>> From Seattle, Washington, it's theCUBE covering KubeCon and CloudNativeCon North America 2018 brought to you by Red Hat, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and it's ecosystem partners. >> Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage here. Day three of wall to wall coverage at KubeCon, CloudNativeCon 2018, here in Seattle, theCUBE's been breaking it down all week. I'm John Furrier with Stu Miniman. Our next guest is Tuan Nguyen who is the principal engineer in technical marketing, cloud products and solutions at Cisco Systems. Tuan, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for joining us. >> Thanks for having me. Thank you. >> So obviously, cloud has been a big part of Cisco. We've seen at Cisco Live last year and Cisco Barcelona. >> Yeah. >> Got your big European event coming up, Cisco Live in Europe. >> Yes. >> Cloud has been a big part of the CEO's conversations on stage. >> Yes. >> Cisco's going all in on cloud, DevNet. >> Yeah. >> DevNet Create, two communities. You guys got a cloud native vibe going on in Cisco. >> Yeah, we do. >> Cloud centered. You got some products that are addressing this. >> Right. >> This is a, shift for Cisco, big time. >> Yeah. >> You've in the cloud, but this is like all. It feels like an all in. >> Right, right. Yeah, yeah, so what we've been evangelizing to people here is that Cisco is a software company, right? We certainly have a very strong heritage in our enterprise relationships related to our hardware platforms but we're transitioning and we're really making that conversion to being a software company. Cisco has been acquiring talent and technology in the past couple years. We've developed some strong relationships with Google and AWS as well and we developed these reference architectures that our customers can buy as kind of a single unit and get the support that they need from us. >> Yeah. >> So. >> We covered your recent announcement with AWS. >> Yes. >> Really nice, elegantly designed Kubernetes strategy where using EKS over here, you got the Cisco stuff on here so it's seamless experience for the customer which is great, congrats, I think that's a great announcement. I think it's directionally correct. I think that's what customers want. But I want to ask you a bigger question I want to get your opinion on, perspective. When you look at Kubernetes, what we're hearing here at the show from end users and from the emerging start ups that are contributing is that, breaking down the monolithic application into a series of granule sets of services is what everyone is doing. That's clearly, that microservices, a variety of other things, Kubernetes can connect that. But it's the network that brings it together. >> Right. >> So we're seeing the policy knobs inside Kubernetes as being a very strategic benefit. We had one expert say, "A lot of people "aren't taking advantage of those policy knobs. "This is a great opportunity." >> Right. >> You guys are, (laughing) as networked as you could be at Cisco. This is your DNA. >> Yeah. >> How are you guys looking at Kubernetes? Are you looking at the policy knobs? How do you talk to your customers about this new opportunity with Kubernetes? >> Yeah. >> What's the real up side-- >> Yeah. >> For your customers with Kubernetes? >> Yeah. So one, you mentioned, we see Kubernetes as very pervasive so we offer an on prem version of Kubernetes and of course, you know, we partner with Google and with AWS to deliver on cloud versions of Kubernetes and related to policies, application policies, in the form of Istio and network policies or security policies in the form of a network interface. Our on prem solution offers three types of CNIs. So we're very flexible in that way and certainly if you are a Cisco customer and you have a Cisco ecosystem of hardware platforms then we natively integrate into those platforms and we let you leverage your existing investments, yeah. >> So if I look at it that way, then I'm saying, okay, I'm good with Cisco right now. >> Yeah. >> Do I have to change anything with Kubernetes? What's the impact to me, as a Cisco customer? >> Yeah. >> Is this added value? Consistent environment? What's the impact to the customer's day to day, operational? (laughing) >> Sure, sure. Yeah. >> Environment? >> Yeah, so our customers are asking us to tie both VM based and container based workloads into CICD, so we obviously, with with our ACI/CNI we give them the capability to construct policies in Kubernetes that end up on the hardware platform, right? That's number one. Then we also have a hardware registry, we have security policies, that can be carried across different platforms, so in your private cloud and VMware and OpenStack, you can carry those same policies. For us, we've got application delivery, frameworks and platforms, that deliver the application in the form of both VM and container based as well as bare metal and we kind of unify the user experience, when it comes to application deployment in Kubernetes. >> Yeah, so Tuan, I'm actually glad that we got you towards the end of what we've been talking about here because one of the things we've been teasing apart is, multi clouds, in many ways, is like what we've been talking about a long time about multi vendor. >> Yeah. >> And the networking space is an area that we really understand. You know, what worked and what didn't work in a multi vendor world and the management piece was often the breaking point because just stitching all those together, we've looked for the last few years, customers have multi cloud and getting their arms around that and how do I manage that, can be a real challenge. >> Yeah, yeah. >> We know Cisco's making investments, they've made acquisitions. Tell us, what have we learned from the past? What's different about this now that will make it successful where management has been one of the pitfalls for quite a long time? >> Yeah, yeah. So I think what we've learned from the past is that customers are asking us for policies that can span across the multi cloud, right? So, whereas certain platforms will give you a hybrid cloud experience, Cisco is investing in things like VPN meshed apologies into CSR, in ASR, in protecting workloads as they move across different cloud targets. And then also in the provisioning and life cycle management. We feel that customers want the capability to run applications in any cloud environment and under any type of overlay or underlay networking platforms, yeah. >> Tuan, one of the things that you talk about not only getting your arms around it but there is multi axis's that I need to optimize for. One of the ones, of course, sorting out is cost. So, you know, where does Cisco sit in this environment? The big shift that I think was really highlighted for me last year, going to Cisco Live is, it used to be most of what I'm managing, I control. >> Right. >> Today, most of the network and most of the environments that I'm in charge of? They're outside of my purview. >> Right. >> With doing that multi cloud world. >> Right. >> So how I make sure that I don't, you know, get myself in trouble with the CFO? >> Right. >> Or have unexpected things come up? >> Right, right, yeah. I came through a software acquisition called CliQr Technologies and CliQr Technologies is that one tool that gives you that experience and allows you to see cloud cost. So cloud cost from a hourly, metered perspective but also from a budgeting perspective. And we're adding additional components into our platform that gives you like true cost for all of your compute, all of your network, your storage, your services like Lambda and then also makes recommendations on the instant sizes that you need to use. We have policies like suspension policies that help our customers to save on their cloud bill. In a lot of ways, the life cycle management aspect of applications is something that differentiates us from other cloud management platforms. >> Talk about the cost side and the cost of ownership. I've always been talking about the cloud as the TCO or total cost of ownership, changes a bit. What are some of the challenges that you've seen the customers having that you guys are helping with? When you look at integrating security, networking and application performance and management? Cause it's not siloed anymore. >> Yeah. >> They're integrating together. >> That's right. >> This is a new dynamic. >> Right, right. >> What's state of the art? What are you guys doing? You guys address that? What are some of the customer challenges? Just, what's your thoughts on that area? >> Yeah so most of the time there are two basic challenges to this. One is, you know bringing the cloud economy into the private cloud consumption is something that our platform does. And then also being able to visualize all the costs. Helping our customers to make good decisions about what types of workloads run where best and whether it's, so we enable, obviously, VMs as well as cloud native, container based, micro services to co-exist in a single platform so we'll deploy VMs and containers in a hybrid fashion. >> Yeah. >> Or we'll deploy them into the same and we'll give you the utilization of those workloads based on dollar amounts, based on run time and also based on the type of workload. >> So here's the curve ball question for you. Now multi cloud comes into the equation? >> Yeah. >> How do you guys deal with that because workload, in some cases, I've heard from customers that refactoring those workloads is a problem. >> Right. >> So if I'm going to run true multi cloud, I'm going to have multiple clouds, I need networks to know, have smarts, around where I want to put that and do I want it in different geography maybe or region? So the network has the intelligence on a lot of things. >> Right. >> How are you guys addressing the multi cloud component? >> Yeah, yeah. >> With workload? Without refactoring? >> Yeah. So because we can compose applications that consist of both VMs and containers, right? One of the projects, just one of the use cases that we worked on with our relationship with Google was to, from cloud center, to deploy cloud native workloads in GKE that would navigate and basically traverse the VPN network to go back into the on prem target in order to access a database that was kind of a legacy database using an API URL. So that whole workflow was something that we solved for with our reference architecture so, you know, we obviously have the portfolio of products that allows our customers to take advantage of both hardware, software and networking and security and monitoring all in one reference architecture. >> A lot of opportunities for you guys. I think you're positioned well. We've covered you guys on the DevNet, DevNet Create. >> Yeah. >> You're seeing the cloud center, this dashboard kind of model of looking at the operations side, the development side. A lot of changes. Really kind of fit right into your wheelhouse. >> Yes, yeah. >> I think the Kubernetes policy knobs, it's a big story that I'm walking away with on this trip and saying, wow, policy sounds like a networking thing. Networking guys love policy. >> Yeah. >> If you can automate it? >> Yeah, that's right. >> And managed the costs? >> Yeah. >> It's a good thing. >> Yeah. >> Thanks for coming on, appreciate your insight. >> Thank you, thank you very much. >> CUBE coverage here, day three continues. I'm John Furrier with Stu Miniman. Stay with us for wall to wall coverage here at KubeCon, CloudNativeCon. We'll be right back with more, after this short break. (upbeat techno music)