>> Narrator: Live from Austin, Texas, it's the Cube covering South by Southwest 2017. Brought to you by Intel. Now, here's John Furrier. >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We're live here in the Cube coverage of South by Southwest. We're at the Intel AI Lounge, hashtag Intel AI. And the theme is AI for social good. So if you really support that, go in Twitter and use the hashtag Intel AI and support our cause. I'm John Furrier with Silicon Angle, I'm here with Robert Scoble, @Scobalizer. Just announcing this week the new formation of his new company, the Transformation Group. I've known Robert for over 12 years now. Influencer, futurist. You've been out and about with the virtual reality, augmented reality, you're wearing the products. >> Yup. >> You've been all over the world, you were just at Mobile World Con, we've been following you. You are the canary in the coalmine poking at all the new technology. >> Well, the next five years, you're going to see some mind blowing things. In fact, just the next year, I predict that this thing is going to turn into a three ounce pair of glasses that's going to put virtual stuff on top of the world. So think about coming back to South by Southwest, you're wearing a couple pairs of glasses, and you are going to see blue lines on the floor taking you to your next meeting or TV screens up here so I can watch the Cube while I walk around the streets here. It's going to be a lot of crazy stuff. >> So, we've been on our opening segment, we talked about it, we just had a segment on social good around volunteering, but what the theme is coming out is this counter culture where there's now this humanization aspect they called the consumerization of IT in the past. But in the global world, the human involvement now has these emersion experiences with technology, and now is colliding with impacting lives. >> Well, absolutely true. >> This is a Microsoft HoloLens first of all. And HoloLens puts virtual stuff on top of the real world. But at home, I have an HTC Vibe, and I have an Oculus Rift for VR, and VR is that immersive media. This is augmented reality or what we call mixed reality, where the images are put on top of the world. So I can see something pop off of you. In fact, last year at South by, I met a guy who started a company called iFluence, he showed me a pair of glasses and you look at a bottle like this and a little menu pops off the side of a bottle, tells you how much it is, tells you what's in the bottle, and lets you buy new versions of this bottle, like a case of it and have it shipped to my house all with my eyes. That's coming out from Google next year. >> So the big thing on the immersion the AR, you look at what's going on at societal impact. What are the things that you see? Obviously, we've been seeing at Mobile World Congress before Peelers came out, autonomous vehicles is game changing, smart cities, median entertainment, the world that we know close to our world, and then smart home. >> Oh yeah. >> Smart home's been around for years, but autonomous vehicles truly is a societal change. >> Yes. >> The car is a data center now. It's got experiences. And there's three new startups you should pay attention to, in the new cars that are coming in the next 18 months. Quanergy is one. They make a new kind of light R, a new sensor. In fact, there's sensors here that are sensing the world as I walk around and seeing all the surfaces. The car works the same way. It has to see ahead to know that there's a kid in front of your car, the car needs to stop, right. And Quanergy is making a focusable semiconductor light R, that's going to be one to watch. And then there's a new kind of brain, a new kind AI coming, and DeepScale is the one that I'm watching. The DeepScale brain uses a new third company called Luminar Technologies, which is making a new kind of 3D map of the world. So think about going down the street. This new map is going to know every pot hole, every piece of paint, every bridge on the street, and it's going to, the brain, the AI, is going to compare the virtual map to the real map, to the real world and see if there's anything new, like a kid crossing across the street. Then the car needs to do something and make a new decision. So 3D startups are going to really change the car. But the reason I'm so focused on mixed reality, is mixed reality is the user interface for the self-driving car, for the smart city, for the internet of things, the fields in your farm or what not, and for your robot, and for your drone. You're going to have drones that are going to know this space, and you can fly it right, I've seen drones already in the R & D labs at Intel. You can fly them straight at the wall, it'll stop an inch from the wall because it knows where the wall is. >> 'Cause it's got the software, it's got the sensors, the internet of things. We are putting out a new research report at Wikibound called IOT and P, Internet Things and People. And this is the key point. I want to get your thoughts on this because you nailed a bunch of things, and I want you to define for the folks watching what you mean by mixed reality because this is not augmented reality. >> Well it is. >> John: You're talking about mixed reality. >> It is augmented reality, it's just-- >> John: But why mixed reality? >> We came up with the new term called mixed reality because on our, we have augmented reality on phones. But the augmented reality you have on phones like the Pokemon's we've been talking about. They're not locked to the world. So when I'm wearing this, there's actually a shark right here on this table, and it's locked on the table, and I can walk around that shark. And it seems like it's sitting here just like this bottle of water is sitting on the table. This is mind blowing. And now we can actually change the table itself and make it something else. Because every pixel in this space is going to be mapped by these new sensors on it. >> So, let's take that to the next level. You had mentioned earlier in your talk just now about user interface to cars. You didn't say in user interface to cars, you didn't say just smart, you kind of implied, I think you meant it's interface to all the environments. >> Robert: Yes. >> Can you expand on what your thoughts on that? >> You're going to be wearing glasses that look like yours in about a year, much smaller than this. This is too dorky and too big for an average consumer to wear around right, but if they're three ounces and they look something like what you're wearing right now. >> Some nice Ray Bans, yup. >> And they're coming. I've seen them in the R & D labs. They're coming from a variety of different companies. Google, Facebook, Loomis, Magic Leap, all sorts of different companies are coming with these lightweight small glasses. You're going to wear them around and it's going to lay interface elements on everything. So think about my watch. Why if I do this gesture, why do I have to look at a little tiny screen right here? Why isn't the whole screen of my calendar pop up right here? They could do that, that's a gesture. This computer in here can sense that I'm doing a gesture and can put a new user interface on top of that. Now, I've seen tractors that have sensors in them. Now, using a glass like this, it shows me what the pumps are doing in the tractor on the glasses. I can walk around a factory floor and see the sensors in the pipes on the factory floor and see the sensors in my electric motors on the factory. All with a one pair of glasses. >> So this is why the Intel AI thing interests me, this whole theme. Because what you just described requires data. So one, you need to have the data available. >> Robert: Yes. >> The data's got to be a frictionless, it can't be locked in some schema as they say in the database world. It's got to be free to be addressed by software. >> Yes. >> You need software that understands what that is. And then you need horsepower, compute power, chips to make it all happen. >> Yeah, think about a new kind of TV that's coming soon. I'm going to look at TV like this one, a physical TV. But it's too small and it's in the wrong angle. So I can just grab the image off the TV and virtually move it over here. And I'll see it, nobody else will see it. But I can put that TV screen right here, so I can watch my TV the way I want to watch it. >> Alright so this is all sci-fi great stuff, which actually-- >> It's not sci-fi, it's here already. You just don't have it. I have it (laughs). >> Well, you can see it's kind of dorky, but I'm not going to say you're a dork 'cause I know you. To mainstream America, mainstream world, it's a bit sci-fi but people are grokking this now. Certainly the younger generation that are digital native all are coming in post-9/11, they understand that this is a native world to them, and they take to it like a fish to water. >> Yes. >> Us old guys, but we are the software guys, we're the tech guys. So continue to the mainstream America, what has to happen in your mind to mainstream this stuff? Obviously self driving cars is coming. It's in fleets first, and then cars. >> We have to take people on a journey away from computing like this or computing like this to computing on glasses. So how do we do that? Well, you have to show deep utility. And these glasses show that. Wearing a HoloLens, I see aliens coming out of the walls. Blowing holes in this physical wall. >> John: Like right now? >> Yeah. >> What are you smoking (laughs)? >> Nothing yet. And then I can shoot them with my fingers because the virtual things are mixing with the real world. It's a mind blowing experience. >> So do you see this being programmed by users or being a library of stuff? >> Some are going to be programmed by users like Minecraft is today on a phone or on a tablet. Most of it is going to be built by developers. So there's a huge opportunity coming for developers. >> Talk about the developer angle, because that's huge. We're seeing massive changes in the developer ecosystems. Certainly, open source is going to be around for awhile. But which friends do you see in open source, I mean, I'm sorry, in the developer community, with this new overlay of 5G connectivity, all this amazing cloud technology? >> There's a new 3D mapping and it's a slam based map. So think about this space, this physical space. These sensors that are on the front of these new kinds of glasses that are coming out are going to sense the world in a new way and put it into a new kind of database, one that we can put programmatic information into. So think about me walking around a shopping mall. I walk in the front door of a shopping mall, I cross geo fence in that shopping mall. And the glasses then show me information about the shopping mall 'cause it knows it's in the shopping mall. And then I say, hey Intel, can you show me, or Siri, or Alexa, or Cortana, or whoever you're talking to. >> Mostly powered by Intel (laughs). >> Most of it is powered by Intel 'cause Intel's in all the data centers and all these glasses. In fact, Intel is the manufacturer of the new kind of controller that's inside this new HoloLens. And when I ask it, I can say, hey, where's the blue jeans in this shopping mall? And all of a sudden, three new pairs of blue jeans will appear in the air, virtual blue jeans, and it'll say this one's a Guess, this one's a Levi's, this one's a whatever. And I'll say, oh I want the Levi's 501, and I'll click on it, and a blue line will appear on the floor taking me right to the product. You know, the shopping mall companies already have the data. They already know where the jeans are in the shopping mall and these glasses are going to take you right to it. >> Robert, so AI is the theme, it's hot, but AI, I mean I love AI, don't get me wrong. AI is a mental model in my mind for people to kind of figure out that this futuristic world's here and it's moving fast. But machine learning is a big part of what AI is becoming. >> Yes. >> So machine learning is becoming automated. >> Well it's becoming a lot faster. >> Faster and available. >> Because it use to take 70,000 images of something like a bottle to train the system that this is a bottle versus a can, bottle versus can. And the scientists have figured out how to make it two images now. So all I need is two images of something new to train the system that we have a bottle versus a can. >> And also the fact that computes available. There's more and more faster processors that this stuff can get crunched, the data can be crunched. >> Absolutely, but it's the data that trains these things. So let's talk about the bleeding edge of AI. I've seen AIs coming out of Israel that are just mind blowing. They take a 3D image of this table, they separate everything into an object. So this is an object. It's separate from the table that it's on. And it then lets me do AI look-ups on the object. So this is a Roxanne bottle of water. The 3D sensor can see the logo in this bottle of water, can look to the cloud, find all sorts of information about the manufacturer here, what the product is, all sorts of stuff. It might even pull down a CAD drawing like the computer that you're on. Pull down a CAD drawing, overlay it on top of the real product, and now we can put videos on the back of your Macintosh or something like that. You can do mind blowing stuff coming soon. That's one angle. Let's talk about medical. In Israel, I went to the AI manufacturers. They're training the MRI machines to recognize cancers. So you're going to be lying in an MRI machine and it's going to tell the people around the machine whether you have cancer or not and which cancer. And it's already faster than the doctor, cheaper than the doctor, and obviously doesn't need a doctor. And that's going to lead into a whole discussion-- >> The Christopher thing. These are societal problems by the way. The policy is the issue, not the technology. How do you deal with the ethical issues around gene sequencing and gene editing? >> That's a whole other thing. I'm just recognizing whether you have cancer on this example. But now we need to talk about jobs. How do we make new jobs in massive quantities. Because we're going to decimate a lot of peoples' jobs with these new technologies, so we need to talk about that, probably on a future Cube. But I think mixed reality is going to create millions of jobs because think about this bottle. In the future, I'm going to be wearing a pair of glasses and Skrillex is going to jump out of the bottle, on to the table, and give a performance, and then jump back into the bottle. That's only four years away according to the guy who's running a new startup called 8i. He's making a new volumetric camera, it's a camera 40 or 50 cameras around-- >> If you don't like Skrillex, Martin Garrix can come on. >> Whatever you want. Remember, this media's going to be personalized to your liking. Spotify is already doing that. Do you listen to Spotify? >> John: Yeah, of course. >> Do you listen to the discovery weekly feature on that? >> No. >> You should. It's magical. It brings you the best music based on what you've already listened and it's personalized. So your discovery weekly on your phone is different than the discovery weekly on my phone. And that's run by AI. >> So these are new collaborative filters. This is all about software? >> Yeah. Software and a little bit of hardware. Because you still need to sense the world in a new way. You're going to get new watches this year that have many more sensors that are looking in your veins for whether you have high blood pressure, whether you're a in shape for running. By the way, you're going to have an artificial coach when you go running in the morning, running next to you, just like when you see Mark Zuckerberg. He can afford to pay a real coach, I can't. So he has a real coach running with him every morning and saying hey, we're going to do some interval training today, we're going to do some sprints to get your cardio up. Well, now the glasses are going to do that for you. It's going to say, let's do some intervals today and you're going to wear the watch that's going to sense your blood pressure and your heart rate and the artificial coach running next you. And that's only two years away. >> Of course, great stuff. Robert Scoble, we have to close the segment. Quickly, how has South by changed in ten years? >> Well, 20, I've been coming for 20 years. I've been coming since it was 500 people and now it's 50,000, 70,000 people, it's crazy. >> How has it changed this year? What's going on this year? >> This is the VR year. Every year we have a year right. There was the Twitter year, there was the Foursquare year. This is the VR year, so if you're over at Capital Factory, you're going to see dozens of VR experiences. In fact, my co-author's playing the Mummy right now. I had to come on your show, I got the short straw (laughs). Sit in the sun instead of playing some cool stuff. But there's VR all over the place. Next year is going to be the mixed reality year, and this is a predictor of the next year that's coming. >> Alright, Robert Scoble, futurist right here on the Cube. Also, congratulations on your new company. You're going out on your own, Transformation Group. >> Yeah, we're helping out brands figure out this mixed reality world. >> Congratulations of course. As always, it is a transformational time in the history of our world and certainly the computer industry is going to a whole other level that we haven't seen before. And this is going to be exciting. Thanks for spending the time with us. It's the Cube here live at South by Southwest special Cube coverage, sponsored by Intel. And the hashtag is Intel AI. If you like it, tweet us at Twitter. We'll be happy to talk to you online. I'm John Furrier. More after this short break. (electronic music)

(upbeat music) >> Male Voiceover: Live, from San Diego, California it's theCUBE covering Cisco Live US 2019 brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> Hey welcome back to theCUBE Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman. We are day one of our coverage of Cisco Live from San Diego. We're going to be here for three days of coverage but a great day so far and we're pleased to welcome back one of our CUBE alumni Kent Christensen the Practice Director from Insight with the Cloud & Data Center at Transformation Group. Kent, welcome back! >> Thank you. It's been a little while. >> It has been a little while. So give our audience a little overview of Insight your partnership with Cisco and some of the history of how you got to Insight. >> Yeah so you remember us as Data Link we were a smaller company than we are now. Focusing on Cloud and data center transformation. We've talked at Dell events, CFC events things like that. But we were a Cisco partner for about 10 years and recently we were acquired and we did what the name sounds like, Cloud and data center transformation. We've talked about Cloud on the channel and all these other things. Insight acquired us. Insight has kind of four major service solution sets if you would. Some people look at them as a supply chain company and it's a great, large supply chain company. Microsoft's largest global partner. Some people understand it for the device and use the devices that's called Connective Workforce. Each of these are pretty big businesses you know, compared to where we are. What was Data Link is now what's called Cloud and Data Center Transformation. So we're helping people with the journey to the Cloud and the Hybrid Cloud and all that other stuff. And Cisco is right dead center in the middle of that and then the fourth one is really exciting. It's called Data and Digital Innovation and that's a couple of companies. Blue Metal, Cardinal etc. Again, a thousand people. Microsoft ILT and AI partner of the year. So all of that is a pretty large channel organization if you would. >> That's great stuff Kent. We love to talk to the channel as the folks in Wall Street do. It like you know, we do a channel check. Okay, You know, Cisco's got a few areas that have you know, stronger growth in the market over all. Security's doing well, a few other spaces on that are you know growing faster over all than the market and helping >> Kent: Absolutely >> grow where Cisco's going, so give us the reality. What's happening with your customers? What's driving you know the most growth in your business and you know, where is Cisco kind of leading the pack? >> So we're doing really well with Cisco and I don't know if it's because we're helping clients build solutions that truly lead to business outcomes. We're not order takers. So we're actually moving up we're now Cisco's fourth largest partner. We're growing well high single digits growth which is pretty phenomenal on such a big number. We're talking a billion dollars now in growing that level and there's a number of reasons. You know, some of it is there's a lot of great technology we can get into some of those. We see the economy as being pretty good not bad yet. You know everybody's worried about what might happen. You mentioned security, we can get into a little bit of that. That's driving a lot of network refresh and stuff like that. You know and a little bit of intra-company you know that word getting our stuff together so this large company with 15000 customers acquires a company with 2000 customers and now we're getting introduced into the 15000 with less friction. So that's helping us and that's helping our Cisco Business. >> Lisa: See here we are at Cisco Live. The thirtieth time that they had done a customer partner event. The network has not only changed dramatically since their first event in '89 which was called Networkers I believe. >> KENT: Yeah. >> But networking technology has also massively changed you mentioned security. And now in this multi-cloud world no longer can you just put a firewall around a data center right? Obviously that doesn't work. We have this core Cloud edge very amorphous environments. Proliferation of mobile, of mobile data traversing the networks. Talk to us about when you're talking with customers who need to transform their data centers where do you start from a networking conversation perspective? Where automation comes in, where security comes in? >> You know, a lot of the Cloud native transformation tends to be the edge of the network. You know conversion, infrastructure, stuff like that that's on the edge. The network security guys which I'm not, you know, I work with them very closely but we almost separate ourselves out from a data center networking and security. But security's end to end to your point, right? I've got software to find access. I've got mobile access points. I've got you know, Tetration. I've got all of these products that are helping people that in the past they were just patching holes in the dyke. You know, hey this happened let's put this software product in. This happened, let's put this in. We actually built a security practice like the last 3 or 4 years ago, it's growing. You know the number of people that are, whether it's regulation, compliance, you know. "I got some real problem. I think I've got a problem and I don't know what it is." Our ability to come back and sit down and say let's evaluate what your situation is. So I was talking to the networking guys and said wow. Enterprise networking's up, way up. What's driving that, the need to transform or is that, you know what is it? And they're like a lot of times it's something along security that's making them step back and re-evaluate and then sometimes that translates into an entire network refresh. >> Stu: So Kent you mentioned Cisco Tetration and that's one I've heard a number of times having some growth. What else, what are some of the you know hot products out there in your customer base? >> ISE, Software to Find, SD Wan, SD Access. >> Stu: Yeah, so one of the things I just want to understand Cisco actually has a few solutions in some of those areas. Any specific products that you call out or you know or that'd be mentioned? >> Kent: In the enterprise networking I wouldn't go through each and every individual one. I think, this is my view as the laymen right? 'Cause I'm the data center guy and here's the security guy and here's the networking guy. I think when Cisco started acquiring all these security companies 3 years ago and you know watched it and it looked like a patchwork quilt and said this stuff doesn't fit together? Now it fits together that story is really solid. And so we've got clients that had the luxury of either saying I'm going to do a refresh because I don't want to keep plugging holes and maybe my technology was ready for it anyway. And there's a lot of reasons to refresh right? My technology's due. Digital transformation, I need to get my network ready for IoT etc. But I keep hearing security over and over right? I've got compliance and regulations and all of this other stuff. >> Yeah but in your core space the data center world and any products that are kind of leading the charge right now? >> You know one of the things that's happening in data center from a Cisco perspective 'cause they're babies right? Ten years old in data center. They didn't really have data center before that. And we were there at the beginning and that's really how CDCT built our data center practice so you know when you talk multi-cloud at the end of the day even if I'm Cloud first I'm going to end up with some of these mission-critical workloads. They might be boring but they're running the company. They're not the innovative Dev-Ops, IoT, AI thing that seems cool. They're running the company and that's still a converged or a hyper-converged play. And some of those you know there's a lot of opportunities we've been talking about all day with the Cisco BU's. Some of those are ready for refresh right so there's a great opportunity to just to go in and say okay what's next? You know, we've added you know the latest server technology. We've added all these things in the server technology. Obviously all flash and the storage technologies and all of that so that's huge. And then you know Cisco continues to innovate in data center solutions with things like HyperFlex which we've talked a little bit about. And it started off a little slow because again just like they were in servers why are they here? Why are they in hyper-converge? So I get it. And now that product is fully improved and improved and improved and we're seeing tremendous growth there and I think the luxury they have on a data center solution is that some of the other guys have to do a or. "Hey, I'm the leading hyper-converge technology but it's me or everybody else." Right? And then Cisco's an end that I can connect those things together. >> So let's talk about some customer examples you can feel free to anonymize these. I'm seeing a smile on your face. When you come into an organization whether it's a 100 year old bank or it's a born of the Cloud or maybe a smaller more nimble organization that needs to undergo transformation data center transformation. What is the conversation like with respect to helping them take all of these disparate presumably disparate solutions? Whether they're 10-15 different security solutions. How does Insight come in and help them I don't want to say integrate but almost plug these things in together to extract value and help them make sure that what they're implementing from a technology perspective is necessary and also an accelerator of their business? >> Yeah, there's a lot there. So we have this... A year ago everybody wanted to talk about Cloud and then you had the security guys but now you have a lot of change agents with transformation in their title right? And so we have this belief. You're not going to digitally transform. Now there are people that are born digital but companies that were buying Cisco 10 years ago need to go through a digital transformation and you can't go through a digital transformation until you have a data center transformation or an IT transformation. So we've done studies. What slows people down? What makes these fail? Legacy stuff, security concerns I mean these are the top 3 things right. Budget. I was just running the company. And so we start there. Where do you want to get to? And then most of it is let's understand what you have. What your objectives are as an organization. "I want to get to this. I want to get to that." Well before we start talking about technologies. It's very, it's very services oriented. I can't just go in there and throw you a bomb and say this is going to fix your problem 'cause everybody's different. So it is very custom and very services oriented. >> Lisa: But you're saying... >> Stu: I was just going to say it's a pattern I've seen quite a bit for the last couple of years. Step 1 is modernize the platform and then step 2 you can worry about your data and application story on top of that in that multi-cloud world that you live in. >> And step 1 admit you have a problem. >> Yeah. >> (Lisa laughs) >> So we actually did a study you know we do this and we're like. Why does everybody keep stalling why have we been stuck in this nobody's refreshing things and stuff like that? Well there's a lot of new technology they don't get it. But you know do you want to digitally transform? Understand what you need to do. But we ask questions like rate your IT infrastructure just rate it B-minus. Across a lot of large companies that was the grade they gave themselves. So there's a lot of opportunity to say: Okay where do you want to be and where do we start? >> Yeah, 90 percent of people think they are above average drivers. So... >> Drivers? But they think they have a B-Minus in IT infrastructure and it's like Do you consider that a problem? >> Yeah. >> So once you as we wrap here in the next minute or so. Once you get them to admit yeah there's problems here that Insight and other partners come in and improve. Data center transformation, modernizing that infrastructure but it's got to be concurrent with starting to modernize and transform other areas right? >> Absolutely. So you know there's so many places you could start. Sometimes you just go and say well what's your appetite? Every once in a while you get somebody who's ready to go through an entire transformational process. You know 20 million dollars or more of whatever and we get those opportunities those are awesome. Now we get to start back and figure out where you want to be and how to get there most efficiently. A lot of people have to pick and choose. You know, what's your concern right now? And so we'll help them figure that out and again it could be security it could be you know how many people... We have over a thousand enterprise customers running Sequel 2008. That's a problem right? Because that's end of support within a year. That's a problem that's an opportunity. You know so they are still trying to figure out these things. And then a picture of where I want to get to. Which we've kind of always said and that's where that Digital Innovation Group they've got all these AI projects and as we sit here and talk about those things that are kind of born in the Cloud but they're coming towards the infrastructure. It was easy to get a GPU in the Cloud but I'm going to have to start... And so we have actually have all the latest Cisco technology and storage technology of AI stuff in our labs and stuff like that so there's a lot going on. Our CEO would say "It's a really exciting time to be in this business." >> It sounds like it! I wish we had more time to start digging through that but you'll have to come back Kent. >> Okay. >> Alright thanks for joining us. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> With Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live. Day 1 of our coverage of Cisco Live from San Diego. Thanks for watching.