>> Live from Atlanta Georgia, it's theCUBE covering AnsibleFest 2019. Brought to you by Red Hat. Hey, welcome back everyone, it's theCUBE live coverage here in Atlanta for AnsibleFest. Part of Red Hat's event around automation anywhere. I'm John Furrier with my co-host Stu Miniman, next guest is Abraham Snell, Senior IT Analyst at the Southern Company, customer of Ansible. Great to have you, thanks for coming on. >> I'm glad to be here. >> John: So tell us about your company, what do you do there? Talk about what is Southern company, and what do you do there? >> Abraham: Yeah yeah, Southern Company is a very large, probably one of top three energy providers and we're based in the southeast, so we're energy utility so we do electric and gas. We also generate electric and gas so. >> John: And your role there? >> Abraham: And there, I am, so in infrastructure we build systems platforms, so I'm kind of a OS specialist and so we build Red Hat platforms for applications. >> John: And What's your goal here at the AnsibleFest this year? >> Well a couple of things. So, I submitted a talk and so I'll be doing a talk here but the other thing is just to learn other ways, how to increase the automation footprint at our company. >> Stu: Abraham, why don't you walk us through that? We heard in the key note, you know, Red Hat talked about their journey, Microsoft talked about their journey, JP Morgan did. So, I'm assuming that, you know, you're undergoing some kind of journey also. Bring us back to, kind of as far back as you can and you know, where things have been going. >> Yeah so, I heard about Ansible during a time when we were trying to automate our patch process. So, our patch process was taking about 19 hundred man hours per year. So it was highly manual, and so we were looking at some other things like puppet was out, CF engine which is incredibly complex. And then in a sales meeting, we heard about Ansible because that was the direction that Red Hat was going. So, I looked it up and learned about it, and that's the other thing the barriers to entry were so low. It's modular, you can jump in and start learning, you can write a playbook without knowing everything else about Ansible. And so that's how we got started with the journey. >> Stu: Okay so, patches, you said over 19 hundred hours in a year. Do you know how long it takes you now? >> Yeah, we reduced that to about 70 hours a year (Stu laughs) Yeah, so it was a massive reduction in the amount of time that we spent patching. >> Okay and you know, have you been expanding Ansible and you know, where's it going from your footprint? >> Yeah, so as a OS platform group we are doing, you know, we do deployments now, with Ansible. I pretty much do everything with Ansible. Honestly, someone just asked me to deploy some files, I was like, "Yeah Imma write and Ansible playbook for that" or use one that we already have. So, now we have other groups, the data base folks are now using Ansible to patch their databases, and the network folks have been asking us questions so maybe they'll be getting on board. But yeah, from my stand point, I think we should expand Ansible. I don't know if that's my call, that's a little above my pay grade, but I'm definitely going to do everything I can to make sure that... >> John: You like the play book concept? >> Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. >> I mean, do you guys have a lot of playbooks developing? Do they just like growing everywhere or, people tend to use them or? >> So, you know, I learned something today that there's going to be kind of like a repository and that will actually work. Right know, we probably have about 150 playbooks but people aren't able to just use them because they're just kind of stored. >> John: They're built. So what's your talk going to be? You mentioned you were going to do a talk. >> Abraham: Oh yeah! How.. um. How automation can reduce business conflict. So we're going to talk about creating automations that kind of reduce the silo conflict and so, I'll be talking about creating an easy button for groups who, you know, when you say, "Hey, I want to pass", they go "Nah, you can't pass this week" And so, rather than having that argument about when we're going to pass, we just give them an easy button and say, "Hey, when you're ready, just press this button and it'll pass. And just let us know if anything turns red and we'll fix it". >> John: Do people want to get rid of the conflict, they like the conflict or, I mean, talk about the culture because this is, you know, conflict's been there. >> Abraham: Yeah, oh yeah. >> What's the culture like with the new capability? >> So, I mean the culture is getting better. I wouldn't say we're there, we're on that journey that he mentioned, but when you say people want conflict... >> John: That's it, they're used to it. >> Yeah yeah yeah. >> I mean they're hey, pass when I'm ready >> We're just going to argue with the other. (John laughs) >> The problem with that is it slows business down. So, at the end of the day, what we're all, you know, there for, happens a whole lot slower because we're back and fourth and we're in conflict. So, what automation does is it literally speeds up what we need to be doing, but it also helps us be friends along the way so. >> John: You know, I want to get your thoughts on something. We did a little survey to our CUBE community about automation, you know the couple key bullet points that we were reporting on earlier. Pretty much everyone's agreed, but I want to get your reaction cause you're doing it. One benefit of automation is for the teams are focus efforts on better results. You agree with that? >> Abraham: Yeah, oh yes. >> Security is a big part of it, so automating helps security? >> Abraham: Yeah, I think it does. I think, anytime you can do something the same way every time, you minimize the ability for human error. So, I think that helps security. And so, I'm not a security guy, but... >> John: Well, here's the next one I want to hear your thoughts on. You mentioned culture. Automation drives job satisfaction. >> Abraham: Oh yeah. >> How about that? >> So, a few ways that just come to mind immediately. One is, I have a greater opportunity for success because it's going to work the same way every time, right? The second thing is, it kind of gives people options. So, I talk about this in my talk, you know, we tend to want options around the when, the where, sometimes even the how, and so automation can actually do that. And the third thing is, it really does free us up to do important stuff, you know? And so, when I'm spending my time doing tedious things like paper work, automation helps me now to do the stuff I really want to do, the stuff I come to work to do. >> John: And there's new jobs being created out of this, means new opportunities. This creates growth for people. >> Abraham: That's right! >> Potentially new hire level skills. >> Abraham: Well, one of the cultural aspects of it is, people are afraid that automation's going to kill my job, right? But honestly, when you start building this stuff, we're finding out that man, it takes a village to do all this stuff. So, it really does allow us to learn new things and probably send our careers in another direction. I hadn't seen a job that was killed yet. >> Yeah that's always good but we'd love to get better jobs than doing the mundane stuff. The final point of our quick poll survey of our community was, that infrastructure and DevOps, or Dev professionals, developers or DevOps, they can get re-skilling with this opportunity. Cause it's kind of new things. Is re-skilling a big part of the culture in the trenches when you start looking at these new opportunities, are people embracing them? What's the vibe there? What's your take on it? >> So, my take on it is it's probably some kind of bell curve right? So, you got probably 10% of the folks that are gung-ho, you got a probably that middle 80% that's like either way, and then you got 10% that are like dude I'm about to retire, I don't want to do this anymore, or whatever, or I'm afraid or I don't think I can do it. But, you know, that opportunity... I mean, I was actually trained in college as a developer, I never wanted to do development, so I did and I've been in infrastructure, but now I'm getting to do development again and I kind of like it, right? It's kind of like, okay yeah... >> You got playbooks, you got recipes, you got all kinds of stuff. >> Right! I mean, and I still get to be an infrastructure guy, so I think there's definitely opportunity for growth for that 90% that says, hey we want to do this. >> John: Well, the scale and all the plumbing is going to be still running. You still need network, you still need storage and compute. >> Yeah. >> Now you got these instruction layers kind of building on top of that scale. >> Yes. >> So, the question for you is, are you going to take this across the company and... >> Abraham: Am I going to take it across the company? (John laughs) >> Plow some change through Southern. >> Let me get that promotion. So, you know, I am definitely being a champion for because I want to share this. I mean, it just kind of makes life better. So yes, the plan is, hey let me share this that automation is great. But we actually have an automation team, there's a management team and a structure around automation, and they allow me to kind of be on there, you know, come to their meetings and do some of the things with them so, yeah I'm looking forward to it. Propagating through Southern. >> John: That's awesome. >> Well, you certainly nailed the use case. >> Abraham, does cloud and public cloud fit into this discussion at all yet from your group? >> So, public cloud is in the discussion, and automation is a part of that discussion. But I think we're kind of early on in that process, there's not a whole lot around it. But the one thing where it really does fit is the way of thinking, right? So, now to be cloud-native, automation is just really a part of that so you have to start thinking in a cloud-native fashion. And that's the beginning, right? Mostly now, it's in the strategy time for it, but implementation of some things are coming, and the more we do automation, the more it kind of gets you ready for this idea of cloud. >> Stu: Yeah, I think that's a great point you're talking about, that mindset. The other thing when you talk about infrastructure is, infrastructure used to be kind of the boat anchor that prevented you from responding to the business, it was okay. Can you do this? Yeah, I'll get to it in the next six to twelve months maybe if we have the budget and everything. How does automation help you respond to the business and be more a group of yes. >> Well, I'm glad you said that because infrastructure has often been seen as the party of no, right? (technical difficulty) and don't come back. But with automation, what we're seeing is, there's a lot of things that we can do, because one of the things you don't want to happen in infrastructure is, create a task that I can never get rid of, okay, I'm going to be doing this forever and a day. But now, if it becomes a push button item and I can do it consistently every time, it's like hell yeah! Why don't we do that, why haven't we been doing that in the past so, yeah. That's exactly, you know, a great point is that now infrastructure can feel like a part of the party, rather than being the people sitting in the corner. They don't want to do this, right? >> Yeah, and it's a critical component of the scale. Abraham, I want to finally ask you, my final question for you is, you've had a great experience with Ansible automation. This is the whole conference, automation for all. What's the learnings, your big takeaways over the past couple years as you've been on this wave, and it's going to be bigger behind you. The cloud's coming, lot more scale, lot more software, lot more applications, what's your big learnings, what's your big takeaway? >> You know, my big takeaway, believe it or not, is really not technical. So, I've been doing this 23 or so years, and I never thought that there would be a tool that could really change and affect culture the way it has. And so for me, my big takeaway is, man this automation thing helps my job in ways that's not technical, you know, it helps me work better with other teams, now there are networks of folks that I work with who I never would've worked with before, who are doing automation. We get along, it's not them over there. >> John: Yeah, it's a social network now. >> It's a social network. And who knew that a tool could make that happen? >> John: And you can have a more collaborative relationship, you get in someones face and no one's going to get offended. >> Abraham: That's right >> Have a conversation, share playbooks. >> Abraham: Yeah! Because with automation, now we can all focus on the big picture. What is the corporate goal? Not what is my, you know, I just want to keep this running or I just want to keep this up, why are we keeping it up? Why are we keeping it running, what is the corporate goal? >> John: Brings better teamwork, probably. >> It sure does, yeah. Shared vision >> Abraham. Thank you for coming on and sharing your insights. Appreciate it. >> Stu: Yeah, thank you. Finally, Red Hat accelerators. Maybe just explain the shirt and the hat. >> Oh yeah, got to plug the accelerators. So, the accelerators are like a customer advocacy group, and so what is happened is, and I was actually a charter member of the accelerator so I got to plug that too. Started a couple years ago. They'd just call us and talk about new stuff that's coming out at Red Hat and go, what do ya'll think? And we are brutally frank with them, sometimes too brutally >> John: That's okay, they want that! >> And they keep coming back for more, I'm thinking really guys? We just abused you. (John laughs) No, it is a great group of guys and girls, and for us, the customers, it affords us opportunities to see new technology and get swag I guess. >> John: Getting collaboration scales as well there. >> Oh absolutely, and you get to see what other companies are doing, like you know, my peers, hey! What are you all doing in cloud? What are you all doing in automation? And so you get to share... >> Yeah Stu and I interviewed a lot of the Red Hat folks, they love the feedback. >> Oh yeah. >> They're a technical group, they want brutal honesty. >> Okay, well. >> Cause you're feeding them the product requirements. >> Well, I'm your... >> This is what they want. Thanks for coming on. >> Yes sir, thank you so much. >> Appreciate it. >> Abraham Snell here on theCUBE, I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman, back for more coverage here at AnsibleFest Day one of two days of coverage. We'll be right back. (music playing)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome to theCube's continuous coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm Dave Nicholson, and we are running one of the industry's most important and largest hybrid tech events this year with AWS and its partners with two live sets on the scene. In addition to two remote studios. And we'll have somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred guests on the program this year at re:Invent. I'm extremely delighted to welcome a very, very special guest. Right now. He served as the director of the NSA under two presidents, and was the first commander of the U.S Cyber Command. He's a Cube alumni, he's founder and co-CEO of IronNet Cybersecurity. General Keith Alexander. Thanks for joining us today General. >> Thanks, David. It's an honor to be here at re:Invent, you know, with AWS. All that they're doing and all they're making possible for us to defend sector states, companies and nations in cyber. So an honor to be here. >> Well, welcome back to theCube. Let's dive right in. I'd like to know how you would describe the current cyber threat landscape that we face. >> Well, I think it's growing. Well, let's start right out. You know, the good news or the bad news, the bad news is getting worse. We're seeing that. If you think about SolarWinds, you think about the Hafnium attacks on Microsoft. You think about this rapid growth in ransomware. We're seeing criminals and nation states engaging in ways that we've never seen in the past. It's more blatant. They're going after more quickly, they're using cyber as an element of national power. Let's break that down just a little bit. Do you go back to two, July. Xi Jinping, talked about breaking heads in bloodshed when he was referring to the United States and Taiwan. And this has gone hot and cold, that's a red line for him. They will do anything to keep Taiwan from breaking away. And this is a huge existential threat to us into the region. And when this comes up, they're going to use cyber to go after it. Perhaps even more important and closer right now is what's going on with Russia in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. We saw this in 2014, when Russia took over the Crimea. The way they did it, staging troops. They did that in 2008 against Georgia. And now there are, by some reports over a hundred thousand troops on the border of Eastern Ukraine. Some call it an exercise, but that's exactly what they did in Georgia. That's what they did in the Crimea. And in both those cases, they preceded those attacks, those physical attacks with cyber attacks. If you go to 2017, when Russia hit the Ukrainian government with the NotPetya attack that had global repercussions. Russia was responsible for SolarWinds, they have attacked our infrastructure to find out what our government is doing and they continue going. This is getting worse. You know, it's interesting when you think about, so what do you do about something like that? How do we stop that? And the answer is we've got to work together. You know, Its slam commissioner addressed it. The meeting with the president on August 25th. This is a great statement by the CEO and chairman of Southern Company, Tom Fanning. He said this, "the war is being waged on our nation's critical infrastructure in particular, our energy sector, our telecommunications sector and financial sector." The private sector owns and operates 87% of the critical infrastructure in the United States, making collaboration between industry and the federal government imperative too, for these attacks. SO >> General, I want to dig just a little bit on that point that you make for generations, people have understood that the term is 'kinetic war', right? Not everyone has heard that phrase, but for generations we've understood the concept of someone dropping a bomb on a building as being an attack. You've just mentioned that, that a lot of these attacks are directed towards the private sector. The private sector doesn't have an army to respond to those attacks. Number one, that's our government's responsibility. So the question I have is, how seriously are people taking these kinds of threats when compared to the threat of kinetic war? Because my gosh, you can take down the entire electrical grid now. That's not something you can do with a single bomb. What are your, what are your thoughts on that? >> So you're hitting on a key point, a theoretical and an operational point. If you look back, what's the intent of warfare? It's to get the mass of people to give up. The army protects the mass of people in that fight. In cyber, there's no protection. Our critical infrastructure is exposed to our adversaries. That's the problem that we face. And because it's exposed, we have a tremendous vulnerability. So those who wish us harm, imagine the Colonial Pipeline attack an order of magnitude or two orders of magnitude bigger. The impact on our country would paralyze much of what we do today. We are not ready for that. That's the issue that Tom Fanning and others have brought up. We don't practice between the public sector and the private sector working together to defend this country. We need to do that. That's the issue that we have to really get our hands around. And when we talk about practice, what do we mean? It means we have to let that federal government, the ones that are going to protect us, see what's going on. There is no radar picture. Now, since we're at re:Invent, the cloud, where AWS and others have done, is create an infrastructure that allows us to build that bridge between the public and private sector and scale it. It's amazing what we can now do. We couldn't do that when I was running Cyber Command. And running Cyber Command, we couldn't see threats on the government. And we couldn't see threats on critical infrastructure. We couldn't see threats on the private sector. And so it all went and all the government did was say, after the fact you've been attacked. That's not helpful. >> So >> It's like they dropped a bomb. We didn't know. >> Yeah, so what does IronNet doing to kind of create this radar capability? >> So, well, thanks. That's a great question because there's four things that you really got to do. First. You've got to be able to detect the SolarWinds type attacks, which we did. You've got to have a hunt platform that can see what it is. You've got to be able to use machine learning and AI to really cut down the number of events. And the most important you need to be able to anonymize and share that into the cloud and see where those attacks are going to create that radar picture. So behavioral analytics, then you use signature based as well, but you need those sets of analytics to really see what's going on. Machine learning, AI, a hunt platform, and cloud. And then analytics in the cloud to see what's going on, creates that air traffic control, picture radar, picture for cyber. That's what we're doing. You see, I think that's the important part. And that's why we really value the partnership with AWS. They've been a partner with us for six years, helping us build through that. You can see what we can do in the cloud. We could never do in hardware alone. Just imagine trying to push out equipment and then do that for hundreds of companies. It's not viable. So SaaS, what we are as a SaaS company, you can now do that at scale, and you can push this out and we can create, we can defend this nation in cyber if we work together. And that's the thing, you know, I really, had a great time in the military. One of the things I learned in the military, you need to train how you're going to fight. They're really good at that. We did that in the eighties, and you can see what happened in 1990 in the Gulf war. We need to now do that between the public and private sector. We have to have those training. We need to continuously uplift our capabilities. And that's where the cloud and all these other things make that possible. That's the future of cybersecurity. You know, it's interesting David, our country developed the internet. We're the ones that pioneered that. We ought to be the first to secure. >> Seems to make sense. And when you talk about collective defense in this private public partnership, that needs to happen, you get examples of some folks in private industry and what they're doing, but, but talk a little bit more about, maybe what isn't happening yet. What do we need to do? I don't want you to necessarily get political and start making budgetary suggestions, but unless you want to, but what, but where do you see, where do we really need to push forward from a public perspective in order to make these connections? And then how is that connection actually happen? This isn't someone from the IronNet security service desk, getting on a red phone and calling the White House, how are the actual connections made? >> So it has to be, the connections have to be just like we do radar. You know, when you think about radars across our nation or radar operator doesn't call up one of the towers and say, you've got an aircraft coming at you at such and such a speed. I hope you can distinguish between those two aircraft and make sure they don't bump into each other. They get a picture and they get a way of tracking it. And multiple people can see that radar picture at a speed. And that's how we do air traffic control safety. We need the same thing in cyber, where the government has a picture. The private sector has a picture and they can see what's going on. The private sector's role is I'm going to do everything I can, you know, and this is where the energy sector, I use that quote from Tom Fanning, because what they're saying is, "it's our job to keep the grid up." And they're putting the resources to do it. So they're actually jumping on that in a great way. And what they're saying is "we'll share that with the government", both the DHS and DOD. Now we have to have that same picture created for DHS and DOD. I think one of the things that we're doing is we're pioneering the building of that picture. So that's what we do. We build the picture to bring people together. So think of that is that's the capability. Everybody's going to own a piece of that, and everybody's going to be operating in it. But if you can share that picture, what you can begin to do is say, I've got an attack coming against company A. Company A now sees what it has to do. It can get fellow companies to help them defend, collective defense, knowledge sharing, crowdsourcing. At the same time, the government can see that attack going on and say, "my job is to stop that." If it's DHS, I could see what I have to do. Within the country, DOD can say, "my job is to shoot the archers." How do we go do what we're authorized to do under rules of engagement? So now you have a way of the government and the private sector working together to create that picture. Then we train them and we train them. We should never have had an event like SolarWinds happen in the future. We got to get out in front. And if we do that, think of the downstream consequences, not only can we detect who's doing it, we can hold them accountable and make them pay a price. Right now. It's pretty free. They get in, pap, that didn't work. They get away free. That didn't work, we get away free. Or we broke in, we got, what? 18,000 companies in 30,000 companies. No consequences. In the future there should be consequences. >> And in addition to the idea of consequences, you know, in the tech sector, we have this concept of a co-op petition, where we're often cooperating and competing. The adversaries from, U.S perspective are also great partners, trading partners. So in a sense, it sounds like what you're doing is also kind of adhering to the old adage that, that good fences make for great neighbors. If we all know that our respective infrastructures are secure, we can sort of get on with the honest business of being partners, because you want to make the cost of cyber war too expensive. Is that, is that a fair statement? >> Yes. And I would take that analogy and bend it slightly to the following. Today every company defends itself. So you take 90 companies with 10 people, each doing everything they can to defend themselves. Imagine in the world we trying to build, those 90 companies work together. You have now 900 people working together for the collective defense. If you're in the C-suite or the board of those companies, which would rather have? 900 help new security or 10? This isn't hard. And so what we say is, yes. That neighborhood watch program for cyber has tremendous value. And beyond neighborhood watch, I can also share collaboration because, I might not have the best people in every area of cyber, but in those 900, there will be, and we can share knowledge crowdsource. So it's actually let's work together. I would call it Americans working together to defend America. That's what we need to do. And the states we going to have a similar thing what they're doing, and that's how we'll work this together. >> Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. General Alexander it's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for coming on to theCube as part of our 2021 AWS re:Invent coverage. Are you going to get a chance to spend time during the conference in Las Vegas? So you just flying in, flying out. Any chance? >> Actually yeah. >> It's there, we're still negotiating working that. I've registered, but I just don't know I'm in New York city for two meetings and seeing if I can get to Las Vegas. A lot of friends, you know, Adam Solski >> Yes >> and the entire AWS team. They're amazing. And we really liked this partnership. I'd love to see you there. You're going to be there, David? Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. And I look forward to that, so I hope hopefully we get that chance again. Thank you so much, General Alexander, and also thank you to our title sponsor AMD for sponsoring this year's re:Invent. Keep it right here for more action on theCube, you're leader in hybrid tech event coverage, I'm Dave Nicholson for the Cube. Thanks. (upbeat music)

>>live from Atlanta, Georgia. It's the Q covering Answerable fest 2019. Brought to you by red hat. >>Hey, welcome back. It was a cube. Live coverage here in Atlanta for answerable fast part of red hats. Event around automation anywhere. I'm John for it. With my coast to Minutemen. Next guest's Abram Snell, senior I t analyst at the Southern Company Customer Invincible. Great to have you on. Thanks for coming on. >>I'm glad to be here. >>So tell us what? Your company What do you do there? About what is Southern Company? So So what do you do there? >>Yeah. Yeah, Southern Company is Ah ah. Very large. Probably one of top three energy providers. And we're based in the Southeast. So we're energy utility. So we do electric and gas. We also generate electric and gas. Oh, >>and your role there. >>And and there I am. So, in infrastructure, we build systems platforms s o. I'm a kind of OS specialist, and so we build red hat platforms for applications. >>And what's your what's your goal here? The answerable fest this year? >>Well, a couple of things. So I submitted a talk, and so I'll be doing a talk here. But the other thing is just to learn other ways. How to increase the automation footprint at our company. Abraham, why don't you >>walk us through that? Some we heard in the keynote red hat talked about their journey. Microsoft talk about their journey J. P. Morgan did. So I'm assuming that, you know you're undergoing some kind of journey. Also bring bring us a little bit, you know, bring us back to kind of his far back as you can. And you know where things have been going. >>Yes, So I heard about answerable during the time when we were trying to automate patch process. So our patch process was taken about 1900 man hours per year. So it was It was highly manual. And so we were looking at some other things, like a puppet was out cf engine, which is incredibly complex. And then, in a sales meeting, you heard about answerable because that was the direction that red hat was going. So I looked it up, um, and learned about it. And that's the other thing. The various to entry were so low. It's modular. You could jump in and start learning you can write a play book without knowing everything else about answerable. And so So that's how we got started with the journey. >>Okay, so the patches you said over, like, 1900 hours in a year. Do you know how long addiction now? >>Yeah, we reduced that to about 70 hours. So it was a massive reduction in the amount of time that we spent patching. >>Okay. And, you know, have you been been expanding? Answerable and you know what? What? Where's it going from? Your footprint? >>Yes. So as a West platform group, we are doing, you know, we do deployments now with answerable. Let's do everything with answer. Well, obviously someone just asked me to deploy some files. I was like, You have no right answer playbook for that or use one that we already have. So now we have other groups the database of folks are now using answerable to patch their databases. And the network folks have been asking us questions, so maybe maybe they'll be getting on board. But yet, from my standpoint, I think I think we should expand, answerable. I don't know if it's if that's my call, that's a little above my pay grade, but I'm definitely going to do everything I can to make sure that >>you like the play book concept. >>Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. >>I mean, you had a lot of playbooks developing feelings, like growing everywhere. People tend to use them or >>Yeah, so, you know, I learned something today that there's gonna be, like, kind of like a depository, and that that will actually work right now there. We probably have about 150 playbooks, but people aren't able to just use them because they're just kind of stored >>something built. So what you're talking to be eventually going to a talk. >>Oh, yeah. How, um how automation can can reduce business conflict. So we're gonna talk about creating automation. Is that kind of reduced the siloed conflict. And so I'll be talking about creating an easy button for groups who, you know, when you say, Hey, I want a patch that now you can't patch this week. And so, rather than having an argument about when we're gonna patch, just give them an easy button and say, Hey, when you're ready, press this button and it'll patch and just let us know if anything turns red and we'll fix >>it. People want to get rid of the comfort. They like the conflict there. Let me talk about the culture because this is, you know, this conflict. Been there? Yeah. Oh, yeah. What's that? What's the culture like with the new capability? >>S O. I mean, the culture is getting better. I wouldn't say we're there. We're on that journey that hit that he mentioned. But when you say people want conflict, >>that they're used to it. >>Yeah. I mean, there's no way I'm ready. The problem with that is it slows business. So at the end of the day, what were all you know, therefore happens a whole lot slower because we're back and forth and were in conflict. So what automation does is it literally speeds up what we need to be doing. But it also helps us to be friends alone away. So >>don't get your thoughts on. So we did a little survey to our cube community of Amon Automation. You know, a couple of key bullet points a week. We're reporting on earlier much everyone's agreed. But don't get your reaction. You're doing it. One benefit of automation is for the teams are focus efforts on better results. You agree with that? Yes. Security is a big part of it. So automating Help security? >>Yeah, I think it does. I think any time you could do something the same way every time you minimize the ability for human error. So I think that helps security. Um and so I'm not a security gap, but >>well, here's the next one will get your thoughts on you mentioned culture, automation, drives, job satisfaction. >>Oh, yeah, Yeah. What? That So A few ways that just come to mind immediately. One is I have a greater opportunity for success because it's gonna work the same way every time, right? The second thing is it kinda gives people options. So I talk about this in my talk. You know, we we tend to want options around the window where sometimes even the how on dso automation can actually do that. The and the third thing is, it really does free us up to do important stuff, you know? And so when I'm spending my time doing tedious things like paperwork, automation helps me now to do the stuff I really want to do. The stuff. I come to work >>and there's new jobs Being created on this means new opportunities. This creates growth for people that are actually new, higher level skills. >>Well, one of the cultural aspects of it is people are afraid that automation kill my job. Right. But honestly, when you start building this stuff, we're finding out that man. It takes ah village to do all this stuff. So it really does take, allow us to learn new things and probably send our careers in another direction. I hadn't seen a job that was killed. Yeah. >>Yeah, well, that's all these cripples love to get better jobs and doing the mundane stuff. The final point on the quick poll survey of our community was that infrastructure and Dev ops or dead professionals, developers or Dev Ops they get congee re skilling with this opportunity because it's kind of new things. Is Reese killing a big part of the culture in the trenches? When you start looking at these new opportunities or are people embracing that? What's the vibe there? What's your take on >>s? Oh, my take on it is It's probably some kind of bill curve. Right? So you got probably 10% of the folks that are gung ho. You gotta probably that middle 80% That's like, either way. And then you got 10% there. Like, dude, I'm about to retire. I don't wanna do this anymore. Whatever I'm afraid or I don't think I could do it. So But, you know, that opportunity is that I mean, I was actually trained in college as a developer. I never wanted to do development, so I didn't have been an infrastructure. But now I'm getting to do development again, and I kinda like it, right? It's kind of like, OK, >>hey, books. You got recipe, >>right? And I still get to be an infrastructure guy. So, um, I think there's definitely opportunity for growth for that 90% that says, Hey, we want to do >>all the scale and all. All the plumbing is gonna be still running. You got a utility network. You still needed storage and compute. Get the abstraction layers kind of building on top of that scale. Yes. So the question for you is you're gonna take this across the company and >>am I gonna be Oh, yeah. Let's >>change your Southern. >>Let me get that promotion. So you know, I am definitely champion being a champion for because I want to share this. I mean, it just kind of makes life better. So, yes, the plan is Hey, let me share this Automation is great, but we actually have an automation team. There's a management team and a structure around automation, and they allow me to kind of be on their, you know, come to their meetings and do some of the things with them. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to it, too. It propagating through Southern. >>Well, you certainly nailed the use case. >>Abraham does. Does cloud in a public cloud fit into this discussion at all yet from your group? >>So public Cloud is in the discussion, and automation is a part of that discussion. But I think we're kind of early on in that process. There's not a whole lot around it, but but the one thing where it really does fit is the way of thinking, right. So now, to be cloud, native automation is just really a part of that. And so you have to start thinking in a cloud native fashion. And that's beginning, right? Mostly now it's in the strategy time for but implementation of something's coming. And the more we do automation, the more it kind of gets you ready for this idea of cloud. >>Yeah, E. I think that's a great point. You talk about that mind set the other thing when you talk about, you know, infrastructures. Infrastructure used to be kind of the boat anchor that prevented you from responding to the business. It was okay. Can you do this? Yeah. Get to it in the next 6 to 12 months, maybe if we have the budget and everything, How does how does automation help you respond to the business and beam or a group of Yes. >>Well, I'm glad you said that because of infrastructure has often been seen as the party of no right. No. And don't come back. But with the automation, what we're seeing is there a lot of things that we can do because one of the things that you don't want to happen an infrastructure is create a task that I could never get rid of. Okay, I'm gonna be doing this forever and a day. But now, if it becomes a push button item and I could do it consistently every time. It's like, Oh, yeah, why don't we do that? Why haven't we been doing that in the past? So yeah, that's exactly you know, a great point is that now infrastructure can feel like a part of the party rather than being the people sitting in the corner. They don't want to do this, right? >>Yeah, it's great. It's a critical component of scale. Am I want a final after my final question for you is you've had a great experience with answerable automation. This is the whole conference automation for all. What's the learning? Your big takeaway. Over the past couple of years, as you've been on this wave and it's gonna be bigger behind you, the clouds come in a lot more. A lot more scale, more software applications. What's your big learning? What's your big takeaway? >>You know, my big takeaway, believe it or not, is really not technical. So I've been doing this 23 years or so years, and I never thought that there would be a tool that could really change in effect culture the way it has. And so for me, my big takeaway is mean this automation thing. Help for my job in ways that that's not technical, You know? It helps me, you know, work better with other teams. Now their networks of folks that I work with who I never would have worked with before who were doing automation. We get along. It's not them over their social network. It's a social network. And who knew that a tool could could make that happen? >>You have more collaborative relationship, get someone's face, and no one's gonna get offended. Conversations share playbooks. >>Yeah, because because with automation now we we can all focus on the big picture. What is the corporate goal? Not what is my You know, I just want to keep this running. I just want to keep this up. Why are we keeping it up? Why are we keeping it running? What is the corporate go >>Better Teamwork does every vision. Thank you for coming on. Sharing your insights. Appreciate >>it. Yeah. Finally, red hat accelerators. Maybe just explain the shirt in the hat. >>Oh, yeah, Kind of flood. The accelerated. So the accelerator's are like a customer at Advocacy group. And so what has happened is and I was actually a charter member of the accelerator, so I gotta plug that too. Started a couple of years ago. They just call us and talk about new stuff that's coming out at Red Hat and go. What do you think? And we are brutally frank with them, sometimes to brutally. What? That and they keep coming back for more. I'm thinking, really, Guys, we just abused you. But no, it is a great group of guys and girls. And in a Ford And for us, the customers, it affords us opportunities to see new technology and gets away >>again. Collaboration scales as well there. >>Oh, absolutely. And you get to see what other companies are doing. Like, you know, my peers. I go, Hey, what are you doing in Cloud? What are you doing in automation on? So you get the get the shit >>that's doing. I interviewed a lot of the red headed folks. They love the feedback, Their technical group. They want brutal honesty. Okay, you're feeding the product requirements. What they want. Thanks for coming on. So now here on the queue Jumpers Do Minutemen for more coverage here, Answerable fest day One of two days of coverage will be right back