>> Man: from around the globe, it's "theCUBE" with coverage of "Kubecon" and "CloudNativeCon Europe 2020", virtual. Brought to you by Red Hat, the cloud native computing foundation and ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is "theCUBE's" coverage of KubeCon CloudNativeCon Europe 2020, the virtual edition of course, it, this ecosystem has been bustling, a lot of activity in the five years that we've been covering it with "theCUBE" we've watched very much the maturation of what's going on. Remember, in the early days, it was open source projects, companies pulling all the pieces together. Now, there's a lot more things to choose from lots of projects, not just Kubernetes, but all the other pieces, and still lots of new innovations and new startups coming into the space. So happy to welcome to the program, have two first time guests from Spectro Cloud, first of all, we have the co founder and CEO Tenry Fu, and also Tina Notle who's the Vice President of product, Tina and Tenry, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having us. >> Likewise. >> All right, so Tenry, as one of the co founders, I want to understand, you know, why Spectro Cloud? Why now, you know, many outsiders, would they have said for a while, you know, Kubernetes, it's just getting baked into all of the environment. They looked at all the platforms, whether you're talking, you know, Google and AWS or VMware, they all have their platforms, they all have their managed services offering. So help us understand, what your team does and how you differentiate from what's already existing. >> Absolutely yeah, so I actually used to work at VMware, I, and then, I saw clouds taking off right and then I left VMware, to start my first startup called CliQr Technologies, which focus on multicloud management. But at that time, really, multicloud management through a single pane of glass is obviously right, and then clicker later acquired by Cisco. So at Cisco, I kind of witness The Container and Kubernetes taking off, right? And it makes a lot of sense, right for the first time both the application workloads and infrastructure became truly portable across multiple environments, but also very interestingly at Cisco I observed there are many developer teams, right? That is adopting Kubernetes and everyone is doing a little bit different things, that because different teams, they have a different stack constructor requirements, like some for AI/ML, some, they need a different base OS, some they just don't want to have a different version, and a lot of existing solutions doesn't really provide this kind of flexibility to satisfy all the different needs, right? one size fit all, typically is a one size fit for nothing. So we asked ourselves, why can't we try to create a platform that will give people the flexibility, but not turning it into a DIY project, right, still have a full manageability, so that user don't need to worry about the upgrade, Day Two operations, governance so and so forth. >> Yeah to Tina, I know when I've looked at your product, it's discussed as layers, which my background's in networking. So I love seeing things visually and understanding the pieces as they lay out the stack. So maybe help us understand a little bit as to, you know, that the flexibility that you give and how it's not just the Paradox of Choice, just too many options out there and you know, developers left to create their own mess that they can't then support. (laughing) >> Yeah, so you know, as Tenry mentioned, offering folks flexibility without turning into a do it yourself, you know, hot mess is what we're what we're helping People do at Spectrol Cloud, the core of our solution, the core of the differentiation within our solution is around this concept of a cluster profile, and as you mentioned, cluster profile basically allows people to define in a layered fashion, what's part of their Kubernetes infrastructure stack? So at the bottom, you're talking, what's the base operating system? What's the version of Kubernetes, that's going to be part of clusters that uses profile? What's your networking and storage interface look like? And then on top of that, you have a number of optional layers. So again, you know, back to flexibility manageability, we give people options around what those other layers look like on top. They include everything from security, logging, monitoring, etc, just anything that you want to go ahead and kind of bake into a definition, a profile of what a cluster should look like in one of your deployed environments. >> All right, well, Want to make sure I understand when you talk about Kubernetes in there, can it be, you know, say VMware with Vsphere7, now has Kubernetes support. Red Hat open shift is an option, all of the cloud players have their, you know, AKS, EKS. And they're like, can I bake that Kubernetes in or are you taking a different approach? >> We're going with upstream vanilla Kubernetes today, that allows us to go ahead and provide what's newest within the ecosystem, and let people go ahead and have a really open, really open solution that's replying. >> Okay, so when I talk to, when you look out there, a lot of companies are saying how can I manage multiple clusters? So if you look at what Google, Microsoft and VMware, they're talking about, we can manage our clusters and we can also help you with those other clusters. How does that impact Tenry, your Solution, doesn't it need to be, it's just the upstream solution that I put into that cluster profile, or can I connect to, say a managed cloud solution? >> Yeah, so I think in terms the multi class management or the consistency is really the key, right. So through this class profile concept, not only it can be used as the initial template to deploy a cluster, but it can also use as a single source for choose, to drive the cluster Lifecycle Management income upgrade. So right now, as Tina mentioned, we primarily focus on upstream, so that we want to provide the maximum flexibility in terms of our end to end Kubernetes stack. But we do also have a plan, that down the road that we go into in Brownfield existing clusters. So that enterprise, existing investment to their Kubernete infrastructure can be under managed by us. >> Well there always reaches a time when the brand new technology gets called Brownfield. I think that's the first time I've heard something like, you know, EKS or the like, you know, referred to as Brownfield. Tina, you know, when I think back to my history with integrated solutions, obviously, if I have the various pieces, it should be easier for me to stay on the latest make upgrades, roll things forward or roll things back, but you know, what, give us if you could some of the, the key values of, you know, building these cluster profiles, what that enables for your customers. >> So the key around cluster profiles, we offer this policy based management, so you describe as an administrator, what it is that those clusters need to look like, right? And we've got, we adopt a declarative desired state, you know, management approach along what Kubernetes does itself, and so what you're able to get through adopting, utilize cluster profiles, is this guarantee that from deployment and then into day two as well, what you've described in this profile, winds up maintaining itself, it remains true of the clusters that have been deployed. So what it is that you require as far as the operating system, what is required as far as some configuration options, etc. So the profile itself winds up being ground source of truth and around what it is that you've got running at all these various locations, across clouds, across different clusters, etc. >> All right. Tenry, you mentioned that having things more standardized is going to help customers, absolutely, we saw that in data centers for a long time, and standardized, how do you help customers make sure that the configuration that they build are going to work, are going to be stable, if they make changes that they're not going to get things out of sync. Is there you know, interoperability matrix or some other ways that we're trying to make sure that customers, you know, stay on the rails, if you will. >> Absolutely right, So through our system, right, all the integration points, we carry the additional metadata, right to basically give the hint about compatibility, resource constraints, right, and also the upgradability, in terms of moving from one version to another. So this way, we can kind of give you some guidance, when they initially construct a class profile, what will work together nicely and then what will not, right. And then on top of that, when upgrading from one existing cluster to a new version of a class profile definition, then we can look at the environment, right to understand, right, if there's something that potentially incompatible will popping up right, so we call that pre pilot integration, check right and also post deployment, we also allow user to run additional conformance tests. So that make sure the cluster everything is actually is still acting as as it's supposed to be. >> Another way to explain that is that you know, the cluster profile concept has a lot of flexibility attached with to it, right? That's a lot of power, it can get you into trouble if you don't have the right safety nets and safety harnesses underneath you. So we have a multi layered approach to helping make sure that people are getting benefit out of that flexibility. >> Wonderful and I'm wondering did, when you've had more customers using this, is their shared information, and if there're community guidelines that help, you know, understand when it's going to be okay, hey, 1.19's out, we're looking at 1.20. You might want to do this or hey, if you're using this piece of networking, you might want to wait a little bit before you go to the next version. >> That's definitely the idea over time, folks that are engaging with us, are very interested in the fact that, because of the fact that we're SaaS management platform, SaaS space management platform today, that it offers them the opportunity to learn from their peers, if you will, right, and their peers experiences. On top of that, we also have the ability to watch just what's been going on in other deployments in the Kubernetes ecosystem and we can make sure that all that's available, as Tenry mentioned, you know, in the form of the metadata that's on top of those packs. >> All right, how about how do you price this solution? When I look out there, I talked about Kubernetes baked into all the platforms, oftentimes, it can be baked into ELA, It's part of, you know, my just general cloud spend from that platform. So how do you do the pricing and, you know, are you plugged into any of the cloud marketplaces yet? >> Yeah, so flexibility is really part of our DNA. So even for pricing, we want to provide the maximum flexibility to our customer. So unlike some traditional solution typically is priced based on number of pause, right, a year, or even number of nodes, right. So we actually price based on number of CPU cores of all workers node under management by hour. So what we call those, core hour under management, right, and then every thousand core hours at one unit, we call kilo core hours. So kind of similar to how electricity is consumed, right, so this way, based on these core hour consumption, we allow user to either pay as you go as amongst the on demand plan, or you can do an annual commitment. >> And we are in process on the marketplaces. >> Yeah. >> All right, how about, we talked about Kubernetes, I think service mesh are part of it. What in this Kube, kubecon cloud native con ecosystem, which projects are the most tied into what you're doing anything that specter cloud is particularly contributing to that you can share? >> Yeah, so our system is built on top of Kubernetes cluster API project. So we are one of the contributor to class API, we are actively adding additional functionality to enhance class API, especially by in some other VMware environment for some custom use case, such as static IP or some special placement behaviors, and also adding additional contribute on different cloud support. >> Yeah, and as far as things that we're watching, and clearly we're, we've seen a dramatic increase in the number of people on our customer front that are interested in actual deployment, of service mesh now. So that's something that you know, we're going to be more engaged in over time. And another one that we're hoping to see, check out more talks around Kubecon is AI ML, right? A lot of interest on the part of customers around AIML use cases. >> Yeah, absolutely edge and AI and ML. Definitely very hot topics to conversation this year at the, at the Europe show, expect that to continue. Tina, I'm wondering, do you have any customer examples, maybe even anonymized that could kind of just explain the key values that your customers are seeing using your solution? >> Yeah, sure, so we've got one of our earliest customers is a Canadian financial, who came to us because, they were looking to figure out how to manage consistently at scale, and they have the problem that Tenry described earlier, around, I've got different development teams, they have different needs, and you know, how do you satisfy all those guys without going crazy, right? They've got an AIML use case, that's a special snowflake they've got two separate teams in different groups that would like to be under an IT management umbrella. That's a convergence use case that they're looking at, so kind of a typical example of somebody that we think of is, you know, a really good set of people for us to be having conversations with. We've also been working with a telecom provider that it's in a similar, similar vein actually, there's an AIML, there are multiple teams of different infrastructure, and they want to be able to consistently manage it's a story that we're seeing over and over again, thankfully. >> Yeah, we also see right from I think, at individual group or team level, right. There are a lot of, kind of a product owner or data scientists that they really want to have a kind of an easy button to quickly be able to provision Kubernetes clusters that suit for their need, right. And a lot of these groups, their primary focus is really the application, right? It's not their interest to spend a lot of time and resource on Kubernete management, in terms of deploying update, or secure an operation. So through us, they can very easily spin up a Kubernetes cluster, whether it's for AIML or for developing experiment, they can very quickly do that But with the flexibility, because a lot of existing solution, they may limit the version of Kubernetes clusters, they may limit the what kind of integration they can do. >> Yeah, Tenry you, we talked a little bit earlier about, you know, potential integration down the road. I'm curious, just there's so many companies creating innovations out there, you know, say for example, one that I hear a lot of feedback on is AWS now has far gate support for their EKS offering. Is that Something down the line you should look at or do you have some guidance as to how customers should be thinking about that, and if they want that kind of functionality, how they would get that with a solution like yours? >> Yeah, actually, we really share the same vision as AWS, right. So we believe, ultimately is the infrastructure really should be transparent to application developers, right, and it should be boundary-less. So our goal is not only manage Kubernetes, across multiple environment, but eventually we will be able to link all these cluster together, to make them acting as a single infrastructure. So developers, they can still use their familiar Kubernetes interface to deploy and manage their application, but without worrying about the how infrastructure underneath is operated or managed, right. So this in a way will eventually become kind of a phallic model, but across multiple cluster and multiple clouds. >> Alright, Tina, if maybe if you could give us the final takeaway, people attending Kubecon, cloud native con, what's the one thing that if you know they have a problem, they should be coming to Spectro cloud to hear more about? >> Yeah, sure so what Spectrol cloud aims to do is help enterprises not have to trade off between flexibility and control of their infrastructure, and manageability of use that stuff's that's the main, the main thing that we would like people to remember. >> All right, well Tenry and Tina, thank you so much for sharing with our community a little bit about Specter Cloud great talking to you and look forward to hearing more in the future. >> Thanks so much. >> Thank you too. >> All right, and stay tuned more coverage from Kubecon Cloud Native Con 2020. I'm Stu MiniMan and thank you, for watching "theCUBE." (light music)