(bright upbeat music) >> Welcome back to Detroit guys and girls. Lisa Martin here with John Furrier. We've been on the floor at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America for about two days now. We've been breaking news, we would have a great conversations, John. We love talking with CUBE alumni whose companies are just taking off. And we get to do that next again. >> Well, this next segment's awesome. We have former CUBE host, Brian Gracely, here who's an executive in this company. And then the entrepreneur who we're going to talk with. She was on theCUBE when it just started now they're extremely successful. It's going to be a great conversation. >> It is, Idit Levine is here, the founder and CEO of solo.io. And as John mentioned, Brian Gracely. You know Brian. He's the VP of Product Marketing and Product Strategy now at solo.io. Guys, welcome to theCUBE, great to have you here. >> Thanks for having us. >> Idit: Thank so much for having us. >> Talk about what's going on. This is a rocket ship that you're riding. I was looking at your webpage, you have some amazing customers. T-Mobile, BMW, Amex, for a marketing guy it must be like, this is just- >> Brian: Yeah, you can't beat it. >> Kid in a candy store. >> Brian: Can't beat it. >> You can't beat it. >> For giant companies like that, giant brands, global, to trust a company of our size it's trust, it's great engineering, it's trust, it's fantastic. >> Idit, talk about the fast trajectory of this company and how you've been able to garner trust with such mass organizations in such a short time period. >> Yes, I think that mainly is just being the best. Honestly, that's the best approach I can say. The team that we build, honestly, and this is a great example of one of them, right? And we're basically getting the best people in the industry. So that's helpful a lot. We are very, very active on the open source community. So basically it building it, anyway, and by doing this they see us everywhere. They see our success. You're starting with a few customers, they're extremely successful and then you're just creating this amazing partnership with them. So we have a very, very unique way we're working with them. >> So hard work, good code. >> Yes. >> Smart people, experience. >> That's all you need. >> It's simple, why doesn't everyone do it? >> It's really easy. (all laughing) >> All good, congratulations. It's been fun to watch you guys grow. Brian, great to see you kicking butt in this great company. I got to ask about the landscape because I love the ServiceMeshCon you guys had on a co-located event on day zero here as part of that program, pretty packed house. >> Brian: Yep. >> A lot of great feedback. This whole ServiceMesh and where it fits in. You got Kubernetes. What's the update? Because everything's kind of coming together- >> Brian: Right. >> It's like jello in the refrigerator it kind of comes together at the same time. Where are we? >> I think the easiest way to think about it is, and it kind of mirrors this event perfectly. So the last four or five years, all about Kubernetes, built Kubernetes. So every one of our customers are the ones who have said, look, for the last two or three years, we've been building Kubernetes, we've had a certain amount of success with it, they're building applications faster, they're deploying and then that success leads to new challenges, right? So we sort of call that first Kubernetes part sort of CloudNative 1.0, this and this show is really CloudNative 2.0. What happens after Kubernetes service mesh? Is that what happens after Kubernetes? And for us, Istio now being part of the CNCF, huge, standardized, people are excited about it. And then we think we are the best at doing Istio from a service mesh perspective. So it's kind of perfect, perfect equation. >> Well, I'll turn it on, listen to your great Cloud cast podcast, plug there for you. You always say what is it and what isn't it? >> Brian: Yeah. >> What is your product and what isn't it? >> Yeah, so our product is, from a purely product perspective it's service mesh and API gateway. We integrate them in a way that nobody else does. So we make it easier to deploy, easier to manage, easier to secure. I mean, those two things ultimately are, if it's an internal API or it's an external API, we secure it, we route it, we can observe it. So if anybody's, you're building modern applications, you need this stuff in order to be able to go to market, deploy at scale all those sort of things. >> Idit, talk about some of your customer conversations. What are the big barriers that they've had, or the challenges, that solo.io comes in and just wipes off the table? >> Yeah, so I think that a lot of them, as Brian described it, very, rarely they had a success with Kubernetes, maybe a few clusters, but then they basically started to on-ramp more application on those clusters. They need more cluster maybe they want multi-class, multi-cloud. And they mainly wanted to enable the team, right? This is why we all here, right? What we wanted to eventually is to take a piece of the infrastructure and delegate it to our customers which is basically the application team. So I think that that's where they started to see the problem because it's one thing to take some open source project and deploy it very little bit but the scale, it's all about the scale. How do you enable all those millions of developers basically working on your platform? How do you scale multi-cloud? What's going on if one of them is down, how do you fill over? So that's exactly the problem that they have >> Lisa: Which is critical for- >> As bad as COVID was as a global thing, it was an amazing enabler for us because so many companies had to say... If you're a retail company, your front door was closed, but you still wanted to do business. So you had to figure out, how do I do mobile? How do I be agile? If you were a company that was dealing with like used cars your number of hits were through the roof because regular cars weren't available. So we have all these examples of companies who literally overnight, COVID was their digital transformation enabler. >> Lisa: Yes. Yes. >> And the scale that they had to deal with, the agility they had to deal with, and we sort of fit perfectly in that. They re-looked at what's our infrastructure look like? What's our security look like? We just happened to be right place in the right time. >> And they had skillset issues- >> Skillsets. >> Yeah. >> And the remote work- >> Right, right. >> Combined with- >> Exactly. >> Modern upgrade gun-to-the-head, almost, kind of mentality. >> And we're really an interesting company. Most of the interactions we do with customers is through Slack, obviously it was remote. We would probably be a great Slack case study in terms of how to do business because our customers engage with us, with engineers all over the world, they look like one team. But we can get them up and running in a POC, in a demo, get them through their things really, really fast. It's almost like going to the public cloud, but at whatever complexity they want. >> John: Nice workflow. >> So a lot of momentum for you guys silver linings during COVID, which is awesome we do hear a lot of those stories of positive things, the acceleration of digital transformation, and how much, as consumers, we've all benefited from that. Do you have one example, Brian, as the VP of product marketing, of a customer that you really think in the last two years just is solo.io's value proposition on a platter? >> I'll give you one that I think everybody can understand. So most people, at least in the United States, you've heard of Chick-fil-A, retail, everybody likes the chicken. 2,600 stores in the US, they all shut down and their business model, it's good food but great personal customer experience. That customer experience went away literally overnight. So they went from barely anybody using the mobile application, and hence APIs in the backend, half their business now goes through that to the point where, A, they shifted their business, they shifted their customer experience, and they physically rebuilt 2,600 stores. They have two drive-throughs now that instead of one, because now they have an entire one dedicated to that mobile experience. So something like that happening overnight, you could never do the ROI for it, but it's changed who they are. >> Lisa: Absolutely transformative. >> So, things like that, that's an example I think everybody can kind of relate to. Stuff like that happened. >> Yeah. >> And I think that's also what's special is, honestly, you're probably using a product every day. You just don't know that, right? When you're swiping your credit card or when you are ordering food, or when you using your phone, honestly the amount of customer they were having, the space, it's like so, every industry- >> John: How many customers do you have? >> I think close to 200 right now. >> Brian: Yeah. >> Yeah. >> How many employees, can you gimme some stats? Funding, employees? What's the latest statistics? >> We recently found a year ago $135 million for a billion dollar valuation. >> Nice. >> So we are a unicorn. I think when you took it we were around like 50 ish people. Right now we probably around 180, and we are growing, we probably be 200 really, really quick. And I think that what's really, really special as I said the interaction that we're doing with our customers, we're basically extending their team. So for each customer is basically a Slack channel. And then there is a lot of people, we are totally global. So we have people in APAC, in Australia, New Zealand, in Singapore we have in AMEA, in UK and in Spain and Paris, and other places, and of course all over US. >> So your use case on how to run a startup, scale up, during the pandemic, complete clean sheet of paper. >> Idit: We had to. >> And what happens, you got Slack channels as your customer service collaboration slash productivity. What else did you guys do differently that you could point to that's, I would call, a modern technique for an entrepreneurial scale? >> So I think that there's a few things that we are doing different. So first of all, in Solo, honestly, there is a few things that differentiated from, in my opinion, most of the companies here. Number one is look, you see this, this is a lot, a lot of new technology and one of the things that the customer is nervous the most is choosing the wrong one because we saw what happened, right? I don't know the orchestration world, right? >> John: So choosing and also integrating multiple things at the same time. >> Idit: Exactly. >> It's hard. >> And this is, I think, where Solo is expeditious coming to place. So I mean we have one team that is dedicated like open source contribution and working with all the open source community and I think we're really good at picking the right product and basically we're usually right, which is great. So if you're looking at Kubernetes, we went there for the beginning. If you're looking at something like service mesh Istio, we were all envoy proxy and out of process. So I think that by choosing these things, and now Cilium is something that we're also focusing on. I think that by using the right technology, first of all you know that it's very expensive to migrate from one to the other if you get it wrong. So I think that's one thing that is always really good at. But then once we actually getting those portal we basically very good at going and leading those community. So we are basically bringing the customers to the community itself. So we are leading this by being in the TOC members, right? The Technical Oversight Committee. And we are leading by actually contributing a lot. So if the customer needs something immediately, we will patch it for him and walk upstream. So that's kind of like the second thing. And the third one is innovation. And that's really important to us. So we pushing the boundaries. Ambient, that we announced a month ago with Google- >> And STO, the book that's out. >> Yes, the Ambient, it's basically a modern STO which is the future of SDL. We worked on it with Google and their NDA and we were listed last month. This is exactly an example of us basically saying we can do it better. We learn from our customers, which is huge. And now we know that we can do better. So this is the third thing, and the last one is the partnership. I mean honestly we are the extension team of the customer. We are there on Slack if they need something. Honestly, there is a reason why our renewal rate is 98.9 and our net extension is 135%. I mean customers are very, very happy. >> You deploy it, you make it right. >> Idit: Exactly, exactly. >> The other thing we did, and again this was during COVID, we didn't want to be a shell-for company. We didn't want to drop stuff off and you didn't know what to do with it. We trained nearly 10,000 people. We have something called Solo Academy, which is free, online workshops, they run all the time, people can come and get hands on training. So we're building an army of people that are those specialists that have that skill set. So we don't have to walk into shops and go like, well okay, I hope six months from now you guys can figure this stuff out. They're like, they've been doing that. >> And if their friends sees their friend, sees their friend. >> The other thing, and I got to figure out as a marketing person how to do this, we have more than a few handfuls of people that they've got promoted, they got promoted, they got promoted. We keep seeing people who deploy our technologies, who, because of this stuff they're doing- >> John: That's a good sign. They're doing it at at scale, >> John: That promoter score. >> They keep getting promoted. >> Yeah, that's amazing. >> That's a powerful sort of side benefit. >> Absolutely, that's a great thing to have for marketing. Last question before we ran out of time. You and I, Idit, were talking before we went live, your sessions here are overflowing. What's your overall sentiment of KubeCon 2022 and what feedback have you gotten from all the customers bursting at the seam to come talk to you guys? >> I think first of all, there was the pre-event which we had and it was a lot of fun. We talked to a lot of customer, most of them is 500, global successful company. So I think that people definitely... I will say that much. We definitely have the market feed, people interested in this. Brian described very well what we see here which is people try to figure out the CloudNative 2.0. So that's number one. The second thing is that there is a consolidation, which I like, I mean STO becoming right now a CNCF project I think it's a huge, huge thing for all the community. I mean, we're talking about all the big tweak cloud, we partner with them. I mean I think this is a big sign of we agree which I think is extremely important in this community. >> Congratulations on all your success. >> Thank you so much. >> And where can customers go to get their hands on this, solo.io? >> Solo.io? Yeah, absolutely. >> Awesome guys, this has been great. Congratulations on the momentum. >> Thank you. >> The rocket ship that you're riding. We know you got to get to the airport we're going to let you go. But we appreciate your insights and your time so much, thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> Thanks guys, we appreciate it. >> A pleasure. >> Thanks. >> For our guests and John Furrier, This is Lisa Martin live in Detroit, had to think about that for a second, at KubeCon 2022 CloudNativeCon. We'll be right back with our final guests of the day and then the show wraps, so stick around. (gentle music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From the heart of Silicon Valley, its theCUBE. Covering CloudNOW 7th Annual Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. (upbeat music) >> Hi, Lisa Martin with theCube, on the ground at Facebook Headquarters. We're here for the seventh annual CloudNOW Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud innovation. Welcoming back to theCube, Idit Levine, who was a winner of one of the awards tonight. Idit, welcome back to theCube. >> Thank you so much, it's great to be here. >> You are the co-founder and CEO of solo.io. >> Idit Levine: Right. >> So, Solo, I think Han Solo, StarWars, I know there's a different impetus for the name there. >> Idit Levine: Yeah. >> I want to talk about, you've been on theCube before talking about the technology, but I'd love for our audience tonight, you are here receiving an award for one, of being one of the innovators, top women in Cloud. Tell us a little bit about the founding of the company, what was the inspiration from a technology perspective, but also as a female technologist, not easy to get funding, tell us a little bit about your backstory. >> Yeah, so I work in the start up most of my life. So I was in Foundry, in a companies, not, I wasn't founding them. And so, you know, working in one company who got acquired, then I moved to another one who got acquired, then I was the CTO of Cloud Management Division in EMC. Much easier to be in a big company, but what drive me to actually start Solo was, because I really saw the need. And did end up actually solving a real problem in the industry. But as you said, it's not easy. So at the beginning I was very naive, I thought, well I already did a lot of open source project, already have a really good kind of like, you know a bitrun of doing and innovative, and so on, I should just get the money, right. So yeah right, no. (laughs) It's not working like this. It's harder to get the money. And also working, I'm specifically in the East coast, which make it even harder. And I'm the only founder. Which mean that it even make it much, much harder. (laughs) So when I started actually, I raised money in the beginning. You know there was a lot of question, like for instance, why don't you have a partner? And so on, I was insisting on not taking one because I felt that I can enter the product myself, right now. And there's nothing to say yet, so there's no point of bringing the business, and I'm a smart dude, I will learn. And that worked really, really well. So, I took the money eventually from, actually in the West coast, actually from a true venture and an amazind pundit, which is amazing, amazing investors, which was just like clear to me that that was the guy who need to go with me. And, we started a company a year and a half ago. But, part of the reason that I call the company Solo is kind of like in a way to explain that I can do it, right? We can do it, even that I'm a woman, and even that I'm tech, I can do these things by myself, so that's part of it. >> I hope you have stickers and pens for when people walk into your offices that says, I can do it, we can do it. That's a great name, and I love the history behind that. But you've fought some pretty big up hill battles, but in a short period of time, getting funding. What's your advice to your peers, either in this generation now or women in the next five years who have a great idea, they have the technical expertise like you do to move forward and just absorb that friction that's going to come your way, how did you do that? >> So actually my motto is really simple, just be the best. So like, I had a great mentor before, we said it right. People will try to stress you in your way and try to explain why you're not doing a good job and try to explain why they're doing a better job. But in the end of the day, people cannot, at least for me I'm a big data driven person, data is the most important thing, so what I did is just, instead of talking, I just was doing. And you know, it was hard in a point of conflict, ignore that, because we're doing really well. Our idea is really good. And again, and again. And persistently, we're doing well. That eventually it was just, you can ignore that. So it wasn't an easy way though. >> No definitely not. You make it sound easy, but your persistence and your determination clearly are essential. Tell us about the culture that you want to, as your company as solo.io continues to grow, what are some of the parts of wisdom that you're going to insist that your leadership team has, like someone that maybe has software skills that are eseential, not just the technical expertise, in order for this fast culture of, we can do this, to flourish? >> Yeah, so I mean, I have an amazing team. And I have to say, what I'm trying to do, my motive is that, I know what I'm good at, but there's stuff that I'm less good at. And my job is to basically surround myself with an amazing A plus team and just let them go. So that's exactly what we're doing. I mean, I'm in charge, I'm the CEO. And I overlook of all the company, doing a lot of the work of with the, managing the engineering, but I have amazing leaders who is going out to this job. I have, I'm doing a lot of the product but I did want a strong, strong people next to me. So if its my VP of Sales, and my field CTO, so I think that the most important thing in the company right now, and this is what we're working on, is the openness. You know, we're not making any decision, we're just sharing it with the amazing energy, and I think this is the key. It wasn't simple, I mean there were people who didn't fit and there was people that we needed to let them go, because, I'm very precise about that, we should be the best. And in order to be the best, you need to have the best people. >> And you want more of the best, because you're hiring. Where can people go to find more information? The website? >> Yeah they can totally go to the website, and just we're everywhere, like Twitter and LinkedIn, so you can just find us. And yeah just come and work for, it's really cool. It's going really well. >> Well, Idit you have such a great energy, thank you so much for joining us on the program. And also congratulations on the award that you won tonight. >> Thank you so much. >> I want to thank you for watching theCube, Lisa Martin for theCube on the ground at Facebook headquarters. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE, covering Cloud Foundry Summit 2018. Brought to you by the Cloud Foundry Foundation. >> Welcome back I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBE's coverage of Cloud Foundry Summit 2018, here in Boston, Massachusetts. Happy to welcome to the program first time guest, founder and CEO of a start-up, solo.io, Idit Levine. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> All right, so one of the things we were talking in the open. Lauren Cooney, who you know, and I were talking about, well, you know, Cloud Foundry. We've been talking about digital transformation. The enterprise for years, but there's always these new technologies. It was, you know, Kubernetes came this wave, now server-less is the wave, and you know, Amazon's kind of overarching, you know, discussion in the market place. That's why I'm glad to bring you in because your company, a startup, plays across a number of these, you know, emerging spaces in the Cloud Foundry space. So, give our audience a little bit about your background and what led to the foundation of solo.io. >> Yeah, thanks. So I was in start-up all my life. I worked in DynamicOps, we got acquired by VMWare, so vRealize, if you remember. And then I moved to another start-up, got inquired by Verizon, so cloud switch, who was moving back in the day from micro, from on prem to off prem. And then I moved to Dell EMC, to the city office and that was great because what I was doing was basically started the dojo of Cloud Foundry. So, me and Ryan Gallagher, if you know him, and Patrick Dennis, we are the three who started it and we basically co-located with the Cloud Foundry team and we worked very, very closely with them. And what we did, what I was doing a lot was bringing in innovation so we created some opensource projects like Key Unique if you heard about it about UniCare, you know, building and running UniCare. We worked with a lot of the ecosystem and the reason we started Solo is because I felt, I really feel, I really felt that the EMC is a great place but that it sometimes slow you down because of the big organization and I felt that we can do much faster outside. So that's why we opened, we started Solo, and all the purpose with Solo is basically playing two tracks. One of them is we really, really want people to use our product, so we want to target the people who has the problem, which is the enterprise. So that's where we're really, really targeting to help them move to what we really master which is the opensource community, so all the innovation. So, that's exactly what we're doing, basically helping them to take their monolithic application, move them to microservices and to Serverless, but by using very, very unique and innovative technology like Envoy and a lot of others. >> Okay, so we hear a lot of times it's you know, of course, companies, they need to move faster. They need to go through this transformation. It's the API economy. And that's, I think, where Gloo fits in there. So Gloo is spelled G-L-O-O, >> Right. >> What's a function gateway? How does this help with, kind of, you know, is it API Sprawl these days? Or, you know, all these various services. You know, how is this the glue that brings everything together? >> So as I said, we're working in two ecosystems, right? The first one is the enterprise. So the main use case that we are trying to solve as I said is the movement. We wanted to make sure that people will be able to take the monolithic and at least extend them to microservices like Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes, and to Serverless, and also in the free time to kind of like move it. So that was kind of like our purpose. But we needed some technology for that, and we looked outside and discovered that the first thing that we needed is probably a very good API gateway. But it need to route on the function level, and it need to discover the function, and a lot of technology that just wasn't exist back then. So what we did was basically build one, which is Gloo. That's the first thing that we needed because we had no choice. There wasn't anything that actually we seriously, and trust me, and looking very well of all the opensource project, there's nothing like what we built out there, in terms of the quality of the technology and what we're capable of doing. So that's why we built it. We didn't plan to make it a product, but that was the purpose. And the second thing. Now we're building more stuff, and we need maybe to extend to service-match, or function-match, like we call it. Again, not because we want to. Because we have no choice. Right? So this is not a core product, but it's really, we're building is about, we're targeting everything that's related to this use case and we're trying to move. >> Okay, so Google and Microsoft in their keynotes talked about an API gateway, opensource project, I hear service-match, I'm thinking about ISDL. How does Gloo fit-- >> So as I said, there's a beautiful, we are not competing because as I said, at the beginning, my purpose, look, I will look at the situation. That's how somebody can use it. But they're just not moving fast enough for us as a startup. So we had to actually create it. Now, when we created it, we created it specifically to our use case, right? We needed the function, that we knew that our purpose was to take all that, those ecosystems of monolithic, microservices, and Serverless, and look and see, what is the smallest unit of compute that's common between them, and cut everything to it, and that's the function. So basically, what we're doing, we're taking all these ecosystems, cut everything to function, and then reassemble a movement between them. That's something that they just didn't give us, so we had to build it. But the beauty of it is because we are, you know, we are really innovative and that's what we know how to do, we decided to leverage the opensource, so for instance is build on Envoy, right, because it is the best proxy that exists today. And we extended it, because we needed some functionalities, so we created a lot of filter, right? Because it was very important to us to make Envoy basically have this functionality. So we are not competing with none of them, because mainly, that's not what we're doing. We're just focusing on the use case. But theoretically, if you're looking at API gateway, I will say hands down we're probably the best that exists out there, which is, that's not what we started with. >> Yeah, it's really smart, coming, you know, no small startup's going to be, oh, well, we're going to, you know, in Silicon Valley maybe they think they're going to take down the giants and break the world and competing is everything, but I like you actually spent some time working in the EMC CTO office, and there are certain things we will always look at. And it's like, there's this gap. Here's what we have today, and here's absolutely where we know where the market is going. >> Right. >> So, you know, the analogy I hear today is like, well, customers they've got their applications. They need to modernize them. So it's been the last year or so, there's been this discussion of lift and shift. It made people cringe. I said, you know, I've lifted the virtualization way. One of the biggest challenges where, was I took this old application which, to be frank, stunk, and I kept it alive for years longer, even though the server was no longer supported, the OS was no longer supported, but I could just virtualize it and that was great. I want to get to 12-factor, microservice architecture, even Serverless might be the foundation that I'd like to build this. I cannot lift and shift to get Serverless. There is no path from old to there. So it sounds like you're >> What we're doing. Trying to attack some of that there, am I getting that right? >> Yes, I mean, basically, I will give you an example of a customer that we have, right? So, they came, their monolithic application, right? And they really want it to move. And you know, it's really hard to maintain this, so they said, you know what, we really want it to move to Serverless. That's the engineering part, right? They're saying, we want it to move to engineering. They came to the boss and they said, well, what we want to do is to take it, rewrite it, and put it as a greenfield, right? Basically as a Serverless. So the boss said, no problem, go, evaluate how much time it will take, and then come back to me. So they went and they did it, and they basically came with nine months. So the boss said, okay, so, no. And the reason is because nine months means a year, and also, I didn't get any feature on this year. Right? They will fire me. So what we're doing is we're saying, take this monolithic application, it's working, don't touch it, extend it. First of all, extend, on the new functionality, going to the Serverless and to microservices, and we're supporting everything, and it's brand new. I mean, I can start telling you what is the platform that we support. It's almost everything. And then, the second thing is that, on your spare time, start breaking it. Now, there's no magic. I know people are saying there's an algorithm. That's never going to work. Trust me, and I did a lot of software in my life. You can't guess this stuff. You actually need to rewrite them. But on your spare time, when you're available, and on the way, you know, on your pace of learning. And I feel that that's what we're giving. We're basically giving them the freedom to do that on their spare time, and we're giving a lot of other tools, like for instance, debug. So we create, we opensource a project called Squash, that basically be able to attach debuggers to microservices, to Serverless, and to monolithic, in different language, different everything, and jump between them. So you basically can create what I call library up, and jump cross that. So I feel that what we're targeting is basically make this movement easy, with any technology that we can put out there. >> Yeah. The whole application modernization is a real challenge. If I look at, you know, in this space, Pivotal's acquisition of Pivotal Labs was to help them. A lot of services, things that we're looking at, Pivotal going public. How much of their business is actually services, how much of it is you know, subscription and software? How much are you, is this just tooling you're building, or are you helping customers get through some of the services that maybe it's time for you to talk, how many people do you have on your team? Like, I look at the website, I see like five people, so. >> Yeah, that's actually what we are. So I mean, specifically, we are five. We are startup. We got actually really well funded from True Ventures, great, great investors. And what was important to me, was not to do a lot of mistakes of the other startups doing, which is basically scale too fast, right? I wanted first to putting a product out there, I want to see what's going on. And today, because we opensource, because we all can use Amazon and so on, we don't need a lot of money to actually create the additional projects. So that's what we did. Specifically, I can tell I'm getting a lot of resumes and right now, I'm actually pushing them back, because it's really, really important to me to scale on the right side. Now we're starting to have customers, we will have to scale, right? So that's that. In terms of how much, so that's enough. We are five and as I said, it's good, but we are not in the services. Actually people they're doing an amazing job. We don't want to touch that. What we do want to make sure is that they're giving the tools to do them themselves and they will hire probably people to do the services. >> Are you able to share how much funding, you said True Ventures is one of the funding? >> So we got 2.5 from True Ventures, and then we got 500 from Haystack and another 250 from Wave Ventures, capital. >> Okay, and five people. You're hiring too. What are you looking for? >> Yeah, so we're definitely going to hire more. We need a full stack engineer, we need a system engineer. Right now it's very flat architecture. A lot of really, really good people. I mean, my engineers are people who was in the Israeli Army as lackers, you know, very, very technical. People who are, walk with me in EMC, and so on. Very, very good people. And our purpose is to grow as system engineers a little bit, UI, and we also need some help to scale. >> And you're located here in Boston, correct? >> I am, I am. I have one engineer in Seattle, but all the rest are here. >> Okay, and the products itself, you know, opensource, and the things that are available, so-- >> For now, so we started as an open, we did put it as an opensource project. This is the platform I feel should be opensource. But there will be features that we will not opensource. A lot of more things that makes sense for the enterprise, we will not opensource. But yeah, right now, everything is opensource, and we wanted to share for the community. >> Okay, and from the customers you're talking to, what's their biggest challenge, you know, things like Serverless, you know, are they getting their arms around it, especially, you know, out here in the east coast, as opposed to, you know, some of the startups in the like? >> So actually, people in the enterprise, I mean, I think I nailed the use case, because you know, I went, I'm talking a lot in conference, QCon is one of the conference that I really, really liked and talked a lot, and when I talk there to the people, everybody has this problem, which I have a monolithic, how do you move them? Most of them trying to move to container right now. That's where it is. But the beauty of how we built Gloo, and that was totally on purpose, is the fact that, and I actually have a diagram showing it, today those enterprise that are only using monolithic. I don't know, like Bank of America, I think is only monolithic. Then if you're looking, there's people only using microservices, probably Google and others. And then there is companies like iRobot for instance. So it's going all the way to Serverless. That's all there, right? Bam, which is amazing. But, and there is companies that's sharing it, right? That means they're microservices and Serverless, so monolithic, and then. And EMC for instance, they have like Serverless, microservices and monolithic. What we're trying to do is basically, the beauty of what we build, is basically a platform on top of an envoy. So we can actually create the customized offer for you that will be only what you need. And what we will help you is to basically glue, this is what the name, glue your environment, so it will give you one experience that you can manage it or you can mix and match, you can do whatever you want, and it's really, really clean. So when I'm talking to customers today, mainly where they are is like monolithic to microservices, but they love this use case. I mean, I didn't meet a customer yet that I show him the demo of how we're taking a spring boot application and move it, and he said that they don't want it to proceed. So it's good. >> Wow. Fascinating stuff. I really appreciate you sharing. Definitely, we hear from customers all the time. It's moving from the old to the new, it's I need to live in both of those worlds, and they can't split those teams, it can't be islands, I need to pull this together. It's definitely through a multi-cloud, and seems like it's happening in the development environment too. So, Idit Levine, solo, congratulations on where you've gone. Look forward to catching up much more in the future. We're back with lots more coverage here from the Cloud Foundry summit in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm Stu Miniman. Thanks for watching theCUBE.

(bright upbeat music) >> Greetings, brilliant community and thank you so much for tuning in to theCUBE here for the last three days where we've been live from Detroit, Michigan. I've had the pleasure of spending this week with Lisa Martin and John Furrier. Thank you both so much for hanging out, for inviting me into the CUBE family. It's our first show together, it's been wonderful. >> Thank you. >> You nailed it. >> Oh thanks, sweetheart. >> Great job. Great job team, well done. Free wall to wall coverage, it's what we do. We stay till everyone else-- >> Savannah: 100 percent. >> Everyone else leaves, till they pull the plug. >> Lisa: Till they turn the lights out. We're still there. >> Literally. >> Literally last night. >> Still broadcasting. >> Whatever takes to get the stories and get 'em out there at scale. >> Yeah. >> Great time. >> 33. 33 different segments too. Very impressive. John, I'm curious, you're a trend watcher and you've been at every single KubeCon. >> Yep. >> What are the trends this year? Give us the breakdown. >> I think CNCF does this, it's a hard job to balance all the stakeholders. So one, congratulations to the CNCF for another great KubeCon and CloudNativeCon. It is really hard to balance bringing in the experts who, as time goes by, seven years we've been all of, as you said, you get experts, you get seniority, and people who can be mentors, 60% new people. You have vendors who are sponsoring and there's always people complaining and bitching and moaning. They want this, they want that. It's always hard and they always do a good job of balancing it. We're lucky that we get to scale the stories with CUBE and that's been great. We had some great stories here, but it's a great community and again, they're inclusive. As I've said before, we've talked about it. This year though is an inflection point in my opinion, because you're seeing the developer ecosystem growing so fast. It's global. You're seeing events pop up, you're seeing derivative events. CNCF is at the center point and they have to maintain the culture of developer experts, maintainers, while balancing the newbies. And that's going to be >> Savannah: Mm-hmm. really hard. And they've done a great job. We had a great conversation with them. So great job. And I think it's going to continue. I think the attendance metric is a little bit of a false positive. There's a lot of online people who didn't come to Detroit this year. And I think maybe the combination of the venue, the city, or just Covid preferences may not look good on paper, on the numbers 'cause it's not a major step up in attendance. It's still bigger, but the community, I think, is going to continue to grow. I'm bullish on it. >> Yeah, I mean at least we did see double the number of people that we had in Los Angeles. Very curious. I think Amsterdam, where we'll be next with CNCF in the spring, in April. I think that's actually going to be a better pulse check. We'll be in Europe, we'll see what's going on. >> John: Totally. >> I mean, who doesn't like Amsterdam in the springtime? Lisa, what have been some of your observations? >> Oh, so many observations. The evolution of the conference, the hallway track conversations really shifting towards adjusting to the enterprise. The enterprise momentum that we saw here as well. We had on the show, Ford. >> Savannah: Yes. We had MassMutual, we had ING, that was today. Home Depot is here. We are seeing all these big companies that we know and love, become software companies right before our eyes. >> Yeah. Well, and I think we forget that software powers our entire world. And so of course they're going to have to be here. So much running on Kubernetes. It's on-prem, it's at the edge, it's everywhere. It's exciting. Woo, I'm excited. John, what do you think is the number one story? This is your question. I love asking you this question. What is the number one story out KubeCon? >> Well, I think the top story is a combination of two things. One is the evolution of Cloud Native. We're starting to see web assembly. That's a big hyped up area. It got a lot of attention. >> Savannah: Yeah. That's kind of teething out the future. >> Savannah: Rightfully so. The future of this kind of lightweight. You got the heavy duty VMs, you got Kubernetes and containers, and now this web assembly, shows a trajectory of apps, server-like environment. And then the big story is security. Software supply chain is, to me, was the number one consistent theme. At almost all the interviews, in the containers, and the workflows, >> Savannah: Very hot. software supply chain is real. The CD Foundation mentioned >> Savannah: Mm-hmm. >> they had 16,000 vulnerabilities identified in their code base. They were going to automate that. So again, >> Savannah: That was wild. >> That's the top story. The growth of open source exposes potential vulnerabilities with security. So software supply chain gets my vote. >> Did you hear anything that surprised you? You guys did this great preview of what you thought we were going to hear and see and feel and touch at KubeCon, CloudNativeCon 2022. You talked about, for example, the, you know, healthcare financial services being early adopters of this. Anything surprise either one of you in terms of what you predicted versus what we saw? Savannah, let's start with you. >> You know what really surprised me, and this is ironic, so I'm a community gal by trade. But I was really just impressed by the energy that everyone brought here and the desire to help. The thing about the open source community that always strikes me is, I mean 187 different countries participating. You've got, I believe it's something like 175,000 people contributing to the 140 projects plus that CNCF is working on. But that culture of collaboration extends far beyond just the CNCF projects. Everyone here is keen to help each other. We had the conversation just before about the teaching and the learnings that are going on here. They brought in Detroit's students to come and learn, which is just the most heartwarming story out of this entire thing. And I think it's just the authenticity of everyone in this community and their passion. Even though I know it's here, it still surprises me to see it in the flesh. Especially in a place like Detroit. >> It's nice. >> Yeah. >> It's so nice to see it. And you bring up a good point. It's very authentic. >> Savannah: It's super authentic. >> I mean, what surprised me is one, the Wasm, or web assembly. I didn't see that coming at the scale of the conversation. It sucked a lot of options out of the room in my opinion, still hyped up. But this looks like it's got a good trajectory. I like that. The other thing that surprised me that was a learning was my interview with Solo.io, Idit, and Brian Gracely, because he's a CUBE alumni and former host of theCUBE, and analyst at Wikibon, was how their go-to-market was an example of a modern company in Covid with a clean sheet of paper and smart people, they're just doing things different. They're in Slack with their customers. And I walked away with, "Wow that's like a playbook that's not, was never, in the go-to-market VC-backed company playbook." I thought that was, for me, a personal walk away saying that's important. I like how they did that. And there's a lot of companies I think could learn from that. Especially as the recession comes where partnering with customers has always been a top priority. And how they did that was very clever, very effective, very efficient. So I walked away with that saying, "I think that's going to be a standard." So that was a pleasant surprise. >> That was a great surprise. Also, that's a female-founded company, which is obviously not super common. And the growth that they've experienced, to your point, really being catalyzed by Covid, is incredibly impressive. I mean they have some massive brand name customers, Amex, BMW for example. >> Savannah: Yeah. >> Great point. >> And I interviewed her years ago and I remember saying to myself, "Wow, she's impressive." I liked her. She's a player. A player for sure. And she's got confidence. Even on the interview she said, "We're just better, we have better product." And I just like the point of view. Very customer-focused but confident. And I just took, that's again, a great company. And again, I'm not surprised that Brian Gracely left Red Hat to go work there. So yeah, great, great call there. And of course other things that weren't surprising that I predicted, Red Hat continued to invest. They continue to bring people on theCUBE, they support theCUBE but more importantly they have a good strategy. They're in that multicloud positioning. They're going to have an opportunity to get a bite at the apple. And I what I call the supercloud. As enterprises try to go and be mainstream, Cloud Native, they're going to need some help. And Red Hat is always has the large enterprise customers. >> Savannah: What surprised you, Lisa? >> Oh my gosh, so many things. I think some of the memorable conversations that we had. I love talking with some of the enterprises that we mentioned, ING Bank for example. You know, or institutions that have been around for 100 plus years. >> Savannah: Oh, yeah. To see not only how much they've innovated and stayed relevant to meet the demands of the consumer, which are only increasing, but they're doing so while fostering a culture of innovation and a culture that allows these technology leaders to really grow within the organization. That was a really refreshing conversation that I think we had. 'Cause you can kind of >> Savannah: Absolutely. think about these old stodgy companies. Nah, of course they're going to digitize. >> Thinking about working for the bank, I think it's boring. >> Right? >> Yeah. And they were talking about, in fact, those great t-shirts that they had on, >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. were all about getting more people to understand how fun it is to work in tech for ING Bank in different industries. You don't just have to work for the big tech companies to be doing really cool stuff in technology. >> What I really liked about this show is we had two female hosts. >> Savannah: Yeah. >> How about that? Come on. >> Hey, well done, well done on your recruitment there, champ. >> Yes, thank you boss. (John laughs) >> And not to mention we have a really all-star production team. I do just want to give them a little shout out. To all the wonderful folks behind the lines here. (people clapping) >> John: Brendan. Good job. >> Yeah. Without Brendan, Anderson, Noah, and Andrew, we would be-- >> Of course Frank Faye holding it back there too. >> Yeah, >> Of course, Frank. >> I mean, without the business development wheels on the ship we'd really be in an unfortunate spot. I almost just swore on television. We're not going to do that. >> It's okay. No one's regulating. >> Yeah. (all laugh) >> Elon Musk just took over Twitter. >> It was a close call. >> That's right! >> It's going to be a hellscape. >> Yeah, I mean it's, shit's on fire. So we'll just see what happens next. I do, I really want to talk about this because I think it's really special. It's an ethos and some magic has happened here. Let's talk about Detroit. Let's talk about what it means to be here. We saw so many, and I can't stress this enough, but I think it really matters. There was a commitment to celebrating place here. Lisa, did you notice this too? >> Absolutely. And it surprised me because we just don't see that at conferences. >> Yeah. We're so used to going to the same places. >> Right. >> Vegas. Vegas, Vegas. More Vegas. >> Your tone-- >> San Francisco >> (both laugh) sums up my feelings. Yes. >> Right? >> Yeah. And, well, it's almost robotic but, and the fact that we're like, oh Detroit, really? But there was so much love for this city and recognizing and supporting its residents that we just don't see at conferences. You uncovered a lot of that with your swag-savvy segments, >> Savannah: Yeah. >> And you got more of that to talk about today. >> Don't worry, it's coming. Yeah. (laughs) >> What about you? Have you enjoyed Detroit? I know you hadn't been here in a long time, when we did our intro session. >> I think it's a bold move for the CNCF to come here and celebrate. What they did, from teaching the kids in the city some tech, they had a session. I thought that was good. >> Savannah: Loved that. I think it was a risky move because a lot of people, like, weren't sure if they were going to fly to Detroit. So some say it might impact the attendance. I thought they did a good job. Their theme, Road Ahead. Nice tie in. >> Savannah: Yeah. And so I think I enjoyed Detroit. The weather was great. It didn't rain. Nice breeze outside. >> Yeah. >> The weather was great, the restaurants are phenomenal. So Detroit's a good city. I missed some hockey games. I'd love to see the Red Wings play. Missed that game. But we always come back. >> I think it's really special. I mean, every time I talked to a company about their swag, that had sourced it locally, there was a real reason for this story. I mean even with Kasten in that last segment when I noticed that they had done Carhartt beanies, Carhartt being a Michigan company. They said, "I'm so glad you noticed. That's why we did it." And I think that type of, the community commitment to place, it all comes back to community. One of the bigger themes of the show. But that passion and that support, we need more of that. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> And the thing about the guests we've had this past three days have been phenomenal. We had a diverse set of companies, individuals come on theCUBE, you know, from Scott Johnston at Docker. A really one on one. We had a great intense conversation. >> Savannah: Great way to kick it off. >> We shared a lot of inside baseball, about Docker, super important company. You know, impressed with companies like Platform9 it's been around since the OpenStack days who are now in a relevant position. Rafi Systems, hot startup, they don't have a lot of resources, a lot of guerilla marketing going on. So I love to see the mix of startups really contributing. The big players are here. So it's a real great mix of companies. And I thought the interviews were phenomenal, like you said, Ford. We had, Kubia launched on theCUBE. >> Savannah: Yes. >> That's-- >> We snooped the location for KubeCon North America. >> You did? >> Chicago, everyone. In case you missed it, Bianca was nice enough to share that with us. >> We had Sarbjeet Johal, CUBE analyst came on, Keith Townsend, yesterday with you guys. >> We had like analyst speed dating last night. (all laugh) >> How'd that go? (laughs) >> It was actually great. One of the things that they-- >> Did they hug and kiss at the end? >> Here's the funny thing is that they were debating the size of the CNC app. One thinks it's too big, one thinks it's too small. And I thought, is John Goldilocks? (John laughs) >> Savannah: Yeah. >> What is John going to think about that? >> Well I loved that segment. I thought, 'cause Keith and Sarbjeet argue with each other on Twitter all the time. And I heard Keith say before, he went, "Yeah let's have it out on theCUBE." So that was fun to watch. >> Thank you for creating this forum for us to have that kind of discourse. >> Lisa: Yes, thank you. >> Well, it wouldn't be possible without the sponsors. Want to thank the CNCF. >> Absolutely. >> And all the ecosystem partners and sponsors that make theCUBE possible. We love doing this. We love getting the stories. No story's too small for theCUBE. We'll go with it. Do whatever it takes. And if it wasn't for the sponsors, the community wouldn't get all the great knowledge. So, and thank you guys. >> Hey. Yeah, we're, we're happy to be here. Speaking of sponsors and vendors, should we talk a little swag? >> Yeah. >> What do you guys think? All right. Okay. So now this is becoming a tradition on theCUBE so I'm very delighted, the savvy swag segment. I do think it's interesting though. I mean, it's not, this isn't just me shouting out folks and showing off t-shirts and socks. It's about standing out from the noise. There's a lot of players in this space. We got a lot of CNCF projects and one of the ways to catch the attention of people walking the show floor is to have interesting swag. So we looked for the most unique swag on Wednesday and I hadn't found this yet, but I do just want to bring it up. Oops, I think I might have just dropped it. This is cute. Is, most random swag of the entire show goes to this toothbrush. I don't really have more in terms of the pitch there because this is just random. (Lisa laughs) >> But so, everyone needs that. >> John: So what's their tagline? >> And you forget these. >> Yeah, so the idea was to brush your cloud bills. So I think they're reducing the cost of-- >> Kind of a hygiene angle. >> Yeah, yeah. Very much a hygiene angle, which I found a little ironic in this crowd to be completely honest with you. >> John: Don't leave the lights on theCUBE. That's what they say. >> Yeah. >> I mean we are theCUBE so it would be unjust of me not to show you a Rubik's cube. This is actually one of those speed cubes. I'm not going to be able to solve this for you with one hand on camera, but apparently someone did it in 17 seconds at the booth. Knowing this audience, not surprising to me at all. Today we are, and yesterday, was the t-shirt contest. Best t-shirt contest. Today we really dove into the socks. So this is, I noticed this trend at KubeCon in Los Angeles last year. Lots of different socks, clouds obviously a theme for the cloud. I'm just going to lay these out. Lots of gamers in the house. Not surprising. Here on this one. >> John: Level up. >> Got to level up. I love these 'cause they say, "It's not a bug." And anyone who's coded has obviously had to deal with that. We've got, so Star Wars is a huge theme here. There's Lego sets. >> John: I think it's Star Trek. But. >> That's Star Trek? >> John: That's okay. >> Could be both. (Lisa laughs) >> John: Nevermind, I don't want to. >> You can flex your nerd and geek with us anytime you want, John. I don't mind getting corrected. I'm all about, I'm all about the truth. >> Star Trek. Star Wars. Okay, we're all the same. Okay, go ahead. >> Yeah, no, no, this is great. Slim.ai was nice enough to host us for dinner on Tuesday night. These are their lovely cloud socks. You can see Cloud Native, obviously Cloud Native Foundation, cloud socks, whole theme here. But if we're going to narrow it down to some champions, I love these little bee elephants from Raft. And when I went up to these guys, I actually probably would've called these my personal winner. They said, again, so community focused and humble here at CNCF, they said that Wiz was actually the champion according to the community. These unicorn socks are pretty excellent. And I have to say the branding is flawless. So we'll go ahead and give Wiz the win on the best sock contest. >> John: For the win. >> Yeah, Wiz for the win. However, the thing that I am probably going to use the most is this really dope Detroit snapback from Kasten. So I'm going to be rocking this from now on for the rest of the segment as well. And I feel great about this snapback. >> Looks great. Looks good on you. >> Yeah. >> Thanks John. (John laughs) >> So what are we expecting between now and KubeCon in Amsterdam? >> Well, I think it's going to be great to see how they, the European side, it's a chill show. It's great. Brings in the European audience from the global perspective. I always love the EU shows because one, it's a great destination. Amsterdam's going to be a great location. >> Savannah: I'm pumped. >> The American crowd loves going over there. All the event cities that they choose are always awesome. I missed Valencia cause I got Covid. I'm really bummed about that. But I love the European shows. It's just a little bit, it's high intensity, but it's the European chill. They got a little bit more of that siesta vibe going on. >> Yeah. >> And it's just awesome. >> Yeah, >> And I think that the mojo that carried throughout this week, it's really challenging to not only have a show that's five days, >> but to go through all week, >> Savannah: Seriously. >> to a Friday at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, and still have the people here, the energy and all the collaboration. >> Savannah: Yeah. >> The conversations that are still happening. I think we're going to see a lot more innovation come spring 2023. >> Savannah: Mm-hmm. >> Yeah. >> So should we do a bet, somebody's got to buy dinner? Who, well, I guess the folks who lose this will buy dinner for the other one. How many attendees do you think we'll see in Amsterdam? So we had 4,000, >> Oh, I'm going to lose this one. >> roughly in Los Angeles. Priyanka was nice enough to share with us, there was 8,000 here in Detroit. And I'm talking in person, we're not going to meddle this with the online. >> 6500. >> Lisa: I was going to say six, six K. >> I'm going 12,000. >> Ooh! >> I'm going to go ahead and go big I'm going to go opposite Price Is Right. >> One dollar. >> Yeah. (all laugh) That's exactly where I was driving with it. I'm going, I'm going absolutely all in. I think the momentum here is building. I think if we look at the numbers from-- >> John: You could go Family Feud >> Yeah, yeah, exactly. And they mentioned that they had 11,000 people who have taken their Kubernetes course in that first year. If that's a benchmark and an indicator, we've got the veteran players here. But I do think that, I personally think that the hype of Kubernetes has actually preceded adoption. If you look at the data and now we're finally tipping over. I think the last two years we were on the fringe and right now we're there. It's great. (voice blares loudly on loudspeaker) >> Well, on that note (all laugh) On that note, actually, on that note, as we are talking, so I got to give cred to my cohosts. We deal with a lot of background noise here on theCUBE. It is a live show floor. There's literally someone on an e-scooter behind me. There's been Pong going on in the background. The sound will haunt the three of us for the rest of our lives, as well as the production crew. (Lisa laughs) And, and just as we're sitting here doing this segment last night, they turned the lights off on us, today they're letting everyone know that the event is over. So on that note, I just want to say, Lisa, thank you so much. Such a warm welcome to the team. >> Thank you. >> John, what would we do without you? >> You did an amazing job. First CUBE, three days. It's a big show. You got staying power, I got to say. >> Lisa: Absolutely. >> Look at that. Not bad. >> You said it on camera now. >> Not bad. >> So you all are stuck with me. (all laugh) >> A plus. Great job to the team. Again, we do so much flow here. Brandon, Team, Andrew, Noah, Anderson, Frank. >> They're doing our hair, they're touching up makeup. They're helping me clean my teeth, staying hydrated. >> We look good because of you. >> And the guests. Thanks for coming on and spending time with us. And of course the sponsors, again, we can't do it without the sponsors. If you're watching this and you're a sponsor, support theCUBE, it helps people get what they need. And also we're do a lot more segments around community and a lot more educational stuff. >> Savannah: Yeah. So we're going to do a lot more in the EU and beyond. So thank you. >> Yeah, thank you. And thank you to everyone. Thank you to the community, thank you to theCUBE community and thank you for tuning in, making it possible for us to have somebody to talk to on the other side of the camera. My name is Savannah Peterson for the last time in Detroit, Michigan. Thanks for tuning into theCUBE. >> Okay, we're done. (bright upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE Live in Detroit, Michigan. Lisa Martin here with John Furrier. We are covering KubeCon + CloudNativeCon '22. John, this is day two of our coverage wall-to-wall three days of coverage on theCUBE. We've been talking a lot about the developer and how the world is starting to really revolve around developer and DevOps portfolios. >> Yes, developers, startups, big companies, all transforming. This next segment, we want to hear from how Dell Technologies cloud natives, big time strategy there and looking forward to it. It's good. It's going to be a great segment. >> Yes, please welcome back one of our alumni to theCUBE. Brad Maltz is here, Senior Director of DevOps Portfolio and DevRel for Dell Technologies. Good to see you. >> Thank you guys for having me. >> So, Dell at KubeCon, what's going on? >> Yeah, that's literally the most common question I'm getting. So for us, it's a lot about our customer base is making that transformation into a DevOps world. And they have a ton of Dell and they're like, Hey, from a Dell perspective, how do you help us make that transformation into a DevOps operating model? So we're here to explain that. We're here to talk about infrastructure as code, our container Kubernetes story, our multi-cloud story. We're talking about all of it. >> Tell us about those stories and what the value is in it for companies to work with Dell as they transition. >> So when we look at it from a DevOps perspective for us, it's all about the culture, the operating model shift they're trying to make. And what that means to them is they have to figure out how do they automate all of the stacks they have to deal with. Whether it's going to be server, storage, data protection, network, and all the way up through the hypervisor and Kubernetes. That means they need to work with an ecosystem of tools. Things like Ansible, things like Terraform, all that stuff. Our job is to make our portfolio more consumable in the infrastructure as code space. That's one part of the discussion. The second part of the conversation is Kubernetes won. Kubernetes won the abstraction in this multi-cloud world and we as Dell are helping our customers consume Kubernetes. Whether it's by bringing solutions and more appliance oriented mentality to the market or whether it's actually enabling them with our container storage modules and CSI drivers. >> So it as supercloud as we call or multi-cloud as some people call it, you're starting to see the abstraction for interoperability, but essentially just distributed hybrid cloud. Edge as you guys have a big presence. So Dell's supplying not just the data center anymore. Cloud models are moving to hybrid on-premises, edge is growing. We saw some great use cases where military applications are using Kubernetes and all kinds of new things. So this real examples happening right now. This is going to impact Dell's customers and Dell as a supplier of compute and servers. And the gear that runs everything. Like at a telco, you can have a data center at an edge spot, like a box could be a data center. >> Telco is a great example cause we created the business, the Telco business unit. And in the Telco business unit, our goal was, hey, telco is a little different than enterprise edge. Enterprise edge, retail, manufacturing, healthcare. They have certain needs. Telco, much smaller group of customers that have a much different set of needs. And that's very similar is how do we scale at the edge? How do we control things programmatically? How do we do it in a secure way? And how do we do it so that our people internally don't have to deal with the underpinnings of all that infrastructure. Just make it easier for them. That's our goal through the edge discussions, through telco and all that. >> Yeah. We've been doing a big thing on why hardware matters. Hardware's back. We look at all the hyperscalers, the big competition is faster, faster, faster chips, faster the physics. This is part of the supply chain both hardware and software. Okay. So developers want more power. At the end of the day, this community here wants invisible infrastructure and they want it fast. >> Brad: Yes, that's exactly right. >> There's a lot under the hub. It's still servers. >> You still got firmware, you still got bio, you still got to management operating system, You still got to patch things, kernels, security issues, all of that from a server perspective. We haven't even talked about storage or networking or any of the other stuff. So there's a ton of buttons and dials under the covers. >> And that's totally going to be awesome. And the question comes in, okay, now take me to the cloud native because automation, infrastructures code, these are now the hotspots. Software supply chain, not hardware, software supply chain. So these are all things that are going to be intersecting. What's your view? >> In the multi-cloud view of the world, what we really have are our customers are saying, okay, we started on one cloud, Amazon or Azure or Google. And they're like, you know what? We had to go to a second cloud for whatever reason, many reasons. Now we have to manage two clouds. And by the way, we never got fully off-prem. So now we have all of our on-premises stuff plus multiple clouds. How do we deal with the complexity there? And the complexity there is everything from data problems of data mobility, data protection, replication, all that stuff. How do we deal with the actual application life cycle management across that? And that's where a lot of the tooling we're discussing comes in. That's where Kubernetes comes in and they want to do it in an agnostic way. 'Cause if they can't begin to transition to do it in a standardized layer, then the end of the day they're still going to be managing three totally different environments with three separate engineering teams. >> So is your target audience primarily existing Dell customers, legacy customers, or is it really wide open? >> It's actually been opening up. So we have kind of, the way I view it is we have three different segments that we're going to be going after. We have what I would say is the top 10% of the industry that's really able to skill up into this DevOps world very quickly. They're going to go after the GitOps, they're going to go after all those things. That's a combination of existing customers, but also the really, really large customers that can build their own clouds on-premises. We then have the other end of the spectrum. People that aren't making the shift. People that are like, you know what this DevOps transformation it's not going to help us there, but we still need server and storage and whatnot. And then I like to call it the squishy middle. 60, 70% of the market that's like, we can't scale up in time, we can't hire the people, they're not available 'cause that 10% just got them all, but we still have the same problems. And how do we operate in a world where we have that multi-cloud type of a problem, but we can't find the people. Now you got to figure out more of the no-code, low-code packaged solutions, packaged automation coming from companies like Dell and others. >> So there's customers that are either at the beginning of their journey are not convinced yet. What are some of the barriers that they're seeing that Dell can help them overcome? >> Number one thing, education. >> Lisa: Really? >> We're hearing that consistently here at KubeCon and just customer meetings all over the place. There is a segment of the industry that they're empowered to move into a DevOps model. They don't have the ability or resources. They're not able to say, I've been doing this forever in this way in storage. How do I do that in another thing? And they're scared. They want somebody to come in and kind of handhold them a little bit, but somebody they trust. Somebody they've been working with for a very long time. That's Dell's role. Hands-on labs, training materials, how-to videos, but do it in the comfortable way that they feel like, okay we got this. >> And the success with the customers has been that well-documented. The success with the company, again, continues to survive and thrive in all conditions. So Michael Dell knows what he's doing. Love following his strategy. Michael, if you're watching, I know he watches theCUBE video, congratulations. But now the hard question for Dell is this, the applications used to run on PCs, now they're running PCs under the covers and servers. The application space here at this community is enabled by Kubernetes, is creating a new application runtime like environment. I like, compared to the old app server days when things were like just application specific, development got easier. We're in that renaissance now where the app runtime is being enabled by Kubernetes. You guys been there, done that in the old school, now the new school. What's your view on this Kubernetes? What's Dell's view on? >> Yeah, so back to Kubernetes won in my head. It's just flat out won and part of the reason, and it beat out a lot of things. You remember Cloud Foundry, which there's still a thing, but Cloud Foundry went a little too far up into the application stack and constrained the application developers a bit too much. Kubernetes success is two things. It's because they're not constraining the developer, but they're also figuring out how to enable that IT operations mindset. And they become that happy medium that's out there. So now all of a sudden, application modernization conversations and cloud-native app development, there is a standard package. There's standard load balancing and security paradigm, standard registration mechanisms, all built into the Kubernetes layer, by the way, enabled by an ecosystem. And because they're actually going through that, what's happening now is we can finally move forward. We can take that next step and we can build around that ecosystem of Kubernetes. >> That is thematically something that we've been hearing, John, for the last day and a half is the maturation of Kubernetes People, what's next? We are ready for the next step. Talk about Dell as an enabler of that. >> Yeah, so a funny, another part of that paradigm is Kubernetes does not equal virtualization. And this is a hard one in this industry right now. A lot of people say, well, yeah, we did the VMware pivot and then the KVM and everything else and they're like, this is just another one of those pivots. I'm like, no it's not. Virtualization was the pivot of physical hardware became virtual hardware, but you still thought of it in CPU memory disc and you managed it in the same way. Kubernetes, it's a such a different way of thinking about operationalization and all that abstraction that what we're realizing is people need to take baby steps into Kubernetes right now. The maturity of it is great because there is an ecosystem around it, but the majority of the industry isn't even aware of the basics of Kubernetes right now. So our job, we look at it as the education part, but also can we deliver the solutions together with the OpenShift's of the world and the Tanzu's of the world and the Rancher's of the world. Can we deliver more of that full stack experience going into the next few years? That's where we believe we can help accelerate them. Education and that delivery mechanism. >> And the community support is going to be there too. You got to have the. >> 100%. >> The community, not just education, which you guys done before, but doing it with open source vibe. >> That's where DevRel comes in. So the DevRel half of my world now is all about Dell in the community. And to be part of community isn't just to say, Hey, I'm going to go sponsor something. That's not community to me. >> It doesn't hurt. >> It doesn't hurt, but we're going to do that. We're definitely going to help with that. What our notion is you got to participate, you got to contribute, you got to be there, you got to be part of the community. That's part of my developer relations team is to become part of it. >> You got to be part of it and belong. Belonging is earning. >> Brad: Yes. >> And that's the key. And the other thing we were talking about standards and Dell has won a lot of business 'cause the PC and the servers all had standards, standard components. Standards now in the community are being driven by developer consensus. >> Brad: Yes. >> So that is an interesting new paradigm. So if you make cloud native work where all the hardware and software that's powering the builders is invisible. The developers will tell you what they want. >> 100%. >> And that's why your Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry example is so on point. It's a little bit nuanced, but what happened there is, let's explain Kubernetes was loosely de facto enabling. They didn't try to take too much territory. They didn't over push. >> Brad: Exactly. >> They were very flexible, lightweight at first, but it was enabling. >> It was organic. >> And we called it on theCUBE, I'm not going to lie, we called that early on. So props to us. >> Brad: Good job. >> Pat on the back. >> Lisa: Pat your own back. >> We get it right a lot. But now there's impact though. But the Dell I think speaks to the theme here, which just we talked is that you got startups here. We had from Envoy, we saw the donator there. He started his own company. You got Dell, which has large enterprises running massive workloads with a lot of legacy and modernization. So you got a combination of both coming together. This is going to be a collision of innovation. >> Oh I look, that's exactly right. Part of what I've been getting is not just the end users, the infrastructure developers, and whatnot around here. Startups look, come to Dell, and they're like, why are you here? Like we build this and we don't talk to you. And we're like, why not? If we come to market and start delivering more of those Kubernetes oriented solutions and the Kubernetes stack experience, that's where you guys should be working with us. You're part of the ecosystem. >> Well, your job is to say to them, look it when you want to write your software for the edge and we have market share of the most hardware at the edge, 'cause we perform better on the edge. No one wants to write software on the slower platform. >> No. >> Name me one I want to write software that's just, this is something, but people don't understand that's why you're here. >> Brad: That's exactly right. >> The game is about performance. >> Brad: Yeah. >> Cloud can do it, you can do it with a machine. So it depends where in the distributed computing chain you're at. >> You bring up one topic that actually isn't a core discussion topic around DevOps, but I am seeing more HPC and a AI/ML conversations popping up in this DevOps cloud native space. 'Cause even the market of HPC, which is a very traditional market, commodity server driven in the past, they're starting to say, how do I take advantage of Kubernetes and all of the benefits that we've been talking about. >> What are some of the things that you've heard like in your sense is the key theme or the talk track of Kubernetes, its evolution? What's on the developer's minds the last day and a half at this conference? >> Oh, okay. That's a hard question, but a good one. So the way I look at it is probably it's the robustness of the features within Kubernetes, not the native features, but even partner included features. They just want to be able to handle security in a much more, I hate to say zero trust, but secure cloud native way. There's tools in the Kubernetes ecosystem that are so integrated into Kubernetes. They don't have to think sometimes as much about how do they do it themselves. They can go find through open source or off-the-shelf startup and say, I need that and I can spin it up in about five minutes and now I'm doing that without having to spend weeks or months and having to build that. And that's security is one example. You can go through the networking discussion, you can go through so many different areas. The fact is because of community and the ecosystem, that is the winning formula for Kubernetes to enable the development. That's all I'm hearing here is they're like, give me more, give me more startups, give me more of these technologies. >> And ease of use has been a big topic here. We've been talking before we came on camera about VMware has done great since it used the virtual machine example versus Kubernetes. That is millions of developers and operators on VMware. They have about 200,000 plus just in VMUG alone. So they are going to transform their careers. They're looking for a home. They're looking for a community for the next 10 years. I mean, VMware will still be around with Broadcom, but I'm speculating that it will be much more in maintenance mode. But to get someone's career in fourth gear, fifth gear, you got to go and get that next skill set, and that's the question. Where do all these operators, IT operators go to become enterprise operators? >> Brad: That's exactly right. >> That is a big topic. What's your reaction? >> Sp I'm actually a living proof of that. I grew up in the VMware ecosystem. And for me making that pivot, it took me many years. One of the ways I did that was I actually have run in Dell, our advanced development pivotal Dojos, if you remember Pivotal. >> Yes. >> And doing the Pair Programming in Agile. It took me that mental shift to say, okay, we were doing it that way and now there's a new way to do it through code with developers and using all the new buzzwords. And that pivot is different for somebody that's just starting now, and they don't have access to a Dojo that they can go handle like a whole bunch of pair programmers. How do they make that pivot? That's 100% what we have to do. >> Okay, so my question is this, this is a hard question for you, maybe you can answer or not or maybe you can. What's different now than the attempt in the past from Dell EMC to do work or align with the developers? I think, was it five, six years ago, it was an effort. Was it timing? What's different now from then? >> So that attempt was awesome. That team was great. I was very close to that team and that was from the EMC side originally is where they have built that out. And the notion of that was that we just have to go start contributing knowledge and technology into the community and start really taking the brand and trying to expand the brand to be relevant in that community. Nothing wrong. That was actually an amazing way they did it. I think through the merger there was definitely a little bit of, okay, well, maybe this isn't one of our top priorities right now and that's probably what happened through the actual merger. >> John: It's a little bit distraction. >> It was distraction. >> Timings wasn't as good now. >> You try merging a 67 billion merger. I mean it's just really hard to do. What happened here is I think we finally got past a lot of that with the merger and now we're in steady stage/growth mode, which is a notion that now we can go and do this again in the new world, taking our lessons learned from what we did before, and try to actually go and update that in these new power apps. >> And you could point to some specific timing issues. Like at that time this community wasn't as advanced along. Kubernetes wasn't as clear. Visibility to that value proposition. Although a lot of people were speculating what happened that way. >> Exactly. >> But now with multi-cloud, I think developers starting to see the reality that it ain't going to be one cloud. >> Well, multi-cloud is not one cloud, so 100%. >> Well, I mean there's multi-cloud today, but it's really not multi-cloud by the way it could be. The people have multiple clouds. I think that gives developers comfort that existing enterprise players. Remember Microsoft wasn't really in the cloud game six, seven years ago. Look where they are now. Significant progress, nipping at the heels of AWS. So all the enterprise players are back at the table. >> Brad: Yeah, definitely. We're here. >> And that's timing issue. >> We're here. >> Talk about, you're here, you are helping customers get to the basics of Kubernetes. You talked a lot about the importance of the education. >> Brad: Yes. >> That screams to me that Dell can be a facilitator of cultural change within organizations, whether it's a bank or a hospital or a retailer or whatnot. Another thing that I'm curious about, what you guys are doing, how you've evolved, Dell is a massive partner ecosystem. How is the partner ecosystem involved in helping customers build their DevOps portfolios and really start embracing, understanding, and learning about Kubernetes? >> So that's an ever changing world right now. And that's part of why we're here at KubeCon is to help expand that. We have a very, very strong partner community. Not even just channel, but like technology partner community. And our goal is to understand with our DevOps portfolio what needs to be the next step of that partner community. Do we have to go partner up with like the, I'll use examples, the Solo.io. Do we have to partner up with all the mesh companies, the HashiCorp, which we are, We have to understand where the layers that make sense and where don't. There are some that don't make sense because they're so often to an app developer land or they're so far above even Kubernetes sometimes that maybe they don't make sense in our partner community. >> How influential are, I know we got to go soon, but how influential are your customers in helping to make some of those decisions? It's all about the customer at the end of the day. >> They're the only one that's deciding for us. They have to come to us. We have to see the need. We have to understand the discussions through our sales mechanisms, our other mechanisms. We're using that data every single day, every hour to make those decisions. >> Awesome. Brad, it's been great to have you. Sorry we took more of your time than we planned, but it was so interesting. >> No, this is awesome. >> Dell at KubeCon, you've done a great job of explaining why that absolutely resonates, the relevance, and why customers should be looking at Dell as their partner for this. Thank you so much for your time and your insights. >> Thank you guys. >> All right. For John Furrier and our guest, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon '22 from Detroit, Michigan. Stick around, our next guest will be here in just a minute. (gentle music)