>>Mhm. Hey, welcome to the cubes coverage of HP discover 2021. I'm lisa martin. I have two guests with me here today. We're gonna be talking to the walt. Disney company. Jason Abrahamson is here. The Director of infrastructure engineering. Jason. Welcome to the program. >>Hi, how you doing >>doing well. And James Irvine is here as well. Account chief technologist at H P. D. James. Welcome to the program. >>Yeah, I like to thank you. >>Okay, so we're gonna be talking about all things the HP supporting Disney relationship. But you know, things have been changing so much in technology, things have been very different for technologists in the last few years, Jason talked to us about how Disney has adapted as business needs have evolved. >>Uh you know, I think not just Disney but in general, as we've we've had to evolve, evolve as technologists. Right. And one of the ways we've done that is to focus a lot on automation and self service, enabling developers to move faster to meet the shift in business demand, business moves at the speed of light. Uh anybody that's been this business long enough knows. Uh There were years ago you could have email servers down for three hours and nobody would notice. Now if email went down for more than, you know, 35 seconds, everybody notices. Right? So in order to meet the change in demand, we've had to focus heavily on automation and self service, which has been a key strategy, is keep a key driver for as as part of private cloud. >>So Jason with infrastructure as such, a large part of your responsibilities and your job title, how has Disney been thinking about private cloud in the last few years? >>So I would say that we were probably one of the uh I don't wanna see bleeding edge, but certainly out in front when it came to private cloud, we had embarked on a cloud first strategy overall across the enterprise, uh, the goal there was to figure out how we could do more with less and be more agile and be able to flex for application developers and meet our shifts in demand. However, there are, you know, systems that for whatever reasons, business purpose or otherwise need to either span hybrid cloud or multi cloud or stay on premise. So in order to uh get a cloud like environment for application developers and whatnot, we decided to build out a robust, private cloud environment that allowed all of our application developers to be able to just bring their code or get a server and try to get as much of the public cloud functionality on premise as we possibly could >>James. Let's bring you into the conversation, talk to us about the H P E WAlt Disney company relationship and how HP is supporting walt. Disney. >>Yeah, HP and Disney have had a long standing relationship dating all the way back to HP and Disney as far as the audio oscillators concerned. So we've had an extraordinarily long history, the technology and co innovation partnership that we've worked on together through the years. And as Jason mentioned, you know, the journey around private cloud and working together in that technology relationship is just has been fantastic. And we've supported them with all the innovation and technology is needed for them to meet their bulls. >>Excellent. All right, Jason, let's go back to you. I want to dig into this private cloud strategy a little bit more. You mentioned this a minute ago, but as we look at and here so many discussions and strategies revolving around public, multi cloud, Why is private cloud so important to Disney? >>Well, we have a tremendous amount of applications. We are application portfolio as massive as you can imagine. And we find ourselves in unique situations because of all of the different uh, business challenges that we have that are unique to Disney, that we have to develop applications from the ground up far more often than we probably like to admit. So, uh, private cloud allows us to uh take advantage of the public cloud, like services and technology scalability and flexibility and agility, right? And bring those on premise and be close to the business where it's absolutely critical to our business. I don't want to comment on what specific, because their services that we have to run close to the business. But you can imagine with the uh, expansive footprint of our business and how we have to interact with guests, um whether it's from a movie or at a theme park, we do have to have some services that are close to our business. And so by having private cloud, we complement our public cloud strategy uh, and and allow us to keep those most critical services very close to the business. >>Got it. You just mentioned a number of the elements of Disney. There's been a lot going on, so much going on. It's actually kind of easy to forget how new Disney Plus is, but sitting in the center of a company that's doing so much digitally, how does the shared services play a part in the overall digital transformation of the business? >>Uh, that's a great question. So obviously technology is key to our business. If you look at all the different lines of business we have and you look at all the different technology that we have. It's absolutely critical in order for us to continue to invest in technology to meet all of our business demands. Were shared services comes in is we enable the business to focus on what is critical to their business. Right? We allow resorts and even the immediate media partners to just focus solely on the technology that is critical to driving those businesses to enabling the guest experience and keeping it great. We are focused on uh everything else that is not critical for their business. The underlying infrastructure, the underpinning infrastructure right? Such as the global network, global servers, emails and so on and so forth. So it's a great compliment where it freezes the business up to focus on what's really critical for them and we can get economies of scale and synergy across our entire enterprise by delivering core services at a much more efficient costs throughout the company >>and James. I want to ask you a question. You've been working as a with the walt Disney company for a long time. We've we've seen the evolution of h p e and we've seen the evolution of Disney. Can we ask you anything about kind of, give us your perspectives on how both companies have evolved in this relationship together? >>I would say that it's been it's been a great relationship. I would say that the uh, we have continued to lean on HP from an investment perspective for our servers in certain areas storage, but mostly servers, what are the big investments we've made recently was hB synergy which is composed all infrastructure, which has allowed us to continue to uh invest in our automation strategy and allows us deliver physical servers much, much faster James. Did you want to add anything there? >>Yeah, of course, Jason. Uh it's been great to partner with with Jason and the team walt. Disney company in particular and and through this experience of them trying to achieve their private cloud goals, we've been able to bring the right technology, the right set of services to achieve these technology outcomes that they've been after and the use of automation to improve life cycle management day to operations, all the goals and aspirations that they need to really automate infrastructure and make it intelligent and started achieving the goal of the intelligent data center. So it's it's been a great technology partners of relationship we've had there, >>Jason back to you. Let's, we've talked about Disney's private cloud strategy. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about how that integrates with the rest of Disney's cloud strategy. What can you share with us? >>Well, uh >>like, like anything you want the right tool for the right job And uh, certainly the multi cloud strategy in the public cloud strategy is a huge part of our overall strategic roadmap. Where again, we use the private cloud is to complement that for applications that need to either span or stay on premise. You know, one of the things that we're just getting into now is hybrid cloud while you have application teams that are like, hey, we really just need to focus on premises where we need to be close to the business, but we have workloads that need to burst to the public cloud or need to scale out to the public cloud, uh, and you really take advantage of that. So again, we don't look at it as it used to be, not just within Disney, but in general, and most cloud strategies, it was, it's kind of like an either or now we look at it as the right tool for the right job. What's the right fit for your application? And as we continue to look at how the application stack modernizes, right used to be. How do you get servers faster? Well, now I don't want to serve. I want a container. Now. It's, I just want to bring my coat and I don't even know if I need a container. Right. The application developers really want sort of this, They really want to just focus on application development and they want to focus more on what makes their applications great. Right. We want to focus more on commoditization and blurring the lines between public and private. Really, where does the workload run best? Where is it most efficient? And where is the best for the business? And so when we look at how we build out our private cloud environment, it was really to complement our existing public cloud strategy. >>Let's talk about people now, Jason for a second. I know, I love that. Disney calls there folks, Cast members, I see the pin on your lapel there. How are the cast members at the center of this technology strategy and how does the private cloud strategy play into that? >>Well, it's one of those things where our cast members are the most important aspect of our, of our brand. If you, if you were to look at what is r one of the most valuable asset, it would certainly be our cast members right there. The front line, whether it's helping a guest, whether it's working on a movie and our overall technology strategy is all about enabling cast members to do their job as most efficiently and effectively as possible. Um, uh, when it comes to how private cloud fits into that, it's again creating an environment where the application developers and our business partners can accelerate their application growth and the delivery of their services to support our back of house operations for our cast members. So that way it doesn't impact the guest experience. There's nothing more frustrating for a cast member is when they're impeded or have issues trying to get to a resource or unable to efficiently do their job. And so by having the private cloud, by having access to resources on premise. At times it gives them the ability to deliver those and consume those applications even faster, >>which I'm sure the guests love. One of the things that you mentioned, Jason and I want to James at your opinion on this too. It's a, it's a statement that we hear very often you need to do more with less in that situation. How does Disney navigate that? And a strategy that is cost effective while you're growing your public, your private cloud strategy? >>Uh huh automation, Right? Automate automation and self service. It really it's always comes back to, I know it's a buzzword, I know people go automate this, automate that you know, what are you automating if you look at just the investments we're making right now in the HP synergy line and having proposal infrastructure combined with pockets of three tier architecture as well as hyper converge. You are we're bringing a delivery model to application teams and business teams that they haven't that is just like public cloud, Right? But that they haven't seen before. So in order to manage massive scale, uh you you need to automate more and you need to automate more in order to make sure that you have self healing, right? So you can see you can look at things and understand things and see where you're having problems and try to predict them before they happen and increase your uptime and availability. I mean it all comes back to again, automation automation, automation uh >>James. Do you have the similar opinion when you talk with customers similar to the walt Disney company that are told we've got to do more but we've got less to work with is automation one of your key go to recommendations. >>Automation is at the center of everything that we're trying to achieve today, both on premise and in the public cloud. And hyper automation is really kind of where everybody is driving to the ability to be incredibly they are incredibly efficient um using infrastructure as code api driven and using all the tools to really automate that and make the seamless delivery of new products and services just that much quicker. And, and we've been focused on that, both not only from a technology and infrastructure standpoint, but also from a consulting and delivery standpoint. So we're able to really kind of meat all the different needs as it relates to automation, both in a private cloud, hybrid cloud or multi cloud scenario with all of the partnerships that we have across all the hyper scale hours. >>James sticking with you with that. Looking through that consultant lens, I want to get some thought leadership from you. What are some of the principles that you'd recommend for businesses that really are working hard to make their private cloud investment work as efficiently as possible for them? >>A lot of that comes down >>to >>consulting and understanding. So really kind of driving to what we referred to as the right mix, what is that right mix of hybrid cloud, private cloud um applications that have gravity that need to remain on premise and there's just no reason to move them. So, working with somebody and partnering with somebody that has the ability to be able to advise and consult in that capacity across the continuum of private public as well as Edge um is vitally important for people to consider as a part of their strategy. >>Jason Edge is absolutely in critical we're hearing about it more and more, especially as so much more data and machine data is generated there. I want to get your advice for the audience the same question that I asked James, what principles would you recommend for making the private cloud investment work as hard as possible? As efficiently as possible. >>I would say that, you know, it's gonna be a unique journey for every single company, but the number one advice is remember, right tool for the right job. Right, What is your application stack? What are the types of in that? What is the type of needs of the application owners? And when you start thinking about it, you start dissecting, Are you going to be investing more microservices? Can you go with more of a serverless, container based type of environment? Are you using shrink wrap software? You're gonna need more. I as right. It all comes down to the right tool for the right job. My father was an auto mechanic and I remember as a kid, he had 8000 tools and they say no, dad, why do you have five screwdrivers? To me? They all look the same right in the heart of mechanic because no, no, no, Jason you don't understand. It's the right tool for the right job. That was always his mantra. That would be my advice. >>I like that. I think my dad would have said the same thing, right tool for the right job. Absolutely critically important. So when we think about Disney, we know, generate a ton of data, how does the growth of the private cloud, Jason support that massive data growth? >>Well, as you can imagine, we have ebbs and flows in our data. There's times where we're taking a tremendous amount of data in and there's times where we're purging a tremendous amount of data for various different reasons. Right? So one of the beauties of private cloud and how it complements the public cloud is when you go to you think about data ingestion, right? And then storage and being able to efficiently can get it on premise and what not having the private cloud there to do those types of things to use more of those B I type of work clothes there, you're just Truncheon a bunch of data. Uh it's really nice to have the private cloud. So that way the application, he can add nodes at collectors of, you know, other other log aggregation type tools, right? Whatever the tool is, you know, being able to have the flexibility to add notes very quickly, just like they can in public cloud, public cloud but have it on premise so that you can do cost control and get the data in a more timely, more efficient manner. Again though, it comes down to the type of workload and what was best for that business. I would I would be remiss if I tried to sit here and tell you that all of our big data stuff were to only reside or only use on premise technology is of course it spans like I said, we've got hybrid cloud and multi cloud, so >>it kind of goes with the right tool for the right job. One more question for both of you and I want to go back to that thought leadership angle Jason when you are talking with peers of yours, what do you recommend that technology leaders look for when they're going to be partnering with a company on any type of cloud, initiative management or implementation project? >>I was a understand you understand the problem, trying to solve, understand the technology that you want to use and understand again, your application portfolio and perhaps because I'm insured services, a large company, I have a unique perspective of having to deal with very different problems at any given day on any given week. And you know, sometimes we forget about those, especially as technologists, we tend to forget that the decisions we make have wide and far reaching impact within our application stacks and within the individual businesses. And I think if if you uh look at what is my application stack, what are the types of technologies? How how is it going to be if you are doing just shrink wrap, then you probably shouldn't be investing in cloud technologies that are heavily focused on container ization. Right. If your custom developing applications, then your entire strategy should probably be focused on how do you build container farms? And if you're doing big data, you probably should bring deep use into the conversation with something nobody's talking about really yet. So, you know, Mhm >>Sounds like collaboration is really key. James the same question. Last question of our conversation. I'd love to get your perspective on what technology leaders should look for when you're talking with prospective customers when they're looking to partner for cloud implementation, growth management. What are some of those things that you say the technology leaders look for this? >>You really need to be working with people who understand your business that are passionate about your success and really having access to not only the advisory capabilities but the technology portfolio to help you realize all of your business and technology outcomes. And I think those are super important attributes that we HP can provide, you know, across the entire portfolio of technologies and services that most customers need to do. And I think that the business outcome, the business transformation is really key to what what the future holds for us. And having the visionary perspective of not only the customer but US in joint partnership allows for these great goals to be achieved. >>Its great goals in this business outcomes. Well, gentlemen, thank you for joining me on the program today. Talking to me about what Disney is doing with technology. How HP is supporting the Disney relationship. Jason and James. I appreciate your time. Thank >>you. Thank you lisa >>For Jason, Abrahamson and James Irvine. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of HP Discover 2021. Uh huh. >>Yeah.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering NAB 2017, brought to you by HGST. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, we are back at NAB 2017 with a hundred thousand of our favorite friends doing everything about broadcast media. It's media, it's entertainment, it's technology, it's the M.E.T. effect, which is all the rage here at the show, because you can't really separate the three, they're all tied together. Really excited to be joined by our next guest, who's in the weeds, keeping an eye on this, trying to keep up with all the crazy trends. He's Avi Swerdlow, he's a Manager, Research and Development at the Walt Disney Company. Avi, welcome. >> Thank you, thank you for having me. >> Absolutely, so first off, we talked a little bit before we went live, your first time at the show, kind of general impressions of NAB? >> Yeah, it's big, a lot of walking, is my first impression. Aside from the tired feet, it's really exciting to see all the new tech out here. From talking to other people who have been in years past, it seems like things move really fast here. So what you were seeing last year is completely different of what you're seeing this year. But loving all the different sections, everything from hardware to some of the more data-driven stuff. Noticing that a lot more things are moving digital, that a lot of demos are now on laptops instead of physical. >> Right. >> Which is exciting to see. I've been impressed by some of the bigger company, like Microsoft's and IBM's machine learning efforts. And equally impressed by some of the hardware plays at DGI and GoPro, so really, really exciting stuff. >> Yeah, it's really interesting, kind of bifurcation of the market. On one hand, you've got all this crazy high end stuff with 4K and 6K and 8K and ultra HD and all these things and 360 and all these crazy cameras. At the other hand, you've got democratization of distribution with YouTube and Vimeo and all these tools being brought down in a price point, Samsung, 360 camera, where you can be a relatively small content creator and have amazing tools at your disposal. So the opportunities from a creative point of view have probably never been richer. >> Absolutely. I think a lot of what we're trying to focus on is moving in that digital direction for some of our content. Trying to implement some of those lower end or more cost efficient tools and those distribution points to get our content to people faster while at the same time trying to keep up on the higher 4K end. Something that's interesting I've chatted with my colleagues is that things move so fast that it's hard year to year to come here and see all the new things that are completely different from what you saw last year. >> Right, right. >> Now you have to start implementing those things. So I think it's a balance between all of that. I think, given that we're a big media company, some of those lower end tools are really interesting to us. In a sense that, take news for example. It's equally exciting to go live on Facebook video as it is sometimes to do it on a traditional broadcast. So I think learning how we integrate those and integrate those well are some of what we're trying to explore. >> Right. One of the topics we talked about before the cameras turned on was this virtual reality and augmented reality, VR and AR. It is pretty interesting because you talked specifically about data infusion on top of tech. And I remember the first time I ever saw a sports broadcast where, I think it was Fox maybe, that put the score bug on the upper left hand corner. You're like what is that, you're taking valuable real estate. Now we're so accustomed to this multi-layers of data on top of the broadcast. Take like a Bloomberg channel, where some of those things, where now they have multiple feeds that are constantly going. It's a very different way to consume data but that's what people really want these days. >> Absolutely. I think that last year was kind of this year of AR, VR. Where people thought there was going to be this massive revolution all of the sudden where everybody would be, would have headsets and VR would become ubiquitous. I think that will happen eventually, it's probably going to be a slower burn, mostly because people don't have devices yet. I think there's not enough content out there, not enough devices out there. Regardless, I think that if you distill down what AR and VR is at its core, it's the augmentation of information over something else. >> Right. >> So I think a lot of people are now starting to explore, what are the baby steps you take to implement some of that technology into your workflow. Assuming that people don't have devices yet, so I think, when I look at some of the virtual sets that we're seeing around this show and the implementation of information over, let's say, news or sports broadcasts, that becomes really interesting. If you use, we were talking about photogrammetry or volume capture, if you can use some of that and do interesting stuff for instance, if you're looking at a sports game and you're able to create in something like Unity or Unreal, an asset that represents the sports game, it becomes a much easier way to understand what's going on in the game then just a set of numbers. Yes, when you saw that score in the top left hand corner that was exciting. Now imagine seeing a live 3D version of the game same information unfolding, just in a different way. I think those are the baby steps towards this AR, VR implementation and eventually you might get to a point where everybody has a headset but baby steps for the average consumer. >> Right, right. In a lot of conversations about machine learning, you said you're excited about some of the machine learning, you've got the metadata and better metadata around the assets themselves, but now actually getting into the assets at the frame level to do more exploration so that people can, it's the age old adage, find, consume and share-- >> Absolutely. >> The stuff that they're most interested in. There's a lot of new opportunities because of the horsepower of these machines here that we're surrounded by, in terms of the massive capacity, and speed of the storage systems, to do things that you really couldn't do inside the assets themselves. >> Absolutely. I think our problem at somewhere like Disney is unique. It's different than at Google or at Facebook. We're not looking at this huge well of content like YouTube. We're looking at a smaller amount of content and what's really important to us is accurate metadata about our content more so than just having metadata. A lot of what we focus on is definitely metadata extraction but to the extent that we're going to use these machine learning tools we want to have really good training sets and get back really accurate data. So a lot of what we focus on is being able to have a QA layer on top of the machine learning efforts. Being able to use machine learning efforts that can be honed towards one show for instance. >> Right. >> So only extracting a certain set of characters. We really enjoy using these tools and enjoy finding ways that we can apply them to a unique problem which seems to be different than the problem that some of them are trying to address. >> Right. >> But regardless, they're working really well for us. >> So what are some of the use cases, or can you share any of how you're using machine learning to get and score that kind of metadata. >> Yeah. For instance, we're starting to use metadata in some of the ways other people are. Some of the stuff that I can talk about for instance is facial capture, location capture. Things that other people are doing but again, they're unique to one show. For instance, a Quantico on ABC might be something where we have a set of characters that we're looking for. We're starting to use machine learning to look at things like that. >> Interesting. Now Disney obviously, great company, been around forever, huge legacy. I'm just curious to the conversations in the hallway there's just this crazy wave of technology butting up against, we still have to tell great stories. Disney has a long history of telling great stories whether it's through the original animation studios or all the vast properties in which you guys have grown up. Is there still a creative ying and yang there-- >> Absolutely. >> Is there a thread and a rebalancing about technology versus let's not forget what should be-- >> A hundred percent. >> Job one. >> Absolutely. I think that's why I really enjoy working at Disney. It's always story first. My background is actually in creative development in the film industry so I always come at it from a story first point of view. I enjoy that the rest of the company does as well. But if you look at Disney's history, it's always been technology complimenting story. Think about the multi-plane camera in Snow White. The reason Snow White was able to be made was because Disney democratized animation. He figured out the technology that made animation possible at a feature film scale. Without that machine, that would not have been possible. I think in our core history you have these certain technologies that are put to use in the service of story. I think that's pretty much how we approach everything. We're looking for stuff that's going to augment our storytelling efforts. Not replace it, not degrade it in any way but only to enhance it. That's in our legacy. >> Right, right. That's interesting, I've never heard it explained that way but that is so much the trend that we continue to be on today. It's democratization of the data, democratization of the access to the data, democratization of the analytics of the data. And then operating at scale. Which requires, in today's scale, I'm not talking about a two hour movie scale, actually be able to set animation, but massive amounts of data that are flowing through the system. So how do you-- >> Absolutely. We want to use that data to empower our storytellers. To empower anybody at the company to tell better stories. But data management it's tough. I think a lot of what we had to do is first of all put in place the plumbing to make that data easily accessible. To make it easily searchable. To make it correct. To make it authoritative. To get people out of their spreadsheets that you had stored away somewhere. And unify that data so that it starts to tell a story. We've been very successful in those efforts. But it's a massive undertaking because you have companies that have not necessarily thought from a data first point of view and are now realizing that the actual value of this data. So part of what we're doing is extracting that metadata. Doing it in a way that's extremely accurate and authoritative. But also going as far upstream as possible to try to find are there other people that are already collecting this metadata and can we have them put it into a central database as opposed to everybody having their own little corner of data? >> Right, right. Is there an effort to reassess the value of the data? Where before just raw data in and of itself was a liability. Was expensive to store, expensive to keep and there was always trade off decisions about what you keep what you throw away. Now there really is the opportunity to keep it all and there's significant data outside, maybe beyond the box office gate of the feature film with all the various distribution channels and ancillary things. Obviously Disney is way ahead of the curve in terms of licensing and realizing value beyond just the core asset. But are there new ways now that those models are being worked in so that you can justify the additional expense of all this extra metadata and storage and infrastructure which, at the end of the day, you got to pay the bill-- >> Certainly. >> To the data center. >> Absolutely. I think to the extent that we can use our data to tell our stories to gain new insights it is extremely valuable. I think there are efforts around the company to, not necessarily store as much data as possible but to find what data is valuable and where it is. We're finding more and more data that is valuable. Because when you are able to unify it with other data it starts to tell a story. That's both data about our content, about our content performance, about our consumers, that what types of stories we should and shouldn't be telling. I think it's not just taking everything but it's figuring out what data is actually valuable and then trying to derive as much insight as possible from that. >> Right. Alright so, 2017, what are your top priorities for this year? Can't believe we're a third of the way through 2017- >> I know. >> It used to be like a stereo question, I guess it's not an end of the year question anymore. >> I would say one of our main goals is really to advance our automation efforts. I think also to the extent possible to advance our metadata tagging efforts as much as possible. I'd say that's top of mind at the moment. In addition to some other things but that's some of the stuff we're thinking about. >> Alright, great. Well Avi, thanks for-- >> Thank you for having me. >> For taking a few minutes and enjoy your first ever >> Thank you, yeah I will. >> NAB 2017. Alright Avi Swerdlow from Disney. I'm Jeff Frick from theCUBE, you're watching us like from NAB 2017 at the Las Vegas convention center. We'll be back after this short break. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)