>> Hi. I'm Stew Minimum. And this is a special on the ground here at the V Tug Summer Slam 2019. It is the 16th year of the event. We had hosted the Cube many times at the veto. Winter warmer and sad to say this actually the final interview for V tug it into the final V tug event. But before we can wrap up a friend of mine, Sean to lean, who is a vey architect with Delhi emcee. I've been promising him for years that we would one of these days do an interview on the Cube at the V tug. So it is the absolute final interview. So, Sean, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. All right. So, uh, not only do you work for Delhi emcee, but you're part of the social team, you know, here at the V tug event, I had conversations with Lee Ji. It was also his first time in a program on Matt. You know who I've spoken with in the past? Eso, you know, give us a little bit about your background at this event and what this community has meant to you. >> Oh, sure. Um So I'm trying to remember I think this is my fifth or sixth summer Slam. Um I mean, I basically once I started my professional career. You know, one of the first things that you know we did was look for user groups. And so when they usedto hold this event back a Gillette that was very close to home. Um and that was my first experience with the I think back then it was the New England V mug, but it's still the same community and community has always been a big part of my life and my career. I mean, I even joined, you know, AMC, Social Media Community team to basically work with influencers in the broader I t community. But I always make sure that I could do events like this, you know, in the New England area, because it's so important to be a part of this community and the I t crowd. Everybody knows everybody, and you can always learn something new just by talking to people. So, like I purposely go like during lunch and sit down with people who have never met before and introduce myself and see what they do for a living, and it's been a wonderful experience every year. It's a great >> point, you know, community is so important in these events, and especially in a regional event with local on your shirt doesn't matter as much because for the years we've been attending this, almost everybody has changed jobs. You know, companies have been acquired, companies go public, you know, people change their jobs. So it's about the learning as a community, the growth of what's happening, our careers more than kind of some of that day to day battle that, like you might happen in the storage community. >> Yeah, yeah, you got to be able to separate, Say, you know, your professional competitiveness and be able to, you know, just embrace people as people and be able to talk to them and share knowledge. And I think anyone else who's a part of the community is able to do that themselves as >> well. Yeah, it's been interesting. Virtualization was one of those galvanizing technology that brought a lot of people, you know, bloggers and people. Helping to participate in Cloud's been interesting in many ways. You know, there's some fragmentation. There's some tough competition out there yet we're all learning and you know it is most customers today. They've got, you know, hybrid cloud. They've got multi club, they've got lots of environment and therefore the user's, you know, don't necessarily look at some of those battles are going on, But they're looking to help run their business on and, you know, how are you seeing that environ? What? What? What do you hear from you know, users that you speak with today? >> So I'm here in a variety of things. There's a lot of people that are on different points. We'll call it in their cloud journey. There are some people who have just kind of gotten the edict from the board or upper management that says Cloud First, where we're gonna do everything in the cloud on dhe. Some people you know who have jumped all in with that are learning a very painful lesson, especially with their wallet. Um, we found that kind of the sweet spot in it is that hybrid cloud. There are some workloads that are absolutely great for cloud, and there are some that is just expensive. And so depending on the size of your infrastructure, you can actually save a good amount of money by setting up something local and having a cloud strategy as well. It's all about evaluating the workload. And I think earlier today during the keynotes this morning, that message was really coming across that it's not all about the cloud or even just one cloud. I mean, there's countless cloud providers out there with all sorts of different Ma operating models and pricing models. And the beauty of it is we're in a place now with the technology that people can almost nickel and dime and do what is best for them and not necessarily be told. This is how it's gonna be. This is your only option. >> Yeah. One of the things I took away from the keynotes this morning is you know, it is oh, so easy to get caught up on the latest cool tool or, you know, the wave or what people are talking about. But it's you know, what skill sets do I have? How do I make sure I understand what valuable for my business and my career? You know, it is. We bring this one to a close. You know, Sean, you know what you have on that >> Well, it's funny you brought up skill sets because a lot of that can be learned from the community. You know, if you don't have the professional skill sets Or maybe, you know, your employer might not pay the empty up for, you know, organized training. There are so many community based free trainings and webinar Siri's and stuff like that that can get you learned up in this. I remember, you know, in my career I was talking with a customer who was like, You know, we're making a shift. We're going to start being more cloud focused on here. My, I'm doing like updating their VM wear environment, and he's like, I need to get better at this. And I rattled off a few different community programs. I talked to him again six months later. He went through all that, and now he's playing around in Azure and Amazon and starting to learn some of that, and they almost gave him a promotion. They reorg, um, into a new role, where he's got more cloud responsibilities and effectively saved his job because he went to the out to the community and learned these skills. >> Yeah, but I always find in these events, right? If if you if you were open Thio, you know, new ideas, that intellectual curiosity. There is so much opportunity in tech these days. Sean won't want to give you the final word any, you know, memories you have from these events. Either you know, the main or the winter event. You know that you want to share, we bring our coverage to a close. >> I mean, you know, this event has been going on for so long, and it's always good stuff every single time. I'm going to miss the rubber chickens that that has always stuck out and to Mia's as one of the guys don't >> know that that's Hans from GM, where, you know, brings the rubber chickens will throw the little key chains at you when you go, Yeah, >> but you know, in general, you know, there's a lot of events out there where, you know, it's it's, you know, the morning and maybe the afternoon, the party afterwards and I'm not here to be like Party party party, but is almost just as important as the event itself. And I've never seen any other user group or event like that that really puts Satan's that time for networking. You get almost just as much business done. You know, they're talking to people, you know, when you're waiting in line for lobster and stuff like that Here, um, as you know, just kind of mingling around during the day. You meet so many people and make business connections and everything at the after party, Which is why I keep thinking they invest so much money in the after hours. Piece >> of it, I think Great point to end on, Shawn. The community is really central to what goes on there. This event. Listen to the customers and, you know, grew that the breath of the topics that they covered, they kept to keep on it. So 16 years of phenomenal run. I wanna have a big shout out to everyone that helped put the Vita gone. Of course, that is Chris and Don Harney at the court. Chris Williams did a lot of work there, but many other people that helped behind the scenes to make it happen. And of course, it was always the users at this event that with drivers for it, as well as the sponsors that helped participate And through this so Sean to lean. Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the Cube alumni. And I'm still minimum. Thank you. As always, for watching this program has been our pleasure. Tiu c All of the V tugs. If you go to the cube dot net, go up in the search bar in touch via tug. You could see previous years We've had so many great guests on the program. You know, I got to interview some of the alumni from the Patriots, which were some definite highlight for me as well as great technical content and good friends that I've made over the years. So with that, we're signing off from the final V tug here in Maine and thank you, as always for watching the Cube.

>> on stew minimum, and this is a special on the ground here at the V tug Summer Slam. Of course, the V tug is the virtual ization in Technology User group, and the veto has always been great at getting us. Some of these users on the programs have any welcome back then. Valentine, who's in I t operating for Danon, the parent company of Dannon, spoke to you in 2017 >> at the >> winter warmer at Gillette Stadium. Since last we spoke, you no longer live in New England. But you have, ah ah, long history with this event. So let's start there what this event meant to you and what brought you back for the ultimate final V tug >> event here. Well, I have a long professional relationship with Chris Williams. He's one of the organizers of the events, and since he introduced me to it and I started coming, my career has really taken off the contacts that you congenital rate and the networking that you could do. An event like this is just unparalleled, and you can also learn a lot from the events, too. But it's almost a footnote because of everything else that you can gain from its ending something like this on a regular basis. Yeah, >> it's a great always look at this show. And when they do the breakout sessions, the Expo Hall gets pretty empty because people are wanting >> to learn. >> But it is the networking, you know, people sitting, you know, before the events, people sitting at lunch. And of course, you know, this evening at the lobster event, there's definitely some good networking, you know, going on, there s >> o, you know, explain. You >> know, from your standpoint, you know, this event started very heavily in virtualization, but it's gone through. You know what? What's changing into Industries Cloud and Dev ops in those environments Is that kind of followed, similar to what you've been seeing in your career? Oh, >> yes, absolutely. I mean, I started off his assists. Admin very heavy and B m wear like a lot of us in that field. Onda, Of course, you know everything's evolving now that the only constant is change. And what I like most about this event is that they have. They've changed the vendors that come in. They've changed the keynote. They've changed the different breakout sessions to keep the information that you're obtaining relevant. It's not redundant. And it allows you to just keep a good bead on what's out there and what to expect in the coming years. All >> right, Dan. What? What? What? What is what's interesting you These days I don't know if you've gotten a chance to go to any of the breakouts or you know what you were looking at coming at the event. But other than coming back and seeing some of the people you know, even though you're no longer in the area, you know what was catching your interest? >> Well, something that's very different since the last time I spoke to you is Cloud specifically for the company that I work for. At that time, it was just a research. It was a nice idea. It was something that, of course, tech was talking about. But the business wasn't interested. And now we're actually in the middle of a cloud implementation for all of our data centers were moving off KREM. We're taking things to the cloud, and we're in the infancy stage of actually, the implementation of the projects has been very beneficial to come here and gain that knowledge. >> Yeah, I heard that one of the themes that was over and over, you know, in the keynotes at this event as well as when I hear many Joe Joe's and just, you know it's not just changed, but, you know, how can I become more agile on? And how can I adopt new things? Theo? Enterprise is, you know, not known for change or speed. You know, what are you seeing in your world? And when you talk to your peers, you know, kind of the openness to be able to embrace technique, new technology that make changes in the way things are done. >> Well, from my personal experience, I would say that most companies intentionally stay a little bit behind when there's a lot of money involved. When you return on, your investment is high. Um, you're not going to jump right into the brand new thing, you know. So there's a There's an intentional, deliberate lag there behind what's brand new behind what your options are at that moment. Um, so I So I think that businesses do, and they do want to move along. They are interested in it, but the validity has to be proven first. All >> right, Dan. Want to give you, You know, your final thoughts that the final be tug any any memories from the events or, you know, last words that you have for the beach community. >> Well, there's definitely some memories that I wouldn't feel comfortable sharing, but ah, this will. This will be missed. I can say that this has been a huge part of my career up to this point. And I have every intention of keeping contact with many of the people that I've met here and continuing to build on those relationships throughout my career. And I'm pretty confident that it wouldn't be exactly where I am now. If it wasn't for my relationship with Chris and the other people, he's introduced me to this event. >> Waves of technology definitely come and go in the different tools, their environment. But those relationships are so important, you know, our careers in the communities that we're part of self. Thanks for coming back from Colorado, and thank you. We appreciate you sharing your story with our community on the cute. >> Yes, of course. Thank you. All >> right. Uh, I'm Sue Minutemen, as always. Thank you so much for watching the cue

>> I am stupid men. And this is a special on the ground here the be Tugg SummerSlam 2019 the 16th and final year of the event. We've got people coming in from all over the environment and so many changes. Really, really. Change is one of the central themes, and joining me on >> the program is >> Matt Robber, who when I first met, I had a very different job, had a different name, but it was one of the keynote speakers this morning at Thank you so much for joining us representing the cube shirt. Yeah, >> thank you. I had aware my limited edition cute shirt I've gotta represent for everybody. Yeah, I've moved on in a slightly different direction from the V community, but what I love about the virtual ization community is it's really about the relationships that we have. So being here is just reconnecting with people I really care about, and making sure that they have hats for with their career is well, not that virtual ization is disappearing overnight. But there's a lot of interesting ways to grow these days, and I like to advocate >> one of things that I loved. When this change from being the the mug, the New England being logged to the beat hug. It actually was helping along that transition. It's more than just virtualization. What's going on in Cloud Computing? Obviously, is having a huge impact. And you know what's happening? Careers and developers. And that was some of the conversation that you have this morning. And if people can't read on the lower third you currently with Red Hat, your technical advocated an editor with open source dot com. That's of course, Red hat. We now call that IBM, right? >> Yes, well, I mean, IBM is the overall Read had a Silla independent part of ah, the organization, and I work for open source dot com. It's a special small group that we get to focus just on telling open source stories inside the ecosystem of open source. So everything from lawyers talking about licenses to people learning python to system administrators telling about their Lennox expertise. And it's all it's all very interesting and very, very exciting because so many of the people here are fantastic sys admin is that yes, they know virtualization. Yes, they know the the proprietary side of it, but the open source side is just as much part of their day, and I want to give them a way of sharing that. >> Yeah. Eso careers, of course, is something that, you know. Well, I was not only a longtime listener, but happened Pleasure to be on the geek twisters broadcast once, and you yourself have gone through a number of career changes. When I first met you very technical working in, you know, some of the products there. You did some very community focused events, but kept your technical bent on your back, working a lot with this, you know, technical community. You know, this key these geek is, you know, at the show there. And they're your people. One >> 100% my people. Yeah, I I I found it early on. I was given the advice that if you ever go anywhere outside of an engineering organization, you're gonna lose your edge. And what I found in practices that there's actually a wide breath of technology and wide breath of jobs necessary to support the technology out there these days. So when you pick your head up when you look into and organizations you might not normally think you could work in, like marketing or in sales. You can find some of the most technical people in ah company. They're attracted to jobs where they can communicate in the way they like to communicate. And they have the day to day life >> that matters. Saddam. >> I found that I love telling stories. I love supporting people, trying to tell stories that makes me gravitate to a very different part of the organization than engineering where it started on. I still get to learn quite a bit. I'm actually coding more than I did when I was an engineer. Technically, and I look forward to doing that more. >> Yeah, well, it really is being able to connect between communities. How do we get, you know, share those stories and make sure we can speak the language of our audience? You know, this is so often it's, you know, if I'm if I'm in the I T organization, I don't necessarily understand the business. We're just talking to Josh out. Well, is if you don't understand the key objectives of the business, how do you know that you're supporting it? How do you make sure you are valuable to the organization right on a similar themes were in your one >> 100% true, and there's a lot of nuance to it because the waves of Cloud and Dev ops and coding infrastructure is code have all see kind of shaking the foundation of this administration. In a way, that's just it seems to be telling a story if you're not good enough in what you're doing, and I really don't like that narrative, I think we can reframe it in a very positive way that we decided to all work in technology because it is inclusive of change and because we >> need to >> continue to evolve. >> If we wanted to be certain about what we're doing every day, you need to study something like geology, so that rocks kind of keep the same or be a chiropractor, and you cracked the back the same way every time In technology you're constantly evolving. You're constantly looking at the next step on. I love Josh is working new ops. I love seeing people adopt Dev ops ideas and open source is such a gateway into all of that work, so open source as the core of it. Once you realize you don't have to file a ticket. When something breaks and you can go fix it or you can talk to a developer that's fixing it. You feel a brand new form of community that you just don't feel in this part of the industry, and I have just become obsessed with it. I want other people to know that there's an option there that it's really exciting. >> Yeah, trust me. I remember the first time I went to a red hat show. I worked with Lennox for many years. I worked with Red Hat for a long time, but it was definitely a different feel at a Red Hat summit. Then it was going to, you know, virtual station, user group or am world. Yes, that inclusiveness. And they want to help. But you know, an open source. A lot of times, it's like, How are you? Contributed doesn't mean you necessarily have to be, you know, fixing bugs and filing code. Maybe you're helping in the documentation, but it is. That contribution is so central onto what happens open source. I know you've got one >> 100% yet the contribution is such a huge element, and like the shirt that you made the shirt is for go for con effectively. It's with gophers fromthe go programming language community and what's cool about Go and I recently went up icon for the python developer community. And at each of those events, what I love is that every one of the booths, every one of the people speaking they have a project that you can participate in. And what's great about that is I think it is the fear of it being like, Oh, I have to learn to code to participate here goes away when you look and they're they're looking for user's. They're looking for subject matter experts on I t infrastructure to use the software tested at scale, make sure it's supported. Make sure it's secure in all the ways that sys admin are the subject matter experts on. So it's not that cyst administrations going away. It's that it's evolving in a way that is Maur inclusive of other technologies and honestly, more freeing once you get into it. All right. So, >> Matt, you currently live in Minnesota. You lived here in the North east For a while. You've been toe many environment. Give us a little bit of you know what? What? The V tug community and the people at this >> thing this event >> have meant to you personally, >> I can't quite some of how important it's been. I started volunteering is part of the pizza community from a social media angle, which showed me that actually, marketing could be interesting because it helps other people connect. And then I spoke here on multiple times early on in my career. It gave me the confidence it gave me the community that help support me. And I think we all can do. Ah, good job of remembering why we're here and remembering how to bring that forward in our local communities. Well, >> not always a pleasure to catch up with you. Thank you for the keynote this morning. And I look forward to seeing your continue working other events. Thanks. All right, I'm still Minutemen. Way back with more coverage here, as always. Thanks for watching the cue

>> Hi. I'm stupid, man. And this is a special on the ground here a the be Tugg Summer Slam and happy to welcome Thio, the program A longtime friend. But first time on the program. Somebody that's known this community for many years. Louisiana Coast is a senior systems engineer in the hyper convert infrastructure space at BM. Where Luigi great to talk >> to you again. >> Thank you. Stew. Actually, this has been one of my bucket list item since e. M. C. World 2010 when the Cube actually first started. >> Yeah. So you've been watching since the beginning. You knew me back from, you know, disclosure. I used to work at AMC, and I've been working with being work for a long time. So you've had a number of jobs. One of those consistencies out there is. I know when I would go to the winter warmer, I would usually see them. There are. Your wife is helped out at the event here also, So give us a way to start off a little bit. Like what is this event being met? You, Your career. Oh, and your friendships over the years. Oh, >> man, that's That's a great question to do. Actually, um, I don't think I would be where I am today without this particular user group. It was my first ever user group in my first ever, really major exposure into the M. We're in January 2010 at the first winter warmer that I attended. So for me, it it actually gave me exposure into the technology and then to see the community and the user's behind that. And I was already following you on Twitter at the time. And you were kind of my mentor into the social space, Ian getting involved in there and to have it all accumulate together. And it was just for me, honestly was amazing. And it was life changing >> liberty. My apologies for introducing to the quagmire that is currently Twitter. But you know l series, right? You know, you got on. You've been in a huge proponent of community activities there. You've now attended. You really think so? You've been at PM world of numbers. Free tip. There one you've been Tonto discovers with H P. When you were there. You know what's different about, you know, a regional event like this compared >> to some of the big ones. >> Well, I think the conversations that you have at most of those events of the same, I think where the benefit regionally is, you can meet up with these people afterwards for coffee, for tea. You can continue that conversation in person a lot easier on and also having the same being in the same geographical region. It helps you relate to some of it. You can. You can laugh about some of the nuances with weather or just, you know, the local sports and what's happening there. And you could just It's more like home, Right? And you get that sense of comfort when you go out to a big conference, right? Yes, you're gonna know people. Were you in a strange environment? You kind of like your little more reserved. >> Like when I talked to Chris Giladi here. He says they don't like when we talk about the Patriots, but your big patriots, >> I have diarrhea. >> Okay. All right. The other thing, you really talk about jobs here. You know something? I know over the years, I've loved helping introducing people on helping them get jobs. The S E positions are always something that every company is going to walk around this expo floor. You're always going to see people that are hiring, and you're gonna find people that that that need jobs. You know what, your >> ears I I would say that's >> the biggest thing about the regional area is when you're actually in the market for a new job. I mean, for me, if you look at me. I started out years ago as a sys admin. Then I went to Tech marketing, and I went to Social Media Marketing. And now I'm doing Essie work for GM wear, which is still a dream, in my opinion, to be working at GM where but for me, it's you build those connections and you have those conversations, those real world conversations. I was just speaking with a gentleman earlier who's possibly contemplating a job change, right? That's not a conversation he would have. Just normally he feels comfortable with these users in the experiences that they've had and and he wants to learn from that. And I'm happily to share that information with anyone. >> Yeah, Luigi, what are some of the things that you've seen? You change the industry, that impact, you know, you were involved with, You know, Matt and Sean hoping Thio, with the social media aspect of this event, Really? You know, being an open 10 toe embrace, not just >> virtualization cloud computing, obviously things like Dev ops, achieving work words or something that a heavily focused on it. >> Yeah, I would think from, if I look at it, I was actually >> having this conversation last night with Hans and are a friend of his, and I was explaining to her about the V tug and how it came about. And, you know, if you really think about back in 2012 you know, companies weren't talking multi cloud or multi virtualization technologies and the user groups started that. And if you look at where the the trend is now in the marketplace, it's plowed. It's this. It's that, you know. So the user's started to dictate that back then. So for me, it's really about that right? He and you know it allows you to stay abreast with the thing. And I don't know if I really entered your question because I'm a went off on a tangent with my a d d. But it was more about that watching the technology change and being ableto have those conversations with with people in from from NSC roll perspective, it keeps you in the touch of actually what the user's they're going through because you listen to them, you know, they start talking to you, even if you could sit in on some of these sessions like they start posing real challenges to you. >> All right, So, Luigi, you know what? I want to give you the final word. You know, we talk a little about the community, how you participated in at the end of an error. So you know what? You're takeaways here in any final memories >> that you want from the >> final memories would have to be my very first V tug. Or at the time was New England. The mug summer slammed. It was my wife's birthday. And I said, Your baby, I'm going to Maine for the day. And she's like, What's my birthday? Yeah, but this is gonna be important for us in the long run, from a career perspective. And here it is, nine years later. You know, I came home that that day with three lobsters for her. You know, I got a sweet talker. >> Um, but, >> you know, nine years later, she works and participates in the user group and gets back. And I now work for the company that we were supporting as a user in community. So for me, that's gotta go full circle. It's pretty surreal if you ask me. >> I >> had a question for you. Stay. >> Oh, I don't know if you turn the mike on, >> I know that I'm a diehard Yankees fan, But which way do you go? Yankees Red Sox? >> Well, come on, we do. You know that Like you. And like a certain Tom Brady, I am still a Yankee fan born and raised in New Jersey S o. Just don't talk about it and we win too much. But my boss is a die hard Red Sox fan, and New England fans are pretty fanatical. And don't don't you understand? Like Patriots fans have become just like 80 perennial winners. You think that they're always going to drive that and a little bit too arrogant. So looking forward to the banner unveiling for the Patriots number nine. Number six for TB 12 man, Team it, of course I will be there I've been lucky enough to be. It was actually it was the Giants connection with a tree. It's that got me there. But I do love football, and I'll miss having the V tug event. There was fun, you know, not meeting one with the alumni from there s so, uh, already, you know, sharing my share in my allegiance is there. I have not converted to the Red Sox, then was a nice place to go. But I'm more of a football God and the Patriots are my number one t never. Yeah, I think I >> think that's the other thing that I respect about. Yours were both patriots in Yankee things that I had to throw that out there. >> All right, well, Luigi, welcome to the Cube, Alumni. Thanks so much always for your >> support over the year and your contributions community. >> And be sure to check out the cute Dunnett were, of course, at PM world. We've got the entire executive team on all the big flower shows. I'm student event as always. Thank you so >> much for watching

>> I am stupid men. And this is a special on the ground at the V Tug SummerSlam 2019. Nicky knows this morning is a lot of discussion about what's happened toe I t operations >> people and all of the changes that are impacting their career. One >> of the keynote speakers is Josh at, >> Well, who's a senior technology advocate with Splunk. Just welcome back to the program, >> thanks to always good to be here. >> All right, so you wait until the final V tug to show up s o about better late than never. >> That's exactly the way I look at it. Thank you so much for >> joining and yeah, you know, before you know, I don't want to talk, really hear about community and jobs. And of course, that's right in your sweet spot to talk about. You know, I've met you, you know, years ago, through the virtual ization community virtualization community, always good at, you know, people sharing, contributing and learning with each other. And you know, >> how have you seen that? >> You know, changing as we go into these new worlds of you, talk about nuance and cloud computing and all of these new things that >> have been changing >> well, so that uncovers a whole lot. I >> think one of them We >> need you to do it in, you know, under five >> minutes. I don't think I've >> been ever to have any conversation under five minutes, but I think we could pull this >> up. I think that >> during the virtual ization emerges, we required the bloggers and the contributors in the community in order for us as a as a industry to mature. Even the vendors weren't holy prepared on everything that they were going to need to deliver to handle that change. I think we're seeing a similar type scenario play out now, as digital transformation is impacting so much of what I t and development does, we have a whole new crop in mechanisms for getting people on board and understanding these trends in these new mechanisms. And I think the biggest way that people have really gravitated to our recently from a community standpoint are around events like your develops meet ups, Dev. Ops Day's events like those have been a huge and then video video has been the other element that has been just completely exploding everywhere throughout this and used to be very focused on the written technical documentation. Now it's I'm gonna show you step by step, how to do all these things. And then the last bit that I think is really interesting is because of the changes that we face now. The cultural elements are vastly different. It's a lot more conversation as a community about the cultural impacts of more transparency addressing burnout. How do you you lead up and influence up in an organization. Lots of cool >> stuff, Jack. Just did I see you were actually advocating >> reading books. You know, in your presentation this morning, don't you know millennials? You know, if I if I can't get it on tic tac or something like that and you know my daily newsletter, you know, it's probably a bit little bit too long form I digest, but, you know, maybe expand a little bit about what you were going out there. Well, >> I think one thing >> that's really important to note is that specifically within the IittIe space and with I t operations on as we solid the keynote today, most people have 10 plus years of experience, right? Most of the younger folks coming in and the operations or doing operational roles. And I have a different perspective in view, and they will have more of a development background and what they're doing. And so it's still hyper relevant. Thio Enterprise I t. And I to operations as a whole or consumption through books. And there's some really high quality books that have been published in the last few years. >> Yeah, maybe if you could speak a >> little bit of that, that organizational dynamic you know, the I >> t people >> versus you know, hey, who are those developers? You know, they used to just, you know, build their stuff and tell me to make it work out there. They dress a little bit different. They don't understand their language, you know? Are we seeing I t. And the developers coming together, at least working together? >> I think it's inevitable that we're going to continue to see more and more of that as I talked about earlier today, when Cloud was kind of emerging and, you know, we had rogue I T people development things in particular, going out looking for an easier option to get the IittIe resource is they need most I T departments for, like, roof. We dodged a bullet. We're not going to have to deal with agile development and lean development practices. Well, then, it turned out, Well, we actually need to modernize all of our applications in various different ways. We need to rationalize where they need to go. There's a lot better cost models for some of these applications. Get out of the, you know, spending money on things that aren't differentiating to our business because we have to. And so as such, those bridges have to be developed, and it is on operations team kind of change The model. It was their developing. You're not developing, but ah, helping developers. >> All right, Josh, explain what this new ops thing is that you're talking about. I know you've got the new op stays on, and, you know, so explain a little bit about >> that. Okay, Uh, new >> offices. A realization. Brinkley, that the way that we've operated I t and managed I t isn't going to work going forward with the addition of greater complexity applications being broken out. Micro Service's various cloud platforms, you know, pulling out private cloud using software as a service. I see operations has a much more diverse and much more complex job ahead of them on. And it's also increasing this scale of which what they need to operate. And so new technologies, new framework for how they operate had to be deployed. There's a lot of talk come out by motel I t. But this isn't really about by motility it's about. Here's what you need to do to operate the new. And you also then need to modernize everything that you've been doing to work within those same models, >> all right. And, >> Josh, you're holding the mic so >> that our audience can't see the T shirts. So maybe just >> shut up for a second and explain that one >> s So you know, it's like one of the things that we pride ourselves on or having really interesting T shirts. And this is really just getting just having people get out of the way and let the systems work for you. >> Yeah, absolutely. But it's a good point is, you know, I team you can't be the group of no from or the blocker where the Yale will get that done, and you know, Pope to 18 months and send us a pile of money we need to be able to move fast. The theme that I hear over and over again is it's the agility and tying things to the business. And I thought that was a great point in your presentation is if you don't understand You know what the key business objectives are this quarter in this year. I'm not saying you need to be, you know, drinking the Kool Aid on everything. But if you're not aware of it, you might be running in the total wrong direction. And therefore, things change. You can't be one of those. Oh, jeez. Why am I out of a job? Oh, well, maybe I wasn't relevant to the >> business. And I think what most I T organizations feel is that they don't get respected for their work they're doing, and it's primarily in large part because they can't show the work that they're doing is tying to business value on DSO until they start making that transition on, then becoming an organization that is a driver of business initiatives in business value and customer value. They're they're they're goingto have thio reconcile some of the things that they're doing >> Okay, final thing, Josh. So are there any skill sets >> or jobs that you know? I hate to see. It's like, Oh, you know the hot thing out there. But, you know, as people kind of look at their career, especially those that have been in I t operation for a while, what are some areas that you recommend them to start with? >> Well, I think one area that to core areas I think people really needed that developing good discipline about being data driven data managed. So being able to look at data management platforms, be able to extract, ask good questions of the data and then act on that data, whether it's an automated response or developing a plan for remediation or improvement on then the other is the adoption of automation framework. Specifically, be able to have an understanding of some some type of programming language don't have to be a full on developer, but you should be able to look at work. Other people have done know how to dissect that manipulate manage. It's what you need to be able to do so that you can remove yourself from the workflow, get out of being ticket driven and allow the systems >> that work for you. >> All right. >> Sounds great, Josh. Out. Well, always a pleasure to catch up >> with you on and off >> camera. So thanks so much for joining us. All right. More coverage is always at the cube dot net on stew minimum, and thanks for watching.

(click) >> Stu: Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and this is a special on-the-ground here at the VTUG: Summer Slam 2019. It's the 16th year of the event and unfortunately it's actually the final event. I've been to a few of these in Maine. I've been to many more of them at the Winter Warmer at Gillette Stadium and welcoming back to the program someone that's been to many more of these that I have, Chris Collotti, who's a principal technologist today at Cohesity but you know, who is doing many other jobs and actually used to live here in New England, southern New Hampshire before. >> Chris: That's right. Chris, welcome back. >> Chris: Thank you, good to see you as always. >> Yeah, give us a little bit of your history with these events and you know, what you've been seeing at you know, user groups and regional events and what brought you back for the final one. >> So this one was interesting cause even last night when I showed up for the night before, I think I knew everybody in the room, it was all hugs and you know, it's just, it's all about the people, I mean, this is all the same people that we've had up here. But, yeah, I grew up in southern New Hampshire, since moved to Tennessee five years ago but I was actually at another event before this and when we found it was the last one, well, Cohesity has always sponsored it but I actually decided to fly over here, being the last one cause knowing the Harneys really well and see all you guys it's just, it's kind of an odd thing to have the curtain go down. >> Yeah, you talk about the people and communities, Chris, I think back to the earliest days that I came to this event I'm like, there's that guy on stage, he's almost always wearing a Patriots jersey there and >> (laughs) I did make that famous. >> Figuring out it was I believe P90x and some of the other things there so, you know, what's the workout regime today? >> Uh, this morning I actually jacked up my neck, um, back in to lifting heavy a little bit but yeah, it was always great to be the guy who always came up on stage and always had a Brewsky jersey on or something. I remember the one year that someone told me they were practicing that year and I was in the middle of the presentation and I was, you know, conflicted on what to do but, um, no I think it's always been good to come back and talk, not just about technology, but I've had so many conversations over the years about where my career's gone and the changes and it was always that opportunity a couple times a year to figure out what changed for everybody. And even now, I mean, there's guys that I've seen that have different shirts on that we're, you know, I have one different from last year when I was at the Winter Warmer. >> Yeah, 16 years it's safe to say almost everyone here has changed what logo they had here. Many of the companies >> We've lost a little more hair, we've got a little more gray. >> So a lot of changes. One thing I tell you, 16 years has been a good run for the Patriots over the last 16 years >> People don't like us when we talk about that for some reason >> We're here in New England, we're allowed to talk about it. >> That's true, that's true. >> At this event, Chris, it's The Cube, you always like talking about sports and if they don't like this piece of it that's all right but, you know, I tell you talking to the vendors here, they're always hiring, like, SEs, technical people, you know, if they understand that latest in technology, usually they can find a job here. What else are you seeing? What are some of the you know, kind of in-demand jobs, of course, you know, the space that your company is playing in, data, is at the center of so much of what we talk, >> Absolutely. Data protection, data management, is a super hot space. >> Yep. I think, I've definitely seen a lot of, all the new companies are always hiring SEs, right? They got to get their sales up and running. For Cohesity, it's a bit similar. I mean, we took over another couple of floors in one of the other buildings in San Jose, which is great, the growth is unbelievable. For people who don't know, you know, we've got a truck rolling around the country that John Hildebrand and I personally, pretty much built over the course of a couple a months, but I think that speaks to it. There's all this stuff happening and everybody's trying to find a different way to get out in front of customers, right, whether it's a salesperson, whether it's the marketing, whether it's creative videos or something else and we're always trying to figure out what's the next, well, not even technical ability, but what's just the next ability you want to hire, right, is it a coder, is it, I mean, we always have developers, we're always hiring developers, but around here, I've been out of the area so much I'm really not sure, like what the hotbed is right now around the Boston area and southern New Hampshire. >> Boston's such a hotbed lately for, you know, everything that's going in IoT, of course, Cloud's having an impact, those people that hadn't been to the Seaport District, oh my gosh, it's great to see those buildings go up. >> Oh yeah. >> You know, not just, you know, Red Hat put in a big facility there, AWS and Amazon, of course, has a strong presence, but between Cambridge and Boston there's so much growth here. Chris, want to give you the kind of final word, as you've been at more of these events than many people, you know, what's it like to see kind of the end of an era and any final memories you have from these shows. >> The only, and I've been talking about this memory, and you may remember this one, and Ed Hartley would too, I think, Tex, he will, when my Challenger broke down. Were you here for that one, when I pulled into Gritty's? That's my worse memory of these but it's the one that always comes up when I come back and everybody saw it on the flatbed driving by, you know, Luigi and everybody. What made it interesting was a horrible situation for me because I drove up here but it speaks to the community because everybody ran out to ask what happened, do you need a ride home, what's going on? And I do think the Harneys have done such an incredible job over the years just bringing all these people together. It's a little bit sad I think, you know, my wife came up for this, Julie actually flew up because she knows everybody and being the last one. She also won't turn down lobster, at all. I'm happy for them though, I think, a lot's happened in their lives in the last couple years and to finally get down to Florida and spend more time down there, I'm happy for them, I think it's great, I think they've done a, they've left a legacy, really I think, I don't think anybody can match up here. >> The intersections of great information, great people and you throw in >> Great food. a great New England Lobsterfest, you really can't go wrong with that, Chris, thank you so much for sharing the update. Always great to catch up with you. >> Yeah, great seeing you again. We'll see you tonight at the bake. >> All right and we'll see Chris and many others at VMWorld later this year as well as lots of other shows. Be sure to check out thecube.net. I'm Stu Miniman and as always, thanks for watching. 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>> I'm Stew Minutemen, and this is a special on the ground at the 16th annual end final, The Tugs Summer Slam. We're here in Maine and happy to welcome back to the program. A Cube alumni punishment. Who is a senior cloud advocate with Microsoft but very active member in the communities here. One of the keynote speakers of Viet Formula. So great to see you. >> Thank you for having me. >> And you are representing. We've got the lobster fest tonight, one of your lobster dresses on. I hear even there might be a costume change before this evening. >> There will be a costume change with lobsters and clams. Yeah, I'm a big lobster fans. >> Well, you were definitely on point with Coach her there, and you were right in the mix. You know, love the keynote themes this morning. I think Josh Astral did it well, he said, you know, hey, how many people here? You know, I t operations and like most, the audit And how many years have you been doing it? And it was like one year to year and the over 10 was most of this audience. And of course, we know there's a lot of change going on this industry. But you know, cos and individual careers don't necessarily keep up. So, you know, >> you're a >> little bit about you know, what you've been working on. You know what you see in the communities out there? >> I mean, you're you're definitely right. Cos are struggling to keep up their staff. It's it's tough. There's so much technology out there, you don't know where to begin. So what I've been doing this past year is just helping the community get up to speed, helping them figure out what they want to dio because there's the cloud. What do you want to do in the cloud? Here's some options. I mean, they're just I speak to so many people. They're like, we hear about this as your thing, But what can I do in azure? You know, where can I go learn? And it's it's all good stuff. So that's pretty much my past years. Here's you could dio How can I help you get to your ultimate goal? Just knowing Maur and leveling up? >> Yeah, so you know, I think back to you know, when I was learning it in college, it was getting together with a group of people is one of the best ways to learn who had been through the class or who could you help work through? This virtual ization community was one that worked well together. Groups were ones where people would get together. They'd all right. Blog's about it on. You know, Cloud has been a bit of a transition, so you know what's the same? What's different about Cloud? Then say what we've seen in the virtualization communities. >> So Cloud is fearful. People fear their jobs because they feel like, OK, the cloud is gonna take away my job because now I don't got the manager's infrastructure. And you know what? That's not entirely true. You're still gonna need people the manage, these systems. You're still gonna need people to manage the applications, so one has to govern it. Someone's gotta click the buttons. Yes, it's not on your premises data center, but there's still machine out there running because survivalist doesn't mean there's no servers. So we have to dispel that. Believe for that myth that you won't have a job >> if you go to the cloud. >> Yes, there's some organizations that have reduced some workforce, but it's me. They're still jobs out there. And there's actually more jobs. Cloud related jobs, security focus, a compliance focus that deal with the cloud because, you know, if you look at the headlines now, each day, I'm gonna swear there's always somebody having a data breach there, being fined for doing something not correct with their data. And so there's their jobs out there. So are, you know, the I t staff. The IittIe operation space are so sad mints it's taking up here out. And here's what you could do with it. >> Yeah, yeah, you bring up some great points there. We understand. Look, there are changes happen in John. If you think you can go with the same skill set that you were doing years ago, you probably need to update That being said, there's nobody that I talked to that said, Hey, if I could give you an extra hour or an extra day in the week, do you have other things that you, after working? Absolutely. You brought up security. Is that something that needs more of our attention? And it's not all going to be robots and automation taking care of it. People plus machines need to work together, and therefore there's a lot of ramp. It is early days for all of us in this. So what can I learn? How can I make sure that I'm value for my organization and ultimately, you know, have a longevity in my career? >> Another thing that I've been finding in, what speaking with people is that they just don't have the time. They're like, I'm just so busy at work Where were, you know, with downsized and we're expected to do more with less. I totally get that. I've been in their shoes, but ultimately your career, you own that the company you work for does not own your career. So it's up to you to make that effort to just learn a little bit more. It goes a long way, and I'm seeing a trend now with some I t professionals. They're getting it. They're like, You know what? Yeah, we need to step up. We need to figure out what to do next, because technology is moving so fast, and if we don't keep up, we won't. We won't have jobs. You know you're going to be outdated. It's got it's got to keep moving. Um, you know, Josh is key Note. Perfect. Matzke Newt. >> Perfect >> Technology is constantly evolving. So you, as the IittIe professional we must evolve to. We must evolve with our technologies. You know, it's it's a circle. >> Yeah, You could bring us a great points, You understand? There are only so many hours in the day. And yes, there needs to be some work life balance. But you know what? We need to take control of where we're going and what we're learning. If I just get kind of stuck in my same old way, you're building that rut for yourself as opposed to breaking yourself way. I want to give you a final word. You know, what tips >> do you give people? >> How do they make sure they kind of break out of their existing, you know, environments? And you know, some areas that they might be able to easily in a start understanding what options are available for them in the future. >> The Internet? That's that's easy way M s learned. We've got learning portals for, you know, professionals that go out test things. We've got different labs. There's plenty of blog's out. There's user groups out there, you know, go out to your local user. Groups meet up with people, go the conferences. And I know they cost money, but there's free ones out there. Network linked in find. Find a good network, and it just it just expands from there. And social media, you know, there's a lot through social media between lengthen and whether you could do so much and learn so much from other >> people. Yeah, you bring up some great points. We've talked to you with some of the big shows, like a V M World or a Microsoft ignite. And not everybody can afford the time or the money to do those. But there's meet ups in your local environment. There are user groups usually that can do that. So, you know, reach out and find your committed or online. There is just so many environment. Lots >> of four lots of forms are so much out there and, you know, reach out to me on Twitter. I've exchanged Goddess. I'll point you to the right. >> Absolutely. In Pamela, Thank you so much. You could help introduce our community thio lots of different people. So exchange goddess Twitter. Of course, I'm at Stew on Twitter and we're here from the V tug Summer Slam 2019. Be sure to check out the cute done that for all of the events were gonna be a CZ. Well, as if you do the search, you can actually find some of the historical interviews that we've done with guests like Camilla and many more. I'm still minimum as always. Thanks for >> watching the cue.

>> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is special On the Ground of theCUBE here at the VTUG Summer Slam 2019. We've had the pleasure of knowing the VTUG team for quite awhile back actually, when it was the New England VMUG was when I started attending. When it switched to the VTUG at Gillette Stadium's when we started doing theCUBE there. And happy to bring back to the program first, Chris Harney, who is the one who created this as a true user event. And joining him is his wife Dawn Harney, who we know is behind the scenes organizing all of this event. So, Dawn and Chris, thank you so much for joining us and thank you for sharing this community and educational process with all of us. >> Thanks Stu, it's been a pleasure. >> All right, so, Chris, we really want this, it's a celebration. Sixteen years; back in 2003 the number one movie of the year was actually Finding Nemo. Of course we waited a long time for there. It goes without saying that all of us were a little bit younger. And boy, in those days, I started working with VMR in 2002, so that journey of virtualization was real early. There was no cloud talking we had kind of the XSP's and some of the earlier things. But so much has changed, and what I have loved is this journey that the users that are attending here. We're actually here in the Expo hall, and if you look, why are there no people in here right now? Because they are all in the break out sessions understanding what are the skill sets that they need today and tomorrow to help them in their journey; virtualization, cloud, DevOps, all of these changes there. Chris, you started this as a user to help share with your peers, so, we've had you on the program many times, bring us back. >> Yeah, so think back to 2003. There was no way to share information. There's no Google, no YouTube, no Facebook groups, Meetups, no Game of Thrones. >> We had to go to books and stuff like that. >> Exactly. >> Read the paper. >> So white papers, those were the big deal. You had the Microsoft books that were two inches thick and glossy. >> Yeah, I wonder how many of our younger audience would know the acronym RTFM? Read The Fine Manual please, is what we're doing. Dawn, this event, as I said, we've been at the winter event at Gillette Stadium, you brought in some of the Patriot players we've had the pleasure of interviewing. This Summer event is epic. I know people that come from very long distances to swim in the community, get the information. There's a little bit of lobster at the end of the day. >> There's a lot of lobster at the end of the day. >> So give us the community that you look to help build and foster, and what this event has meant to you over the years. >> For me it's really a place for everybody in the community to come together and share their knowledge with their peers. Something may work for me maybe it will work for you. Let's get together and talk about it. The best way to learn something is from somebody that may have done it, or done it, messed it up, learned something, like to share it with you. So, it really is about working with your peers, learning something from your sponsors and all these companies that you work with everyday. What's new, what's going on. So this is the place to go to get all that. >> Wait, Dawn, I thought you weren't a tech person. >> I'm not a tech person. >> That answer was spot on because one of the things I loved about the virtualization community, is we were all learning in the early days. And it required a little bit of work. There's this theory known as the IKEA effect. Sometimes if you actually help build it a little bit, you actually like it a little bit more. And this community really epitomizes that in the virtualization community and cloud. We've been talking about cloud now for a decade but it's still relatively early days on how this multi-hybrid cloud fits together, how operations are changing, so, Chris, bring us through a little bit of that arc. >> Well, I'll think about it, back in 2003, there was only VMwire. There was only one virtualization platform, if you didn't use VMwire, you were doing bare metal Windows install or Unix install on physical servers. Well, back when we changed, there was Hyper-V, that was coming out, AWS was just coming out, so that's when we kind of made the jump from just being a VMwire user to a virtual technology. So we could talk about the cloud, we could share those experiences and have that same journey together, and hopefully learn and lead, get smarter together as a group, you can learn faster as a group than you can by yourself. >> Yeah, and as we know, Chris, and we've talked about this, the IT industry is never "Hey, give me a clean "sheet of paper and we'll start everything." We know it is additive and all of these things go together, so cloud did not obviate the need for virtualization, so all of these things go together, and how do I make sure as my job doesn't get completely eliminated or, I was talking to somebody who said "If I've been doing the same thing for 10 years, "will I be out of a job?" They said, "Well hopefully you really really like "what you're doing cause if you think "you can keep doing what you're doing, "that is all you will ever be able to do." And I thought that was a very poignant comment. >> Yeah, Matt Broberg's talk this morning about what's your next job going to be, what skillsets do you need to be relevant in 10 years, and it's the same thing, I mean we said the same thing 10, 15 years ago. You can't be a Windows admin anymore, you can't be a VMwire admin anymore, you can't be a cloud admin anymore in five years. >> Yeah, so Dawn, give our audience a little bit of the scope of this event, as I said, I know people that have flown in from the Carolinas, from Colorado, from all over, from California and the like, 16 years of this event, this community is not just New England, it really has had a broad impact. >> Right, and it's huge, people plan their vacations around this, I've had people come from Europe, they fly over here, stay in the state of Maine, they go to L.L. Bean, they do all those things because they plan their vacation, they know they need to be here for the VTUG event, so it's meant a lot, because you do get so many different variety of people, you have the sponsors, you have the end users, you have media, you have bloggers, you have pretty much just everybody comes together to really be that community, so it's meant a lot to me, it's been a long 16 years but it's meant a lot. >> All right, so the question people are asking, this is the final VTUG, so no more winter event at Gillette, this is the final event tonight at Gritty's, so explain to us how that happened. >> It is the final event, 16 years, we're all getting older, it's bittersweet, but we've just realized that it takes a lot of time to put these together, it takes a lot of sponsors, it takes a lot of users, the users continue to come, but unfortunately the sponsors pay for it, and really don't have that following with the sponsors that we used to have, unfortunately. >> There are a lot more events, there are a lot more ways to find customers, so they're going to the meetups and they're doing their own events. >> Yeah, to your opening point Chris, 16 years ago it was much tougher to find sources. Now the challenge we have is there's too many options out there, there are too many events, trust me, I go to too many events, but this one has always been one that we've always looked forward, so please from the community, want to say thank you so much, it has always been one of our favorite things to kick off the year with when we do the winter one, and the summer one, I've made this trip a couple of times, it is a little warm in here, I think brings back to the roots of this event, remember it was four or five years ago it was 110 degrees out, and then you switched to this facility, so of course the air conditioning decides to go out, because we know in IT, sometimes things break. >> Start in the heat, end in the heat. >> So Chris, want to give you the final word for the final VTUG. >> You know, I'm just very proud and happy with this community, it truly is a community, it wasn't us, it wasn't theCUBE, it wasn't the vendors, it was everyone working together to make a community that helped each other out, so thanks to everyone. >> Chris and Dawn, thank you so much, we're happy to be a small piece of this community, and look forward to staying in touch with you in your future endeavors. Thanks so much, I'm Stu Miniman, we have a full day of coverage here, keynote speaker, some of the users that have traveled around, really focusing on the community here at the VTUG Summer Slam, as always, thank you for watching theCUBE.

>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, it's the CUBE. Covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBE's coverage of the VTUG Winter Warmer 2019. Just had Rob Ninkovich from the New England Patriots on the program. And, happy to bring on the program, one of the co-leaders of this VTUG event, Chris Williams. Whose day job is as a cloud architect with GreenPages, but is co-leader here at VTUG, does some user groups, and many other things, and actually a CUBE alum, even. Back four years ago, the first year-- >> That's right. >> -that we did this, we had you on the program, but a few things have changed, you know... You have a little less hair. >> This got a little longer. A little less here. >> More gray hair. Things like that. We were talking, >> Funny how that works out. you know, Rob was, you know, talking about how he's 35, and we were, like, yeah, yeah, 35, I remember 35. >> A child. (laughing) >> Things like that. Just wait til you hit your 40's and stuff starts breaking. >> Oh, so much to look forward to. >> So, Chris, first of all, thank you. We love coming to an event like this. I got to talk to a few users on-air, and I talked to, you know, get a, just, great pulse of what's going on in the industry. Virtualization, cloud computing, and beyond. So, you know, we know these, you know, local events are done, you know, a lot of it is the passion of the people that do it, and therefore we know a lot goes into it. >> I appreciate it, thanks for having me on. >> Alright, so bring people up to speed. What's your life like today? What do you do for work? What do you do for, you know, the passion projects? >> Ah, so the passion projects recently have been a lot of, we're doing a Python for DevOp series on vBrownBag. For the AWS Portsmouth User Group, we're also doing a machine learning and robotics autonomous car driving project, using Python as well. And for VTUG, we're looking at a couple of different tracks, also with the autonomous driving, and some more of the traditional, like, VMware to CAS Cloud Hybrid training kind of things. >> Excellent, so in the near future, the robots will be replacing the users here, and we'll have those running around. >> I have my Skynet t-shirt on underneath here. >> Ah, yes, Skynet. (laughing) You know if you Tweet that out, anything about Skynet, there's bots that respond to you with, like, things from The Terminator movies. >> I built one of them. >> Did you? (laughter) Well, thank you. They always make me laugh, and if there's not a place for snark on Twitter, then, you know, all we have left is kind of horrible politics, so. >> That's true, that's true. >> Great, so, yeah, I mean, Cloud AI, robotics, you know, what's the pulse? When you talk to users here, you know, they started out, you know, virtualization. There's lots of people that are, "I'm rolling out my virtualization, "I'm expanding what use-cases I can use it on, "I might be thinking about how cloud fits into that, "I'm looking at, you know, VmMare and Amazon especially, "or Microsoft, how all those fit together." You know, what are you hearing, what drives some of those passion projects other than, you know, you're interested in 'em? >> So, a lot of what my passion projects are driven, it's kind of a confluence of a couple of different events. I'm passionate about the things that I work on, and when I get into a room with customers, or whatever like that, or with the end users, getting together and talking about, you know, what's the next step? So, we as users, as a user group and as a community, we're here to learn about not just what today is... what's happening today, but, what's going to keep us relevant in the future, what are the new things coming down the pipe. And, a lot of that is bending towards the things that I'm interested in, fortuitously. Learning how to take my infrastructure knowledge and parlay that into a DevOps framework. Learning how to take Python and some of the stuff that I'm learning from the devs on the AWS side, and teaching them the infrastructure stuff. So, it's a bi-directional learning thing, where we all come together to that magical DevOps unicorn in the middle, that doesn't really exist, but... >> Yeah, I tell you, we've had this conversation a few times here, and many times over the last few years especially, is that, there's lots of opportunities to learn. And, you know, >> Too many. >> is your job threatened? And, the only reason your job should be threatened, is if you think you can keep doing, year after year, what you were doing before, because chances are either you will be disrupted in the job, or if not, the people you're working for might be disrupted, because if they're not pushing you along those tracks, and the tools and the communities to be able to learn stuff is, I can learn stuff at a fraction of the cost in faster times. >> Yep. >> Might not learn as much, but I'm saying I can pick up new skills, I can start getting into cloud. You know, it's not $1000 and six months to get the first piece of it. >> Exactly. >> It might be 40 to 60 hours online. >> Yep. >> And, you know, cost you 30 to 100 bucks, so, it's... >> Yeah, the lift in training, is a lot easier because, you're basically swiping your credit card, and with AWS, you have a free tier for 12 months, that you can play with and just, you know, doodle around, and then... And figure things out. You don't have to buy a home lab, you don't have to buy NFR license, or get NFR licenses from Vmware. But, the catch to that is, you do have to do it. There's a... remember Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? >> Of course. >> Remember the dad was doing the toothpaste tubes, he was the guys screwing the toothpaste tubes onto the machines. At the end of the story, he got, you know, automated out of a job, because they had a machine screwing the toothpaste tubes on. And then, at the end, he was the guy fixing the machine that was screwing the toothpaste tubes on. >> Right. >> So, in our world, that infrastructure guy, who's been deploying manually virtual machines, there's a piece of code, there's an infrastructure code, that will do that for them now. They've got to know how to modify and refactor that piece of code, and get good. And, get good at that. >> Yeah, you know, I've talked to a couple of people, we talk about, you know, there's big, you know, vendor shows, and then there's, you know, regional user groups and meet-up's, and the like. Give us a little insight into, you know, let's start with VTUG specifically, and, you know, what you're doin' up in the Portland area. Would love to hear some of the dynamics now, you know, it feels like there's just been a ground swell for many years now, to drive those, you know, local, and many times, more specialized events, as opposed to bigger, broader events. >> Yeah, it's interesting, because we like the bigger, broader events, because it gets everybody together to talk about, things across a broad spectrum. So, here we have the infrastructure guys, and we have the DevOps guys, and we have a couple of Developers, and stuff like that. And so, getting that group think, that mind share, into one room together, gets everybody's creative juices flowing. So, people are starting to learn from each other, that the Dev's, are getting some ideas about how infrastructure works, the infrastructure guys are getting some ideas about, you know, how to, how to automate a certain piece of their job. To make that, you know, minimize and maximize a thousand times, you know, go away. So, I love... I love the larger groups because of that. The smaller groups are more specialized, more niche. So, like, when you get into a smaller version, then, it's mostly infrastructure guys, or mostly Dev's, or some mixture thereof. So, they both definitely have their place, and that's why I love doing both of them. >> Yeah, and, you know, what can you share, kind of, speeds and feeds of this show here. I know, it's usually over a thousand people >> Yep. >> You know, had, you know, bunch of keynotes going on. You know, we talked about The Patriots, in, you know, quite a number of, you know, technology companies, people that are the, kind of, SI's or VAR's in the mix. >> Yeah, so, we had, I think, 35 sponsers. We had, six different keynotes, or six general sessions. We talked about everything from Azure to AWS, to Vmware. We covered the gamate of the things that the users are interested in. >> You had... don't undersell the general sessions there. (laughing) There was one that was on, like, you know, Blockchain and Quantum computing, I heard. >> Yep, yep. >> There was, an Amazon session, that was just, geekin' out on the database stuff, I think, there. >> Yes, yeah, Graph tier, yep. >> So, I mean, you know, it's not just marketing slideware up there, I saw a bunch of code in many of the sessions. >> Oh yeah, yeah. >> You know, this definitely is, you know, I was talkin' with the Amazon... Randell earlier, here on the program, and said that-- >> The Amazon Randall. (laughing) >> Yeah, yeah, sorry, Randall from Amazon, here. >> He's a very large weber. >> Gettin' at the end of the day, I've done a few of these, but, you know, remember like, four years ago, the first, like, cloud 101 session here? >> Yeah, yep. >> And, I was like, you know, I probably could have given that session, but, everybody here was like, "Oh, my gosh", you know, I just found out about that electricity. >> Right. >> You know, that, this is amazing. And, today, most people, understand a little bit more of... We've gotten the 101, so, you know, I'm getting into more of the pieces of it, but. >> Yeah, it was really gratifiying because, the one that he gave was, all of the service, all of the new services, of which, there were like, more than 100, in 50 minutes or less. And, he talks really, really fast. And, everybody was riveted, we... I mean, people were coming in, even up until the last minute. And, they all got it. It wasn't like, what am I do... what am I going to do with this? It's, this is what I need to know, and this is valuable information. >> Yeah, we were having a lunch conversation, about, like, when you listen to a Podcast, what speed do you listen on? So, I tend to listen at about one and a half speed, normally. >> Me too, yep. >> You know, Frappe was sayin', he listens at 2x, normally. >> Does he really? >> Somebody like, Randall, I think I would, put the video up, and you can actually go into YouTube, and things like that, and adjust the speed settings, I might hit, put him down to 0.75, or something like that, >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Because absolutely, you know, otherwise, you can listen to it at full speed, and just like, pause and rewind, and then things like that. But, definitely, someone... I respect that, I'm from New Jersey, originally, I tend to talk a little faster, on camera I try to keep a steady pace, so that, people can keep up with my excitement. >> I do, I speed up too. He actually, does this everyday. He flies to a new city, does it once a day. So, he's, he's gotten... This is like rapid fire now. >> Alright, want to give you the final word, you know, VTUG, you know, I think, people that don't know it, you go to VTUG.com, A Big Winter Warmer, here. There's The Big Summer one, >> The Summer Slam. >> With the world famous, you know, Lobster Bake Fest, there, I've been to that one a few times. I know people that fly from other countries, to come to that one. What else should we know about? >> So, we're about to revamp the website, we've got some new and interesting stuff coming up on there. Now that, we also have our slack channel, everybody communicates on the backhand through that. We're going to start having some user content, for the website. So, people can start posting blog articles, and things of that nature, there. I'm going to start doing, like a little, AW... like learn AWS, on the VTUG blog, so, people can start, you know, ramping up on some of the basics and everything. And, and if, that gains traction, then, we'll maybe get into some more advanced topics, from Azure, and AwS, and Vmware of course, Vmware is always going to be there, that's... Some of the stuff that Cody is doing, Cody Jarklin is doing, over at Vmware, like the CAS stuff, where it's the shim layer, and the management of all the different clouds. That's some really, really cool stuff. So, I'm excited to showcase some of that on the website. >> Alright, wow. Chris Williams, really appreciate you coming. And, as always, appreaciate the partnership with the VTUG, to have us here. >> Thanks for havin' me. >> Alright, and thank you as always for watching. We always love to bring you the best community content, we go out to all the shows, help extract the signal for the noise. I'm Stu Miniman, thanks for watchin' The CUBE. (energetic music) (energetic music) (energetic music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube, covering IBM Think 2018, brought to you by IBM. (lively music) >> Hello everyone, welcome back to The Cube. We're here live in Las Vegas for IBM Think 2018. It's where all the action's happening. Third day of three days, wall to wall coverage, I'm John Furrier, co-host of The Cube, we have two great guests here, Paul Papas, Global Leader of Digital Strategy at IBM's iX, new digital agency, and his cohort Matt Candy, European leader of IBM iX, a new agency within IBM specifically developed for expanding the digital services to their customers, to create the best experiences, using technology, data, and other analog and digital capabilities. Wimbledon and among others. Guys, welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you, thank you, and thanks for that great introduction. >> So Paul, so take a minute, this is a novel concept. When I think of agency I think ad agency, buy some keywords, PR firms, you know, more of an adjunct to a core organization, kind of a service provider. >> Yeah. >> You guys have it a little bit different agency focus, more like management consultants meets World Economic Forum, meets, you know, UX UI design, because you are building this company. Take a minute to explain what iX is, and what's different about it in context what people might think it is. >> Sure, and thanks, a great set up in there it's like you melded a lot in there of what we do. So you can think of us as a combination of strategy consultancy, digital agency, consulting systems integrator. So we do three things with our clients, we help them design, well we help them define, their digital strategies, really their business strategy in a digital world. We help them design world-class customer experiences. Experiences that are going to be personalized, and have an impact. And then lastly we help them implement the technology. Implement the customer platforms that they use to engage with their customers in a personalized, meaningful, omni-channel way, all of those things that we do help drive a measurable business impact so nothing we do is hypothetical, everything we do is real and drives a real business impact for our clients. So, where if you might look at an agency a lot of people think of agency as marketing communications agencies, and the world has changed so fast around digital, >> Or ad agencies. >> Or advertising agencies, you know, in that vein, we're on the more transformational side. In fact we consider ourselves a business design partner. So what we're trying to do with our clients around the world is help them redefine, redesign their businesses, so that they're fit for purpose, so that they can survive and thrive in this modern world. >> Yeah, I want to get your thoughts on this, because you know looking back as a historian if you will of evolution, technology used to be slower, so agencies added value on something complex, ad agencies would create ad campaigns and some glam, glamour around something. And we even saw it in some of the lead gen side of the business, where this beautiful micro-site and the graphics are amazing, it looked great but actually didn't scale there's no tech behind it. Now fast forward, you have the requirement for cool, relevant, and glamorous, but actually having tech involved. Cloud computing has really enabled this, and the role of data has really enabled it, so this is now the new normal, the new normal for these higher-end functionalities is actually having a tech stack, technology stack, combined with business engineering logic, >> Paul: Yeah. >> And real business outcome, like profit, money outcome objectives that people might want. How do you guys explain that story because, you know, I would just call a consultant up in the past, are you guys combining it to make it easier? What's the purpose that customers call you guys in for? What are they asking for from you guys? >> So I'll start off and then Matt, you can add color commentaries, so, the way we describe what you just, what you just brought to life there, was, we have multi-disciplinary teams, so we have a combination of business strategists right, so when our clients are engaging us, they could be working with a business strategist who's really comfortable showing up for work and wearing a suit and tie, and he could be sitting next to, in our studio, sitting next to one of our creative designers who's tattooed from his wrist to his neck. >> The hoodie guy building everything. >> The hoodie guy, right, sitting there building there, next to one of our data scientists who's popping open his Lenovo laptop, it's got the latest chip in it, and he's so pumped 'cause he's going to run some crazy data analytics on it, applying AI on top of it. And all of these people work together using Design Thinking so we have an approach we call IBM Design Thinking, they've all been trained, we've trained over 16 thousand people on Design Thinking, and they all work together and come together to solve our clients' ploblems. They work in a studio environment, and we've opened up 38 studios around the world. Studios are places where we co-create with our clients, or we invite our clients in to ideate, innovate and co-create >> So it's agile on the format, on the projects, not like Waterfall, hey now you pass the ball to the other guy, it's all integrated team. >> Yes, and what you end up having is, you end up having the view of understanding the business and the client's business challenge, which is where we start when we define the strategy, when we do the design work, it's underpinned with an understanding of the technology that's going to bring this to life. So we like to say that we don't do creative for creative's sake or creative just for the beauty of the art, we do creative that can actually be made real. >> Yeah, you guys put a relevant package together. So I got to ask you now, the beauty of cloud computing was, is that you don't have to provision a data center if you don't need it. Now you see people needing a data center for privacy reasons they store their data, hence the hybrid cloud strategy, et cetera et cetera, but if I want to do something like what you guys are doing, it's going to cost me money to build it out. One, where are the people? Skills of the people, salaries of the people, tools for the people, all that is expensive to build out. So it's natural to go to someone who's already got it. So I want you guys to talk about that dynamic, of buy versus build, what stays in-house that's core competency, and what's the scale leverage that the clients get from working with you guys, 'cause you have that advantage. >> Yeah, and actually what I like to tee up is, this cost effective approach that we use to help our clients jumpstart the work that they're doing, we call it an innovation garage, and Matt and the team in the UK and in Europe have really been champions of this approach. Why don't you share some of the work we do around innovation garages. >> Yeah, so, I mean, one example is our client BP who we've been working with in this space, and helping them drive a lot of the digital reinvention of their business. And so, teams of data scientists, designers, developers, working hand in hand with product owners from the client side but ideating, finding new different digital products and services that help improve advocacy of customers drive loyalty, drive new revenue streams but very quickly taking those ideas and turning them into prototypes right, paper prototypes, actual MVPs, minimum viable products, launching them into market right, choosing some target markets, but putting very measurable KPIs around each of those things >> What's the timetable on that roughly, ballpark? >> Probably getting those MVPs out at eight to 10 weeks right >> So, fast. >> Oh yeah, fast. >> It's not months, not eight months. >> No, no, there's no Waterfall. And so a radically different approach to getting things out there, in the hands of real users. And then testing and learning, iterating, and then based on the data, actual fact and data backed against those KPIs and measurements then starting taking the decision around whether we're going to scale that into a global product. >> Yeah before we go to drill down on that, what's the alternative to doing that? How many months would it take if I want to do it from scratch in-house? >> Spinning up large transformation programs right, and >> John: A year. >> Yeah, at least, multi-years >> John: At minimum. >> Multi-years, and I think the other thing John, that's kind of key about this way of working, is that you're starting to infuse new ways of working and new ways of thinking into the client's organization right, and so Design Thinking: lean, agile, dev ops, right all of these approaches to get things done in a more rapid way and so, you're kind of driving change and transformation through making and creating and doing, not through some big change management program. And so we've been, if I took BP for example, training and certifying their people in IBM Design Thinking, certifying them as product owners and so, through the act of making and creating these services, it's changing their culture and changing how they get stuff done and it's a bit like a fire, kind of a little fire that burns and spreads within the organization as people see what's going on and want to become part of it. >> And one of the ways we do that we actually co-locate in these innovation garages. So you take a company like BP, if you go to our South Bank office, we have a dedicated floor where you have a hundred BP people with the IBM iX team, working in this innovation garage model, >> So they're learning too with you it's not like you're doing all the work and they're integrating in. No, no, we're learning together and they're building new skills and we're building new skills, and we're coming up with new ideas and innovations we're doing it in a cost-effective way, to your point before, in the past companies would spend a lot of money to try to go down a big path and try to in essence, boil an ocean sometimes. >> Yeah and your one guy quits, you got to replace, skill gaps, massive challenges. >> But also I find that from the client's perspective the thing that they're most proud of, some of the things they're most proud of, is the bin, what they call the bin. And so it's all of those ideas that we've killed as far to the left as possible right, and taking an idea that traditionally may have turned into some big program, multi-millions spent on doing it to find that it actually didn't deliver the outcome for the end consumer. >> So Matt, talk about the example with Wimbledon 'cause obviously everyone kind of can recognize that brand, you guys have been working at Wimbledon, you have a relationship with them so they've known IBM for years. What's the current state of the art with Wimbledon? What are some of the things you're doing for those guys and how is iX team, your integrated design team, working with those guys? >> So we've been partnering with Wimbledon now for about 28 years, so relationship goes back to 1990, I mean Wimbledon's been around back since the 1870s, you know, the home of kind of tennis, tennis in an English garden, so complete with rain and drizzle and gray clouds and everything else. And so, probably over the last seven years we've been working with them to drive their digital transformation, and so, how they engage with fans, and so how they use data and analytics to drive insights to put very personalized experiences in the hands of fans. So if you think about an event like Wimbledon, runs for 13 days, and about 500 thousand people get to physically experience Wimbledon in the grounds. And so their whole strategy from a digital perspective is taking the beauty of the grounds and the experience, and how they can manifest that digitally to millions of people around the world. >> And that's more than live streaming that's more than highlights, that's replicating the vibe the buzz, the experience of being there. >> Completely, so if you look at the web channel right when you go to that website, you don't actually see tennis players and stuff on there. What you might see is a beautiful flower just wafting in the breeze right, so a lot of the technology and the experience that we put together is trying to bring to life the beauty of the grounds right, through those digital mediums. And also being very thoughtful and purposeful about the different channels, so when you think about the mobile app right people use that to get snack access to data they're on the move, they want to understand the scores, alerts, iPad, people tend to use that sat on the sofa in front of the telly, you know, second screen experience so there's a different set of use cases and demands. We launched the first Apple TV app for grand slam tennis tournaments. So again, people tend to be using that for catch up and replays and so, being very thoughtful and purposeful about the... >> And you got to keep track of the digital culture 'cause it's like fashion, you got to know what's state of the art, what's going to sell VR, AR, whole new creatives coming out >> You do but you also have to do it in a way that's authentic to the product. >> Tech fashion. (laughter) The latest and greatest. >> Hashtag new hashtag tech fashion But you also have to do it, what I was going to say, you have to do it in a way that's authentic to the brand that you're representing. >> John: And relevant. >> Correct, so we're expressing the brand of Wimbledon online through digital channels and mobile channels, it has to be consistent with the brand, the brand values, the brand purpose, the brand mission. >> And that goes in to the design side of it 'cause they're going to tell you look if we go off the brand, we're not... >> The beauty, the elegance, the elegance of the sport, the elegance of the All England Tennis Club, you have to capture all of that and represent it in a way that's genuine. >> Alright so this is where the melting pot between agency, creative, ad agency, where it's much more about experience, less about the tech, and tech come together. So I wanted to ask you, I did a panel this year at Sundance called the New Creative, with Intel and it was all about the emerging new creative artists that have tech behind it, and here's what we talked about, I want to get your reaction to it. Agile, which killed Waterfall development, made things less risky, the old days was, you build something, a lot of craftsmanship goes into it, but you ship it, you don't know if it's going to work, and you hope it works and sells. Then Agile de-risked that, but you're shipping code every day. But what we lost with Agile that's now coming back, and I think this is where you guys are hitting the mark, the idea of craftsmanship in the product is coming back. So you got Agile, that's good, but it felt boring, it felt, the products didn't feel great. Yeah, certainly they were successful and they used data to be agile and always be iterating, fail fast, et cetera, but now the users want craftsmanship, they want art, they want more experience in the tech product What's your reaction to that, what's your vision? Do you agree and, if you do, what's your opinion? >> Well I agree on the recommitment to craft, and the approach that we take to that is really starting with Design Thinking, and we view this a couple different ways. One, we think Design Thinking is a way to actually solve business problems in the modern world. Now design, we view as a craft. So we have very specific craftspeople that are pure designers, that's what they do every day for a living. Everyone in our organization practices Design Thinking. So I believe that the use of Design Thinking coupled with our design community and the world-class talent that we have there, has enabled to really get an underlying need, right. So when you're doing a design, you have to have the understanding of the underlying need of the customers that you're trying to serve. And that's what we really get at, so the craftsmanship that comes in through applying Design Thinking, applying your design principles to creating something that can then be made real and have an impact. If you ask our designers, in our 38 studios around the world what they love about being part of IBM iX and being part of IBM, it's the impact that they can have. That they can see their design scale, they can see it brought to life in a way that is far beyond anything they could've done at any agency >> Can't fake design, it's like security, you can't fake it, it either works or it doesn't. >> And the way we think about design right is about almost design with a capital D. And so it's not just about how things look and feel, it's about how they work, and so how you can apply design to help solve problems in a very different way right. And how you apply design to strategy because designers are problem solvers. And so actually having people apply a designer's mindset to problem solving, you end up with very different outcomes right, you end up with a lot more innovation driving into what you're building, and I think you end up with products and services that actually help make somebody's life a little bit easier right, you're taking friction out of their life you're delivering something meaningful and of value to them. >> You're doing empathy mapping, you're doing customer journey mapping, you're doing a persona development. I want to build on what Matt said though that designers are problem solvers. When we look at Design Thinking, we have a method called IBM Design Thinking, and the logo that we use for Design Thinking is actually an infinity loop. So what we do is we combine Design Thinking with Agile and I think of IBM Design Thinking as a 3-D printing of a solution to a problem. We're designing it, we're getting at an underlying need, we're prototyping something fitting a proof of concept, we're learning, we're now doing another iteration of Design Thinking and learning more about the underlying need, testing something, and as we keep testing and learning, we add more texture to the solution of the problem and it starts coming into focus for us. >> Yeah, and the key word's problem. I interviewed a Stanford professor on the cutting edge of innovation, design she said, "Don't fall in love with your product. Fall in love with solving problems." And I think that's kind of what you guys believe. >> And I think John, to the point that you raised, about Agile, you know, we see many organizations driving kind of Agile transformation and shifting, and you know, I think our perspective is very much is you need this combination of design, of Agile and dev-ops together, because Agile allows you to pivot quickly, dev-ops allows you to kind of learn and get rapid feedback from production and putting things out there, and you've got to have this kind of design-led approach to doing stuff, because you've got to make sure that what you're building and putting out there serves a purpose and a real outcome for the end user. >> That's perfect, and most people think oh, we're Agile, check. No, whoa, hold on, stop, yeah it's not a silver bullet. >> You brought up a great point from a business leadership perspective that don't fall in love with your products, fall in love with the problems that you're solving, We are seeing that across every industry we work in, and I think this new digital age, with all these emerging technologies going mainstream so fast, AI, AR, VR, blockchain, it's allowing companies to, in some ways, reimagine their purpose, but in some ways, revisit their original purpose. So if you look at, Ford as an example, they've declared that they're going from pure car manufacturing, to mobility services. If you look at our clients in the life sciences industry, years ago they would've declared themselves as pharmaceutical manufacturers right? But now they would look at themselves as partners in health and partners in the health ecosystem. And every industry we're operating in, there's that re-imagining or revisit of the core mission. >> I think this is the only interview I haven't asked about blockchain, but I was just talking to Jesse Lund about blockchain and we talked about digital currencies, digital, and we observed, and we were talking about things are happening faster. So what's happening on digital it's a speed gain, across the board, with currency there's no clearing, it's digital, it moves instantly. So his banking side, that's his thesis, but here, your customers are challenged with looking down the barrel and being scared when, damn, this is going to be fast, what if I screw this up? I mean this is kind of how I see it happening, like it's accelerated in all aspects. >> And this is where I think, in terms of the business that we're in how we're different, and you've kind of raised the traditional agencies and stuff earlier, John. I think the difference for us is, you know when you think about the world of advertising, and companies driving their message out through shouting loudly and campaigns and building micro-sites, actually, our perspective very much is that these, most organizations need to look at how they digitally reinvent, right. And so therefore the scale of change needed as they look to reinvent their businesses, the business models, the skill pools within the organization, how they're going to use data and insights to drive different experiences you start to move to a very different level of change and transformation right, and one where these technology platforms, and becoming a platform business in these organizations, right, need a partner fundamentally who can help them scale and drive that change. >> And the data's critical, using data, using cloud, dev-ops, Agile, design, all rolled into a highly accelerated process, that's hard. >> It is hard but, >> You guys are doing it though. >> Well yeah, that's what we do for a living. It's what our clients are faced with right now. It's kind of a like a Dickensian-like challenge, right, it's A Tale of Two Cities. With all the emerging tech that we were talking about before there's never been a better time to create new innovations. To be innovative in some of the things that we're doing with BP was a great example of that. And some of the bigger things we're doing with some clients that are trying to reinvent their organization around a renewed purpose. But at the same time, there's never been a bigger threat to existing companies, in terms of there's never been more opportunity to be disrupted. So between these two poles of never been a better time to be in business, never been a tougher time to be disrupted, that's where our clients are operating. And this juxtaposition of core and new where our clients have mostly been in business for more than a few years. They have a core business that they need to grow and optimize, while they also need to expand into the new. And they can't do one or the other, they have to do both at the same time. >> And you know the customers I talk to in the industry, around this area, really look down, they look at three choices. Go for it, that's scary, need a partner to do that you guys are there for that. Don't do anything, put your head in the sand. Or three, create blockers and ban stuff. So you're seeing, you kind of walk in and you kind of figure out who's doing what. You see the blockers with all these excuses, no well we've got this other... And then the head, well we should be, they don't do anything, they're not moving. And then people who move. >> Yeah. >> I mean that's the reality right now. >> You know, what we see, we just published this research you know, a C-suite study, so we interviewed 12,000 C-suite executives, over 2,500 CEOs, and the title of this study's The Incumbents Strike Back, and that's what we're seeing now, so we're not seeing folks kind of sitting or putting their heads in the sand, they're looking at their legacy business, and the competitive advantage they have because of all the knowledge and incumbent advantage that they have, and now applying that. >> Well Paul and Matt, we don't have enough time to go into the impact of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and initial coin offering's impact, to the token economics of how your business will change but we'll do that another time. >> Fantastic. >> Alright thanks for joining The Cube. I'm John Furrier here live in Las Vegas for IBM Think 2018. A lot of great conversations here in The Cube number one live tech coverage, extracting the signal from the noise. We'll be back with more after this short break. (techno music)

(lively techno music) >> Announcer: From Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2018, presented by SiliconANGLE. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBE's coverage of the VTUG Winter Warmer here in 2018. Happy to welcome to the program, first time guest and first time company on the program, Dilip Advani, who's the vice president of marketing at Uila. Great to see you. >> Thank you Stu. Great to be here. >> All right, so Dilip, first, tell us a little bit about your background and what brought you to Uila. >> Yeah. So again, my background has been on the analysis side and the protocol analysis side. I have been, in the past, focused on the wireless aspects of the business. I have led teams on product strategies and product marketing in my past history. What I have done is, the reason I came to Uila, is because of the rich history, from the founders who have great experience on the deep packet inspection and the protocol analysis side. And they decided to bring this to the virtualization world and that's what got me very interested in Uila. >> Okay. So Uila itself, we've worked with a number of the team. Fluke Networks? Was that where... >> This was, yeah this was from the original AirMagnet Fluke Networks team as well. So this is the team that actually built the world's first analyzer product, which was Net XRay from Cinco Networks. >> Okay, great, tell us the why of Uila, why today, what's different, what's the big problem it's helping us solve. >> Yeah, so before I talk about what Uila does, and then, what role it plays in the industry, I wanted to address one question that people frequently ask us, "What does Uila actually mean?" The joke around the office is that, because the founders like to go to Hawaii, a lot, >> Stu: (laughs) >> That's why they came up with the Hawaiian name. It actually means "lightning in the cloud" in Hawaiian. But there's a deeper meaning to that. We, actually, we are the power and the guiding light behind some of the challenges that people have with their cloud environment. So what Uila, If you step back and talk about what Uila as a company does, we are a young and dynamic company based out of the Silicon Valley, and what we do is, we do application-centric infrastructure monitoring. We pinpoint the bottlenecks that may exist on your infrastructure, and we also help users on the hybrid cloud workload migration strategy. >> Yeah, I hear "application-centric," and there's been hardware companies that sometimes use that term, and it really more infrastructure-centric, that applications sit on. So, maybe tell us a little bit about where you sit and what you look at and how much is kind of tied to the application versus the infrastructure. >> Absolutely, right. At the end of the day, everything goes back to the application, all the business service. And obviously, the business service is running on the infrastructure. So we target the IT operations team. We want to make sure that they don't end up being the fall guy, or the team to be blamed for anything and everything that goes wrong with the network. Sometimes it is the infrastructure, but at times it could be the application itself, as well. So, that is where Uila plays a role, to help in that full stack monitoring, to avoid the finger-pointing discussion that takes place between the operations team as well as the application teams, or any other teams within the organization. >> I think that's a great point. It's interesting, when the dev ops wave, some people throw out that term "no ops," it's like, operations is real important. I interviewed Solomon Hykes from Docker, and he said, "The reason we did container wasn't to get away from the operator, it was actually to create tools to help the operator, and it enables the developer and the application side, but ops is still pretty critical." >> Absolutely, absolutely. That's where, I think, everything ends. So that's been our focus, to make sure that we provide a solution for that particular team, so that they can help solve any challenges that you may have in your data center. >> Okay, need to understand where this lives, because, today, customers, especially at an event like this, there's virtualization and there's cloud, and there's a huge spectrum of what cloud means to customer. Some of them, cloud is, I'm a small company, maybe it is mostly public cloud. Everybody's doing SaaS. Most companies have some in their on-premises, whatever you want to call that, and heck, there's even the edge stuff, is becoming majorly important, but it's the, everything, whether you call it multi-cloud or hybrid cloud, how do you put that all together? There's lots of challenges there, where do you fit in this overall puzzle? >> Absolutely. In terms of the private cloud, like I mentioned, our main goal is to help you solve the performance bottleneck, whether it's on the application side or the infrastructure side, and help you solve that problem. But what trends we are seeing, is, a majority of the customers, just like the industry in general, is looking towards the hybrid cloud, or multi-cloud, or whatever you want to call that. We are seeing a lot of customers move towards that strategy, but again, they are struggling with defining that strategy. They're struggling with how you get going on this particular path of taking their applications or their business services, which, traditionally I've stated in the private data center and moving it to the public cloud as such. So that's where we've seen organizations struggle with understanding what their current scenario looks like, what their current applications look like, how they're dependent on each other. Again, documentation, obviously, as you know, is that last thing on IT people's minds. Or, if they have a document ready, it's outdated as soon as it's created. So that's where we've seen a lot of organizations struggle, with getting that visibility into what exists within their environment, as they plan about taking their applications to the hybrid cloud. >> Okay, so Dilip, I just want to make sure I understand. Things like performance management, do you look at both sides of a hybrid, both the public and the private, or is it primarily in the private? >> We look at both sides, on the private side as well as the public side. And on the private side, like I mentioned, not only do we help on the performance monitoring there, but we also help you define your migration strategy. >> Okay, when I think about all those things you were talking about, I'm surprised I haven't heard some mention of machine learning, artificial intelligence, 'cause things are growing, things are changing so fast, there's no way the administrator can do it themselves, what's the secret sauce, where's the software, where do you fit in, or do you just stay away from those buzzwords? >> No, no, no, again, I think everybody likes to use those buzzwords. >> Stu: (Laughs) >> We do the same as well. I think, when you think about artificial intelligence, or machine learning, at the end of the day, it goes back to the predictive analysis capabilities that organizations must have for their data centers, because at the end of the day, it's about being proactive, not just being reactive, to issues that could be occurring on your network. So, mining the data that's being collected on your current environment and using that, by artificial intelligence, or machine learning, to figure out what are the resources that will be needed as they expand their own capacities within their own environment and such. Or, being able to predict that they need to assign certain resources, or they're going to run into a certain issue, if they don't assign certain resources, or they don't do something, which could impact their business performance. >> Okay, Dilip, want to just step back for a second, give us a snapshot of the company. How many people, what can you share about funding, the state of the product, is it, actually GA? >> Yeah, absolutely. Like I mentioned, we are a young and dynamic company located in Silicon Valley. We are founded three or four years ago, we have a product that's shipping, we have lots of customers. In terms of funding, we have gone through Series A round of funding and such. And we have customers across different verticals. Whether it's healthcare, whether it's retail, and whether it's MSB type of customers as well. >> And you're 100 percent a software company, how do people engage? Is there like a free trial demo type thing, or how do people get started? >> Yeah. Again, we're a pure software company, so if you look at how Uila gets installed, we get installed as a guest VM, on top of the hypervisor. So this could be a Hyper-V environment, or it could be a VMware type of an environment. And then what we do is we do deep packet inspection to get the application and the network information. >> You mentioned VMware and Hyper-V, public clouds, which ones? >> Public clouds, AWS, Google cloud, so we are more agnostic on that side. >> Stu: Great. >> So we do deep packet inspection, to get those details, on the application and network side, and then we also talk to vCenter, to get all of the compute and storage statistics. So again, a pure software solution, we do have trials available, we have a 30-day trial available for our software, so in case anybody is interested, they can obviously go to our website, at Uila.com, and then request a trial. We work with the customer to install it, we train the person who's doing the trial, and then, after the trial, we even do data reviews, and show you what issues that may be existing in your network. So like a true performance assessment of your data center. >> Okay, and who's the typical administrator of this? Is this same person using vCenter admin, or doing their public cloud management? And I'm curious what dynamics you're seeing in the company, when they've got both sides of that, and how that plays? >> Yeah. So typically, we're seeing virtualization engineers, or IT architects, who are using the Uila solution. And the trend we are seeing between the private and the public cloud is that many of the people who had the responsibility on the private side, it's the same group of people who are still responsible for managing the environment on the public cloud side. So it's not only important to make sure the availability of the infrastructure continues, as you go from your private to your public cloud, but also the application and user experience continues, so that's why having the same group of people managing and monitoring is the trend that we are seeing with our customers. >> Okay. Dilip, want to give you the final word. What brings Uila to an event like this? >> Again, this is the first time we've come to VTUG, we have been doing many other community events, in other locations. Uila believes in working with the community, so that's why we've been engaged with the vExperts, as well as the community in general. And we think this is one of the premier events where the right people in the community, in terms of the technical professionals, hang out. So that's why we decided to come to the VTUG event. And I'm pretty sure I will be back for the Summer Slam as well. >> Well, Dilip Advani, really appreciate the updates, and telling our audience a little bit about Uila, it's lightning in the cloud. For some reason we haven't had the CUBE yet in Hawaii, maybe we need to re-change >> Instead of water, we'll have mai tais there. (laughing) >> Absolutely. Lots more coverage here, at the VTUG Winter Warmer 2018, I'm Stu Miniman, you're watching theCUBE. (energetic techno music)

>> Announcer: From the Fairmont Hotel in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's The Cube. Covering when IOT met AI, the intelligence of things. Brought to you by Western Digital. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Rick here with The Cube. We're in downtown San Jose at the Fairmont Hotel at a little show called when IOT Met AI, the Intelligence of Things. Talking about big data, IOT, AI and how those things are all coming together with virtual reality, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, all the fun buzz words, but this is where it's actually happening and we're real excited to have a pioneer in this space. He's Jack McCauley. He was a co-founder at Occulus VR, now spending his time at UC Berkeley as an innovator in residence. Jack welcome. >> Thank you. >> So you've been watching this thing evolve, obviously Occulus, way out front in kind of the VR space and I think augmented a reality in some ways is even more exciting than just kind of pure virtual reality. >> Right. >> So what do you think as you see this thing develop from the early days when you first sat down and started putting this all together? >> Well, I come from a gaming background. That's what I did for 30 years. I worked in video game development, particularly in hardware and things, console hardware. >> That's right, you did the Guitar Hero. >> Guitar Hero. Yeah, that's right. >> We got that one at home. >> I built their guitars and designed and built their guitars for Activision. And when were part of Red Octane, which is a studio. I primarily worked in the studio, not the headquarters, but I did some of the IP work with them too, so, to your question, you know when you produce a product and put it on the market, you never really know how it's going to do. >> Jeff: Right. >> So we make, we made two developer kits, put them out there and they exceeded our expectations and that was very good. It means that there is a market for VR, there is. We produce a consumer version and sales are not what we expected for that particular product. That was designated towards PC gamers and hopefully console games. But what has done well is the mobile stuff has exceeded everyone's mildest expectations. I heard numbers, Gear VR, which is Occulus designed product for me, sold 7 million of those. That's a smash hit. Now, worldwide for phone mounted VR goggles, it's about 20 million and that's just in two years, so that's really intriguing. So, what has happened is it's shifted away from an expensive PC based rig with $700 or whatever it costs, plus $1,500 for the computer to something that costs $50 and you just stick your cell phone in it and that's what people, it doesn't give you the best experience, but that's what has sold and so if I were doing a start-up right now, I would not be working on PC stuff, I'd be working on mobile stuff. >> Jeff: Right. >> And the next thing I think, which will play out of this is, and I think you mentioned it prior to the interview, is the 360 cameras and Google has announced a camera that they're going to come out and it's for their VR 180 initiative, which allows you to see 180 video in stereo with a cell phone strapped to your face. And that's very intriguing. There's a couple of companies out there working on similar products. Lucid Cam, which is a start-up company here has a 180 camera that's very, very good and they have one coming out that's in 4K. They just launched their product. So to answer your question, it looks like what is going to happen is for VR, is that it's a cell phone strapped to your face and a camera somewhere else that you can view and experience. A concert. Imagine taking it to a sporting event where 5,000 people can view your video, 10,000 from your seat. That's very intriguing. >> Yeah, it's interesting I had my first kind of experience just not even 360 or live view, but I did a periscope from the YouTube concert here at Levi Stadium a couple of months ago, just to try it out, I'd never really done it and it was fascinating to watch the engagement of people on that application who had either seen them the prior week in Seattle or were anticipating them coming to the Rose Bowl, I think, you know, within a couple of days, and to have an interaction just based on my little, you know, mobile phone, I was able to find a rail so I had a pretty steady vantage point, but it was a fascinating, different way to experience media, as well as engagement, as well as kind of a crowd interaction beyond the people that happened to be kind of standing in a circle. >> You, what's intriguing about VR 180 is that anybody can film the concert and put the video on YouTube or stream it through their phone. And formerly it would require a $10,000 camera, a stereo camera set up professionally, but can you imagine though that a crowd, you know, sourced sort of thing where the media is sourced by the crowd and anyone can watch it with a mobile phone. That's what's happening, I think, and with Google's announcement, it even that reinforces my opinion anyways that that is where the market will be. It's live events, sporting events. >> Right, it's an experience, right? It all comes back to kind of experience. People are so much more experience drive these days than I think thing driven from everything from buying cars versus taking a new Uber and seeing it over and over and over again. People want the experience, but not necessarily, as the CEO of Zura said, the straps and straddles of ownership, let me have the fun, I don't necessarily want to own it. But I think the other thing that gets less talked about, get your opinion, is really the kind of combination of virtual reality plus the real world, augmented reality. We see the industrial internet of things all the time where, you know, you go take a walk on that factory before you put your goggles on and not only do you see what you see that's actually in front of you, but now you can start to see, it's almost like a heads up display, certain characteristics of the machinery and this and that are now driven from the database side back into the goggles, but now the richness of your observation has completely changed. >> Yes, and in some ways when you think of what Google did with Google Glass, not as well as we had liked. >> But for a first attempt. >> Yeah. They're way ahead of their time and there will come a time when, you know, Snap has their specs, right? Have you seen those? It's not augmented reality, but, there will come a time when you can probably have a manacle on your face and see the kinds of things you need to see if your driving a car for instance that, I mean, a heads up display or a projector projecting right into your retina. So, and, so I think that's the main thing for augmented reality. Will people, I mean, your Pokemon Go, that's kind of a AR game in a way. You look through your cell phone and the character stays fixed on the table or wherever you're looking for it. I mean that uses a mobile device to do that and I can imagine other applications that use a mobile device to do that and I'm aware of people working on things like that right now. >> So do you think that the breakthrough on the mobile versus the PC-based system was just good enough? In being able to just experience that so easily, you know, I mean, Google gave out hundreds and hundreds of thousands of the cardboard boxes, so wow. >> Yeah. Well, it didn't mean that Gear VR didn't move into the market, it did. You know, it did anyways, but to answer your question about AR, you know, I think that, you know, without having good locals, I mean the problem with wearing the Google Glass and the Google cardboard and Gear VR is it kind of makes you sick a little bit and nobody's working on the localization part. Like how to get rid of the nausea effect. I watched a video that was filmed with Lucid Cam at the Pride Parade in San Francisco and I put it on and somebody was moving with the crowd and I just felt nauseous, so that problem probably probably is one I would attempt to attack if I were going to build a company or something like that right now. >> But I wonder too, how much of that is kind of getting used to the format because people when they first put them on for sure, there's like, ah, but you know, if you settle in a little bit and our eyes are pretty forgiving, you get used to things pretty quickly. Your mind can get accustomed to it to a certain degree, but even I get nauseous and I don't get nauseous very easily. >> Okay, so you're title should just be tinkerer. I looked at your Twitter handle. You're building all kinds of fun stuff in your not a garage, but your big giant lab and you're working at Berkeley. What are some of the things that you can share that you see coming down the road that people aren't necessary thinking about that's going to take some of these technologies to the next level. >> I got one for you. So you've heard of autonomous vehicles, right? >> Jeff: Yep, yep. >> And you've heard of Hollow Lens, right. Hollow Lens is an augmented reality device you put on your had and it's got built in localization and it creates what's, it's uses what's know as SLAM or S-L-A-M to build a mesh of the world around you. And with that mesh, the next guy that comes into that virtual world that you mapped will be away ahead. In other words, the map will already exists and he'll modify upon that and the mesh always gets updated. Can you imagine getting that into a self-driving vehicle just for safety's sake, mapping out the road ahead of you, the vehicle ahead of you has already mapped the road for you and you're adding to the mesh and adjusting the mesh, so I think that that's, you know, as far as Hollow Lens is concerned and their localization system, that's going to be really relevant to self-driving cars. Now whether or not it'll be Microsoft's SLAM or somebody else's, I think that that's probably the best, that's the good thing that came out of Hollow Lens and that will bleed into the self-driving car market. It's a big data crunching number and in Jobs, he was actually looking at this a long time ago, like what can we do with self-driving vehicles and I think he had banned the idea because he realized he had a huge computing and data problem. That was 10 years ago. Things have changed. But I think that that's the thing that will possibly come out of, you know, this AR stuff is that localization is just going to be transported to other areas of technology and self-driving cars and so forth. >> I just love autonomous vehicles because everything gets distilled and applied into that application, which is a great application for people to see and understand it's so tangible. >> Yeah, it may change the way we think about cars and we may just not ever own a car. >> I think absolutely. The car industry, it's ownership, it's usage, it's frequency of usage, how they're used. It's not a steel cage anymore for safety as the crash rates go down significantly. I think there's a lot of changes. >> Yeah, you buy a car and it sits for 20 hours a day. >> Right. >> Unutilized. >> All right. Well, Jack I hope maybe I get a chance to come out and check out your lab one time because you're making all kinds of cool stuff. When's that car going to be done? >> I took it upon myself to remodel a house the same time I was doing that, but the car is moving ahead. In September I think I can get it started. Get the engine running and get the power train up and running. Right now I'm working on the electronics and we have an interesting feature on that car that we're going to do an announcement on later. >> Okay, we'll look out for that. We'll keep watching the Twitter. All right, thanks for taking a few minutes. All right, let's check with Cauley. I'm Jeff Rick. You're watching The Cube from When IOT Met AI, the Intelligence of Things in San Jose. We'll be right back after this short break. Thanks for watching. (technological jingle)