also are going to have to have very clear contractual relationships with the cloud players and each other for how that data gets shared. Ultimately, however, we think it's crucially important that any CIO recognized that the existing environment that they have right now is not converged. The existing environment today remains operators, suppliers of technology, and suppliers of automation capabilities and breaking that up is going to be crucial. Not only to achieving automation objectives, but to achieve a converged infrastructure, hyper converged infrastructure, multi-cloud arrangements, including private cloud, true private cloud, and the cloud itself. And this is going to be a management challenge, goes way beyond just products and technology, to actually incorporating how you think about your shopping, organized, how you institutionalize the work that the business requires, and therefore what you identify as a tasks that will be first to be automated. Our expectation, security's going to be early on. Why? Because your CEO and your board of directors are going to demand it. So think about how automation can be improved and enhanced through a security lens, but do so in a way that ensures that over time you can bring new capabilities on with a depth-first approach at least, to the breadth that you need within your shop and within your business, your digital business, to achieve the success and the results that you want. Okay. Once again, I want to thank David Floyer and George Gilbert here in the studio with us. On the phone, Ralph Finos and Jim Kobielus. Couldn't get Neil Raiden in today, sorry Neil. And I am Peter Burris, and this has been an Action Item. Talk to you again soon. (upbeat digital music)