[Announcer] - From New York, it's theCUBE! Covering ESCAPE/19. >> Hello, welcome back to theCUBE coverage here in New York City for the first inaugural Multi-Cloud Conference called ESCAPE/2019. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here with Natalie Gholmieh who is the Manager of Data and Integration Services at the University of California San Diego campus/office- sprawling data center, tons of IT, a lot of challenges, welcome. >> Yeah, thank you for having me. >> So, thanks for taking the time out. You're a practitioner, you're here. Why are you at this conference? What are you hoping to gain from here? What interests you here at the Multi-Cloud Escape Conference? >> So, this conference is very much within the spirit of what we're trying to do. Our CIO has directives which is to avoid lock-in, to do multi-vendor orchestration, to go with containers first, and open-source wherever possible. So, this conference pretty much speaks to all of that. >> So, this is a really interesting data point, because it seems the common thread is data. >> Mhmm. >> The cloud is an integration of things, so people are trying to find that integration point so they can have multiple vendors, multiple clouds. It seems like the multi-vendor world back in the old days, where you had multiple vendors, heterogeneous environment, data seems to be the linchpin in all this. >> Right, yes. >> That's what you do. >> Right. >> How do you think about this? Because it used to be that the big database ran the world, now you have lots of databases, you have applications. >> Right, yeah. >> Databases are everywhere now. >> Data is born in multiple systems, but the data is also an asset right now to all of the organizations, including the university. So, what we want to try to accomplish is to get all of this data possibly in one place, or in multiple places, and be able to do analytics on top of this, and this is what the value-added processing over the data. >> What's exciting to you these days in the University? You guys try to change the business, could be technology? What are the cool things that you like, that you're working with right now, or that you envision emerging? >> Yeah. So, my team is currently building a platform to do all of the data integration and we are planning to offer this platform as a service to developers to streamline and standardize application development, as well as integration development, within the central IT at the University. So this is pretty much the most exciting thing that we're doing, is putting together this platform that is quite complex, it is a journey that we're taking together with the people who already operate the existing systems. So we're putting up this new thing that we're operating in parallel and then we will be migrating to that new platform. >> I'm sure containers are involved, >> Yes. >> Kubernetes is a key part of it. >> Yes, mhmm. So, the platform has two parts. There is the application publishing with Docker and Kubernetes, and we also have the streaming side of it, to build the data pipeline with open-source tools like Apache NiFi and Apache Kafka. So this is going to be wiring the data pipelines from source to target and moving the data in real time in order to- >> And you see that as a nice way to keep an option to move from cloud to cloud? >> Potentially, since the platform's role is to decouple the infrastructure from development. That way, you could spin a portion of the platform on any cloud, pretty much, and run your workload anywhere you want. >> So classic DevOps. >> Yeah. >> Separate infrastructure as code, provide a codified layer. >> Yeah. >> So, let me ask you a question. How did you get into all this data business? I mean, what attracted you to the data field? What's your story? Tell us your story. >> So, the data, you know, I personally started, I mean, I had more of a networking background. Then I became Sys Admin, then I got into the business of logging and log aggregation for machine data, and then I was, you know, using that data to create dashboards of system health and, you know, data correlation, and this is what exposed me, personally, first to the data world, and then I saw the value in doing all of this with data, and the value is even more impactful to the business when you're working with actual business data. So I'm very excited about that. >> So you were swimming in the first data lake before data lakes were data lakes. >> Yes, yeah, right, for machine data. >> Once you're in there, you see value, the data exhaust comes in, as we used to say back in the day, data exhaust! >> Yeah. >> So, now that you're dealing with the business value, is the conversation the same? Or are they different conversations? Or is it still the same, kind of, data conversation? Or is the job the same? Because you still have machine data, applications are throwing off data, you have infrastructure data being thrown off, you have new software layers. >> Yes, yeah. >> Is it the same, or is it different? Describe your current situation. >> You know, maybe the concepts are the same, but I think the logging machine data has more value to IT to give insights on how to improve your SLAs, within the scope of IT, but the business data really will impact the business, the whole entire university for us. So, one of the things that we're doing on the business side with the business data is to provide some analytics on the student data in order to increase their chances for success. So, getting all of that data, doing some reports and pattern analytics, and then coaching the students. >> Not a bad place to live, in San Diego, is it? >> Oh, it's excellent. >> Weather's always perfect? >> Oh, yeah. >> Marine layer's not as bad as L.A., but, you know. >> Yeah. >> Or is it? >> No, we do have- The university is right on the coast, so yeah. Sometimes it's gloomy the whole entire day. >> I love it there. I wish I could've gone to school at the University of San Diego. >> It is great. It's a great place to be. >> Love to go down, see my friends in La Jolla, Del Mar, beautiful areas. Great country. >> Yeah. >> Well, thank you for coming on and sharing your insights into multi-cloud and some of the thinking. It seems to be very foundational right now in its whole thinking. >> Mhmm. >> There's no master plan yet. People are really having good conversations around how to set it all up. >> Yeah. >> The architecture. >> Right. >> The role. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Do you see the same thing? >> Yes, architecture is actually a very essential piece of it because you need to plan before you go. If you go without planning, I think your bill is going to be off the roof. >> Huge bill. >> Yeah. >> And you'll sink in the quicksand and the data lake and you can be sucked into the data swamp. >> Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, architecture is a big piece of it, design, then build, and then continuous improvement, that's a huge thing at UC San Diego. >> You know what I get excited about? I get excited about real time, and how real time, time series data is becoming a big part of the application development, and understanding the context between good data and bad data. >> Mhmm. >> It's always a hard problem. It's a hard tech problem. >> Yeah, that is true, yeah. There are a lot of processes that should be set around the data to make sure the data's clean and it's a good data set and all of that. >> If data's an asset, then has it got a value? Is it on the balance sheet? Shouldn't we value the data? Some data's more valuable than others? It's a good question, huh? >> It is a good question, but I don't know the answer to that. >> No one knows. We always ask the question. I think that's a future state where at some point, data can be recognized, but right now it's hard to tell what's valuable or not. >> I think the value is in the returned services and the value-added services that you, as an organization, can bring to your customer base. This is where the value is, and if you want to put a dollar amount on that, I don't know, it's not my job. >> Thank you so much for coming on, special time of conversation. >> Thank you. >> CUBE Conversation here, the CUBE Coverage of the first inaugural Multi-Cloud Conference called ESCAPE/19, where the industry best are coming together. Practitioners, entrepreneurs, founders, executives, and finally, just talking about what multi-cloud really can be, foundationally what needs to be in place. And this is what happens here at these conferences, tons of hallway conversations. Natalie, thank you for spending the time with us. CUBE Coverage, I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching.