>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE! With digital coverage of Dell Technologies World, digital experience. Brought to you by Dell Technologies. >> Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World 2020, the digital coverage. I'm Lisa Martin, and I'm excited to be talking with one of Dell Technologies' customers EarthCam. Joining me is Bill Sharp, the senior VP of product development and strategy from EarthCam. Bill, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you so much. >> So talk to me a little bit about what EarthCam does. This is very interesting webcam technology. You guys have tens of thousands of cameras and sensors all over the globe. Give our audience an understanding of what you guys are all about. >> Sure thing. The world's leading provider of webcam technologies, you mentioned content and services, we're leaders in live streaming, time-lapse imaging, primary focus in the vertical construction. So with a lot of these, the most ambitious, largest construction projects around the world that you see these amazing time-lapse movies, we're capturing all of that imagery basically around the clock, these cameras are sending all of that image content to us and we're generating these time-lapse movies from it. >> You guys are headquartered in New Jersey. I was commenting before we went live about your great background. So you're actually getting to be onsite today? >> Yes, yes. We're live from our headquarters in upper Saddle River, New Jersey. >> Excellent, so in terms of the types of information that you're capturing, so I was looking at the website, and see from a construction perspective, some of the big projects you guys have done, the Hudson Yards, the Panama Canal expansion, the 9/11 museum. But you talked about one of the biggest focuses that you have is in the construction industry. In terms of what type of data you're capturing from all of these thousands of edge devices, give us a little bit of an insight into how much data you're capturing per day, how it gets from the edge, presumably, back to your core data center for editing. >> Sure, and it's not just construction. We're also in travel, hospitality, tourism, security, architecture, engineering, basically any industry that need high resolution visualization of their projects or their performance or their product flow. So it's high resolution documentation is basically our business. There are billions of files in the Isilon system right now. We are ingesting millions of images a month. We are also creating very high resolution panoramic imagery where we're taking hundreds and sometimes multiple hundreds of images, very high resolution images and stitching these together to make panoramas that are up to 30 gigapixel sometimes. Typically around one to two gigapixel but that composite imagery represents millions of images per month coming into the storage system and then being stitched together to those composites. >> So millions of images coming in every month, you mentioned Isilon. Talk to me a little bit about before you were working with Dell EMC and PowerScale, how were you managing this massive volume of data? >> Sure, we've used a number of other enterprise storage systems. It was really nothing was as easy to manage as Isilon really is. There was a lot of problems with overhead, the amount of time necessary from a systems administrator resource standpoint, to manage that. And it's interesting with the amount of data that we handle, being billions of relatively small files. They're, you know, a half a megabyte to a couple of megabytes each. It's an interesting data profile which Isilon really is well suited for. >> So if we think about some of the massive changes that we've all been through in the last, in 2020, what are some of the changes that EarthCam hasn't seen with respect to the needs for organizations, or you mentioned other industries like travel, hospitality, since none of us can get to these great travel destinations, have you seen a big drive up in the demand and the need to process more data faster? >> Yeah, that's an interesting point with the pandemic. I mean, obviously we had to pivot and move a lot of people to working from home, which we were able to do pretty quickly, but there's also an interesting opportunity that arose from this where so many of our customers and other people also have to do the same. And there is an increased demand for our technology. So people can remotely collaborate. They can work at a distance, they can stay at home and see what's going on in these project sites. So we really saw kind of an uptick in the need for our products and services. And we've also created some basically virtual travel applications. We have an application on the Amazon Fire TV which is the number one app in the travel platform, and people can kind of virtually travel when they can't really get out there. So it's, we've been doing kind of giving back to people that are having some issues with being able to travel around. We've done the fireworks at the Washington Mall around the Statue of Liberty for July 4th. And this year we'll be webcasting New Years in Times Square for our 25th year, actually. So again, helping people travel virtually and maintain connectivity with each other, and with their projects. >> Which is so essential during these times where for the last six, seven months, everyone is trying to get a sense of community and most of us just have the internet. So I also heard you guys were available on the Apple TV, someone should fire that up later and maybe virtually travel. But tell me a little bit about how working in conjunction with Dell Technologies and PowerScale. How has that enabled you to manage this massive volume change that you've experienced this year? Because as you said, it's also about facilitating collaboration which is largely online these days. >> Yeah, and I mean, the great things of working with Dell has been just our confidence in this infrastructure. Like I said, the other systems we've worked with in the past we've always found ourselves kind of second guessing. We're constantly innovating. Obviously resolutions are increasing. The camera performance is increasing, streaming video is, everything is constantly getting bigger and better, faster, more, and we're always innovating. We found ourselves on previous storage platforms having to really kind of go back and look at them, second guess where we're at with it. With the Dell infrastructure it's been fantastic. We don't really have to think about that as much. We just continue innovating, everything scales as we need it to do. It's much easier to work with. >> So you've got PowerScale at your core data center in New Jersey. Tell me a little bit about how data gets from these tens of thousands of devices at the edge, back to your editors for editing, and how PowerScale facilitates faster editing, for example. >> Well, basically you can imagine every one of these cameras, and it's not just cameras. It's also, you know, we have 360 virtual reality kind of bubble cameras. We have mobile applications, we have fixed position and robotic cameras. There's all these different data acquisition systems we're integrating with weather sensors and different types of telemetry. All of that data is coming back to us over the internet. So these are all endpoints in our network. So that's constantly being ingested into our network and saved to Isilon. The big thing that's really been a time saver working with the video editors is instead of having to take that content, move it into an editing environment where we have a whole team of award-winning video editors creating these time lapses. We don't need to keep moving that around. We're working natively on Isilon clusters. They're doing their editing there, and subsequent edits. Anytime we have to update or change these movies as a project evolves, that's all, can happen right there on that live environment. And the retention is there. If we have to go back later on, all of our customers' data is really kept within that one area, it's consolidated and it's secure. >> I was looking at the Dell Tech website, and there's a case study that you guys did, EarthCam did with Dell Tech saying that the video processing time has been reduced 20%. So that's a pretty significant increase. I can imagine with the volumes changing so much now, not only is huge to your business but to the demands that your customers have as well, depending on where those demands are coming from. >> Absolutely. And just being able to do that a lot faster and be more nimble allows us to scale. We've added actually, again, speaking of during this pandemic, we've actually added personnel, we've been hiring people. A lot of those people are working remotely as we've stated before. And it's just with the increase in business, we have to continue to keep building on that, and this storage environment's been great. >> Tell me about what you guys really kind of think about with respect to PowerScale in terms of data management, not storage management, and what that difference means to your business. >> Well, again, I mean, number one was really eliminating the amount of resources. The amount of time we have to spend managing it. We've almost eliminated any downtime of any kind. We have greater storage density, we're able to have better visualization on how our data is being used, how it's being accessed. So as these things are evolving, we really have good visibility on how the storage system is being used in both our production and also in our backup environments. It's really, really easy for us to make our business decisions as we innovate and change processes, having that continual visibility and really knowing where we stand. >> And you mentioned hiring folks during the pandemic, which is fantastic, but also being able to do things in a much more streamlined way with respect to managing all of this data. But I am curious in terms of innovation and new product development, what have you been able to achieve? Because you've got more resources presumably to focus on being more innovative rather than managing storage. >> Well, again, it's, we're always really pushing the envelope of what the technology can do. As I mentioned before, we're getting things into, you know, 20 and 30 gigapixels, people are talking about megapixel images, we're stitching hundreds of these together. We're just really changing the way imagery is used both in the time lapse and also just in archival process. A lot of these things we've done with the interior, we have this virtual reality product where you can walk through and see in a 360 bubble, we're taking that imagery and we're combining it with these BIM models. So we're actually taking the 3D models of the construction site and combining it with the imagery. And we can start doing things to visualize progress, and different things that are happening on the site, look for clashes or things that aren't built like they're supposed to be built, things that maybe aren't done on the proper schedule or things that are maybe ahead of schedule, doing a lot of things to save people time and money on these construction sites. We've also introduced AI and machine learning applications directly into the workflow in the storage environment. So we're detecting equipment and people and activities in the site where a lot of that would have been difficult with our previous infrastructure. It really is seamless and working with Isilon now. >> I imagine by being able to infuse AI and machine learning, you're able to get insights faster, to be able to either respond faster to those construction customers, for example, or alert them if perhaps something isn't going according to plan. >> Yeah, a lot of it's about schedule, it's about saving money, about saving time. And again, with not as many people traveling to these sites, they really just have to have constant visualization of what's going on day to day. We're detecting things like different types of construction equipment and things that are happening on the site. We're partnering with people that are doing safety analytics and things of that nature. So these are all things that are very important to construction sites. >> What are some of the things as we are rounding out the calendar year 2020, what are some of the things that you're excited about going forward in 2021, that EarthCam is going to be able to get into and to deliver? >> Just more and more people really finally seeing the value. I mean I've been doing this for 20 years and it's just, it's amazing how we're constantly seeing new applications and more people understanding how valuable these visual tools are. That's just a fantastic thing for us because we're really trying to create better lives through visual information. We're really helping people with the things they can do with this imagery. That's what we're all about. And that's really exciting to us in a very challenging environment right now is that people are recognizing the need for this technology and really starting to put it on a lot more projects. >> Well, you can kind of consider it an essential service whether or not it's a construction company that needs to manage and oversee their projects, making sure they're on budget, on schedule, as you said, or maybe even just the essentialness of helping folks from any country in the world connect with a favorite travel location, or (indistinct) to help from an emotional perspective. I think the essentialness of what you guys are delivering is probably even more impactful now, don't you think? >> Absolutely. And again about connecting people when they're at home, and recently we webcast the president's speech from the Flight 93 9/11 observation from the memorial, there was something where only the immediate families were allowed to travel there. We webcast that so people could see that around the world. We've documented, again, some of the biggest construction projects out there, the new Raiders stadium was one of the recent ones, just delivering this kind of flagship content. Wall Street Journal has used some of our content recently to really show the things that have happened during the pandemic in Times Square. We have these cameras around the world. So again, it's really bringing awareness. So letting people virtually travel and share and really remain connected during this challenging time. And again, we're seeing a real increased demand in the traffic in those areas as well. >> I can imagine some of these things that you're doing that you're achieving now are going to become permanent not necessarily artifacts of COVID-19, as you now have the opportunity to reach so many more people and probably the opportunity to help industries that might not have seen the value of this type of video to be able to reach consumers that they probably could never reach before. >> Yeah, I think the whole nature of business and communication and travel and everything is really going to be changed from this point forward. It's really, people are looking at things very, very differently. And again, seeing that the technology really can help with so many different areas that it's just, it's going to be a different kind of landscape out there we feel. And that's really continuing to be seen as on the uptick in our business and how many people are adopting this technology. We're developing a lot more partnerships with other companies, we're expanding into new industries. And again, you know, we're confident that the current platform is going to keep up with us and help us really scale and evolve as these needs are growing. >> It sounds to me like you have the foundation with Dell Technologies, with PowerScale, to be able to facilitate the massive growth that you were saying and the scale in the future, you've got that foundation, you're ready to go. >> Yeah, we've been using the system for five years already. We've already added capacity. We can add capacity on the fly, really haven't hit any limits in what we can do. It's almost infinitely scalable, highly redundant. It gives everyone a real sense of security on our side. And you know, we can just keep innovating, which is what we do, without hitting any technological limits with our partnership. >> Excellent, well, Bill, I'm going to let you get back to innovating for EarthCam. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for your time today. >> Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. >> For Bill Sharp, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE's digital coverage of Dell Technologies World 2020. Thanks for watching. (calm music)

>>From Miami beach, Florida. It's the queue covering a chronics global cyber summit 2019 brought to you by Acronis. >>Okay, welcome back. Everyone's the cubes covers two days here in Miami beach. The Fontainebleau hotel for the Kronos has global cyber summit 2019. It's inaugural event around a new category emerging called cyber protection. Um, this isn't a wave that's going to be part of the modernization a week we've been calling cloud 2.0 or whatever you want to call it. A complete modernization of the it technology stack and development environment includes core data center to the edge and beyond. Our next guest is Dan havens, chief growth officer per Chronis. Dan, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. And thank you for having me, Dan. So, uh, what does chief growth officer mean? You guys obviously are growing, so obviously we see some growth there. Yeah, numbers are there. What she, what she, we have a couple of divisions in the company where we see we can really accelerate the business. >>So we came in and we wanted to make some large investments here. One of those areas was sports. You're seeing race cars out here on the floor, you're seeing all kinds of baseball teams, soccer teams, and we're talking to everybody. We have 40 teams now that are using our technology for competitive advantage on the field. Uh, the other areas, OEM, so, uh, original equipment manufacturers, everybody from making a camera to a server somewhere, having a Cronus be embedded, that's a big angle for us and we just didn't have a lot of focus. So I came into to build those divisions. I've actually joined the CEO before in a prior life in his last company and did something similar for him on a similar, uh, back there and we had violent success. So yeah, it's been a lot of fun. I've been here a year and a half and we're killing it. >>We got triple digit growth in the sporting category and similar in the OEM. It's interesting, you know, I look at a lot of these growth companies and the kind of a formula. You see, you guys have a very efficient and strong product platform engineering group. A lot of developers, a lot of smart people in the company, and a strong customer facing for the lack of a better word, field. The group you're in, you're involved, this is not, and you got marketing supporting it in the middle. Yep. So nice, efficient organizational structure on a massive way. But cyber, because this isn't your grandfather's data projection, this is a platform. What's the pitch? So the key here for us is we have to always say, and, and it, it's, it's hard to simplify and we're easy. In fact, we're cost-effective. Sometimes I'll even say I'm cheap and I'm easy. >>And that does not go out of style for an enterprise, right? So our ability to take good old fashioned backup and these things that other people need and basically extend that across. Now I can have one window where I can control, keep 'em out. If somebody gets in or from the inside or a disaster happens. I from this one place can recover my data. I'm secure with my data. I have the ability to notarize my data. So this one, and by the way, key simple interface. Customers love simple. This one simple interface to be able to do that. Now it takes a lot of engineering that goes behind that. I have plenty of, I have fancy engineering degrees and all that, but I try forget that when I'm talking to a customer because at the end of the day it's gotta make sense. A mind that doesn't know, says no. >>And I think we do a pretty good job of simplifying the message, but as they get under the covers and they roll it out, they recognize that there's, you know, we, we, we have more engineers per employee capita than any company that would have 1600 employees. Simple, easy to use. It reduces the steps it takes to do something as a winning business model. You kind of come from that school you mentioned, you know, cheap and easy. That's what is key. Yeah. But we're in a world where complexity is increasing and costs are increasing. Yep. These are two dynamics that are facing every enterprise, cyber it everywhere. What's your story when you want to educate that person so they can get to that? Yes. I want to work with you guys. What's that? What's that getting to? Yes. Processed motion look like. So the beautiful part is is we sell software right now. >>Software can be purchased complex. You install it, you can figure, you do everything yourself. We also can sell that from a cloud standpoint. So now you consume it like a service. Just like you consume Netflix at home, right? I can now consume this protection as a service. You have bolts spectrums covered. Most enterprises are somewhere in the middle. We call that hybrid. So the idea here is that there's going to be components where this data's not leaving these four walls. It might be government agency, it might be some compliance factor, but the ability to be able to say yes anywhere on that spectrum, it makes it very easy for an executive to say, okay, but we have a very, as you leverage the cloud, the OnRamp for this can be as simple as turning on the surface and pointing it at a data source. I mean, you're a student of history, obviously even in this business for awhile, you've done been there longer than you'd think. >>Data protection was kind of like that. Afterthought, backup data recovery all based upon, yeah, we might have an outage or a flood or hurricane Sandy who knows what's going to happen. You know, some force majority out there might happen, but security is a constant disrupter of business continuity. The data's being hijacked and ransomware to malware attacks. This is a major disruption point of a world that was supposed to be a non disruptive operational value proposition. Yeah, so the world has changed. They went from a niche, well, we've got their architecture of throwing back up. You've got to think about it from day one at the beginning. This seems to be your, your story for the company. You think about security from the beginning with data protection. There's only one club in the bag, so to speak. Talk about that dynamic and how's that translating into your customer's storytelling customer engagements to show you, you used an interesting word at the beginning, disaster recovery years ago, I started my tech industry in 1992 right? >>Disaster recovery is when we're going to have a flood or a hurricane and the building's going to burn down. What we find is most of our customers, that's certainly happens, but that's not the driver. The driver now is somebody after my data because the world has changed. Not only has the amount of data we're collecting change, but the ability to illegally monetize somebody else's data has become reality and you have social media that is socializes if you get breached and so forth. So there's a number of drivers. Number one, I don't want to be turned out of business. Number two, I don't want to be ransom. Then number three, I certainly don't want to do the cover of the wall street journal tomorrow morning as a top executive who looked past data. We literally watch brands, I won't mention the brand now, but a very large fortune 1000 what's called out yesterday. >>We see it every few days and we watched the carnage of their brand get deluded because they weren't protected. So I think it's the perfect storm up. I've got a ton of data, so it's coming in from all directions. Secondly, I I'm concerned about, you know, my brand and been able to protect that data and then you know, what do I do? And the disaster in this case is not necessarily flood or fire. It's that somebody from the inside or outside got in the gym. Pretend that I'm a decision maker. I'm like, my head's exploding. I'm got all this carnage going on. I don't want to get fired yet. I know I'm exposed. Nothing's yet happened yet. Maybe I settled the ransomware thing, but I know I'm not in a good place. What's your story to any, what's your pitch to me? What's in it for me? Tell me. >>Tell me the posture and the, well, we're halfway home. If you say, I know I'm not in a good place, right? Cause oftentimes somebody has to get bit first or they have to see their neighbor get bit first and then they say, Hey come in. One of my first plays would be let's find out what place you really are. I can do that very quickly and an assessment, we can gather your systems, we can get a sense for our, where's your data? Where it's flowing from. What are you doing? What are you doing to protect it? We typically will come back and there's going to be spots where there's blind spots. Sometimes they're fully naked, right? But the good news is is now we know the problem, so let's not waste any time, but you can get onboard and baby steps or you know, we can bandaid it or we can really go into full surgery however you want to move forward. >>But the idea is recognizing this has to be addressed because it's a beast. Every single device that's out there on the floor, in any enterprise, any company is a way in and a POC are critical for your business model. You want to get them certainly candy taste, show the value quickly has a POC, gets structured unit assessment. You come in on a narrow entry nail something quick, get a win. What's the, what's the playbook? Love PLCs because we're so fast and easy meaning oftentimes you do PLCs cause you're complex software and you're trying to prove your point and so forth. I love to push a POC cause I can do it inside of days, but I get the customer to take the drive. It's just on the car lot. If I get you to drive it down the block, you're not bringing it back. You're bringing it home to the neighbors. >>Right. That is the case with our software and our hit rate is key. But again it's because it's straightforward and it's easy. So though most sales cycles don't push for pilot. I can't wait to get a pilot but we don't need 30 days to do it in a couple of days. They're going to recognize I can do this too. You have a good track record of POC. If I get, this is going to be the most conceding. You might have to edit this out. If I get an audience, I will win. That is the most conceited statement on the planet. And if I get the audience and they will look, and this is why we use the sports teams. Sports teams are the cool kids using this. And if I get an executive to say, what are you guys doing with the red Sox? If I could get him or her to look, it's game over. >>Hey being bad ass and having some swagger. It's actually a good thing if you got the goods to back it up. That's not fun. Piece here is that the product works well and it's not this massive mountain to hurdle. It is. We can get started today and take bites as we go, but you mentioned sports. Let's get into that talk track. As we have been covering sports data for now six years on the cube in San Francisco. We were briefly talking about it last night at the reception, but I think sports teams encapsulates probably the most acute use case of digital transformation because they have multiple theaters that are exploding. They got to run their business, they got a team to manage and they got fan experience and their consumers, so you've got consumerization of it. You got security of your customers either in a physical venue from a potential terrorist disaster could happen to just using analytics to competitive venture from the Moneyball model to whatever sports really encapsulates what I call the poster child of using digital into a business model that works. >>You've been successful with sports. We interviewed Brian shield yesterday. Yup. Red Sox, vice-president technology. He was very candid. He's like, look it, we use analytics. It helps us get a competitive, not going to tell you the secrets, but we have other issues that people not thinking about drone strikes while the games going on, potential terrorist attacks, gathering the people, you know, adding on East sports stadium to Fenway park. They have a digital business model integrating in real time with a very successful consumer product and business in sports. This has been a good market for you guys. What's been the secret to success? >> Explosive market? Couple things. First off, you summarized well, sports teams are looking for competitive advantage, so anything that can come in under that guys is gonna get some attention plus data, fan data, system data, ticket data. Um, in baseball, they're studying every single pitch of pictures ever thrown. >>They have video on everything. This is heavy lift data, right? So a place to put it saved money, a place to protect it, a pace to access it so that all of my Scouts that are out in the field with a mobile device have the ability to upload or evaluate a player while they're out still on them and on the field somewhere maybe in another country. And then add the added caveat in our sexiest piece. And that's artificial intelligence. You mentioned Moneyball, right? Uh, the, the entire concept of, of stat of statistics came out in the Moneyball concept and you know, we all saw the movie and we all read the book, but at the end of the day, this is the next step to that, which is not just written down statistics. Now we can analyze data with machine learning and we have very, we have unique baseball examples where there's absolutely no doubt they have the data. >>It's the ability to, how do I turn that to where I can be more competitive on our racing team. So we're actually working with teams improving, changing the car on the track during the race, using our software fact. We always look forward to opportunities where somebody says, Hey, come in and talk about that because it's incredibly sexy to see. Um, but sports are fun because first off they're the cool kids. Secondly, they're early adopters. If it's gonna give competitive advantage, uh, and third, they hit all the vectors. Tons of data have to protect it. >> It's our life in the business models digital too. So the digital transformation is in prime time. We cannot ignore the fact that people want wifi. They got Instagram, Facebook, all of these, they're all conscious of social media. There are all kinds of listening sports club, they have to be, they have to be hip, right? >>And being out front like that, think about the data they have come in at. And so not just to be smart on the field, they have to be smart with our customer. They're competing with that customer for four of their major sports or whatever. Major sports in the, in the, in the, in our case in this fashionable to be hip is cool for the product, but now you think about how they run their business. They've got suppliers, um, that have data and trusting suppliers with data's. There's a difficult protection formula. They've got national secure security issues. They have to protect, well they have to protect as a big part, but they have to protect, well first off these, these archives of data that are of 20 races ago or of this pitcher pitched three years ago and I have a thousand of his pitches and I'm looking for towels. >>That is, that's mission critical. But also, uh, to boot you have just business functions where I'm a, I'm a team and I have a huge telco sponsor and we are shifting back and forth and designing what their actual collateral is going to be in the stadium. They're actually using a Chronis to be able to do that up in the cloud where they can both collaborate on that. Not only doing it, but being able to protect it that way. It's, it's more efficient for them. It's interesting. I asked Brian shield this question, I asked her how does baseball flex and digital with the business model of digital with the success of the physical product or their actual product baseball. And he said an interesting thing. He's like the ROI models just get whacked out because what's the ROI of an investment in technology? It used to be total cost of ownership. >>The class that's right under the under the iceberg to sharpen whatever you use, you use that. We don't use that. We think about other consequences like a terrorist attack. That's right. So so the business model, ROI calculation shifting, do you have those kinds of conversations with some of these big teams and these sports teams? Because you know they win the world series, their brand franchise goes up if they win the national championship, but whatever their goal is has real franchise value. There's numbers on that. There's also the risk of say an attack or some sort of breach. >> Well, I won't mention the names, I won't mention the teams by name, but I have a half a dozen teams right now and two that are actually rolling out that are doing facial recognition just for security, a fan's entering their stadium. So they are taking the ownership of the safety of their fan to the level of doing visual or facial recognition coming into their stadium. >>Obviously the archive to measure against is important and we can archive that, but they're also using artificial intelligence for that. So you're absolutely right. They owe their fan a safe experience, not only a safe experience with good experience and so forth. And we love to be associated whenever we can with wins and losses. But to your point, how do you get, or how do you show a TCO on a disaster and nobody wants to, and by the way, we've seen enough of that to know it's looming. And there's also the supply chain too. I can buy a hotdog and a beer from Aramark, which is the red socks. They say supplier that's not owned by the red Sox. They have a relationship. But my data's in, I'm a consumer of the red Sox. I'm procuring a, you know, some food or service from a vendor. Yeah, yeah. My data's out there. >>So who protects that? Well, these are unique questions that come up all the time. Again, that's a business decision for the customer. The idea is with cloud collaboration, it's technically quite easy, but again, they have to decide where they're gonna commingle their data, how they're going to share. But the idea here is, again, back to the spectrum, fully cloud and accessible and locked down airtight government's scenario where we have a, you know, a lock bottom line is you get to pick where you want to be on there and there's going to be times where my example of talking to the, uh, the telco vendor, we're, we're actually going to share our data together and we're going to make us faster, make a quicker return and design this collateral for our stadium faster. Those are business decisions, but they're allowed because it, Coronas can be as hybrid as you need to be along the site. >>And again, that resonates with an executive. They never want to be wearing handcuffs and they don't want to pay overpay for stuff to not use our stuff. And if you decide to consume cloud, you, you just pay as you go. It's like your electricity bill. All right. So the red Sox are a customer of you guys. You have or they use your service. What other sports teams have you guys engaged with who you're talking to? Give a taste of some of the samples. So European, we have a couple of formula one teams. We have a racing point. We have the Williams team and formula E we have to cheetah the dragon team. We have a adventury, we also have Neo. So we have a good presence in the racing clubs. We have a ton of a world rally cars and, and, and motorcycle motorcross and so forth. >>Then you step over into European football. So we, we, we started in cars and recognize this is hot. So then we got our first, uh, European team, uh, and we had arsenal. As a matter of fact, we have one of the legends here signing with us today. And you know, I mean, they're rock stars, right? People follow them. Anyway, so we have arsenal and we did man city. Um, and we just landed, uh, Liverpool just did that this quarter, two weeks ago. I literally just, the ink is still drying. Um, and then you move into the United States, which I brought the, you know, I brought the circus to town on January one, 2019. First when was the Boston red Sox. We quickly followed that up. You'll see us on the home run fence at San Diego Padres. Volts bought for different reasons, but both very sexy reasons. So it's the reason. >>What were the main drivers? So in the case of the Boston red Sox, it was, it was a heavy lift on video. A lot of on the protection side. Um, the, uh, San Diego was file sync and share. So the example I was giving of, um, being able to share with your largest telco vendor or with your largest investors slash sponsor for your stadium, um, that was the driver. Now what's funny about both is as they get started, he's always expanding, right? So we have the baseball teams, we did land this quarter, the Dallas stars. So that's our first hockey club. I really want. And my goal is to try to get a couple in each of the main four categories and then some of the subs, um, just cause you get the cool kids, you get a tipping point. Everybody then wants to know what's going on. I have a hundred and play. >>And so we, we typically try to qualify regional where it makes sense. Um, uh, we're, you know, we're very close with a team here in the region. So, you know, they, in the feedback from, from the, from the successes you had implementations, why, what's uh, what's been the feedback from the customers. So here's the file in this. Sounds like I'm just tripping with sales guy and I apologize. Warning signs. Okay. If they use it, we're home free. So when you get Brian or any one of these guys that are using it, all I have to do is make sure that a new customer hears this person who has no reason to say anything else and just expose them to it. Because it's this unknown, scary thing that we're trying to protect against and being able to do that and have the freedom of how aggressive or you know, what metaphor am I going to cover that? >>And then also, uh, you know, the, obviously the economics work is you pay as you go. Um, it's, you know, it's a good story. Well, Dan, congratulations on the success. Um, great to see you guys really digging in and getting those PLCs and being successful. We watching your growth. Final question for you yes. Is all the data and the patterns that you see and all of customers. What's the number one reason why a Cronus is selected and why you women? I think that's an interesting question and I think that it's a couple of reasons. Number one, we work, we're easy. We have an enormous footprint. So there's a lot to reference from. Many people have already used us on the consumer side, so we're safe. So that's one reason I would also tell you however, that we have a great ecosystem because a Kronos is different than most software companies. >>Most software companies have a huge outside sales force that sells direct to customer a Chronis. Everybody here is a partner. We sell through a service provider to a channel member through a, through a, a, a, an ISV. Um, and then we have some direct enterprise. But the idea is there's a variety of solutions that can be baked on this foundation. And I think people like that variety. I, they, they like the, like the freedom of I'm not just trapped with this one thing. I can buy it and all options are available and I will tell you an it, nobody wants to be locked down. Everybody wants options, safety in numbers. They want their data protected with the whole cyber land lens. And they know everything's changing every six months. Something's different. And I don't want to be handcuffed in my desk. I want all options available. I think that's our best value from all right, Dan, thanks for coming on. Dan havens, chief growth officer, but Krohn is weird. The Chronis global cyber summit. I'm John Ford. Stay tuned for more cube coverage after this short break.

>>Live from Boston, Massachusetts. It's the cube covering ifs world conference 2019 brought to you by ifs. >>Well going back to Boston and everybody, this is the cube, the leader in live tech coverage. We're here day one at the ifs world conference at the Hynes convention center in Boston. Cindy shutdown is here. She's the president of America's at ifs and she's joined by to my right, K in Blackwell, who's a controller at PPC partners, one of the divisions of PPC Metro power. And rod is the CIO of PPC partners. Welcome folks. Good to see you. I said, let me start with you. So you were on last year in the cube down at Atlanta. You still kind of set some, set some goals, you're a little competitive with your other brethren within then ifs. We love it. You know, we're Americans. Okay. So how's it going in North America? >>Um, well it's, it's growing well. We've had fantastic growth and it's been, you know, a little bit of competition within ifs, but you know, certainly we were very proud. We were named region of the year last year. So we won the coveted cup, which, uh, means, uh, we, uh, we want to keep that cup. So that's some of the, some of the competition that we've got going, right? >>Yeah. Well, of course, most of us based companies, they'll do, they'll start up 79, you know, 90% of their businesses, U S if not 100%, and then they'll slowly go overseas as some of the opposite. Right? >>Very much. I mean, ifs is a European based company. We've been in the, in the U S for quite awhile and, but we've really been investing in our growth and we've had fantastic growth over the last few years. And I think, you know, one of the reasons for that growth is our customer satisfaction in the fact that we really want to listen to our customers. You know, I, um, I, I travel quite a lot as you can imagine. And when I travel, I always try to make sure I can visit customers and hear what they have to say, you know, and of course we love to hear the good things, but I also like to hear when they can give us some ideas for improvement and um, you know, then that gives us something to work on and to, you know, to keep moving forward. Um, I also think that, you know, the good thing about that is, um, it gives us a chance to listen and um, you know, I heard something really great from one of our customers, they went live two weeks ago and they called up and said, Hey, can we do a customer story? I love things like that. Yeah. >>I always love that. Uh, let me think about it. I'll get back to you. Okay. What's your relationship between ifs and PPC part? >>Well, PPC partners is one of our newer customers in there in the middle of an implementation and they're doing some great things around digital transformation. And when I had this opportunity to be here on the cube, I thought it would be great to invite rod and can with me and to, you know, tell some of the things that they're doing. >>Cool. So I kind of recruited Cindy as my cohost, your, they're going to be the defective coho. So welcome to the queue and then we're going to show you right to the fire. Okay. So, uh, can you describe your, your role, your when one of the divisions of PPC partners, right? So maybe maybe set up sort of PPC partners and then your role. >>Right. Okay. So PPC is a specialty contracting company and we have four subsidiary companies that operate in the upper Midwest and then also the Southeastern United States. And we provide, um, um, customers within a base innovative, innovative solutions in the electrical and mechanical contracting. So there are those four companies. I was one of the controllers, um, of those four companies for a lot of years. And now I'm on the core team. There's four of us, five of us now, um, that are involved in the implement. >>Okay. So you got all the numbers in your head. And then rod, you're the CIO and you guys are a service organization for all the divisions. Is that correct? That is correct. >>We sit at the holding company and we're responsible for technology across all four of those specialty contractor companies that can just mention. >>So I love these segments, Cindy, because you know, we, here you go, we go to a lot of conferences in the cube and um, you hear a lot about digital transformation, but, so I'd like to ask the practitioners, what does that mean for you guys? We've got somebody who's very close to the line of business, like I say, knows the numbers, but at the end of the day you've got to deliver the technology services. So what does digital transformation mean to you? What's the company doing in that regard? So a great question actually. >>Um, you'll find companies like ours that have been on the same platform for quite a while, uh, 50 plus years, uh, five zero five, six, zero, uh, probably North of five zero, but we'll go with five zero. Uh, and what happens over time is just, you know, with the system can't grow with the organizations, you resort to a lot of manual paper pushing a lot of file flinging, lots of Excel. And so there's just a ton of duplication of effort and those types of things going on. So from a technology standpoint, that's really the stuff that I come in and see and go, you know. Um, but overall I think that getting to the ifs platform, getting a lot of those redundant processes, a lot of the file flinging out of there, it's just going to be beneficial for all of them. >>Okay. So you guys have had to make the business, you're in the middle of the implementation, right? Is that correct? So she had to go through the business case. Um, it sounds like the business case was, you know, we're, we're basically struggling with running our business because, you know, data's all over the place. We don't have a single view of our business, our customers, et cetera. So we have to come to grips with that. But, but, so what was the business case like? I presume that you were involved as well. >>Right. So I've was really involved in building the software that we've used for that 40 plus years though I haven't used it all of them two years. Um, and, and it was really. It was built by accountants. We, you know, intended for it to meet the needs of the whole, the whole organization. But really it was built by accountants. So, um, we've found that we just really weren't able to keep up with meeting the needs of all of the users. Um, so when we started looking at that, we also had, we were running on a couple of different, um, I'm going to call them boxes. We run it on IBM. So, um, we were not able to look across the entire organization and see a consolidated view of the whole organization. So that was one of the things that we were looking to do, was to really bring all four companies under one umbrella and be able to get a picture of the whole mainframe or, yes, we had a couple of mainframes and all of that software was internally written. Um, and it was good. It was, it was good, but it met, you know, just the needs that those of us within the company saw. Um, so I think we were missing a whole lot of opportunity, um, to really, you know, see what else was out there and see new things and really get outside of our sphere of understanding, you know, >>so PPC, >>no, I was going to say as SKM pointed out and the sort of running joke within the companies is the system we have today does numbers really well. Words not so much because it was designed by accountants for accounting, tracking the financials primarily. Yeah. >>In PPC you do construction of course, or construction club, but you also do some service as well, right? You've got people out in the field that are, that are doing, doing service. So when you were looking, um, I'm assuming that you were trying to find a system that could do both, both solutions. Yeah. Did. >>Absolutely. Uh, one of the things that's been concerning to the entire core team is it's great to go out and find a system and there's plenty of them that can handle your back office. Most systems do that fairly well. But what about you feel services, uh, any in our particular industry, electrical contracting, you might have residential, you know, we could very well be working on the buck stadium or a military installation or even the school, you know, those folks have to be able to process invoices, do all sorts of things from a handheld, et cetera, et cetera. That was a big, big driving factor for us. So has a lot of COBOL code running? Is that, is there right here? So you said 50 years, I mean, um, so now I'm interested in the, in the, in the migration and, and you know what that looks like. >>Yeah, I'll bet. So do you, do you have to freeze the existing sort of systems and then sort of bring the other ones up to speed? Is this cloud-based? What does that all look like? That great question. So, uh, we are, uh, we subscribe to the managed cloud solution. Um, you know, for most construction companies, electrical contracting companies like ours, you know, technology is important, but it is not what really makes our wheels turn. It's a con. It's a competitive advantage if you use it wisely. And so, um, you know, for us it was very important to think about this holistically and try to figure out if we're gonna bring in a solution, what does that solution need to look like and will it work for all of our companies, not just one, not just residential, commercial, et cetera. Okay. All right. So, so w w what's that journey look like? I mean, um, when did, when did it start? What's your >>sort of timeline? So about two and a half years ago, we really started looking at what we had in on hand now and what we had in place and thinking about did we really want to make a move? And so, um, we had a team that came together about 15 people across the organization from operations and also the back office to really evaluate what we had evaluated our needs. Um, we decided, yes, we needed something new. And then we actually brought in a second team, um, that started looking at what that new thing would be. We had a consultant assisting us with that and uh, we kinda narrowed it down to two players if you will. And ifs was one of those. Um, and we, even though, um, one of the things that we liked was the fact that that ifs had, um, a broad reach over different types of industries and we felt like that would give us, um, something in addition to a construct and centric view know domain expertise. Yeah, >>exactly. You know, and you know, with our core industries, you know, construction is a big part of that. But one of the things that we're seeing in the construction industry today is the trend to go to what we call prefabrication. The fact that you know, you can really speed up a project if you aren't trying to build everything on site and you can also do it much more cheaper. McKinsey has a study out and they believe that over time if, if of comp of construction company will engage with prefabrication, they can reduce the project timelines 20 to 50% and lower the cost up to 20% and with ifs is heritage in manufacturing. It's really a perfect marriage for construction companies because construction companies need the project management, the installation, you know, the change management that goes along with some of those back-office things. They also a lot of time have to do service. But if you really want to get that competitive advantage, if you can take advantage of the prefab, which is really manufacturing high, if this is heritage, he could really have a, a full, complete S, you know, solution from one supplier. >>There's a huge trend in home-building actually. You would, you see, you know, modular homes and kind of the future of it. But uh, so how does that affect you guys? I mean you, you prefab something that resonates with you, is that sort of more of a generic statement across the customer base or >>it's certainly an area where we're focusing on more. Um, we also have an automation, uh, division that really focuses on, um, automation for industries. And that's an area that it's kind of a manufacturing type of thing. They build panels and those sorts of things. So we're definitely seeing it >>well. So, okay. So I got to ask you, so when you pulled out the Gartner magic quadrant, I said, okay, it always is. Ifs isn't the leader that, that, that, that might've helped. Right. Okay. So you don't get fired now, but choose the leader, but then you started peeling the onion. He had to do due diligence. So what kinds of things did you look at? What kind of tires did you kick? Piers, did you talk to and be, I'm interested in what your, what you learned. Well, I'll touch on one key element and >>we can get in as many sub elements as you like. The selection process for us took several months. Um, I think initially we really pared it down to about eight packages that we were seriously considering. Then down to four and then eventually down to two. And what really, really intrigued us about ifs was the fact that they are not construction centric. So we really had a big decision to make internally, which was do we want to just get on the bandwagon and do what everyone else in construction is doing or do we really wanna you know, risk versus reward and go after something special. So ifs, they are in, you name it, manufacturing is obviously key. Aerospace engineering, race cars I saw today, I didn't know that. So that was a big selling point for us. And the plan is to retire your mainframe and go into the cloud. >>Yes, yes, yes. So IBM got you in a headlock. >>We've been friends for a long time. Good company. Um, w what's that been like just to sort of, uh, that the thought of, you know, going to the cloud. W how, how is, you know, the it folks you know, responded to that. Um, how has that changed their sort of role brokers versus all? Again, I think in construction organizations, technology is important, but it is not what makes the wheels turn. So I'm trying to bring in all of that iron and infrastructure and build it out and configure it ourselves and then maintain it for the long haul. Just not something that was value added for us. In addition, um, if you've ever worked with Oracle, which is a close partner of ifs, but there is a lot of licensing caveats and a lot of things you've got to worry about if you're going to go it alone by going with the managed cloud solution, we're sort of partnering and trusting ifs to take that on for us so we can focus on taking care of our companies, our customers, and doing what we do best. Right? So, okay, so you're still going to be an Oracle. You just won't be, it won't be as visible. We use Oracle too. We're a Salesforce customer, so Hey, Oracle is behind there, but no offense. >>Ah, I know you guys did >>for the distinction as well, right? Because even if you are going to have portions of Oracle that are running your system, you've got to have some Oracle experts on staff. You know, if you're going to have all of the infrastructure, you gotta have infrastructure folks who understand how it all ties together. So on the surface it could seem like a simple decision to do it in house or go to the cloud. Far from it. >>Yeah. You know, I think certainly one of the things that we see in a lot of different industries, but certainly in construction, the plant had always been that you bring together different, different solutions and you try to both and together and then some of that becomes a lot more concerning. You know, some of the technology behind it. But one of the things that with the ifs solution is the fact that from one provider you can do, you know, do the whole life cycle. So then some of the have it in the managed cloud where we take care of it for you. So then that takes away some of those technology issues and then you can focus on your core competencies. So Rhonda would agree generally >>with what you're saying. I mean some probably say that for most companies that you know, the technology is not the core differentiator. Obviously this for Google, sure. For Amazon, for Facebook, but for CIO is I talked to, they go people process, technology, technology is the least of my problems. It's like I was going to come and go, it's going to change. I can deal with that. It's the, if the people in the process issues. So having said that, I'm still interested in how concerned you were about peeling the onion on the cloud, what's behind it, the security model, all that stuff in terms of your due diligence, you know, with any cloud based solution, there's some concern obviously. But, but in working with ifs, we, we asked a ton of questions and they gave us a ton of answers. So the comfort level was there. Um, the industry's been going to the cloud now for quite some time. And to be brutally honest, if you're not going there, um, you need to be strongly considered >>in Microsoft is our partner with the cloud. We're on, you know, using Microsoft Azure. So it's not like, you know, it's one of the largest cloud provider. So it's not like, you know, it's, it's something that you have to worry about. You've got the, you know, the backstop of Microsoft behind you as well. You know, I'm sorry, go, go, go. I was going to say, I think one of the things that's interesting is you talk about all your different divisions and you're really trying to bring a lot of different companies together on one system. And one of the things that I, you know, as I've seen the things that's change management becomes really something that you really have to consider. I mean, how have you seen that part of the implementation going? Has there been stepping in the easy piece for you? It's not been an easy piece and that's one of the pieces that we're still working on. >>Um, I don't know if any organization that says that they're really, really good at change. Um, but we've recognized that really the, our organization is a group of entrepreneurs and we've encouraged people to have their own business, but we're really trying to streamline and get some consistency across the organization. That's a little bit of a culture shift for us. So that change management piece is a piece that we're really trying to get our arms around now and prepare, um, the organization for that team. Just trying to get my head around your software still. You guys do change management? I TSM. Well, you'll change management is really some of the, um, consulting that goes along with it and certainly ifs and AR, we've got many partners who can, you know, help our customers go through that. Because when you're going through a digital transformation, you know, you're taking people who have been using something for 50 years, being out, especially out in the field doing those things. And now you're trying to figure out what are the right processes to put in place to get what the business needs. And in some cases they might have to do things differently. So you really have to think that through and how you're going to roll those out. >>So now, is this your first ifs world? Yes, it is. It is. What final thoughts, you know, things you've, you've taken away or you're going to bring back to your teams? >>Well, yeah, Boston is a favorite city of mine. I was just glad to be here just for that. But, and we've just been here a little bit. I've already picked up some things on leadership. I was involved the um, >>Oh, the women's leadership breakfast this morning. So there's already been some things that I think we can take back to users and share with them, particularly around change management and trying to get people comfortable and understanding why they're uncomfortable with change. You know? So it, rod, you're next on the line. So I'm sure you were taking notes, pretty attentive in the sessions and just getting started, right? >>No, you know, I have, and one of the things for me that was most, I guess rewarding is, is the partner network. All of the vendors. There's a number of things with our implementation that we're still trying to sort out OCR for example, being one of them. Are we going to go there or are we gonna wait until later? Just different technologies and maybe add ons that we may want to take advantage of. All you've got to do is walk down the hallways and there's, there's people ready to talk to you about it. So that's, that's been kind of intriguing. >>Okay. Excellent. Well yeah, I said earlier I was, I was surprised and impressed at the sort of size of the ecosystem and its great. Well good luck to you guys. Really wish you the best and thanks so much for coming on the cube and sharing your story Cindy. Great to see you. Always pleasure. All right, take care. Thank you for watching everybody. We're back with our next guest right after this short break. You're watching the cube from Boston ifs world 2019 right back.

>> from Seattle. Washington. It's the Q covering AWS. Imagine nonprofit brought to you by Amazon Web service is >> Hey, welcome back already, Jeff. Rick here with the Cube were in Seattle, Washington, right on the waterfront. It's a beautiful day. Unfortunately, a lot of the topics we're talking about today are not so beautiful. We're here at the AWS. Imagine not for profit. Imagine of it. Great event. Little under 1000 people here talking about solving very, very, very big important problems in AWS is helping him. We're excited to have our next guest on. He is Paul Shapiro, President and CEO of the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Paul, great to see you. >> Hey, Jeff. Thanks for having me. >> I mean, the title of your organization says that this is not a not a happy problem. I wonder if you can speak a little bit too, You know, kind of the scale of this, this issue and, you know, I know that's part of the reason why you got involved. >> Yeah. You know, it's interesting. Someone once said to me, How do you do this for a living every single day and this person put it into perspective, I think in a profound way. It's a woman who works on our team in the education space. She works with teachers all over the world to help them in the prevention and response of sexually abused and exploited children. Right? And she said, to be in this job to do this every day you give up a little bit of your own innocence to preserve the innocence of others. And when she said that to me, it really hit home. And while it can be challenging every single day, you know, we we realized that the work that we do is very, very important. And, you know, someone has to be there for these children that are very much alone. And that's what drives us every single day. >> Very much God's work, and it's a it's great great for you to do it. So give us a little bit of background on the actual organization. What do you do every day? What kind of the mission and how are you >> executing around the world? >> Well, the mission, as as we like to say, is summarized up in just a few words, and that is no child stands alone And when you think about the children that are out there and the children that we typically focus on our first missing children and why do we focus on missing children? Because when a child goes missing, they become extremely vulnerable, and the urgency to find them quickly is extraordinarily important, the kind of things that can happen to them when they're alone. And for those of us who have children, there's a sense of panic when they're out of our sight for even a moment. Will. You can imagine what happens when a child actually goes missing for a period of time. It's so very important to find them quickly within the first few hours. If not, they're vulnerable, and they're vulnerable to things like trafficking to things like sexual abuse, things that that oftentimes lead toe very negative outcomes so way need to get on it quickly and to build. Um, this would be hard enough if we were just doing in the United States, but our organization was really built out of a necessary out of the necessity to build a global solution for this. So we've activated emergency response in over 30 countries, things like the you've heard of Amber Alerts in the United States? Well, we've helped activate those in over 30 countries. We've helped with building a technology platform that takes images of children and allows us to geo target those images in countries all over the world with just the push of the button sending out millions of images through redundant advertising space through our technology partners that allows for that to happen and a lot more. So when you think about us about the scale of the problem, I mean, how how big do you think the missing >> children probably want? I don't even want to guess, right? I mean, it's, it's, uh, knows all kind of in everyone's face back in the in the milk carton >> days right, which we don't really get seats so much on the milk cartons in the back of trucks. But it's it's >> hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands. But to your point, if it's the one, if it's that that one is is every one is as important as the other hundreds and hundreds of thousands. >> I guess what we do is a modern day milk carton, right? It's It's a way of activating um, the communities through a alert system that is constantly searching for a child on there's there's lots of different ways that we do that, but just getting back to the point of the size of the problem. I mean, there's there's well over 400,000 children missing in the United States. It's enough. If I think 424,000 I believe, is the number in the U. S. Alone. That's enough. That's what Is that the population of Miami? Too many, right? There's, um, 80,000 children missing in the UK That's that's enough children that are missing to Philip Wembley Stadium, Australia. 24,000 children are missing, right? >> So clearly, most of those kids didn't get picked up within hours of becoming missing, as you said, which is such an important piece. So you know what's kind of the ongoing, um, you know, kind of process to keep to keep those keep those faces alive and to use kind of >> modern methods to find them. Clearly, the milk carton was something that that was available a long >> time ago was kind of mass distribution kind of creative at the time. But I have a lot more tools at your disposal today. >> Yeah, you know what? One? One thing that is so important is just making sure a a country is ready and that that is an easy work. That means finding partners that are out there that want to make a difference in this area. Law enforcement is a huge piece of this. Other NGOs are a huge piece of this. And, of course, technology, with the help of organizations like Amazon really enable us to be able to do that on. And that's where things like facial recognition software come in. And, you know, we're big proponents of the partnership and advocacy that we have with a W S that allows us tow Dr that intelligence through our platform and will make it more possible to find more children. >> Right. So you say you're relatively new to the organization. Was there a specific charge in your mind in terms of, you know, kind of fresh blood, fresh energy, fresh point of view that you saw on this opportunity or they saw in you that was kind of York and a new strategic directive that maybe a little bit different than what was happening before, only >> as your new Yeah. Meanwhile, while this is all this has always been so important to me, you know, finding a way to give back and make the world a better place. I mean, that is something that has driven me my entire career. And, you know, ironically, 17 years ago, I worked for a company that really took on missing children as the purpose of their organization. So that's when I got my first exposure to this. If things have come back rather full circle in this new pursuit, by the way, missing children isn't isn't all that we D'oh. But my, uh, my day job over the last 15 years was really ah was organizational transformation. It was it was helping organ organization standardize and scale, um, so that they could be more productive. They can leverage technology so that they can engage a workforce thio drive the right behaviors, Did a lot of organizational training trained tens of thousands of individuals over the last 15 or so years. And when I had an opportunity to come to this organization, you know, I really saw an extraordinary team of people that were very effective at training countries. This organization is a very sensitive organization. What I mean by that is they're very sensitive understanding where country is in its readiness for child protection. And we go in the countries with that sensibility and make sure that the programs that we build first, that there is policy and legislation in place so that the country even recognizes that there's a problem. And by the way we've driven. We've driven policy and legislation where we've had significant influence in over 150 countries over the last 20 years, which is extraordinary work. That's very important foundational e to us being able to understand where countries that trying to go in and provide a cookie cutter solution doesn't work when you're talking about international work, the sensitivities of ah, of a country's culture and understanding of how law enforcement how the education system, how the political system hell healthcare views this problem is ready for this problem is really what we focus on. So that's really where we've built our core competencies are in those very areas and what along with my team and I, we're looking to do right now is to take these silos that we've been focusing on for nearly 20 years where we've been where we've trained, you know, tens of thousands of law enforcement professionals, educators and health care nationals. And we're taking that to the next level. We're building it into a global training academy that is going to take a multidisciplinary look at this that brings these teams together. And instead of us just going in with instructor led training, which is what so many organizations do, we're gonna be taking a look at a blended learning curriculum, using technology to take it online where we can, and to make sure that the time that we spend in these countries is really focused on helping these countries get to a level of certification where they are international center certified. And there will be accountability and expectations built in two. How they get there and how they stay there. And there will be a commitment, ongoing support from us to be able to, you know, keep them moving in the right direction. That's really the vision for the organization. >> Yeah, a CZ you're talking, you know, it's going through my mind is is is the surveillance >> society that we live in right We've got cameras everywhere as you talk to. You know, we're talking about the milk carton, So I'm thinking about pictures of these of these kids rights. We've got surveillance everywhere. We've got all types of laws around how that surveillance is used. We've got facial recognition software all over the place now, which is developing. And I just, you know, are >> these are these tools that you currently use that you envision using? I mean, I would would you know, there's always the privacy security, >> you know, kind of trade off and complexity. That said, I would imagine tools like surveillance at airports and tools like facial recognition and tools like a I and machine learning to do projected aging of individuals must be tremendous new assets for you guys to leverage in your mission. >> Yeah, they've been around for a while, but it's getting better and better, and I know the downward pressure that effects organizations like a W s relative to facial recognition. There's so many privacy laws that cause this this'll challenge for organizations like AWS and also organizations like ours. I guess where where I'm at with it all is we need, there's there's not a question about privacy in my mind, when it comes to protecting children, it's the one great unifier that we have. So we need to find ways to work within the confines of privacy, and that varies wildly country to country, right. But these are the tools that we need that are gonna be just absolutely vital to finding more children to protecting more children, whether these air children that are being trafficked in an airport or child that goes missing after two hours. And we need toe alert a community and feed their images into our system that constantly searches for them. Whether it's in the first hour or just spoke to a parent who had been on his 45th day of his missing son, his son had gone missing. And and and you see the desperation that a parent has when they have nowhere else to turn. It's our job to find places for them to turn toe, employ technology that never stops. I mean, that's you talked about how dark of, ah of a of a job this could be, Yeah, but you know, the hope that we provide really is is the light that keeps us going >> right. So, Paul, final question. What do people not >> know about the space that they should? If you if you could just say, you know, this is kind of the reality, but, >> you know, this is this is where I'm very careful, Thio to make sure that people are ready to hear the realities of the space. I spoke to a judge in the Philippines recently who talked about just the, you know, the kind of cases that she's trying when it comes to sexual abuse, when it comes to children who are trafficked. And I said, What? What exactly are we talking about here? And by the way, this is a conversation I'll have with a lot of people, especially in law enforcement, you know? What kind of age are we talking about? You'd be shocked to find out how high the percentage of children are under 10 years old. You'd be shocked to find out the percentage of children that are under one. And you say to yourself, How can this be? Well, it is. It is the reality of what we're dealing with. So, you know, you talk about something that drives you when you find out children that are that vulnerable in the scale that truly exists, the numbers that exist. You wake up every day and you run to this job and you try to find partners out there in every sector that you can. I don't care if it's in sports. I don't care if it's an entertainment. I don't care if it's in technology. I don't care if it's in religion or government. You find partners that have the ability to make you stronger. And that's a big part of our remit. And it's it's why I feel so fortunate to be here. Um, at this a w s conference, learning more about how we can employ even more technology to make us strong, >> right? Well, certainly with a w s behind you got all the technology >> could ever, ever hope Thio deploy. So hopefully that will help >> you be more effective in your work and >> your team's work. And thank you for taking a few minutes. >> You got Jeff. Thank you so much. >> All right, thanks. He's Paul on Jeff. You're watching the cube. Where? Need of us. Imagined nonprofit in Seattle. Thanks >> for watching. See you next time

>> From Cambridge Massachusetts, it's The Cube covering MIT Chief Data Officer, and Information Quality Symposium 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. (electronic music) >> Welcome back to MIT in Cambridge, Massachusets everybody. You're watching The Cube, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante I'm here with Paul Gillin. Day two of the of the MIT Chief Data Officer Information Quality Conference. One of the things we like to do, at these shows, we love to profile Boston area start-ups that are focused on data, and in particular we love to focus on start-ups that are founded by women. Julie Johnson is here, She's the Co-founder and CEO of Armored Things. Julie, great to see you again. Thanks for coming on. >> Great to see you. >> So why did you start Armored Things? >> You know, Armored Things was created around a mission to keep people safe. Early in the time where were looking at starting this company, incidents like Las Vegas happened, Parkland happened, and we realized that the world of security and operations was really stuck in the past right? It's a manual solutions generally driven by a human instinct, anecdotal evidence, and tools like Walkie-Talkies and video cameras. We knew there had to be a better way right? In the world of Data that we live in today, I would ask if either of you got in your car this morning without turning on Google Maps to see where you were going, and the best route with traffic. We want to help universities, ball parks, corporate campuses do that for people. How do we keep our people safe? By understanding how they live. >> Yeah, and stay away from Lambert Street in Cambridge by the way. >> (laughing) >> Okay so, you know in people, when they think about security they think about cyber, they think about virtual security, et cetera et cetera, but there's also the physical security aspect. Can you talk about the balance of those two? >> Yeah, and I think both are very important. We actually tend to mimic some of the revolutions that have happened on the cyber security side over the last 10 years with what we're trying to do in the world of physical security. So, folks watching this who are familiar with cyber security might understand concepts like anomaly detection, SIEM and SOAR for orchestrated response. We very much believe that similar concepts can be applied to the physical world, but the unique thing about the physical world, is that it has defined boundaries, right? People behave in accordance with their environment. So, how do we take the lessons learned in cyber security over 10 to 15 years, and apply them to that physical world? I also believe that physical and cyber security are converging. So, are there things that we know in the physical world because of how we approach the problem? That can be a leading indicator of a threat in either the physical world or the digital world. What many people don't understand is that for some of these cyber security hacks, the first weak link is physical access to your network, to your data, to your systems. How do we actually help you get an eye on that, so you already have some context when you notice it in the digital realm. >> So, go back to the two examples you sited earlier, the two shooting examples. Could those have been prevented or mitigated in some way using the type of technology you're building? >> Yeah, I hate to say that you could ever prevent an incident like that. Everyone wants us to do better. Our goal is to get a better sense predicatively of the leading indicators that tell you you have a problem. So, because we're fundamentally looking at patterns of people and flow, I want to know when a normal random environment starts to disperse in a certain way, or if I have a bottle neck in my environment. Because if then I have that type of incident occur, I already know where my hotspots are, where my pockets of risk are. So, I can address it that much more efficiently from a response perspective. >> So if people are moving quickly away from a venue, it might be and indication that there's something wrong- >> It could be, Yeah. That demands attention. >> Yeah, when you go to a baseball game, or when you go to work I would imagine that you generally have a certain pattern of behavior. People know conceptually what those patterns are. But, we're the first effort to bring them data to prove what those patterns are so that they can actually use that data to consistently re-examine their operations, re-examine their security from a staffing perspective, from a management perspective, to make sure that they're using all the data that's at their disposal. >> Seems like there would be many other applications beyond security of this type of analysis. Are you committed to the security space, or do you have broader ambitions? >> Are we committed to the security space is a hundred percent. I would say the number one reason why people join our team, and the number one reason why people call us to be customers is for security. There's a better way to do things. We fundamentally believe that every ball park, every university, every corporate campus, needs a better way. I think what we've seen though is exactly what you're saying. As we built our software, for security in these venues, and started with an understanding of people and flow, there's a lot that falls out of that right? How do I open gates that are more effective based on patterns of entry and exit. How do I make sure that my staffing's appropriate for the number of people I have in my environment. There's lots of other contextual information that can ultimately drive a bottom line or top line revenue. So, you take a pro sports venue for example. If we know that on a 10 degree colder day people tend to eagres more early in the game, how do we adjust our food and beverage strategy to save money on hourly workers, so that we're not over staffing in a period of time that doesn't need those resources. >> She's talking about the physical and the logical security worlds coming together, and security of course has always been about data, but 10 years ago it was staring at logs increasing the machines are helping us do that, and software is helping us do that. So can you add some color to at least the trends in the market generally, and then maybe specifically what you're doing bringing machine intelligence to the data to make us more secure. >> Sure, and I hate to break it to you, but logs are still a pretty big part of what people are watching on a daily basis, as are video cameras. We've seen a lot of great technology evolve in the video management system realm. Very advanced technology great at object recognition and detecting certain behaviors with a video only solution, right? How do we help pinpoint certain behaviors on a specific frame or specific camera. The only problem with that is, if you have people watching those cameras, you're still relying on humans in the loop to catch a malicious behavior, to respond in the event that they're notified about something unusual. That still becomes a manual process. What we do, is we use data to watch not only cameras, but we are watching your cameras, your Wi-Fi, access control. Contextual data from public transit, or weather. How do we get this greater understanding of your environment that helps us watch everything so that we can surface the things that you want the humans in the loop to pay attention to, right? So, we're not trying to remove the human, we're trying to help them focus their time and make decisions that are backed by data in the most efficient way possible. >> How about the concerns about The Surveillance Society? In some countries, it's just taken for granted now that you're on camera all the time. In the US that's a little bit more controversial. Is what your doing, do you have to be sensitive to that in designing the tools you're building? >> Yeah, and I think to Dave's question, there are solutions like facial recognition which are very much working on identifying the individual. We have a philosophy as a company, that security doesn't necessarily start with the individual, it starts with the aggregate. How do we understand at an aggregate macro level, the patterns in an environment. Which means I don't have to identify Paul, or I don't have to identify Dave. I want to look for what's usual and unusual, and use that as the basis of my response. There's certain instances where you want to know who people are. Do I want to know who my security personnel are so I can dispatch them more efficiently? Absolutely. Let's opt those people in and allow them to share the information they need to share to be better resources for our environment. But, that's the exception not the norm. If we make the norm privacy first, I think we'll be really successful in this emerging GDPR data centric world. >> But I could see somebody down the road saying hey can you help us find this bad guy? And my kids at camp this week, This is his 7th year of camp, and this year was the first year my wife, she was able to sign up for a facial recognition thing. So, we used to have to scroll through hundreds and hundreds of pictures to see oh, there he is! And so Deb signs up for this thing, and then it pings you when your son has a picture taken. >> Yeah. And I was like, That's awesome. Oh. (laughing) >> That's great until you think about it. >> But there aren't really any clear privacy laws today. And so you guys are saying, look it, we're looking at the big picture. >> That's right. >> But that day is coming isn't it? >> There's certain environments that care more than others. If you think about universities, which is where we first started building our technology, they cared greatly about the privacy of their students. Health care is a great example. We want to make sure that we're protecting peoples personal data at a different level. Not only because that's the right thing to do, but also from a regulatory perspective. So, how do we give them the same security without compromising the privacy. >> Talk about Bottom line. You mentioned to us earlier that you just signed a contract with a sports franchise, you're actually going to help them, help save them money by deploying their resources more efficiently. How does your technology help the bottom line? >> Sure, you're average sporting venue, is getting great information at the point a ticket is scanned or a ticket is purchased, they have very little visibility beyond that into the customer journey during an event at their venue. So, if you think about again, patterns of people and flow from a security perspective, at our core we're helping them staff the right gates, or figure out where people need to be based on hot spots in their environment. But, what that also results in is an ability to drive other operational benefits. Do we have a zone that's very low utilization that we could use as maybe even a benefit to our avid fans. Send them to that area, get traffic in that area, and now give them a better concession experience because of it, right? Where they're going to end up spending more money because they're not waiting in line in the different zone. So, how do we give them a dashboard in real time, but also alerts or reports that they can use on an ongoing basis to change their decision making going forward. >> So, give us the company overview. Where are you guys at with funding, head count, all that good stuff. >> So, we raised a seed round with some great Boston and Silicon Valley investors a year ago. So, that was Glasswing is a Boston AI focused fund, has been a great partner for us, and Inovia which is Canada's largest VC fund recently opened a Silicon Valley office. We just started raising a series A about a week ago. I'm excited to say those conversation have been going really well so far. We have some potential strategic partners who we're excited about who know data better then anyone else that we think would help us accelerate our business. We also have a few folks who are very familiar with the large venue space. You know, the distributed campuses, the sporting and entertainment venues. So, we're out looking for the right partner to lead our series A round, and take our business to the next level, but where we are today with five really great branded customers, I think we'll have 20 by the end of next year, and we won't stop fighting 'till we're at every ball park, every football stadium, every convention center, school. >> The big question, at some point will you be able to eliminate security lines? (laughing) >> I don't think that's my core mission. (laughing) But, optimistically I'd love to help you. Right, I think there's some very talented people working on that challenge, so I'll defer that one to them. >> And rough head count today? >> We have 23 people. >> You're 23 people so- >> Yeah, I headquartered in Boston Post Office Square. >> Awesome, great location. So, and you say you've got five customers, so you're generating revenue? >> Yes >> Okay, good. Well, thank you for coming in The Cube >> Yeah, thank you. >> And best of luck with the series A- >> I appreciate it and going forward >> Yeah, great. >> All right, and thank you for watching. Paul Gillin and I will be back right after this short break. This is The Cube from MIT Chief Data Officer Information Quality Conference in Cambridge. We'll be right back. (electronic music)

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

(click) >> Stu: Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and this is a special on-the-ground here at the VTUG: Summer Slam 2019. It's the 16th year of the event and unfortunately it's actually the final event. I've been to a few of these in Maine. I've been to many more of them at the Winter Warmer at Gillette Stadium and welcoming back to the program someone that's been to many more of these that I have, Chris Collotti, who's a principal technologist today at Cohesity but you know, who is doing many other jobs and actually used to live here in New England, southern New Hampshire before. >> Chris: That's right. Chris, welcome back. >> Chris: Thank you, good to see you as always. >> Yeah, give us a little bit of your history with these events and you know, what you've been seeing at you know, user groups and regional events and what brought you back for the final one. >> So this one was interesting cause even last night when I showed up for the night before, I think I knew everybody in the room, it was all hugs and you know, it's just, it's all about the people, I mean, this is all the same people that we've had up here. But, yeah, I grew up in southern New Hampshire, since moved to Tennessee five years ago but I was actually at another event before this and when we found it was the last one, well, Cohesity has always sponsored it but I actually decided to fly over here, being the last one cause knowing the Harneys really well and see all you guys it's just, it's kind of an odd thing to have the curtain go down. >> Yeah, you talk about the people and communities, Chris, I think back to the earliest days that I came to this event I'm like, there's that guy on stage, he's almost always wearing a Patriots jersey there and >> (laughs) I did make that famous. >> Figuring out it was I believe P90x and some of the other things there so, you know, what's the workout regime today? >> Uh, this morning I actually jacked up my neck, um, back in to lifting heavy a little bit but yeah, it was always great to be the guy who always came up on stage and always had a Brewsky jersey on or something. I remember the one year that someone told me they were practicing that year and I was in the middle of the presentation and I was, you know, conflicted on what to do but, um, no I think it's always been good to come back and talk, not just about technology, but I've had so many conversations over the years about where my career's gone and the changes and it was always that opportunity a couple times a year to figure out what changed for everybody. And even now, I mean, there's guys that I've seen that have different shirts on that we're, you know, I have one different from last year when I was at the Winter Warmer. >> Yeah, 16 years it's safe to say almost everyone here has changed what logo they had here. Many of the companies >> We've lost a little more hair, we've got a little more gray. >> So a lot of changes. One thing I tell you, 16 years has been a good run for the Patriots over the last 16 years >> People don't like us when we talk about that for some reason >> We're here in New England, we're allowed to talk about it. >> That's true, that's true. >> At this event, Chris, it's The Cube, you always like talking about sports and if they don't like this piece of it that's all right but, you know, I tell you talking to the vendors here, they're always hiring, like, SEs, technical people, you know, if they understand that latest in technology, usually they can find a job here. What else are you seeing? What are some of the you know, kind of in-demand jobs, of course, you know, the space that your company is playing in, data, is at the center of so much of what we talk, >> Absolutely. Data protection, data management, is a super hot space. >> Yep. I think, I've definitely seen a lot of, all the new companies are always hiring SEs, right? They got to get their sales up and running. For Cohesity, it's a bit similar. I mean, we took over another couple of floors in one of the other buildings in San Jose, which is great, the growth is unbelievable. For people who don't know, you know, we've got a truck rolling around the country that John Hildebrand and I personally, pretty much built over the course of a couple a months, but I think that speaks to it. There's all this stuff happening and everybody's trying to find a different way to get out in front of customers, right, whether it's a salesperson, whether it's the marketing, whether it's creative videos or something else and we're always trying to figure out what's the next, well, not even technical ability, but what's just the next ability you want to hire, right, is it a coder, is it, I mean, we always have developers, we're always hiring developers, but around here, I've been out of the area so much I'm really not sure, like what the hotbed is right now around the Boston area and southern New Hampshire. >> Boston's such a hotbed lately for, you know, everything that's going in IoT, of course, Cloud's having an impact, those people that hadn't been to the Seaport District, oh my gosh, it's great to see those buildings go up. >> Oh yeah. >> You know, not just, you know, Red Hat put in a big facility there, AWS and Amazon, of course, has a strong presence, but between Cambridge and Boston there's so much growth here. Chris, want to give you the kind of final word, as you've been at more of these events than many people, you know, what's it like to see kind of the end of an era and any final memories you have from these shows. >> The only, and I've been talking about this memory, and you may remember this one, and Ed Hartley would too, I think, Tex, he will, when my Challenger broke down. Were you here for that one, when I pulled into Gritty's? That's my worse memory of these but it's the one that always comes up when I come back and everybody saw it on the flatbed driving by, you know, Luigi and everybody. What made it interesting was a horrible situation for me because I drove up here but it speaks to the community because everybody ran out to ask what happened, do you need a ride home, what's going on? And I do think the Harneys have done such an incredible job over the years just bringing all these people together. It's a little bit sad I think, you know, my wife came up for this, Julie actually flew up because she knows everybody and being the last one. She also won't turn down lobster, at all. I'm happy for them though, I think, a lot's happened in their lives in the last couple years and to finally get down to Florida and spend more time down there, I'm happy for them, I think it's great, I think they've done a, they've left a legacy, really I think, I don't think anybody can match up here. >> The intersections of great information, great people and you throw in >> Great food. a great New England Lobsterfest, you really can't go wrong with that, Chris, thank you so much for sharing the update. Always great to catch up with you. >> Yeah, great seeing you again. We'll see you tonight at the bake. >> All right and we'll see Chris and many others at VMWorld later this year as well as lots of other shows. Be sure to check out thecube.net. I'm Stu Miniman and as always, thanks for watching. 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>> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is special On the Ground of theCUBE here at the VTUG Summer Slam 2019. We've had the pleasure of knowing the VTUG team for quite awhile back actually, when it was the New England VMUG was when I started attending. When it switched to the VTUG at Gillette Stadium's when we started doing theCUBE there. And happy to bring back to the program first, Chris Harney, who is the one who created this as a true user event. And joining him is his wife Dawn Harney, who we know is behind the scenes organizing all of this event. So, Dawn and Chris, thank you so much for joining us and thank you for sharing this community and educational process with all of us. >> Thanks Stu, it's been a pleasure. >> All right, so, Chris, we really want this, it's a celebration. Sixteen years; back in 2003 the number one movie of the year was actually Finding Nemo. Of course we waited a long time for there. It goes without saying that all of us were a little bit younger. And boy, in those days, I started working with VMR in 2002, so that journey of virtualization was real early. There was no cloud talking we had kind of the XSP's and some of the earlier things. But so much has changed, and what I have loved is this journey that the users that are attending here. We're actually here in the Expo hall, and if you look, why are there no people in here right now? Because they are all in the break out sessions understanding what are the skill sets that they need today and tomorrow to help them in their journey; virtualization, cloud, DevOps, all of these changes there. Chris, you started this as a user to help share with your peers, so, we've had you on the program many times, bring us back. >> Yeah, so think back to 2003. There was no way to share information. There's no Google, no YouTube, no Facebook groups, Meetups, no Game of Thrones. >> We had to go to books and stuff like that. >> Exactly. >> Read the paper. >> So white papers, those were the big deal. You had the Microsoft books that were two inches thick and glossy. >> Yeah, I wonder how many of our younger audience would know the acronym RTFM? Read The Fine Manual please, is what we're doing. Dawn, this event, as I said, we've been at the winter event at Gillette Stadium, you brought in some of the Patriot players we've had the pleasure of interviewing. This Summer event is epic. I know people that come from very long distances to swim in the community, get the information. There's a little bit of lobster at the end of the day. >> There's a lot of lobster at the end of the day. >> So give us the community that you look to help build and foster, and what this event has meant to you over the years. >> For me it's really a place for everybody in the community to come together and share their knowledge with their peers. Something may work for me maybe it will work for you. Let's get together and talk about it. The best way to learn something is from somebody that may have done it, or done it, messed it up, learned something, like to share it with you. So, it really is about working with your peers, learning something from your sponsors and all these companies that you work with everyday. What's new, what's going on. So this is the place to go to get all that. >> Wait, Dawn, I thought you weren't a tech person. >> I'm not a tech person. >> That answer was spot on because one of the things I loved about the virtualization community, is we were all learning in the early days. And it required a little bit of work. There's this theory known as the IKEA effect. Sometimes if you actually help build it a little bit, you actually like it a little bit more. And this community really epitomizes that in the virtualization community and cloud. We've been talking about cloud now for a decade but it's still relatively early days on how this multi-hybrid cloud fits together, how operations are changing, so, Chris, bring us through a little bit of that arc. >> Well, I'll think about it, back in 2003, there was only VMwire. There was only one virtualization platform, if you didn't use VMwire, you were doing bare metal Windows install or Unix install on physical servers. Well, back when we changed, there was Hyper-V, that was coming out, AWS was just coming out, so that's when we kind of made the jump from just being a VMwire user to a virtual technology. So we could talk about the cloud, we could share those experiences and have that same journey together, and hopefully learn and lead, get smarter together as a group, you can learn faster as a group than you can by yourself. >> Yeah, and as we know, Chris, and we've talked about this, the IT industry is never "Hey, give me a clean "sheet of paper and we'll start everything." We know it is additive and all of these things go together, so cloud did not obviate the need for virtualization, so all of these things go together, and how do I make sure as my job doesn't get completely eliminated or, I was talking to somebody who said "If I've been doing the same thing for 10 years, "will I be out of a job?" They said, "Well hopefully you really really like "what you're doing cause if you think "you can keep doing what you're doing, "that is all you will ever be able to do." And I thought that was a very poignant comment. >> Yeah, Matt Broberg's talk this morning about what's your next job going to be, what skillsets do you need to be relevant in 10 years, and it's the same thing, I mean we said the same thing 10, 15 years ago. You can't be a Windows admin anymore, you can't be a VMwire admin anymore, you can't be a cloud admin anymore in five years. >> Yeah, so Dawn, give our audience a little bit of the scope of this event, as I said, I know people that have flown in from the Carolinas, from Colorado, from all over, from California and the like, 16 years of this event, this community is not just New England, it really has had a broad impact. >> Right, and it's huge, people plan their vacations around this, I've had people come from Europe, they fly over here, stay in the state of Maine, they go to L.L. Bean, they do all those things because they plan their vacation, they know they need to be here for the VTUG event, so it's meant a lot, because you do get so many different variety of people, you have the sponsors, you have the end users, you have media, you have bloggers, you have pretty much just everybody comes together to really be that community, so it's meant a lot to me, it's been a long 16 years but it's meant a lot. >> All right, so the question people are asking, this is the final VTUG, so no more winter event at Gillette, this is the final event tonight at Gritty's, so explain to us how that happened. >> It is the final event, 16 years, we're all getting older, it's bittersweet, but we've just realized that it takes a lot of time to put these together, it takes a lot of sponsors, it takes a lot of users, the users continue to come, but unfortunately the sponsors pay for it, and really don't have that following with the sponsors that we used to have, unfortunately. >> There are a lot more events, there are a lot more ways to find customers, so they're going to the meetups and they're doing their own events. >> Yeah, to your opening point Chris, 16 years ago it was much tougher to find sources. Now the challenge we have is there's too many options out there, there are too many events, trust me, I go to too many events, but this one has always been one that we've always looked forward, so please from the community, want to say thank you so much, it has always been one of our favorite things to kick off the year with when we do the winter one, and the summer one, I've made this trip a couple of times, it is a little warm in here, I think brings back to the roots of this event, remember it was four or five years ago it was 110 degrees out, and then you switched to this facility, so of course the air conditioning decides to go out, because we know in IT, sometimes things break. >> Start in the heat, end in the heat. >> So Chris, want to give you the final word for the final VTUG. >> You know, I'm just very proud and happy with this community, it truly is a community, it wasn't us, it wasn't theCUBE, it wasn't the vendors, it was everyone working together to make a community that helped each other out, so thanks to everyone. >> Chris and Dawn, thank you so much, we're happy to be a small piece of this community, and look forward to staying in touch with you in your future endeavors. Thanks so much, I'm Stu Miniman, we have a full day of coverage here, keynote speaker, some of the users that have traveled around, really focusing on the community here at the VTUG Summer Slam, as always, thank you for watching theCUBE.

>> live from Boston, Massachusetts. It's the queue covering your red hat. Some twenty nineteen. You buy bread. >> Oh, good afternoon. And welcome back as the Cube continues our live coverage. Exclusive coverage of Redhead Summit twenty nineteen here in Boston. Some nine thousand strong attendees here. Key notes have been jam packed, but we just finished our afternoon session not too long ago again. Very well attended. Dynamic speakers stew Minimum. John Walls. We're joined now by Lee Dae. Who's the Vice president of Marketing Communications? That Red Hatley. Good to see you. I see you and Michael brats, who was a teacher of English as a second language of Franklin Middle School in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Mr B. Good to see you, sir. And that's what your your students call you, Mr B. Is that right? What they do, we saw that way. Might just follow through on that tradition right now. All right, let's talk about why the two of you are here together. And I know you're Michael School has an interesting history that they've been kind of following somewhat independently, you know, in terms of open source and work. And only you found them through your marketing work some really very interesting. Two avenues that you have on your platform. So tell me a little bit about how how you got here. And then we'LL get into it after that. >> Okay, Great. So Red Hat has a program called co lab and this sir program where we go into schools and we teach kids how to code. So we do things like circuit boards and programming on raspberry pies. Kids have program raspberry pies into cameras to go around cities and take pictures. And we have had collapse in many cities, and we hadn't hit the Midwest. And we chose Minneapolis. And we found, fortunately, Franklin Middle School in that great group of girls and two awesome teachers that are very inspirational on, So the relationship didn't stop it. That week of coal lab, we have stayed in touch, and here at the summit, we've showcased the work in the police ship that we have together. Yeah, >> and I know a lot of the focus that the program is toward, uh, appealing to younger ladies. You know, young girls trying to get them or involved in stem education. We just had the two award winners for the women and open source with us just a few moments ago. So this is Ahh, a company wide. Durant wants a directive initiative that you said, Okay, we we have a responsibility, and we think we have a role here to play >> absolutely well. It's important to us to see the next generation of technologists. And when you feel like women, especially young women sometimes feel like technology is inaccessible to them, and they're not often in technology programs and university. So it's our initiative. Teo help young people feel comfortable and good about technology and that they can actually code. And they can actually do things that they didn't think were possible to them previously. >> So, Mr B. Help us understand how this fixing curriculum and give us a little bit of the story of how it went down. >> Well, it's funny asset. I mean, this opportunity for us is a home run out the part because we're a steam school science, technology, engineering, arts in math. So today, not only did our students perform on the main stage a song that we were able to collaborate right and go through a >> whole production process >> with music were also able to on there right now as we speak down running a booth, building circuits, presenting those circuits, presenting those circuit boards, and collaborating altogether down there with attendees of this conference right now. So, I mean, we're covering every one of those steam components, basically, in one project, one large scale technology project. So this opportunity homeland out the >> part. >> I love that because that was the first thing I went to mind. I heard photography involved. You say steam and so much, you know, we can't just have tech for Tex take. You know, I worried I studied engineering and, like, things like design and those kind of things right weren't in the curriculum. But you know what? I went to school. Creative side. Yeah. How important is that? You kind of get especially think young people get the enthusiasm going. That creative side would, you know, get them deeper into it. >> Well, you know, I always look att, individual students. Everybody has their individual gifts and talents, and it's about, you know, finding those leadership skills within each one of those gifts. And so within this, you're able to find someone that might be more creative in one area, maybe more technical and more, you know, logic orientated in other areas. So with that, you're able to just have Mohr a broader spectrum to be ableto find people's individual gives in towns and for them to in the collaboration also contribute their gifts and talents in different avenues instead of it just being one lane like just this part of technology or just this part of production and just this part of design were able to kind of integrate all of that into one thing and to take it one step further. After we did the, um So Cola came out with their mobile container to US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and it was right downtown, right outside of where our football team players brand new stadium Super Bowl is is there two years ago now And, um, so with our students being there after we got done with that, that cold lamb, when they were asking us, you know, to take it a step further in the classroom are students actually designed with our future boys Lo Bill Future Girls logo a card and then presented it to Red hat and they ended up printing off the cars and they were able to use it to build the circuit. So we weren't just using the coal lab cars. But we also got to design our own, too. >> So, you know, you said future boy's feet. So that's that's a new organization, the club that you formed the school Future Boys and Girls Club for the express purpose of what? >> Well, so we actually tie in all different content areas into assault. Obviously, this is just the future girls that are here in Boston and did the technology side with us and that parts of Spain the cold because it's an initiative for girls in technology but of the future boys and girls, uh, overall program. We encompass a lot of different continent as we integrate performing arts with academics and all the components of esteem school, um, into learning. And we do interest based learning. We do project based learning, and basically, you know, kids are learning a lot without realizing how much they're really learning, you know, and we make it fun and relevant. But we also teach the leadership skills in the hard work that goes in with it. And I mean, even just coming out here to Boston for this, uh, for this opportunity here in this summit, I mean, the amount of work that it took for the students to get here and the process, the ups and downs, especially with middle school students. You know, the marathon, not a sprint mentality, you know, has been absolutely amazing. >> Good luck with that eye. Well, >> I always say I >> haven't had a bad day yet. Just an overstimulating one. >> So lately, you know, we love having stories on the Cube and especially tech for good is something that we always get a good dose here at Red had some it. You know what else can share some of the open tour stories that were going on around the event? >> We're really thrilled. Today. We're launching our newest open source story, which is about agriculture and which we choose topics with open source stories that are important every everyone so medicine, helping to find cures for cancer, even our government and artificial intelligence. And today it's about open hardware and open agriculture. And we're launching a new film this afternoon. >> It's all future farming, right? Right. That that's the viewing today. >> Yes, and we had someone showing their their farming computer on our stage, and it's actually done in Summit >> Show for today. So you've got the open studio, you know, working and you have a number of projects. I assume this fell into one of those slots right where you were Using one of those platforms to feature great work of future farming is another example of this, But But you have some, I think, pretty neat things that you've created some slots that give you a chance to promote open source in a very practical and very relatable way. >> Yes, exactly. So our Opens our open studio is our internal creative community agency. But we do get ideas from everyone around, you know, around the world. So wait, get ideas about open agriculture, eh? I, uh, what we can do with kids and programming with kids. And then we take those ideas into the open studio and it is a meritocracy. So the best ideas when and that's what we choose to bring to life. And we have designers and writers and filmmakers and strategist and a whole group of people that make up the open studio inside a red hat >> And you've done a new feature, Frank. >> Yes. So, yeah. We work together to create the container that doctor be mentioned and to create the container. And then we work. When >> you have you >> have. You know, one of the girls Taylor actually taught me just now I am not technical. I will just give that caveat. But they they make, they made circuit boards, and they're making circuit boards here. Some issue and mine doesn't work. So don't That's okay. Just, basically were you can see here we have different designs that are attendees can choose from, and then we have electrical tape that you are sorry, competent and an led light. And so the idea is to toe form a circuit and to have led light item the card. That's great. So one of the one of the girls actually taught me how to make it, but I think I didn't follow >> her. Instructed you to go back to school. Wouldn't be the first time that I would have fallen apart either on that. So where Michael, Where would you be now without red hat? Or, you know, you were doing your own thing right independently. But now you've received some unexpected support. Where would you be? You think was out that help. And how much of a difference have they made >> you? Well, let me tell you. I mean, you know, when we look at it being an after school program, the amount of enrichment and opportunities that redhead has created for us has been, honestly, just unbelievable. It's been first class, and we're so appreciative. I mean, even even in our meeting with the future girls last night, we just talked about gratitude and how grateful we are for it. I mean, when you look at this circuit, this is an abbreviated version of what the students actually participate in. This is, you know, just a one one, uh, one led light and a small formation our students were doing. I think there were seven or eight on ours. And so the amount of learning in the modern opportunity that this presented to him not only have they learned how to do the technical piece of it, they've learned howto present. They've learned howto speak and present. They've learned howto call lab, collaborate, work together on huge levels, and I mean, they learned what they can take on an airplane, you know, coming out here. So I mean, the amount of things that through the learning process of, like, eye color, large scale technology project that we've been participating since October since they brought the mobile lab out to Minneapolis. I called a large scale tech, you know, technology project, and going through that whole process has been huge. And let me tell you this as a teacher and those that are parents you're competing was so much in this day and age to keep kids attention, right? I mean, everything is swiped the phone every which way and everything. So instant gratification. So for students to actually engage in this cola program for to be set up so well from Red Hat and to actually stick with it and stay engaged with it really speaks volumes denying the program. But also, you know, our students staying engaged with it, but they've they've stuck with it, they've been engaged, and it's very interest based, the project I've seen it through. But then also the renewed opportunities and being ableto one of the things on our rubric as the teacher is toe expand and extend the learning I don't mean to be long winded, but we wanted, you know, expand on the learning that's already taken place and being out here, it's just it's just a continuous continuation of the learning, you know, not just one level going to next level going on next long light, next level. And that's that, honestly, is where the real learning really takes place. >> So, Michael, you know, from its very nature being an open source company, you know, Red Hat talks a lot about it. Ecosystem in community. If I five red right in the notes, they're you know, your student really getting the value and understanding of community. There's something about they wrote a song. Talk >> about that. We become stronger. Yeah, that's the name of the song is we become stronger And you know what the idea was. We were looking at the power point for this summer and for this summit, and in that there was, uh there was a phrase that said ideas become stronger and that's the collaboration. And so we started tossed around ideas and things like that were like, Well, we liked the idea of stronger, and then we're like, Well, this is more of the coal lab experience, not just the ideas of the technical side. And that's why we become stronger. And yet we developed a song specifically for this summit. I think you go top for, you know. >> Yeah, the performance was amazing. >> Yeah, you don't want >> one top forty, to be honest with you, but no. I mean, uh, you know, and that was another whole another phase, you know, like, I talked about the steam side of the school. Um uh, integrating the arts in and the whole production side of that, you know, it was a lot of work and another project, but it was another area of content that we're able to integrate into this project, and, uh, and we're able to perform it on stage. So, like I said, they literally just got off stage performing. We become stronger singing the whole production of song a dance routine choreography and then went straight to the boot to now present circuits and teach attendees here at the summit howto build a circuit. I don't know how much better can get in that. >> That is so cool. That's great. Now is this the song that you recorded in the same studio. Lenny Kravitz. Atlantis More. Tell me you didn't like that, huh? >> I mean, you know, it's all right. >> That's good. That's great. Congratulations, Roy. On this collaboration, it's really it is exciting to see what they're doing to inspire young people on Michael. I can tell you like your job. Don't you love it? I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, keep up the great work. And we appreciate the time here. And I look forward to hearing that song. Maybe if it hits, you know, the ice store. You know, Apple Store, maybe, You know, maybe good things will happen, right? Hey, you never know. She's Vice president marketing. We're gonna figure this. I'm checking out. I tio go by weight, become stronger. Thanks, Michael. We appreciate Lee. Thank you for having me back with more. Here on the Cube. You're watching our coverage, right? Had some twenty nineteen, but

>> live from Mountain View, California. It's the queue covering definite create twenty nineteen. Brought to you by Cisco. >> Welcome back to the cave. Lisa Martin with John Barrier on our first day of two days of coverage of Cisco Definite Create twenty nineteen at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. John Eyre. Please welcome to iniquitous and directors solutions, architecture and Devil Box from Liberty Technology. Tony, Welcome. >> How are you? >> Good, thanks for Thanks for having us tell our audience a little bit about liberty technology before we get into the community. What you doing your breakout session? >> Not a problem. The re technology is a company. Where? MSP company down in Griffin, Georgia. And so we handle a lot of a lot of clients are either public sector cities, all different types of all the different verticals. So well. And so do you have a client? A customer out there that needs needs an extra arm into it. We're there for them. >> So your basement of Georgia, Which means that how warm it is in here today Outside should be nothing for you right >> now. Tell me about >> well outside >> now, since there is no humanity I like it back home in few minutes, >> Californians were babies. >> Yeah, Joni, Public Sector. We've done a lot of interviews of public sector folks with their towns and cities, air, ground rules, municipalities, cities, their I t light. And then they don't have the Dev ops expertise, but clouds a perfect fit for them. But they have a lot of certain characters. Whether it's email is very ephemeral. People come and go, So getting people collaborating in these distinct user groups that have different roles and responsibilities is a challenge. How are you guys solving that? Because there's something I know you guys have worked on. There's a challenge that's only Republicans for enterprises do. How do you bring people that are distinct user populations that have an application or roll or use case into a collaborative, horizontally scaleable >> system? We show Be honest way. Go in there and we go in there and we discover as to what they're doing now, what are their pain points? What do they want? Change where they want to go and then we show them the collaboration started. We shone like what makes team's way? Show him all of the, uh, meetings room devices, things like that. And then not just on the collaboration side, but also if there helping with three, six, five their security than Rocky. That's how we bring. That's how we bring collaboration intothe public >> about the Cisco dynamic we've been covering definite create since it started. Definite. Now it's just go live couple years, seeing kind of a new vibe and new mojo going on with that within the Cisco ecosystem of actually coding stuff up, whether it's slinging AP eyes together or creating new ones. New capabilities. How is it changed the delivery in performance of the customers? Because this is not just your old school Cisco networking company. Yeah, they got APS. Things are connected. Date is moving from Point A to point B. All right, but he's kind of integration challenges. Kind of seamless program ability is the core theme here. What's your reaction? Thoughts on all this? >> No. >> Well, first off, this is my first definite create. I've been to other Siskel lives have not been too. Don't think great yet so so far, I'm enjoying this a lot. It's I like the tight niche, the community style of this of this event I'm sorry. Go back, >> Tio. Go live a little creations that are going on here. Very community already. Kind of be open source projects. Yeah, people talking to each other, a lot of hallway conversations. But it's a kind of a new kind of collaborative model that customers are now getting exposed to write. This is something >> new. I mean, it is. It's new, and I'm finding a lot times where a lot of customers and clients they've heard about it, but they don't know yet. So it's our job to actually get them to adopt to it and and also adapt to it as well. So it's almost like how we have our own like community here. For definite. It's almost how can we take that structure and show it to our clients >> and translation involved Kind of kind of taper down the excitement, maybe, or keeping up questions for you people watching that aren't here. A definite what's that? What's the vibe here? Like, what's some of the cools? Things you've seen and heard are something Well, the keynote was >> great either. Was amazing Kino how they actually showed how, especially with the Iraqi had when Mandy went while I was out there talking about from the small campus to the festival and to an actual >> there's a radio >> that was a great use of incredible, especially with like big Stadium and how John McDonough came out and showed about how there was a fight on the field with you. Yet no one saw it, but yet then, when they went through the actual demonstrate, the actual video were like, Oh, yeah, this's amazing how it's almost like it was like the minority report way. You're already >> exactly Dan. Yes, the data out there, >> all that data and they just machine learning A I just watching people, seeing what they're doing, kind of almost like predicting what they're going to do >> and every little bit, actually, a little bit. I agree with you. I thought they did a great job with that, Especially coming off the heels of Coachella and showing how they can enable Cisco enable developers for social folks to set up secure networks of different sizes and also be able to use in real time machine learning a eye to evaluate what's going on the offensive. And that was a very cool, real world example of what they showed. Leveraging machine learning, identifying. There's there's an issue here. There's an altercation. They surprised at a sports event, right? And deploying those. It has a lot security, many sports events, though I thought it was all that the security was just casually walking up to fight. That's another thing >> that you would slow >> down. But you don't know what >> you're right. >> And it is so many more etiquette rules now at events, whether it's, you know, hate crimes or just, you know, just violent language fights. Also, everyone sees those that write that events. But this actual now, surveillance tech out there. You know, you could tell the guys that how many beers he's had kicks in, You know, >> we're gonna have something where they can actually check out someone like Heat signature. They can't tell how >> much he's going to explode. Is the Red Sox going to blow the lead again? A. Having a good year? Well, you know, they wanted last year Yankee fans, so you would be off the charts now. Philly fans, a whole other story. I don't. Okay. My digress. You've >> got a breakout session. Sorry, John. A lightning session that's tomorrow Any time tomorrow. Tell us the title and what you're going to be talking about. >> Keisha, my title is orchestrate forty five percent. So >> we'LL just read the forty five percent correct Alright, Digging >> again tonight a little >> bit. I have a sly where we was actually Suzy. We actually did a presentation awhile back where she put up a slider, says where she talked about how fifty five percent of partners are creating APS and developing their own naps. So, way of liberty we saw that we were like, OK, what about the other forty five percent? So that's where that the idea came out too. Okay, let's I'll do a talk about how we orchestrate forty, forty five, forty five percent. So entails What I'm doing with that is that we actually have a platform called Consulate. Where there were that platform has the ability to integrate with multiple business processes. So we're connecting. We're integrating with connect allies with Iraqi doing eight about and so that I have it where that there'll be a trigger or Web hook from one my rocky cameras like emotion which will trigger which will create a ticket and connect allies so they can help out some help tasks service desk and then that which will also they get thrown into teams and click on the ticket and then also run commands and grab a snapshot from the camera. The right of the team's six teams >> fell by the Iraqi for a minute because we get a lot of hearing a lot of buzz about Muraki. It's not just wireless. It's not just what you might think it is, it seems to be connected tissue you meant. There's a great demo that added to she's showing around. They are with looking at network configuration. We're obviously to be connecting all of this together. What's your view on this? What's that? >> I for one, I love muraki. I run Rocky at home, so five the viol. Although the wireless is switching cameras and just that, it's it's one. Really. They have, like their own room platform that connects has all their devices connecting into the dashboard, and you could do so much with it that they're actually they're open up Now. The eyes, the web hooks this so much things that you can actually integrate with it. It's it's great, and it's the analytics that you get from it. >> And this is what you're talking about really about bringing these teams together through Webb Hooks for AP, eyes in through Morocco, the connected to direct and then allow the APS to be valuable, cross different groups >> very valuable, but then so that then you don't have it on. Engineer doesn't have have to touch different applications or devices. They get it all from one and from that one application, click and go to where you need to get got. >> So we're only on halfway through Day one of your first up that crate. But it sounds like you've already been exposed to so many things that I could see the wheels turning us without anticipating that you're going to be able to bring back to liberty. And that will really help drive. What you guys doing driving forward toward that customer engagement only, eh? Educate >> well, since it is, you know, it's like half day already on day one. There's still so much to see here. There's so much to see about Coyote. There's a bunch of workshops here about form Iraqi and the AP ice, which I want to join in and see what I can take out of that and bring it back. Um, you know, there's a bunch of stuff get on. So I want to gather all that and just be a sponge and then bring it back to liberty and say, Hey, this is what we can do. How can they fit into our business model? >> Awesome. Well, Tony, thank you so much for stopping by and talking with Jonah me on the program this afternoon. We appreciate it. Best of luck in your lightning session tomorrow as well. >> Thank you so much >> for John Ferrier. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching us on the Cube. Live from Cisco. Definite great. Twenty nineteen. Thanks for watching. >> No.

>> From Gillette Stadium, in Foxborough, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2019, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Hi I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE at VTUG Winter Warmer 2019 at Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots, AFC Champions week out from going to Super Bowl 53. Joining me is a user from the great state of Maine, Dawnna Pease, who is the Director of Computing Infrastructure and Services for the state of Maine, thank you for joining us. >> Yes, thank you. >> Alright so Dawnna, you've been to a few VTUGs, of course the Summer Fest, which is, you know it might not be quite as big, as the winter one, but it is known even broader, I've known people come from out of the country because there's a giant lobster bake at the end of the day. I've been a few times, but you know tell us, you've been to VTUG before, yes? >> We have, so I have been to many, especially in Maine. And this is probably our fourth or fifth one that I've broughten the team from the state of Maine here and I feel it's really crucial and important because it allows them to network, to talk with their peers and to look at the technologies of how we can provide services for the constituents of the state of Maine and for our services that we offer within our office. >> Yeah so we always love talking to the users, we love to be able to help you share with your peers what you've been learning and actually I've had lots of great government discussions over the last few years, even attended, I attended a public sector show in the cloud space last year, and it's always fascinating because people have a misconception when it comes to what it's like to be IT in government, so let's dig into that a little bit. Tell us a little bit about your role, your group, what's kind of under your purview. >> Sure, I've been in state government going on 33 years as a public servant, very proud of that. I have a great group and I am the Director of Computing Infrastructure Services and it's really directory services, Microsoft stack. We have VMWare environment that we been probably nine years now and we're just implementing SimpliVity our hyperconverged, and after extensive research on that, we really solidified and selected HPE SimpliVity because in state government we had a lot of aging servers that needed to be replaced as well as our VM environment which was 44 nodes and it was a huge investment so not only on the licensing, hardware, storage, the compute part as well. So lookin' at the hyperconverged that was just one of many of our technologies that we looked at. >> So Dawnna take us back, how long ago did you start looking at that initiative? >> Oh 18 months. >> Okay, and was it a single location, multiple locations, can you give us any, how many you know servers or VMs or locations that this solution was going to span? >> For me it was actually spannin' and takin' on many of our on-prem solutions that we have. Like our SQL environment, our application hostin', the one offs, we're bringin' into that. As well as upgrading our existing VM cluster. So it's really taken on and morphed even more. We have a lot of net new as that want to participate in this environment so for us it is literally like a cloud solution, but it's for within our own private cloud solution on that. >> And these were critical business productivity applications that you're talking about? >> Absolutely >> This wasn't a new project to do, you know, early days of hyper converged, it was like oh I'm doing desktop virtualization, let me roll this out. I mean you're talking about databases and applications. >> Absolutely so we run close to, little over 600 servers for virtual and physical, so when all said and done within our hyperconverged our goal is to really be under 60 physicals left within state government. And currently today we have probably over 400 in our virtual environment today. So we're really expanding that more and bringing the services all into one knowing that we're going to have compute network and everything in our storage will all be in this environment. Plus we have a legacy storage environment, so when you're thinking of your legacy storage environment and you're looking at your refreshment of hardware and all the licenses around that our return on investment was huge for the state of Maine. So it was literally the wise choice for us to do within state government for tax payers, saving money. Also for the state as a whole. >> I have to imagine in addition to kind of the Capex piece if you're saying going from 900 to 400 and looking to get down to 60, operationally hopefully it makes the jobs of you know you and your team, a little bit easier once things are up and running. And that's one of the promises of hyperconverged, is it should be that cloud layer, it should be almost invisible when you talk about, it's just a pool that my virtualization lives on but I don't need to touch and rack and stack stuff the way that I might have in the past. >> Exactly, exactly, good point on that. Also on that we've really taken a broad look at how we can leverage the cloud so from a disaster recovery aspect and not only havin' the site resilience between two data centers, but how we can leverage the cloud for that continuity aspect. So we're really broadening that and the team's doing a fabulous, excellent job at that. >> Are you doing the Cloud DR today or is that a future plan? >> That is future. >> Okay, going to leverage a public cloud as that Are you far enough down? >> Government. So we have Azure today and we have a government tenant on that so we will use that aspect within the government tenant as well. >> Great so primarily Microsoft applications, you've moved into hyperconverged and you leveraged the Azure government certified cloud pieces. >> Correct >> Okay, awesome, when you started going down this path did you have in your mind hyperconverged or is that, how did you end up on that type of solution? >> So no, we didn't. Doin' the research on that and lookin' at all options, and really doin' the research with that, hyperconverged was more of makin' sense from the return on investment and also from a ... I want to say the simplified fashion, like you said it's simple you want to make it not so complex, it provided everything within that environment, and it was really based on how we were structured today, the investment that we would need to do if didn't go down this path. And taking in, so we did go with the hyperconverged. >> In your previous environment were you using HPE for the servers or the storage? >> So we were HPE, we are an HPE shop. And we have VMC, we have Pure Storage, we have different aspects of our storage today that exist so lookin' at that as well, we had an investment that we either needed to upgrade, replace, and, or invest. >> What I was poking at a little bit is were you HPE before, was that part of the decision to buy SimpliVity which is part of the HPE family or was that not a major factor? >> It was not a major factor, I mean we were ... We have always been a HPE shop, however we had criteria we were lookin' at, so you know after doing the research and we had 15, we were lookin' at 15 vendors at the time. We narrowed it down to like eight, and out of that we really narrowed it down to two that were in the quadrant, in the Gartner quadrant. And in doing our own research and study and bringin' all the vendors in and everything and what we had already invested what we currently had, it really came out to SimpliVity as the choice. >> And your 18 months into this, you've got some Cloud DR in the future, how are things going? What have you learned so far, is there anything you would have done differently or any advice you'd give to your peers if they're starting to go down this path? >> Do the research, do the research, be very thorough in what you're lookin' at for your requirements. And you know not only the research but look at what you've already invested in and take that into consideration and what your return on investment, what you're looking for your return on investment because you need to look just past not only your hosting environment but it really goes into can your network support that environment? Do you need to upgrade your network, your storage aspects, licensing aspects of that as well? So it's a huge investment, however look at the money they already pay in. >> Yeah licensing, one of those things when you talk about that great reduction of servers, are you today or do you expect in the future some of those licensing costs from the database, the virtualization, will those actually be able to be scaled down? >> Absolutely, and that was part of our ROI as well. By a lot, you know and that is one of the benefits of the hyperconverged as well. Once you set that up and purchase the proper licenses, I mean like data center licenses, you can put in as many VMs as you need within that environment and that's important. So you're really just looking at your compute at that, what you need for storage and compute. >> Yeah, I'm curious just spoke, cause we have, we've worked with clients for years on that and often times I've got a ELA or I've got a multi-year contract there and I have to renegotiate it, has that gone smoothly? Have there been any bumps along the road or is it pretty straightforward that licensing can be a huge chunk of your budget and like oh great, I'm two years later and I'm going to save myself a lot of money. >> So I actually am the administrator of our enterprise agreement with Microsoft, had been for many years, so I know what we have. And so I work very closely with that and I as far as the licensing and what we have, so for the renewals, I will say it gets easier. I found that being consolidated because when the agencies own their IT, at the time, we had many enterprise agreements and that was more complex so if you can actually consolidate and go into one, we have one enterprise agreement, or under the three I would say, it's much more manageable on that. So I don't find that that's a show stopper on that, it's gotten easier over the years. Simplified, it's more simplified. >> It's great to hear that and actually Microsoft has made great strides, Microsoft today is not the Microsoft of fives years ago or 10 years ago. >> Correct, I would agree. >> So, Dawnna Pease, pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences and be sure to check out thecube.net for all the recordings from the VTUG Winter Warmer 2019 as well as all of the other shows. I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching theCUBE.

>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, if the queue covering Vita Winter warmer, twenty nineteen brought to you by Silicon Angle media. >> I'm stupid. And this is the cubes coverage of the V tug Winter warmer twenty nineteen here at Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots, and is my distinct pleasure to welcome to the program. Two time Super Bowl champion number fifty Patriots alumnae Rob Ninkovich. Rob may think you are doing great. Thanks for having awesome. You know, the team's a little bit of flutter. We brought, you know, one of the people here that help support the Patriots. The last two rings the Patriots had and you were on those teams, So yeah, >> it was, uh, you know, privileged and blessed to be on a couple Super Bowl winning teams. So >> did I hear right? Was the last one actually on your birthday to know that was the first >> one? That was really, really, really, really nice. >> Capable ring on your palm. My birthday. So your birthday's coming up here on February first, so >> I'll be the Big thirty five. Yeah, we'll have to sell me. I can't believe it. I'm almost seventy after seventy. >> Congratulations. Looking good and thank you. Feel good. Probably look out >> running climbing mountains. I'm gonna climb Mount Kilimanjaro with Chris Long here pretty soon in a month off. So I'll be in Africa raising money for water boys. So we'll be drilling for clean water, so it'll be cool. >> That's great. Yeah. I mean, let's hit on that. You know, you were you were drafted by the same. Believe you met your wife. Yeah. They're Southern Southern girls. Both of you are, you know, giving back to the community. Do a lot of charitable work. Would love to hear a little bit about that. >> Yeah. I mean, I think that the platform that athletes have is is tremendous. So if you can give back to your community, you know, that's that's one of the best things that I think an athlete can give back. And that's, you know, people that are in need and people that aren't as fortunate. So you know, for me, I work with Matt Light and the Light Foundation. So him on his board of directors and that basically brings kids in from troubled areas and backgrounds and they go into a camp and it's a four year program. So they start. And then they graduate, so to speak. When they get through high school and they're going into their college years, but it's a great program for trying to develop your skills. And you know, a lot of kids that don't have, you know, maybe a great family background that you know is a healthy background to where it's trying to bring kids together and show them some different things that could help them moving forward. And, you know, life skills that everyone needs. >> Yeah, this conference actually talk a lot about skills in career because and the technology field things were changing a lot. Now I've watched football. Most of my career were actually my season tickets. I can see across the field here and, you know, in your career, your eleven year career in the NFL changed a lot. I think you came into the NFL as an outside linebacker. And when you're here in the Patriots who switched the defensive end? No, you know what kind of things do you learn? And you know, how do you kind of have the mindset to say, like, Okay, well, this is the job and the skills and the things I'm looking to do. And now, like a weight, I need toe, you know, have a hand down and be facing off against some really big guys. >> Yes. So, I mean, I think the Toby the chameleon, so to speak and be able to change and adapt to your environment. I mean, that's what makes not just an athlete, but, you know, every every business person that can change with time and in with the trends of technology and how things were adapting over overtime, that's what's gonna continue your success. So if you stay, if you just one thing and you never want to change and you never adapt, you're goingto be overtaken by somebody else. So you have to have that mindset. When I arrived here with the Patriots, I knew that you had to be multiple. He had to continue toe, do different things with your career in position or else, you know, really, you don't stick around as long. So you know, for me, I was a defensive lineman, linebacker, special teams. You do it all, and it helps Not only your team, but it helps your career and, you know, have a long career that, >> yeah, not only do your job, but when you're called to do multiple jobs, you you're going to step in and do that. It kind of seems to be the Patriot. >> You have to. You have to. If you can't do the multiple job thing, it's This might not be the place. >> Yeah, So, you know, we just had, you know, one of the most amazing games and Patriot history that I think I've seen. I'm curious us now, an observer rather than player. You know what your thought looking at a game like that? You know, I know heart rates were a little bit high for those of us in New England, but, you know, it's really amazing win like that. >> Yeah. I mean, it goes to show you that the mental toughness and the that just never quit mentality is one of the main characteristics of this team this year in their story, you can't look at previous years or just you can't look att history. When it comes to football, it comes down. Who's going to play the best football in that particular day? And, you know, you look at what the defense has done so far. It's been tremendous going against the Chargers, who are a great team and you know, everyone was making the excuse of, you know, they travelled a lot in the time change was tough, but then them going on >> the road, >> which hadn't been a strong point form this year and getting a win and shutting out a team in the first half. The Chiefs that were really powerful and really explosive in one of the best in the NFL. It just goes to show you that, you know, in the playoffs, it's a completely different season. It's a new season. You've gotto just forget about what happened in the regular season. You know, moving on to this next game. I think that they just need to continue that high momentum and playing the way that they are playing, which is running the football, being tough and playing physical for four quarters. Being physical. That's that's what's going to win in this next one >> sixty minutes. And if it goes in over time, a little bit longer, >> you got it. Whatever it takes. >> Rob Ninkovich really appreciate you spending some time with that. Well, best of luck on Kilimanjaro this year. Exciting. Yeah, I know you do some social media. They're so sure people can follow along >> Yeah, I'll be on there. I got Instagram Nick five o. So And then I'm Niko. Five o for Twitter. So I'm out there. All right, all right. >> Thank you so much. And we, of course, are out there all the time. Go to the cube dot net to catch all the videos. Find me on Twitter. I'm just stew s to you and, uh, super pleasure to be able to have Rob Ninkovich. And thanks so much for the veto >> booth.

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

>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, if the queue recovering Vita Winter warmer, twenty nineteen Brought to you by Silicon Angle media. >> Hi. I'm stupid men. And this is the cubes coverage of V tug Winter warmer. Twenty nineteen here. A Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots. Happy to welcome to the program. A community member, Someone I've known for many years at this point. Jonathan Frappe here. Who's with V Brown bag? Thanks so much for joining us from >> Thanks for having me. >> All right, so, you know, I watched this event, and when it started, it was, you know, originally the V mug for New England. And then it became vey tug And one, there's some of the politics stuff which we don't need to go into, but part of it was virtual ization and cloud. And what's the interaction there and what will users have to do? Different. And part of that is jobs. And one of the reasons I really wanted to bring you on is, you know, you started out heavy in that virtual ization base and you've been going through those machinations. So maybe just give our audience a little bit about, you know, your background, some of the things skill sets. You've got lots of acronyms on your on your you know, resume as it is for certification. You've done. So let's start there. >> Sure. So my background. I started this help desk. I did Windows two thousand Active Directory, administration and Exchange Administration all on site and moved into Mohr server administration. And when the empire started to become a thing, I was like, Wow, this is This is a game changer and I need to sort of shift my skill set. I understand the applications of music. I've been supporting him. But virtualization is going to change change That so started to shift there and saw a similar thing with Public Cloud and automation a cz, That same sort of next step beyond infrastructure management. >> All right. And you've had a bunch of certification. The real off a few. You know what? Where are you today? What? What have you added gives a little bit of a timeline. >> My first certification was a plus which come to you seemingly has come around and joined the ranks of posting toe linked in for everybody. So a plus was my first one. EMC PM, CSC on Windows two thousand. Took a little bit of a break in back into it. Bcp five era so four, five years ago. Cem Cem. Other of'em were Certs NSX Cloud see Emma and most recently, the solution's architect associate for a Ws. >> OK, great, in when you look at the kind of virtual ization and cloud, it's not like you thirst, which one day and said, Okay, I no longer need the VM were stuff. I'm going to do the cloud tell us a little bit about you know what led you to start doing the cloud and you know how you you know how your roles that you've had and you know the skill set that you want to have for your career. You know how you look at those. >> So for me, it is about being able to support what my business is doing. And sometimes the right answer's going to be VM, where sometimes it's going to be physical. Sometimes it's going to be containers or public cloud, or, you know, new fancy buzzwords like server lists. And I've always in my career tried to support what where, what application we're delivering to get the business, the information they need. So for me to do that properly, I need to be well versed across all of that infrastructure so that when when it's time to deliver something in public cloud or time to deliver something in the container, I'm ready to go when you do that. >> Yeah. What? What? What's the push and pull for some of the training bin? Is this something that you've seen? You said, like Veum, where you saw it, like, Oh, my gosh, I need to hop on that. You know, I remember back to those early days I remember engineers I worked with that were just like, this thing is amazing. That was like preview motion, even. Yeah, but you know, just what? That that impact we've seen over the last, you know, ten to fifteen years of that growth has there been times where the business is coming said, Hey, can you go learn this? Kaixian orders have been you driving most about yourself. Uh, >> it's it's been both. There are times when the business has come and said, Hey, we would really like to take advantage of virtual ization or public cloud. And it from a technology perspective, there may have been other factors that would impact the ability to do that. So that's why for me. I tried to sort of stay ahead of it when, you know virtual ization was taking off and everything I had was on physical servers. I knew I needed to have the VM where peace in my pocket so that when the business was ready and when other things like compliance, we're ready for it. We could move forward and sort of advanced that same thing with Public Cloud. Now that that's Mohr prevalent and sort of accepted in the industry a lot more cos they're moving in that direction. >> Yeah, and you know, what tips would you give your Pierre if they're a virtual ization person? You know, how are the waters in the cloud world is there are a lot of similarities. Is it? You know, do I have to go relearn and, oh, my gosh, I need to go learn coding for two years before I understand how to do any of this stuff. >> I think it's helpful. Tto learn some level of coding, but do it in an environment that you're comfortable in today. So if you're of'em were admin today, you know there's power, see Ally and be realized orchestrator and and even if you're on via Mars Cloud platform there's there's some basic power shell on bass scripting you could do in the cloud Automation. Get comfortable with the environment, you know. And then as that comfort grows when you move Oh, look, there's power shell commandments for a ws. If that's the route, you go so oh, already understand the format and how I how I glue those things together so you could get comfortable in the environment you're in today and sort of get ready for whatever that next step is. >> Yeah, I've always found I find it interesting. Look at these ecosystems and see where the overlaps and where two things come together. You know, I actually worked with Lennox for about twenty years. So I you know, back when I worked at Emcee the storage company and I supported the Lenox Group and Lennox was kind of this side thing. And then you kind of saw that grow over time and Lennox and virtual ization. We're kind of parallel, but didn't overlap is much. And then when we get to the cloud, it feels like everybody ended up in that space and there were certain skill sets that clinics people had that made it easy to do cloud in certain things that the fertilization people had that made it easy do there. But we're kind of all swimming in the same pools. We see that now in the, you know, core bernetti space. Now I see people I know from all of those communities on, but it's kind of interesting. Curious if you have anything you've seen in kind of the different domains and overlapping careers. >> Yes, you. For me. I think what's help is focusing on how the applications the business uses consumed, what some of the trends are around, how you know whether finance or marketing teams are interacting with those applications. If I know how the application works and what I need to do something to support it, the concepts aren't going to be vastly different. If I know how Exchange's install their sequel servers install, there's some custom application is insult. I could do that across the VM, where environment native US environment and should it supported into Docker by leveraging Cooper Netease. >> All right, so you've mentioned about the time the application, can you? How has it changed your relationship with kind of the application owners as you go from, you know, physical, virtual, the cloud. >> I don't think it should change much. The problem probably the biggest shift that you have is that at some point now, things are out of your control. So when I've got a server sitting in my data center that I can walk down the hallway to if something's not working, I have access to it. If there's an application down in the public cloud, or there's an A Ws outage or any public cloud provider outage, I have to wait. And that sort of I think the thing that I've seen business struggle with the most like, well, it's down, go fix it. It's like, I can't get to it right now, and I'm probably not driving to Virginia, Oregon to go reboot that server for Amazon. >> Whoever absolutely big shift we've seen right is, you know a lot of what I is. It I am managing is now things that aren't in my environment. You know, there was my data centers. My might have had hosted data centers where I'd call somebody up, you know, you know, tell the Rex paper person to reboot the servers or it's right, it's in the public cloud. In which case it's like, OK, what tools. What can I trouble shoot myself? Or is there some, you know, out of that I'm not aware of, you know, is affecting me. Yeah, >> it's Ah, it's a good shift to have for a infrastructure person because we're really getting to the point now. I think the tails, the scales have tipped to focusing more on delivering business value versus delivering infrastructure. The CFO doesn't necessarily think or care that spinning up a new V m faster is cool. They care about getting their application to their team so that they could do their work. So I think taking, you know, going to public cloud or going to other platforms where that's removed it sort of forces you to move to supporting supporting those business applications. >> So I'm curious it every time we have one of these generational shift time. Time is like, Oh, my gosh, I'm going to be out of a job on the server ID men Virtualization is going to get rid of me. I'm a virtual ization Had been cloud's going to get rid of me. This whole server listing will probably just get rid of all the infrastructure people I've read article yesterday was called the Creeping Apocalypse a CZ what they called it. But, you know, you know what you saying is there general fear in your peers or, you know, do you just, you know, dive in and understand it and learn it? If you could stay, you know, up with or a little bit ahead of the curve, you know you're going to keep employed. >> I would say that there's a mix there. Some people, even just a few months ago, some some folks I talked to and they were just sort of breaking into automation and like how they can automate deploying their applications in their legitimate concern, was I won't have a job anymore and sort of the way I looked at that was my job's going to change. I don't spend my entire day administering Windows two thousand active directory boxes any more. So I need Yes, I need to shift that and start thinking about what's next. If I can automate the routine task, you know, deploying an application, patching and application, bringing things up and down when there's some sort of failure than I, uh, I'm going to naturally grow my career in that way by getting rid of the boring stuff. >> Yeah, and I've been here in this argument against automation for decades now, and the question I always put two people is like, Look, if I could give you an extra hour a day or an extra day a week, do you have other projects that you could be doing or things that the business is asking for? That would be better. And I've yet to find somebody that didn't say, Yeah, of course, on DH. What are the things that you're doing that it would be nice to get rid of, You know, other people is like I love the serenity of racking and stacking cabling stuff. And nothing gets people more excited than beautiful cables in Iraq. I thought yesterday I saw people like going off about here's this data center with these beautiful, you know, rack, you know? So with the cable ties and everything, but I'm like, really, you know, there's more value you can add absolutely out there. So >> automate yourself into your next job. It is sort of the way I think I like to think about it. It's not a meeting, >> so let's you know, just look forward a little bit, you know? There's all these waves, you know, Cloud been a decade data was talking to keep downs in this morning on the Cube on we said, you know, when he talks to users, it's their data that super important applications absolutely is what drives, uh, you know, my infrastructure, but it's the data that's the super important piece. So you know, whether it be, you know, you're a I or, you know, you figure various buzz word of the day I ot You know, data is in the center. So what do you looking forward to is? Are there new search or new training that that are exciting? You are areas that you think you're Pierre should be poking out to help try to stay ahead of the curve. >> Yeah, and back to my earlier point about leveraging the thing you know today and how to sort of grow your career. And that next skill set is how I can look at data and make. I understand what's going on around that. So maybe maybe today that's taking some stats from any SX. I hosted an application and correlating that data together on help. You underst Yes. And you know what that means for the applicator action before or use their calls in. And that's going to help you grow into sort of this new realm of like, machine learning and big data. And in analytics, which I think is really the next thing that we're going to need to start doing as Mohr and more of that infrastructure shifted away into surveillance platforms and things that were not worried about How can I understand? How can I take that data? Transform it, use it, correlated together to, you know, help make decisions. >> Alright, on final thing, give us update on our friends at V Brown bag. So, you know, we talked Well, I always say, you know, when we go to V m world, it's like we're there. I'm trying to help kind of balance between the business and the technology. You want to go a little deeper and really geek out and understand some of these things. That's where you know the V brown bag. You know, people are going to be able to dig in with the community in the ecosystem. There was the V and V brown bag for virtual ization. But he brown bags doing much more than just traditional virtualization today. You know what? What? What's on the docket? >> Eso upcoming This year, we're gonna have some episodes around Python so helping add men's get to know Python start to get comfortable with it, Which would be a great language to a automate things that maybe you're doing today in your application, but also to be able to take data and and use Python, too. Manage that data extract value out of that data so that you can help make decisions. So look for the throughout this year and, you know, learn new things. >> All right, Jonathan, from pure pleasure to talk with you on camera after talking to off camera for many years. Thanks so much for joining us. All right. And we appreciate you joining us at this virtual ization and cloud user event. Ve tug Winter warmer. Twenty nineteen on student a minute. Thanks for watching the cue