>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, if the queue covering Vita Winter warmer, twenty nineteen brought to you by Silicon Angle media. >> Hi, I'm stew Minutemen. And this is the Cube Worldwide Leader and live tech coverage. >> We're on the ground here at the V Tug winter warmer, and it is twenty nineteen. It's actually, the thirteenth year of this event was one of the original, if not the original Veum, where user groups covers virtual ization, cloud computing and even Mohr, always great to be able to get back to the community, get some good interviews and no better person helped me start with my first interview at a show of the year. But good friend of the program, Keith Towns and he is the CTO advisor. And he's also now a slew front architect with the M. Where Keith. Thanks for joining >> us. Thanks for having me on the cute. >> Yeah. So, Keith, I mean, you were host of our program for a number of years. You're now, you know, back working on the vendor side. But you know, you know this community. You know what I always say in my career, There, certain communities, an ecosystem where there's just love to be a part of it. And the virtual ization group. You know, I've been part of it for a long time. You know, Veum, wear and beyond, though, you know people that you know, they get excited, They geek out on the technology and they love to share. And that's why we come to events like this. >> Yeah, it is amazing. Just, you know, the every every show is getting smaller, but maybe with the session of a Ws re event, but I don't think the intensity has shrunk at all. You get around friends, you know, we're just at a desk and one of the ten days, actually, how did I get a job doing X? And the community was like, Oh, you just talk to the people at this table. So it is. It is a great, great commute. >> Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic you talk about. You know, we've seen the huge growth in Meetups in user groups and regional shows. You know, vm Where does Veum World but the VM world being where forums around the globe. I'm sure you probably have to go for a few of those they've been doing well. I'm right back in my emcee Daisy M. C. Did a number of those. So we see you. Amazon Reinvent is growing, but oh, my God, they're regional shows are ridiculous. I I've said some of those regional shows either different communities or different localities can actually be even better than some of the big shows on. You know, we love Keith. We're happy to welcome you here to the home of the NFC Championship. New England Patriots ur >> First off, Congratulations. The wait went a little better for you to bare sand and say, You know what? Tom Brady won't play forever, so enjoy it. This is amazing backdrop through him. Little finish that you've not involved. Invited me to a veto before now. >> Oh. Oh, I'm sorry, Keith. It's It's a community thing that absolutely got to come. Absolutely. I've had friends. Most of them. It is local. I'm talking to users from Maine and Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut and like so you gave a keynote this morning and you didn't True fashion. You did a block post about reality check leading in, and I thought it was a great way for us to start is, You know, there's so much change in the industry, uh, those of us that are technologies that you know, we're super excited because there's so much new stuff. It's not like Oh, jeez, you know, twenty nineteen is probably going to be just like twenty eighteen. It's like, Oh, my gosh, what did I do in twenty eighteen? What do I have to change? How do I keep up? How do I manage it? I would love to get your viewpoint. You know what's going on with Keith? And you're talking about a lot of users, so you know how help share, You know, what is the reality? Check that everybody's going >> to know. We're talking about a pre recording in the banter. Just, you know, whether it's, you know, Vienna where we're hip Theo and all the stuff that Casey Kelsey Hightower is going out with Cooper Netease. Then as you spent spent out to serve earless, uh, infrastructures Cole scripting it centre. There's much to learn that you're a bit overwhelmed and we're seeing this out. You know, as I'm talking to executive CTO CEOs, VP of infrastructure, they're filling the same kind of excitement at the same time. Overwhelmed this Like what? What's what's really You know, we had the big cloud movements over a few years ago where I think we're at the height cycle where organizations are starting to understand that. You know, Cloud isn't the destination is part of a strategy, and everyone seems to be in the throes of figuring out what that means for us. We're just on the crowd chat, talking about multi Cloud and the drivers around. Multi Cloud. You guys did a great job hosting that cloud shit chat, nothing. We saw the gambit off where people are. You know, uh, there's not really a business rationality people who are really in the throes of trying to figure it out. >> Yeah, actually, I love to comment friend of ours that we've had on the program before, Bobby Allen from Cloud General said when he's working with companies, if they ask for a three year strategy plan, he said, I will not do it unless we guarantee that we will go revisit it every six months because I looked back. You know, Clay Christensen, you no way talks about strategy is strategy is a point in time thing, not something that you write it in stone. I've been saying for a couple of years cloud strategies that companies today is, they wrote it in ink and the ink still drying. And, you know, you're probably going to need toe, you know, go through it and change it because it is changing fast and therefore, you know, huge. Out I started Deploy something. Oh, wait, what about the next thing? Or there's some new practice or something to do it. So it is challenging because I need to run my business. Today. I got to set my budget for the year, usually, um and it's I need to be agile. But, you know, I can't constantly be tearing everything up and you're not going to be throwing it out or re training and skills. I mean, there's so many challenges. >> So still, you might remember when when I was on the other side of the the table. I, uh it was meant at somewhat of a D that Veum where moves at the speed of the aisle, and it was picked up as Maury compliment. But >> it was a >> big I'll be honest that it was a dig. And what I've learned the past few months is that Veum, where has to move at the speed of the CIA, is no longer and It's not just being wherever the community has and the CIA always faced with that we could do a few years ago. A cloud strategy, and that thing can sit on the desk for a year, and it would still be valid. But the bobbies point, if you're going to do a strategy and three year strategy, got to revisit that every six months and this agility that were not accustomed to previously in the industry, we have to now become super agile and figure out how do we keep the lights on and innovate at the pace That business, these witches? Pretty good chance. >> Yeah, it's attorney were beginning the year I made a comment personally said, You know, I'm not a big believer in, you know, setting. You know, Resolutions. Mohr. You know, let's set goals Your runner, I do some biking and it's like, Okay, you know, I've got a big race I want to do this year. I'm gonna work myself, you know, towards that goal and raise the money. You've got a certain target and something that you could do over the year. It's and there's no way that you do that, cos you know they've got goals that they need to accomplish and business. And it's great to say, Oh, well, we need to be more efficient. We need to do some down something different. But, you know, reality is, you know, it's not just digital transformation of modernizing. It was, you know. Oh, okay. Do I need to transform my backup? You know, data protection, you know, huge activity going on in the marketplace right now, you know? So, what >> is sixty million noon investment in one >> week? Exactly. You know, the wave of hyper convergence is one that really changed a lot of architectures and had people change. You know, we've talked cloud computing. They're what are some of the, You know, some of the big, you know, movements that you see, you know, will you? Tracking the industry? It was kind of the the intel refunds for a cycle, and, you know, Oh, well, it's the next version of Microsoft or, you know, Veum, where operating system would be one of those big, you know, kind of ticked. Talks of what? What are some of the big commonalities that you're seeing Al? So they're actually moving people to >> new things without a doubt. There is one conversation that customers cannot get the enough of. And I had Ah, on my little vlog. I had game being from Vienna, where V P off the Storch and Business availability unit and I challenged her on the via Where? Vision around this. But customers cannot get enough of having a conversation around data. What they What do they do with data? And how does a move data? How did they get compute closest to data? How did we get data they're closest to? They're re sources. We talked about it on the multi cloud conversation, but by far conversations are around. Howto they extract value from data had really protect data, and howto they make sure their compliant with the data is something that that's driving a lot of innovation and a lot of conversation. A lot of interest. >> Yeah, Keith, it's a great one. When I look at you know, our research team, that wicked bond data is that the center of everything. In many ways, the failings of big data was talking about, You know, the challenges. I have infrastructure. No, the growth and the variety and blah, blah, blah and everything that's not what important to the business they don't care about, You know, it's like, Oh, well, there's a storage problem in a network problem. It's the business says there's data, you know? Do I protect my bird business to make sure that I'm not a risk? You know, all the things like DDP are coming And can I livered value? Do I Can I get new lines of business? Can I generate revenue out of that? And I've seen early signs that we've learned this whole, You know, a I m l movement. You know, data, Really? At the center. All right, we've seen enough storage. We went from talking about storing data to about, you know, that data ecosystem, Andi, even computing and I ot data where data needs to be, how I work it. Absolutely a center. So, yeah, it's great to hear that. Customers are identifying that. We've been doing like, chief data officer events for many years. You know, where does data live? Is that a CEO Thing? Is that a different part of the business? I don't know if you've got anything you're seeing from, you know, your customers is Tau, >> who owns the Data initiative, So it's really interesting. I had a conversation with a major bank, and it was a one on one with the CDO and what I thought was the most tricky part of the conversation is that here, Not only does he report directly into the CIA, which you know is to be expected, but he meets regularly with the board of directors. So data were seen. I've seen these seedy old rolls being popped up, and it's not just about the technology as you mentioned. It's about the whole approach about this asset that we have. It's so critical that worth creating a sea level position that today might reporting to the CEO but is most definitely accountable to the border director. >> Well, yeah, Keith, it's that the trend we've been watching for a while, as it used to be, it was a cost center. And, you know, it's kind of, you know, that's what it was considered today. If it isn't in, you know, direct relationship, working with the business, the business will go find somebody else to do it. The whole stealthy movement. You know, I can go find an answer for what I'm doing. I think about project I've worked on in my career and been like, I wish it was easy. You know, fifteen years ago, it was today to do those. But we see security's a board level discussion data as a board level discussion is excellent. And all of those things that traditionally you would think that own them. Having awareness and visibility and information communication flow between the board in the C suite is great progress. You >> know, it's interesting. I was a big proponent of this prior to coming on The vendor side is that vendors have to start having conversations outside of it. So traditional infrastructure of injustice, his goal. Hurry, right saw and where the whole the Dale emcee Dale Technologies they have to skill up and have conversations with CIA moles. Seo's CEO Ole's H R directors because the these buying centers now have power to go out and buy solutions. You know, talked about in my no keynote this morning. You know how many people have worked day? How many people have salesforce applications? They had nothing to do when I had no nothing to do with the procurement of off these solutions. The ball is moving outside of just traditional for court technology is starting to get to the point where regular users can consume business users can consume these massive, massive solutions based on technology and just happens to be a label. The technology, whether sales Force worked in >> Sochi, thought on this this whole point there want to ask you, In my career, there's often been groups inside a business that didn't get along. And we, you know, built silos. You know, the storage in the network team don't get along cloud and traditional I t You know what we're fighting? You know who owns it? Turf wars Managing that, You know, have we built silos in multi cloud today? Is everybody holding hands and, you know, pointing the business in the same direction, you could kind of give us the good the bad. So what? We need to work on going forward. >> I think the good is that you know that the umbrella of infrastructure starting to work as a single. Uh, you So you have storage, compu networking, even configuration man groups that were kind of confrontational before and territorial. Those groups are starting. Tio. Come on. Their one senior manager or one senior executive looking at? How do you provide services as a group and providing those services? I think we're we're starting to see Silos is actually the developer versus the infrastructure group is developers just wantto FBI, too. A set of services. They want infrastructure to get away. Developers themselves. Haven't you know, kind of katende enough of the scars from heaven have to do operations, So there's a different view off the world. And, uh, today I think developers haven't yet getting the budget power off operations. But the business wants solutions, and they're going out there competing with traditional Teo get the dollars to run the services in the cloud or or wherever, however they consumed them, whether it's, you know, just saw Chick fil a's deploying two thousand ten points to run six thousand containers at the edge. Is that something that's run by tears? That something wrong? Run by developers? I don't know. Check feeling well enough to know about. This is what we're seeing in >> industry. Yeah. All right. Well, keep towns. And always a pleasure to catch up with you. Thanks so much for joining us. Be sure to check him out see Teo advisor on Twitter, check out his blogged. And of course, thank you so much for watching. We'll be back. Uh, lots more coverage here at V tug. Winter warmer, twenty nineteen. Thanks for watching.

(orchestral music playing) >> Hi. I'm Peter Burris. Welcome to another Cube Conversation. Brought to you by theCUBE from our beautiful studios in Palo Alto, California. Great conversation today. We're going to be speaking with Datera about some of the new trends and how we're going to utilize data within the business, with greater success, generating more value to superior customer objectives. To do that, we've got Marc Fleischmann, who's the CEO and Founder of Datera. Marc, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> And Guy Churchward, who's the Executive Chairman of Datera. >> Yeah, thank you Peter. >> So guys, this is a great topic, great conversation, very very timely industry. One of the reasons is we've heard a lot about the Cloud-native stack. Now the Cloud-native stack is increasingly going to reach into the enterprise and not just demand that everything come back to the cloud, but bring the cloud more to the enterprise. Well one of the things that's still something of a challenge is and how do we bring data given it's native attributes into that model more successfully. Marc, what are the issues? So look, ultimately we believe it's all about data freedom, the capability to extract the value of data across the enterprise. However, as long as we continue to think about proprietary systems silos, where data is trapped, where it can't move freely across the enterprise, we're not going to be able to get there. So ultimately what it requires is changing our thinking of infrastructure from a hard for centric prospective to a service centric prospective. Ready applications drive the needs from the data, where it's an application centric perspective that automatically drives how data is actually consumed across the enterprise. >> But the, we've been thinking about that through software defined, ECI, and other, you know, hyperconversion infrastructure in other things. But at the end of the day, we really have to make sure that we're doing so in a way that marries to the realities of data. >> Absolutely. >> Talk to us a little bit about how Datera is providing that substrate that is native to data, but also native to the cloud. >> Absolutely. So I would describe Datera as Datera is to data what Kubernetes is to compute. What do I mean by that? First of all, it's all about data orchestration. We orchestrate the data just like Kubernetes would orchestrate compute. That's the foundation of our platform. Now if we don't deliver enterprise performance, so that we can actually, you know, replace existing storage, we wouldn't be able to actually broadly deploy. So we have enterprise performance as well. And lastly, to get away from a hard for centric model, we offer wide variety, wide choice, future ready choice of Harver. Those are the three key tenants that we actually see as getting to that vision. >> So Guy, you've been in this business a long time. You've looked at a lot of changes in technology, for rays where we were mainly focused on persisting data to now some of the new technologies, we were more focusing on delivering data to new classes of applications. From your perspective, how does this message Marc's bringing line up with customer needs? >> Yeah, I know, appreciate it. I mean that was one of the reasons that when I had the opportunity to work closely with Datera, I kind of jumped into it. You know, because part of this is, as Marc said, data freedom. Unlocking, in other words, unlocking from the boundaries of basically a physical location. I think, you know, we always aspire and believe that we want to move towards a cloud, a pure cloud model. But we're going to be in this transition for five, six, seven years where we have on premise a bit of hybrid and a bit of distributed and things like Intelligent Edge. So in other words, the whole concept is to say how do I utilize data no matter where it is into a fabric or a mesh. And I think that the industry that we all live in sort of, by accident, tries to own the data, you know. It doesn't matter whether you own it in a physical construct of a data center or we own it in a physical construct of a piece of hardware or a proprietary format. But in essence you have these data silos absolutely everywhere. And so for me to move to a cloud, you've got the simplicity you need. You've got the orchestration that you actually need. But you need this freedom outside of the bounds of a physical location or a piece of tent. >> I want to return back to the issues of performance >> Yeah. >> and the need for performance because the world that you just laid out guys, makes an enormous amount of sense to me and the Wikibon community. But it does mean that this data generated by that application in this location may have value to some other applications somewhere else that may have completely different performance action. >> Absolutely. >> So let's talk about that need for ensuring, that again, this notion of a native data approach to incorporating data into the cloud. How does the performance angle really work? >> I would argue where traditional self defined storage, SDS, fell short was exactly on the promise of performance. We saw that we contributed a significant part of the Linux data path itself. The way we architected the system, we delivered true, primary application performance. So that in combination with the ability to orchestrate data across the data center, across multiple data centers, and ultimately across the data center and the cloud gives you the best of both worlds. It gives you primary workloads, the ability to actually serve primary workloads across multiple protocols, but to serve them location dependent, wherever you like, because we orchestrate the data through those places. >> And- >> So- >> Oops! Go ahead. >> Sorry. It's the coffee. It's going to kick in. (Peter laughs) So I mean part of it is not just that, but it's also the life cycle. >> Ah, very true. Right, I mean and, you know, this is the thing that kind of attracts me is, and you mentioned, you know, what you learn with the amount of hair I don't have now and the gray beard I've got is, you know, there's one thing about this sort of data boundaries and things getting locked in. The other one is the speed of which people want to build an application. They need it to be have the enterprisilities, and then they'll take the application down. You know, if you kind of think when we started in the industry and it would last 20 years. And then 10 years. And then five years. And now you look at it saying somebody wants an enterprisility application up and running within two or three months, which is preposterous, but needs to be done. And then it might be down within a month. Because- >> Oh 15 years ago it took us two or three months to create the test data required for the application to follow up. >> Right, and how many people would ever used to tell you never use an application if it's a window zero. But we're talking about, in a window zero period, they're actually going to serve their communities, the most critical thing. Data is it for a company. If you're analytics don't run as fast as your company's competitive space, you're behind. So if you're going to analyze something that application that you bring up to analyze has to be critical to your business. And that's going to go up and it's going to go down. So in other words, it's going to go from test and dev, up into production, tier zero, then tier one, tier two, tier three, and then out into an archive in a period of time that normally a window zero would gestate. And so you need a platform that has that ultimate agility and again it can't be bound by anything. And this is something that, you know, Datera has as unique. This was why I like software defined and why I believe that this market's place is now for this space. Everything prior to SDS is basically what I call new legacy. You know, it doesn't matter whether it's a ray or it's hyperconversion, and they're great and they've got their place. But each one of them has this fixed boundary that allows you to flex but inside of its own control. Businesses aren't like that. They can't be done like that and applications can't be done like that now. So it's all multi-cloud, it's all going to be versed. >> Well let's build on that. So the Kubernetes describes, as you said, a cluster of compute. When you pull away the- It's really a network of compute. >> That's right. >> It's a network of compute resources that Kubernetes has visibility into so we can move resources >> That's right. >> Or move elements where they need to be to be optimally utilized. Let's build on that. So what where is Datera in this relationship between resources as it starts to build a an orchestrator, a manager, a network of data elements, and pull that into something that makes it easier for developers to do what they need to do, operators to do what they need to do, and the business to do what it needs to do? >> Yeah, so you can call Kubernetes the network of compute or a swarm of compute, right? So the power of Kubernetes is that it abstracts the infrastructure to a level where it gets delivered continuously to the application on demand. We do exactly the same thing for data, for the ability to store, manage, and ultimately life cycle data. So simply label based, like Kubernetes is, you specify the service level objectives for every individual application, and Kubernetes pretty much does all the rest of the job, completely independent of the hardware underneath. Again, we do that for data. You have certain access requirements, protocols, authentications, security. You have certain performance requirements. You have certain reliability requirements. You articulate them simply in similar SLO, service level objectives. Datera does all the actual implementation automatically across the data center. So now you get to a point where in the modern data center and the soft defined data center, I would argue we are the data foundation in those kinds of scenarios, we can co-orchestrate data along, since you said Kubernetes specifically with Kubernetes, with its compute. Obviously we work in other environments as well. We work equally well for Enver. We work for some other, a number of other cloud orchestration frameworks. But Kubernetes is a really good example here. >> So who's going to buy it? I mean cause going back to this issue of the orchestrator, the developers clearly need this because they want access to real data, but they typically don't think in terms of underlying data structures. If it's available that's all they care about. Data administrators, business people. Who do you find your customers today are really making that, not the initial contact, but actually driving the adoption of this new data fabric? >> So Marc, I mean I know you'll answer it more accurately than I will. But just from a higher level to step down, there seems to be two types of people inside of large companies. One is a project owner. So for instance, you know, I've been blessed with a job inside of BMW that I have to do, autonomic cars. And I'm tying together a very complicated pipeline that has to be extremely agile. So that's the type of person that would basically look to buy and move us forward. And the other one is an internal service provider to the enterprise. So in other words, instead of being a group that has a physical job, what I'm actually doing is I'm saying I'm now going to be a service provider, or a cloud provider, or a resource provider to an organization that now has complexity that's moving into and embracing the digital economy or digital transformation. So if those are the two types of person inside of an organization, I think if you get a tie kicker, you know, there are places that we struggle with, I think it would be fair to say, is there's always going to be a geek somewhere that wants to kick the latest, cool technology, so we get involved with that. And then by the time you go all the way through it, there's no project there. They just really enjoyed themselves and so have we. But in essence there's enough people now who recognize my business is going through this transformation, I need to get out of my technical debt, I'm throwing business into, you know, this economy. It's normally around machine learning applications, Kubernetes, things that are fast moving, you know. And they need that level of ility that they're used to getting through fixed bounded technology, you know. And so we're actually seeing that as a service provider, both external and internal. But internal, inside the enterprises, is something which we're very key on. >> And let me give you perhaps a few examples. We're looking at Fortune 2000 companies. A good example, for instance, would be one of the top airlines in the world that is replatforming from a more rigid siloed IT to really deliver all their applications to internal and external customers as a service. It would also be digital businesses where there currency really is speed, agility, and obviously data is their currency. So if you're looking here at one of the top travel fare aggregators, that's one of the customers, actually interestingly we are in their tier zero at Storch. That's quite an endorsement of the performance aspect. We are also in one of, I would say, the leading service providers outside of the typical crowd you think, those are one of the up and coming guys. So those are typical markets and customers we're looking at. Really Fortune 2000 companies that are replatforming to cloud, hybrid cloud, and digital service businesses. Digital businesses. >> But it is most people who are basically going from, they're transforming their data center into a metadata center. They're embracing the distribution and then cloud. But they're not going wholesale and just saying (claps hands) we're over. They have this practicality of first thing I need to do is to free up my data, make my data center agile, and then decide how I want to distribute it across. >> Marc Fleischmann. Guy Churchward. Datera. Thank you very much for being on theCUBE. >> Thank you very much Peter. >> A pleasure. Thank you. >> And once again, this is Peter Burris from our CUBE studios in Palo Alto, California. Thanks very much for participating in this CUBE conversation with Datera. (orchestral music plays)