>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting Cuban Cloud brought to you by Silicon Angle. Welcome back to the live segment of the Cuban cloud. I'm Dave, along with my co host, John Ferrier. John Rose is here. He's the global C T o Dell Technologies. John, great to see you as always, Really appreciate >>it. Absolutely good to know. >>Hey, so we're gonna talk edge, you know, the the edge, it's it's estimated. It's a multi multi trillion dollar opportunity, but it's a highly fragmented, very complex. I mean, it comprises from autonomous vehicles and windmills, even retail stores outer space. And it's so it brings in a lot of really gnarly technical issues that we want to pick your brain on. Let me start with just what to you is edge. How do you think about >>it? Yeah, I think I mean, I've been saying for a while that edges the when you reconstitute Ike back out in the real world. You know, for 10 years we've been sucking it out of the real world, taking it out of factories, you know, nobody has an email server under their desk anymore. On that was because we could put it in data centers and cloud public clouds, and you know that that's been a a good journey. And then we realized, Wait a minute, all the data actually was being created out in the real world. And a lot of the actions that have to come from that data have to happen in real time in the real world. And so we realized we actually had toe reconstitute a nightie capacity out near where the data is created, consumed and utilized. And, you know, that turns out to be smart cities, smart factories. You know, uh, we're dealing with military apparatus. What you're saying, how do you put, you know, edges in tow, warfighting theaters or first responder environments? It's really anywhere that data exists that needs to be processed and understood and acted on. That isn't in a data center. So it's kind of one of these things. Defining edge is easier to find. What it isn't. It's anywhere that you're going to have. I t capacity that isn't aggregated into a public or private cloud data center. That seems to be the answer. So >>follow. Follow that. Follow the data. And so you've got these big issue, of course, is late and see people saying, Well, some applications or some use cases like autonomous vehicles. You have to make the decision locally. Others you can you can send back. And you, Kamal, is there some kind of magic algorithm the technical people used to figure out? You know what, the right approaches? Yeah, >>the good news is math still works and way spent a lot of time thinking about why you build on edge. You know, not all things belong at the edge. Let's just get that out of the way. And so we started thinking about what does belong at the edge, and it turns out there's four things you need. You know, if you have a real time responsiveness in the full closed loop of processing data, you might want to put it in an edge. But then you have to define real time, and real time varies. You know, real time might be one millisecond. It might be 30 milliseconds. It might be 50 milliseconds. It turns out that it's 50 milliseconds. You probably could do that in a co located data center pretty far away from those devices. One millisecond you better be doing it on the device itself. And so so the Leighton see around real time processing matters. And, you know, the other reasons interesting enough to do edge actually don't have to do with real time crossing they have to do with. There's so much data being created at the edge that if you just blow it all the way across the Internet, you'll overwhelm the Internets. We have need toe pre process and post process data and control the flow across the world. The third one is the I T. O T boundary that we all know. That was the I O t. Thing that we were dealing with for a long time. And the fourth, which is the fascinating one, is it's actually a place where you might want to inject your security boundaries, because security tends to be a huge problem and connected things because they're kind of dumb and kind of simple and kind of exposed. And if you protect them on the other end of the Internet, the surface area of protecting is enormous, so there's a big shift basically move security functions to the average. I think Gardner made up a term for called Sassy. You know, it's a pretty enabled edge, but these are the four big ones. We've actually tested that for probably about a year with customers. And it turns out that, you know, seems to hold If it's one of those four things you might want to think about an edge of it isn't it probably doesn't belong in >>it. John. I want to get your thoughts on that point. The security things huge. We talked about that last time at Del Tech World when we did an interview with the Cube. But now look at what's happened. Over the past few months, we've been having a lot of investigative reporting here at Silicon angle on the notion of misinformation, not just fake news. Everyone talks about that with the election, but misinformation as a vulnerability because you have now edge devices that need to be secured. But I can send misinformation to devices. So, you know, faking news could be fake data say, Hey, Tesla, drive off the road or, you know, do this on the other thing. So you gotta have the vulnerabilities looked at and it could be everything. Data is one of them. Leighton. See secure. Is there a chip on the device? Could you share your vision on how you see that being handled? Cause it's a huge >>problem. Yeah, this is this is a big deal because, you know, what you're describing is the fact that if data is everything, the flow of data ultimately turns into the flow of information that knowledge and wisdom and action. And if you pollute the data, if you could compromise it the most rudimentary levels by I don't know, putting bad data into a sensor or tricking the sensor which lots of people can dio or simulating a sensor, you can actually distort things like a I algorithms. You can introduce bias into them and then that's a That's a real problem. The solution to it isn't making the sensors smarter. There's this weird Catch 22 when you sense arise the world, you know you have ah, you know, finite amount of power and budget and the making sensors fatter and more complex is actually the wrong direction. So edges have materialized from that security dimension is an interesting augment to those connected things. And so imagine a world where you know your sensor is creating data and maybe have hundreds or thousands of sensors that air flowing into an edge compute layer and the edge compute layer isn't just aggregating it. It's putting context on it. It's metadata that it's adding to the system saying, Hey, that particular stream of telemetry came from this device, and I'm watching that device and Aiken score it and understand whether it's been compromised or whether it's trustworthy or whether it's a risky device and is that all flows into the metadata world the the overall understanding of not just the data itself, but where did it come from? Is it likely to be trustworthy? Should you score it higher or lower in your neural net to basically manipulate your algorithm? These kind of things were really sophisticated and powerful tools to protect against this kind of injection of false information at the sensor, but you could never do that at a sensor. You have to do it in a place that has more compute capacity and is more able to kind of enriched the data and enhance it. So that's why we think edges are important in that fourth characteristic of they aren't the security system of the sensor itself. But they're the way to make sure that there's integrity in the sense arised world before it reaches the Internet before it reaches the cloud data centers. >>So access to that metadata is access to the metadata is critical, and it's gonna be it's gonna be near real time, if not real time, right? >>Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the important thing is, Well, I'll tell you this. You know, if you haven't figured this out by looking at cybersecurity issues, you know, compromising from the authoritative metadata is a really good compromise. If you could get that, you can manipulate things that a scale you've never imagined. Well, in this case, if the metadata is actually authoritatively controlled by the edge note the edge note is processing is determining whether or not this is trustworthy or not. Those edge nodes are not $5 parts, their servers, their higher end systems. And you can inject a lot more sophisticated security technology and you can have hardware root of trust. You can have, you know, mawr advanced. PK I in it, you can have a I engines watching the behavior of it, and again, you'd never do that in a sensor. But if you do it at the first step into the overall data pipeline, which is really where the edges materializing, you can do much more sophisticated things to the data. But you can also protect that thing at a level that you'd never be able to do to protect a smart lightbulb. A thermostat in your house? >>Uh, yes. So give us the playbook on how you see the evolution of the this mark. I'll see these air key foundational things, a distributed network and it's a you know I o t trends into industrial i o t vice versa. As a software becomes critical, what is the programming model to build the modern applications is something that I know. You guys talk to Michael Dell about this in the Cuban, everyone, your companies as well as everyone else. Its software define everything these days, right? So what is the software framework? How did people code on this? What's the application aware viewpoint on this? >>Yeah, this is, uh, that's unfortunately it's a very complex area that's got a lot of dimensions to it. Let me let me walk you through a couple of them in terms of what is the software framework for for For the edge. The first is that we have to separate edge platforms from the actual edge workload today too many of the edge dialogues or this amorphous blob of code running on an appliance. We call that an edge, and the reality is that thing is actually doing two things. It's, ah, platform of compute out in the real world and it's some kind of extension of the cloud data pipeline of the cloud Operating model. Instance, he added, A software probably is containerized code sitting on that edge platform. Our first principle about the software world is we have to separate those two things. You do not build your cloud your edge platform co mingled with the thing that runs on it. That's like building your app into the OS. That's just dumb user space. Colonel, you keep those two things separate. We have Thio start to enforce that discipline in the software model at the edges. The first principle, the second is we have to recognize that the edges are are probably best implemented in ways that don't require a lot of human intervention. You know, humans air bad when it comes to really complex distributed systems. And so what we're finding is that most of the code being pushed into production benefits from using things like kubernetes or container orchestration or even functional frameworks like, you know, the server list fast type models because those low code architectures generally our interface with via AP, eyes through CCD pipelines without a lot of human touch on it. And it turns out that, you know, those actually worked reasonably well because the edges, when you look at them in production, the code actually doesn't change very often, they kind of do singular things relatively well over a period of time. And if you can make that a fully automated function by basically taking all of the human intervention away from it, and if you can program it through low code interfaces or through automated interfaces, you take a lot of the risk out of the human intervention piece of this type environment. We all know that you know most of the errors and conditions that break things are not because the technology fails it because it's because of human being touches it. So in the software paradigm, we're big fans of more modern software paradigms that have a lot less touch from human beings and a lot more automation being applied to the edge. The last thing I'll leave you with, though, is we do have a problem with some of the edge software architectures today because what happened early in the i o t world is people invented kind of new edge software platforms. And we were involved in these, you know, edge X foundry, mobile edge acts, a crane. Oh, and those were very important because they gave you a set of functions and capabilities of the edge that you kind of needed in the early days. Our long term vision, though for edge software, is that it really needs to be the same code base that we're using in data centers and public clouds. It needs to be the same cloud stack the same orchestration level, the same automation level, because what you're really doing at the edge is not something that spoke. You're taking a piece of your data pipeline and you're pushing it to the edge and the other pieces are living in private data centers and public clouds, and you like they all operate under the same framework. So we're big believers in, like pushing kubernetes orchestration all the way to the edge, pushing the same fast layer all the way to the edge. And don't create a bespoke world of the edge making an extension of the multi cloud software framework >>even though the underlying the underlying hardware might change the microprocessor, GPU might change GP or whatever it is. Uh, >>by the way, that that's a really good reason to use these modern framework because the energies compute where it's not always next 86 underneath it, programming down at the OS level and traditional languages has an awful lot of hardware dependencies. We need to separate that because we're gonna have a lot of arm. We're gonna have a lot of accelerators a lot of deep. Use a lot of other stuff out there. And so the software has to be modern and able to support header genius computer, which a lot of these new frameworks do quite well, John. >>Thanks. Thanks so much for for coming on, Really? Spending some time with us and you always a great guest to really appreciate it. >>Going to be a great stuff >>of a technical edge. Ongoing room. Dave, this is gonna be a great topic. It's a clubhouse room for us. Well, technical edge section every time. Really. Thanks >>again, Jon. Jon Rose. Okay, so now we're gonna We're gonna move to the second part of our of our technical edge discussion. Chris Wolf is here. He leads the advanced architecture group at VM Ware. And that really means So Chris's looks >>at I >>think it's three years out is kind of his time. Arise. And so, you know, advanced architecture, Er and yeah. So really excited to have you here. Chris, can you hear us? >>Okay. Uh, >>can Great. Right. Great to see you again. >>Great >>to see you. Thanks for coming on. Really appreciate it. >>So >>we're talking about the edge you're talking about the things that you see way set it up is a multi trillion dollar opportunity. It's It's defined all over the place. Uh, Joey joke. It's Could be a windmill. You know, it could be a retail store. It could be something in outer space. Its's It's it's, you know, whatever is defined A factory, a military installation, etcetera. How do you look at the edge. And And how do you think about the technical evolution? >>Yeah, I think it is. It was interesting listening to John, and I would say we're very well aligned there. You know, we also would see the edge is really the place where data is created, processed and are consumed. And I think what's interesting here is that you have a number off challenges in that edges are different. So, like John was talking about kubernetes. And there's there's multiple different kubernetes open source projects that are trying to address thes different edge use cases, whether it's K three s or Cubbage or open your it or super edge. And I mean the list goes on and on, and the reason that you see this conflict of projects is multiple reasons. You have a platform that's not really designed to supported computing, which kubernetes is designed for data center infrastructure. Uh, first on then you have these different environments where you have some edge sites that have connectivity to the cloud, and you have some websites that just simply don't write whether it's an oil rig or a cruise ship. You have all these different use cases, so What we're seeing is you can't just say this is our edge platform and, you know, go consume it because it won't work. You actually have to have multiple flavors of your edge platform and decide. You know what? You should time first. From a market perspective, I >>was gonna ask you great to have you on. We've had many chest on the Cube during when we actually would go to events and be on the credit. But we appreciate you coming into our virtual editorial event will be doing more of these things is our software will be put in the work to do kind of a clubhouse model. We get these talks going and make them really valuable. But this one is important because one of the things that's come up all day and we kind of introduced earlier to come back every time is the standardization openness of how open source is going to extend out this this interoperability kind of vibe. And then the second theme is and we were kind of like the U S side stack come throwback to the old days. Uh, talk about Cooper days is that next layer, but then also what is going to be the programming model for modern applications? Okay, with the edge being obviously a key part of it. What's your take on that vision? Because that's a complex area certain a lot of a lot of software to be written, still to come, some stuff that need to be written today as well. So what's your view on How do you programs on the edge? >>Yeah, it's a It's a great question, John and I would say, with Cove it We have seen some examples of organizations that have been successful when they had already built an edge for the expectation of change. So when you have a truly software to find edge, you can make some of these rapid pivots quite quickly, you know. Example was Vanderbilt University had to put 1000 hospital beds in a parking garage, and they needed dynamic network and security to be able to accommodate that. You know, we had a lab testing company that had to roll out 400 testing sites in a matter of weeks. So when you can start tohave first and foremost, think about the edge as being our edge. Agility is being defined as you know, what is the speed of software? How quickly can I push updates? How quickly can I transform my application posture or my security posture in lieu of these types of events is super important. Now, if then if we walk that back, you know, to your point on open source, you know, we see open source is really, uh you know, the key enabler for driving edge innovation and driving in I S V ecosystem around that edge Innovation. You know, we mentioned kubernetes, but there's other really important projects that we're already seeing strong traction in the edge. You know, projects such as edge X foundry is seeing significant growth in China. That is, the core ejects foundry was about giving you ah, pass for some of your I o T aps and services. Another one that's quite interesting is the open source faith project in the Linux Foundation. And fate is really addressing a melody edge through a Federated M L model, which we think is the going to be the long term dominant model for localized machine learning training as we continue to see massive scale out to these edge sites, >>right? So I wonder if you could You could pick up on that. I mean, in in thinking about ai influencing at the edge. Um, how do you see that? That evolving? Uh, maybe You know what, Z? Maybe you could We could double click on the architecture that you guys see. Uh, progressing. >>Yeah, Yeah. Right now we're doing some really good work. A zai mentioned with the Fate project. We're one of the key contributors to the project. Today. We see that you need to expand the breath of contributors to these types of projects. For starters, uh, some of these, what we've seen is sometimes the early momentum starts in China because there is a lot of innovation associated with the edge there, and now it starts to be pulled a bit further West. So when you look at Federated Learning, we do believe that the emergence of five g I's not doesn't really help you to centralized data. It really creates the more opportunity to create, put more data and more places. So that's, you know, that's the first challenge that you have. But then when you look at Federated learning in general, I'd say there's two challenges that we still have to overcome organizations that have very sophisticated data. Science practices are really well versed here, and I'd say they're at the forefront of some of these innovations. But that's 1% of enterprises today. We have to start looking at about solutions for the 99% of enterprises. And I'd say even VM Ware partners such as Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services as an example. They've been addressing ML for the 99%. I say That's a That's a positive development. When you look in the open source community, it's one thing to build a platform, right? Look, we love to talk about platforms. That's the easy part. But it's the APS that run on that platform in the services that run on that platform that drive adoption. So the work that we're incubating in the VM, or CTO office is not just about building platforms, but it's about building the applications that are needed by say that 99% of enterprises to drive that adoption. >>So if you if you carry that through that, I infer from that Chris that the developers are ultimately gonna kind of win the edge or define the edge Um, How do you see that From their >>perspective? Yeah, >>I think its way. I like to look at this. I like to call a pragmatic Dev ops where the winning formula is actually giving the developer the core services that they need using the native tools and the native AP eyes that they prefer and that is predominantly open source. It would some cloud services as they start to come to the edge as well. But then, beyond that, there's no reason that I t operations can't have the tools that they prefer to use. A swell. So we see this coming together of two worlds where I t operations has to think even for differently about edge computing, where it's not enough to assume that I t has full control of all of these different devices and sensors and things that exists at the edge. It doesn't happen. Often times it's the lines of business that air directly. Deploying these types of infrastructure solutions or application services is a better phrase and connecting them to the networks at the edge. So what does this mean From a nightie operations perspective? We need tohave, dynamic discovery capabilities and more policy and automation that can allow the developers to have the velocity they want but still have that consistency of security, agility, networking and all of the other hard stuff that somebody has to solve. And you can have the best of both worlds here. >>So if Amazon turned the data center into an A P I and then the traditional, you know, vendors sort of caught up or catching up and trying to do in the same premise is the edge one big happy I Is it coming from the cloud? Is it coming from the on Prem World? How do you see that evolving? >>Yes, that's the question and races on. Yeah, but it doesn't. It doesn't have to be exclusive in one way or another. The VM Ware perspective is that, you know, we can have a consistent platform for open source, a consistent platform for cloud services. And I think the key here is this. If you look at the partnerships we've been driving, you know, we've on boarded Amazon rds onto our platform. We announced the tech preview of Azure Arc sequel database as a service on our platform as well. In addition, toe everything we're doing with open source. So the way that we're looking at this is you don't wanna make a bet on an edge appliance with one cloud provider. Because what happens if you have a business partner that says I am a line to Google or on the line to AWS? So I want to use this open source. Our philosophy is to virtualized the edge so that software can dictate, you know, organizations velocity at the end of the day. >>Yeah. So, Chris, you come on, you're you're an analyst at Gartner. You know us. Everything is a zero sum game, but it's but But life is not like that, right? I mean, there's so much of an incremental opportunity, especially at the edge. I mean, the numbers are mind boggling when when you look at it, >>I I agree wholeheartedly. And I think you're seeing a maturity in the vendor landscape to where we know we can't solve all the problems ourselves and nobody can. So we have to partner, and we have to to your earlier point on a P. I s. We have to build external interfaces in tow, our platforms to make it very easy for customers have choice around ice vendors, partners and so on. >>So, Chris, I gotta ask you since you run the advanced technology group in charge of what's going on there, will there be a ship and focus on mawr ships at the edge with that girl singer going over to intel? Um, good to see Oh, shit, so to speak. Um, all kidding aside, but, you know, patch leaving big news around bm where I saw some of your tweets and you laid out there was a nice tribute, pat, but that's gonna be cool. That's gonna be a didn't tell. Maybe it's more more advanced stuff there. >>Yeah, I think >>for people pats staying on the VMRO board and to me it's it's really think about it. I mean, Pat was part of the team that brought us the X 86 right and to come back to Intel as the CEO. It's really the perfect book end to his career. So we're really sad to see him go. Can't blame him. Of course it's it's a It's a nice chapter for Pat, so totally understand that. And we prior to pack going to Intel, we announced major partnerships within video last year, where we've been doing a lot of work with >>arm. So >>thio us again. We see all of this is opportunity, and a lot of the advanced development projects were running right now in the CTO office is about expanding that ecosystem in terms of how vendors can participate, whether you're running an application on arm, whether it's running on X 86 or whatever, it's running on what comes next, including a variety of hardware accelerators. >>So is it really? Is that really irrelevant to you? I mean, you heard John Rose talk about that because it's all containerized is it is. It is a technologies. Is it truly irrelevant? What processor is underneath? And what underlying hardware architectures there are? >>No, it's not. You know it's funny, right? Because we always want to say these things like, Well, it's just a commodity, but it's not. You didn't then be asking the hardware vendors Thio pack up their balls and go home because there's just nothing nothing left to do, and we're seeing actually quite the opposite where there's this emergence and variety of so many hardware accelerators. So even from an innovation perspective, for us. We're looking at ways to increase the velocity by which organizations can take advantage of these different specialized hardware components, because that's that's going to continue to be a race. But the real key is to make it seamless that an application could take advantage of these benefits without having to go out and buy all of this different hardware on a per application basis. >>But if you do make bets, you can optimize for that architecture, true or not, I mean, our estimate is that the you know the number of wafer is coming out of arm based, you know, platforms is 10 x x 86. And so it appears that, you know, from a cost standpoint, that's that's got some real hard decisions to make. Or maybe maybe they're easy decisions, I don't know. But so you have to make bets, Do you not as a technologist and try to optimize for one of those architectures, even though you have to hedge those bets? >>Yeah, >>we do. It really boils down to use cases and seeing, you know, what do you need for a particular use case like, you know, you mentioned arm, you know, There's a lot of arm out at the edge and on smaller form factor devices. Not so much in the traditional enterprise data center today. So our bets and a lot of the focus there has been on those types of devices. And again, it's it's really the It's about timing, right? The customer demand versus when we need to make a particular move from an innovation >>perspective. It's my final question for you as we wrap up our day here with Great Cuban Cloud Day. What is the most important stories in in the cloud tech world, edge and or cloud? And you think people should be paying attention to that will matter most of them over the next few years. >>Wow, that's a huge question. How much time do we have? Not not enough. A >>architect. Architectural things. They gotta focus on a lot of people looking at this cove it saying I got to come out with a growth strategy obvious and clear, obvious things to see Cloud >>Yeah, yeah, let me let me break it down this way. I think the most important thing that people have to focus on >>is deciding How >>do they when they build architectures. What does the reliance on cloud services Native Cloud Services so far more proprietary services versus open source technologies such as kubernetes and the SV ecosystem around kubernetes. You know, one is an investment in flexibility and control, lots of management and for your intellectual property, right where Maybe I'm building this application in the cloud today. But tomorrow I have to run it out at the edge. Or I do an acquisition that I just wasn't expecting, or I just simply don't know. Sure way. Sure hope that cova doesn't come around again or something like it, right as we get past this and navigate this today. But architect ng for the expectation of change is really important and having flexibility of round your intellectual property, including flexibility to be able to deploy and run on different clouds, especially as you build up your different partnerships. That's really key. So building a discipline to say you know what >>this is >>database as a service, it's never going to define who I am is a business. It's something I have to do is an I T organization. I'm consuming that from the cloud This part of the application sacked that defines who I am is a business. My active team is building this with kubernetes. And I'm gonna maintain more flexibility around that intellectual property. The strategic discipline to operate this way among many of >>enterprise customers >>just hasn't gotten there yet. But I think that's going to be a key inflection point as we start to see. You know, these hybrid architectures continue to mature. >>Hey, Chris. Great stuff, man. Really appreciate you coming on the cube and participate in the Cuban cloud. Thank you for your perspectives. >>Great. Thank you very much. Always a pleasure >>to see you. >>Thank you, everybody for watching this ends the Cuban Cloud Day. Volonte and John Furry. All these sessions gonna be available on demand. All the write ups will hit silicon angle calm. So check that out. We'll have links to this site up there and really appreciate you know, you attending our our first virtual editorial >>event again? >>There's day Volonte for John Ferrier in the entire Cube and Cuba and Cloud Team >>Q 3 65. Thanks >>for watching. Mhm

(upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at our Palo Alto studios today. And obviously, what's top of the news is the coronavirus and COVID-19, and it's having a direct impact on anything where people get together. We're obviously really tied into the convention space. But we're excited to have an expert in the field coming at it from a different kind of point of view, more from the entertainment side. We'd like to welcome, calling in from Tennessee, Lauren Spahn. She is a partner for Shackelford, Bowen, McKinley, or excuse me, but yeah, McKinley & Norton. Lauren, great to see you. >> Hey there, how are ya? >> Jeff Frick: Good. So we were introduced through kind of the process of the South by Southwest cancellation. Before we get into it, tell us a little bit about kind of what you do, what type of clients do you have, who do you guys kind of represent? >> Yeah, sure, so I practice primarily in entertainment law here in Nashville. But I work with a variety of people in the music industry, whether it be artists or music festivals, record labels, publishing companies, you name it, across the US. So I do a lot of work in L.A. and New York as well. And our firm specializes in a little bit of everything, but our national hub is kind of the spearhead for the entertainment and music practice. >> So it's pretty interesting 'cause we're not so directly involved in entertainment, but we do go to a lot of conferences. And, I think, for us, the watershed moment this year was Mobile World Congress earlier this year in February, 100,000 people in Barcelona, Spain. That's a little unique because most of the main vendors are Asian in terms of all the mobile carriers and the handset tech carriers. But, you were saying before we turned the cameras on, that now the South By Southwest event cancellation is kind of sending the same shock waves if you will through the entertainment industry. >> Yeah, I mean South By Southwest obviously is a big coming together of multiple industries. You know, music, film, TV, technology, but it really was one of the first events that were canceled that impacted the music industry. And so, such a large conference to completely cancel, really just started, it was the tip of the iceberg, or I think what we are going to continue to see across the sphere in music whether its tours being canceled or music festivals that are being canceled, everything is kind of starting to ramp up, and were starting to see the effects from South By Southwest line. >> Jeff Frick: Right. So, one of the things that really is just kind of a splash of cold water, is these things are going down it just really highlights the interconnectedness of all these different parts of these events, right? whether it is the primary promoter or the primary bands in the case of South By Southwest or even the tech companies, but then there are tons and tons of secondary, third and other vendors that are involved from food and transportation and the list goes on and on. So, you're quoted quite often in the press about talking about force majeure and that this is something that kind of comes up in contract law when these types of events happen. So, I wonder if you can kind of explain the dictionary definition of force majeure and how do you see it kind of executed traditionally in a contract where maybe one person just can't uphold their part of the deal and how that contrasts with something like this, which is hitting kind of both sides of the agreement, if you will. >> Completely. So, I think it's important to step back and look at if we are going to use a music festival as an example. You have a contract, the music festival itself will have a contract with the artist, but they will also have contracts with their vendors, with the production team that comes in and sets up the staging and the sound and the light. There are a myriad of contracts and so, the language in each contract tends to govern the relationship between the festival and that third party. So, in this situation of let's use an artist, for example. There is different things in the contract that point to how you can cancel and what happens when you cancel. A force majeure is an example of that. And force majeure is something that is outside of the control of both parties. So, again, the festival and the artist. If something like the Coronavirus is coming, neither one of those parties can control that from happening. And so it typically relieves both parties of any obligation to move forward with the contract. What is important, though, is the language that's in that force majeure provision. So, you sometimes will see language like sickness or an epidemic. But then, you may not have that, and you may have language that says, a local or national state of emergency. So, depending upon the state you're in, depending upon the exact situation in the city that you are holding the event, all of those things can be looked or looked to to interpret whether or not the language that's in that force majeure contract will impact you or will give you the rights to cancel that event without having to pay additional money. >> Jeff Frick: Right. >> And so, you know, not only that but you're then seeing it carried out through the insurance policies, as well. So, even if you have force majeure language whether or not the insurance company will help cover the losses for you again depends upon the exact language that's in your insurance policy. >> Jeff Frick: Right. >> So, across the board, it really is a contractual right, that can differ for the different people that are involved. >> Right. But, there's the contractual, the language in the contract, but then there is kind of this random stuff that comes up. And, we hear kind of act of God kind of thrown up by insurance companies when it's something they haven't defined in all the fine language. And then, the other piece that we're hearing about a lot in the news here on Palo Alto, right is the specific descriptive terms used by the authorities. Is it a pandemic? Is it an outbreak? Is it a natural disaster? Is it a state of emergency called by the government? >> Or other. So, how does that figure in on something like we're experiencing? I don't know that we've seen anything quite like this before. >> You know, I was looking back through some contracts earlier this morning because I had a potential cancellation that was going to happen, and I mean some contracts go as far as to even describe the Swine Flu and similar things like that but we really are looking to the authorities to see what decision they are making on everything. And whether or not they are calling it a local state of emergency because a lot of times that exact definition or that exact cause is defined in the agreement . But, yeah, I mean really it comes down to small print wording in this situation, if you are looking at the contract itself to see what rights that you have. What I found is that people aren't going to the nitty gritty of at least the contracts, you're probably going to get into the nitty gritty of the insurance policy, if you have a chance of getting any kind of protection. But, at the end of the day, the artist doesn't want to go play a festival that could potentially cause their fans to have some outbreak of the Coronavirus. An event doesn't want to be liable for holding an event that could be connected with that, as well, because across the board, that creates a PR nightmare for whoever's making that decision. So, you're seeing people that are trying to work together to figure out exactly how we're going to handle things, and what we're going to do moving forward, because no one is going to win in this situation. >> [Jeff Frick} Right. Right. >> It's really just figuring out a way that we can all be in the best position possible across the board. >> Yeah. And I think that's what we're kind of seeing a lot too, where, you know, I think everyone is again instead of just one party that's not upholding their part of the deal and the other party getting screwed on that, this is really, you know, we're kind of in it together, this has kind of come down on both of our houses so how do we work together to minimize the pain and at least, kind of get through this window that we assume will pass at some point or at least the current heightened state will go. But, I just wonder if you have an opinion on, from a legal point of view, and it's not your space, so if you say no that's an okay answer, but, you know, if you look at kind of market forces is determining what is the appropriate action, right? Because we don't really know what's the right action. But, clearly, the market is defined based on activity and the University of Washington shutting down and Stanford shutting down >> Vanderbilt >> Almost is a self-imposed kind of semi-quarantine state, which is just, you know the latest now I think they get the local high school basketball game is they can only have 100 people in the stands in the biggest building they can find and everybody needs to spread out. So, it's just been very interesting to see you know kind of what is the appropriate response. What's the right response? Because ultimately it seems like it's driven by nobody wants to be the one that didn't take the max precautions and something bad happens. >> To be honest, I don't think that anyone really knows. You know, it really is the conversations right now are not the artist's agent calling the festival and saying we're absolutely not doing this The conversation is more so, hey what are you guys seeing? What are you guys thinking? What's the best way to handle this? You know, no one wants to put the consumers and the fans at risk. And, you know, until we have a better handle on exactly how we handle this type of situation, it's really going to be people doing their best to try to not create a situation that's going to, you know, cause some kind of massive outbreak. >> Right. Right. >> If you look at, you know, something like South By, no one wants to cancel, you know. It really impacts, not only the company and the event itself, but really everyone that's associated to it, has a financial hardship because of that decision, but the decision isn't made because someone wants to do it, it's made because collectively, you know, people are feeling like it needs to be done in order to keep people safe. >> Right. >> And if they didn't think that, they'd probably go ahead and try to hold the event and, you know, risk the liability. But, I think people truly want what's in the best interest of everyone. And that's why they are working together to try to figure this out. >> Yeah. Yeah. It really is driven home what social creatures we are when you start to kind of disconnecting crowds and groups of people from so many events and it just continues to ripple through whether it's our business, a convention business, the entertainment business, you know March Madness is coming up here in a very short order. What's going to happen there all the way down to you know, the local talent show for the local middle schoolers that they used to have before graduation, which is now canceled. So, it's interesting times. >> And I think for us, the biggest indicator in terms of just music festivals is going to be what happens with Coachella. And, you know, Billboard and Variety have reported that they're looking to potentially reschedule the event to October, if artists are able. And if not, they're going to have to completely cancel it for this year. And, you know, Coachella is such a massive festival that attracts people from all over the world. And if Coachella is canceled then I think there is a good chance that so long as this is continuing at the speed it is, that we're going to see a lot more music festivals canceled. >> When is Coachella scheduled? >> It starts in about a month. >> In about a month. >> So it's the second weekend in April, but they have to start production and really building out the grounds now. >> Wow. Wow. >> And so the decision kind of has to be made before then. And then, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a decision there in the next few days. >> Yeah. I think I would take the short if I was in Vegas, because there's just not enough data, I don't think, to go forward based on the current situation. I'm glad I'm not the one sitting in that chair. >> Yeah. It'd be a tough position. >> All right, well Lauren, well thank you for sharing your insight and, you know, it's great to get the perspective of another you know kind of industry that's all built around bring people together. And, I think we probably both would agree that this time will pass and we'll get a vaccine out, we'll get the growth curves to start to flatten out and go down which is where they need to go. And then you know I think it will be a different time, but hopefully things will get approximate a little bit more to normal in the not too distant future. >> Yeah, fingers crossed. I hope it gets figured out sooner rather than later and we can all have our summers full of conferences and festivals and the gathering of people. >> Yep. All right Lauren. Well thanks again for your time >> Thank you >> And have a great Tuesday. >> Awesome. You too. >> Alrighty. She's Lauren. I'm Jeff. Thanks for checking in on this Cube Conversation. We'll catch you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's theCUBE. Covering Blockchain Unbound, brought to you by Blockchain Industries. (upbeat samba music) >> Hey, everyone. Welcome back to our exclusive coverage in Puerto Rico for Blockchain Unbound Global Conference, where everyone from around the world is coming here. And the Blockchain cryptocurrency, a decentralized application market, changing the game, the future of work, future of government, the future of the world happening. The biggest wave in the tech generation we've seen in centuries. And I'm here in Puerto Rico at the Vanderbilt Hotel. Our next guest, Anthony Delgado, the CEO of Disrupt. We're got some real innovative projects around bringing his work and his vision to Puerto Rico. Anthony, thanks for spending the time. >> Thank you for having me. >> So, talk about your project. Tell me a bit about your project. For instance, you learn how to code. What's goin' on with that? You're doing it in New Jersey, in Newark schools there. Just take me in to explain what you're working on. >> Absolutely. So, back in January, I met a gentleman. His name was David, and he's from Puerto Rico, and he's lived in Puerto Rico for the last eight years, and he runs a tourism company. And when the hurricane happened, his for-profit company transformed into a non-profit. And the same trucks that he used to do tours, he start doing humanitarian work. And I met him at an app release party for a client of mine, and he looked me in my face and says, "Anthony, I'm doing to best work of my life." And I was like, "oh my God! "I'm not doing the best work of my life!" And so, we go to a diner, and I had the worst tuna fish sandwich that I've ever had in my life, but the best conversation. And we start brainstorming about how can we transform and help the people of Puerto Rico? So, the first problem is energy. Close to 50 percent of the island still does not have energy. In the capital, in the beautiful place we are now, power has been restored, but there are many cities that are still forgotten. So, me as the tech guy, I'm like, hey, we can do solar panels. Like, there's tons of sunshine in Puerto Rico, right? So, solar energy. And then the next thing he brought to my attention was that the entire economy is actually based on tourism. So, now, with the hurricane and all those things that are in the media, not only did people lose their jobs, ah, not only did people lose their homes, but they lost their job as well. So, we start brainstorming. We're like, okay, well, let's create a coding school to teach the digital skills that are needed, to the people in Puerto Rico. So, we're goin' back and forth, and he said, "Okay, that's a great idea, "but how are these kids going to pay for this school?" So, the concept that we've come up with is to combine education with vacation, and basically encourage people who are paying to go to school in New York City and encourage them to come to Puerto Rico, experience this beautiful island, learn how to code in the a.m. and have an amazing vacation in the p.m. And that's what we're building. So, we're building the Caribbean Institute of Technology, where we combine education with a vacation. >> So, Institute of Technology. We were talking before we came on camera that you were at the Institute of Technology, a school my two brothers went to. Great engineering school, renowned for it's program. You're doing work there there as well, so you're taking your mission of what you're doing there in New Jersey and bringing it to Puerto Rico. Sounds like you were really impacted by that conversation. As you're here in Puerto Rico, what's your assessment? Good call? Are you happy, and what's on your to-do list as you're down here? So, it's beautiful. I mean, I was here two weeks ago, and now I'm back for this global currency conference. I really feel like there's an unlimited amount of opportunity here in the island. It's the strongest internet, there's huge tax incentives if you start a new business here, and it's really a blank canvas. You know, the hurricane was a horrible atrocity that happened, but now we have this blank canvas to create a vision for Puerto Rico. So, we created a foundation. It's called Vision for PR. And the question that we're asking ourselves is: What would we do if we were creating a new city in America today? What would it look like? It would have solar energy. The power lines would be below ground instead of above ground, right? You know, the economy would be based on the digital economy and not tourism, right? So, we look at countries like Bali, we look at countries like India. We look at countries where they have this huge influx of currency that's getting generated from overseas. So, we really want to be part of the driving force that has Puerto Rico being the Hong Kong of the Caribbean. >> And it really is a clean sheet of paper, because certainly the hurricane puts a real awakening to the needs here. And now that you look at the infrastructure and how it needs to be revamped, this is an opportunity to lay down some fat pipes, high-speed internet, loop Blockchain, the Blockchain.edu chain project that they've got goin' on, http://educhain.io is interesting. The young people, they want more. I mean, that's my vibe here, I'd sense. Yet the old guard, they're scared. They want to preserve their culture, yet there's this huge incentive to move beyond tourism. This is an opportunity for Puerto Rico to be sovereign nation at a level that could go significantly higher-level than they are now. So, that's all great. What do you do? I mean, it seems like Brock Pierce is laying down his vision: come here, bring your cash, bring your community, do good. How is the playbook evolving? Because that's a question people want to know How do I come to Puerto Rico, do it right, not offend the culture, enable them, come together? What's your experience with the playbook? >> Absolutely. So, you know, technology and access to the internet, it democratizes the world. You know, now you're on a level playing field. If you have four G connectivity, and you're on an island, you can compete globally and be a part of the global economy. So, really the opportunity here - [Interviewer] Are you going to start a company here? >> Yeah, so we are starting the Caribbean Institute here in Puerto Rico. And um, yes, so we had this-- >> As a separate corporation? >> Separate corporation. So, we have a non-profit that runs in New Jersey called Newark Kids Code, where we teach kids to code, and we really want to take that model and teach people to code here in Puerto Rico as well. So we started a corporation, it's the Caribbean Institute of Technology-- [Interviewer] Is it going to be a virtual school? Is it going to put up a facility? >> No, no, it's in person. It's in person, so, we have the architect right now working on the renderings. I'd love to share those with you as well. >> Well, certainly, we'll publish them on our blog. But so you're going to put an actual location here. So this is your notion of having people take a vacation and work here. >> Yeah, so that's all well and good, but, like you mentioned, how does that help the people from Puerto Rico? So, what we've created is a scholarship program. So, for every single person from the United States or overseas that comes here to take our coding school, we sponsor someone from the island. >> It's like a fellowship. >> Yes. (Interviewer laughs) >> Alright, so what else are you working on? I see Disrupt is your company. Tell us a bit about you and what you do, and what's goin' on with Disrupt. >> Absolutely! So, Disrupt is a media agency based in New York City. And we focus on creating innovative products that change the world. So, we work with clients who have innovative products that are making a big impact. One of the products that we're working on is called True Connect. It's AI for sales people. And basically it syncs with your Google calendar and it gives you recommendations on ways to connect with your clients. So, it gives you a news feed of news stories, but it's not stories that you're personally interested in, it's stories that your clients would be interested in, so you have topics of conversation. >> It's kind of like a reversed Linked In. >> Yes. (Interviewer laughs) A reversed Linked In, absolutely. >> You also do some really important projects that matter to peoples' lives. Talk about the project that you're working on for the autism kids, that's really interesting. Take a moment to explain that. >> Absolutely. So, another one of our clients is Debbie Stone. She has a non-profit called Pop Earth. And it's basically a free school for kids with autism. So, based on that she's starting a IOT company called the Popu Lace. It's an IOT device, it's about the size of a quarter, and it has GPS, 4G connectivity, and it hooks into a student's shoelaces. There's a huge problem with kids with autism, if they wander off from school, they can get hit by a car, and they don't have the communication skills to get found again. So this device puts a geofence around their school-- >> Alzheimer's, there's a zillion use cases. So, geofencing a location, like Snapchat ads they do, but this is for a good reason, safety and impact to people's lives. >> Absolutely. >> Caregivers, too, they matter. >> Yeah, caregivers, people who go mountain climbing, hiking, all of these other use cases. Primarily focusing on children during the beginning, but yes, Alzeimer's, and hikers, and tons of uses for this. >> Great stuff. Congratulations, Anthony, great to have this conversation with you, really inspired. Good luck with the Puerto Rico opportunity, the Caribbean Institute of Technologies. Will it be on the Caribbean, Bahamas? We were just there for Poly Con. Other islands, start at Puerto Rico... >> Absolutely. So, we're actually open-sourcing the floor plan for the building that we're building. So, the building that we're building has solar energy. It's a green building. And we're open-sourcing that floor plan so that anyone in the Caribbeans, South America, anywhere in the world can adopt this model. >> It's the wee work for paying it forward. >> Absolutely. >> Well done, Anthony. Anthony Delgado, CEO of Disrupt, doing amazing work here, paying it forward, contributing here with the Caribbean Institute of Technology. I'm John Ferrier, in Puerto Rico for our on-the ground coverage of Blockchain Unbound. Be back with more. Thanks for watching. >> Thank you for having me.