(gentle music) >> Okay, welcome back to Supercloud 2, live here in Palo Alto, California for our live stage performance. Supercloud 2 is our second Supercloud event. We're going to get these out as fast as we can every couple months. It's our second one, you'll see two and three this year. I'm John Furrier, my co-host, Dave Vellante. A panel here to break down the Supercloud momentum, the wave, and the developer impact that we bringing back Vittorio Viarengo, who's a VP for Cross-Cloud Services at VMware. Sarbjeet Johal, industry influencer and Analyst at StackPayne, his company, Cube alumni and Influencer. Sarbjeet, great to see you. Vittorio, thanks for coming back. >> Nice to be here. >> My pleasure. >> Vittorio, you just gave a keynote where we unpacked the cross-cloud services, what VMware is doing, how you guys see it, not just from VMware's perspective, but VMware looking out broadly at the industry and developers came up and you were like, "Developers, developer, developers", kind of a goof on the Steve Ballmer famous meme that everyone's seen. This is a huge star, sorry, I mean a big piece of it. The developers are the canary in the coal mines. They're the ones who are being asked to code the digital transformation, which is fully business transformation and with the market the way it is right now in terms of the accelerated technology, every enterprise grade business model's changing. The technology is evolving, the builders are kind of, they want go faster. I'm saying they're stuck in a way, but that's my opinion, but there's a lot of growth. >> Yeah. >> The impact, they got to get released up and let it go. Those developers need to accelerate faster. It's been a big part of productivity, and the conversations we've had. So developer impact is huge in Supercloud. What's your, what do you guys think about this? We'll start with you, Sarbjeet. >> Yeah, actually, developers are the masons of the digital empires I call 'em, right? They lay every brick and build all these big empires. On the left side of the SDLC, or the, you know, when you look at the system operations, developer is number one cost from economic side of things, and from technology side of things, they are tech hungry people. They are developers for that reason because developer nights are long, hours are long, they forget about when to eat, you know, like, I've been a developer, I still code. So you want to keep them happy, you want to hug your developers. We always say that, right? Vittorio said that right earlier. The key is to, in this context, in the Supercloud context, is that developers don't mind mucking around with platforms or APIs or new languages, but they hate the infrastructure part. That's a fact. They don't want to muck around with servers. It's friction for them, it is like they don't want to muck around even with the VMs. So they want the programmability to the nth degree. They want to automate everything, so that's how they think and cloud is the programmable infrastructure, industrialization of infrastructure in many ways. So they are happy with where we are going, and we need more abstraction layers for some developers. By the way, I have this sort of thinking frame for last year or so, not all developers are same, right? So if you are a developer at an ISV, you behave differently. If you are a developer at a typical enterprise, you behave differently or you are forced to behave differently because you're not writing software.- >> Well, developers, developers have changed, I mean, Vittorio, you and I were talking earlier on the keynote, and this is kind of the key point is what is a developer these days? If everything is software enabled, I mean, even hardware interviews we do with Nvidia, and Amazon and other people building silicon, they all say the same thing, "It's software on a chip." So you're seeing the role of software up and down the stack and the role of the stack is changing. The old days of full stack developer, what does that even mean? I mean, the cloud is a half a stack kind of right there. So, you know, developers are certainly more agile, but cloud native, I mean VMware is epitome of operations, IT operations, and the Tan Zoo initiative, you guys started, you went after the developers to look at them, and ask them questions, "What do you need?", "How do you transform the Ops from virtualization?" Again, back to your point, so this hardware abstraction, what is software, what is cloud native? It's kind of messy equation these days. How do you guys grokel with that? >> I would argue that developers don't want the Supercloud. I dropped that up there, so, >> Dave: Why not? >> Because developers, they, once they get comfortable in AWS or Google, because they're doing some AI stuff, which is, you know, very trendy right now, or they are in IBM, any of the IPA scaler, professional developers, system developers, they love that stuff, right? Yeah, they don't, the infrastructure gets in the way, but they're just, the problem is, and I think the Supercloud should be driven by the operators because as we discussed, the operators have been left behind because they're busy with day-to-day jobs, and in most cases IT is centralized, developers are in the business units. >> John: Yeah. >> Right? So they get the mandate from the top, say, "Our bank, they're competing against". They gave teenagers or like young people the ability to do all these new things online, and Venmo and all this integration, where are we? "Oh yeah, we can do it", and then build it, and then deploy it, "Okay, we caught up." but now the operators are back in the private cloud trying to keep the backend system running and so I think the Supercloud is needed for the primarily, initially, for the operators to get in front of the developers, fit in the workflow, but lay the foundation so it is secure.- >> So, so I love this thinking because I love the rift, because the rift points to what is the target audience for the value proposition and if you're a developer, Supercloud enables you so you shouldn't have to deal with Supercloud. >> Exactly. >> What you're saying is get the operating environment or operating system done properly, whether it's architecture, building the platform, this comes back to architecture platform conversations. What is the future platform? Is it a vendor supplied or is it customer created platform? >> Dave: So developers want best to breed, is what you just said. >> Vittorio: Yeah. >> Right and operators, they, 'cause developers don't want to deal with governance, they don't want to deal with security, >> No. >> They don't want to deal with spinning up infrastructure. That's the role of the operator, but that's where Supercloud enables, to John's point, the developer, so to your question, is it a platform where the platform vendor is responsible for the architecture, or there is it an architectural standard that spans multiple clouds that has to emerge? Based on what you just presented earlier, Vittorio, you are the determinant of the architecture. It's got to be open, but you guys determine that, whereas the nirvana is, "Oh no, it's all open, and it just kind of works." >> Yeah, so first of all, let's all level set on one thing. You cannot tell developers what to do. >> Dave: Right, great >> At least great developers, right? Cannot tell them what to do. >> Dave: So that's what, that's the way I want to sort of, >> You can tell 'em what's possible. >> There's a bottle on that >> If you tell 'em what's possible, they'll test it, they'll look at it, but if you try to jam it down their throat, >> Yeah. >> Dave: You can't tell 'em how to do it, just like your point >> Let me answer your answer the question. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So I think we need to build an architect, help them build an architecture, but it cannot be proprietary, has to be built on what works in the cloud and so what works in the cloud today is Kubernetes, is you know, number of different open source project that you need to enable and then provide, use this, but when I first got exposed to Kubernetes, I said, "Hallelujah!" We had a runtime that works the same everywhere only to realize there are 12 different distributions. So that's where we come in, right? And other vendors come in to say, "Hey, no, we can make them all look the same. So you still use Kubernetes, but we give you a place to build, to set those operation policy once so that you don't create friction for the developers because that's the last thing you want to do." >> Yeah, actually, coming back to the same point, not all developers are same, right? So if you're ISV developer, you want to go to the lowest sort of level of the infrastructure and you want to shave off the milliseconds from to get that performance, right? If you're working at AWS, you are doing that. If you're working at scale at Facebook, you're doing that. At Twitter, you're doing that, but when you go to DMV and Kansas City, you're not doing that, right? So your developers are different in nature. They are given certain parameters to work with, certain sort of constraints on the budget side. They are educated at a different level as well. Like they don't go to that end of the degree of sort of automation, if you will. So you cannot have the broad stroking of developers. We are talking about a citizen developer these days. That's a extreme low, >> You mean Low-Code. >> Yeah, Low-Code, No-code, yeah, on the extreme side. On one side, that's citizen developers. On the left side is the professional developers, when you say developers, your mind goes to the professional developers, like the hardcore developers, they love the flexibility, you know, >> John: Well app, developers too, I mean. >> App developers, yeah. >> You're right a lot of, >> Sarbjeet: Infrastructure platform developers, app developers, yes. >> But there are a lot of customers, its a spectrum, you're saying. >> Yes, it's a spectrum >> There's a lot of customers don't want deal with that muck. >> Yeah. >> You know, like you said, AWS, Twitter, the sophisticated developers do, but there's a whole suite of developers out there >> Yeah >> That just want tools that are abstracted. >> Within a company, within a company. Like how I see the Supercloud is there shouldn't be anything which blocks the developers, like their view of the world, of the future. Like if you're blocked as a developer, like something comes in front of you, you are not developer anymore, believe me, (John laughing) so you'll go somewhere else >> John: First of all, I'm, >> You'll leave the company by the way. >> Dave: Yeah, you got to quit >> Yeah, you will quit, you will go where the action is, where there's no sort of blockage there. So like if you put in front of them like a huge amount of a distraction, they don't like it, so they don't, >> Well, the idea of a developer, >> Coming back to that >> Let's get into 'cause you mentioned platform. Get year in the term platform engineering now. >> Yeah. >> Platform developer. You know, I remember back in, and I think there's still a term used today, but when I graduated my computer science degree, we were called "Software engineers," right? Do people use that term "Software engineering", or is it "Software development", or they the same, are they different? >> Well, >> I think there's a, >> So, who's engineering what? Are they engineering or are they developing? Or both? Well, I think it the, you made a great point. There is a factor of, I had the, I was blessed to work with Adam Bosworth, that is the guy that created some of the abstraction layer, like Visual Basic and Microsoft Access and he had so, he made his whole career thinking about this layer, and he always talk about the professional developers, the developers that, you know, give him a user manual, maybe just go at the APIs, he'll build anything, right, from system engine, go down there, and then through obstruction, you get the more the procedural logic type of engineers, the people that used to be able to write procedural logic and visual basic and so on and so forth. I think those developers right now are a little cut out of the picture. There's some No-code, Low-Code environment that are maybe gain some traction, I caught up with Adam Bosworth two weeks ago in New York and I asked him "What's happening to this higher level developers?" and you know what he is told me, and he is always a little bit out there, so I'm going to use his thought process here. He says, "ChapGPT", I mean, they will get to a point where this high level procedural logic will be written by, >> John: Computers. >> Computers, and so we may not need as many at the high level, but we still need the engineers down there. The point is the operation needs to get in front of them >> But, wait, wait, you seen the ChatGPT meme, I dunno if it's a Dilbert thing where it's like, "Time to tic" >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did that >> "Time to develop the code >> Five minutes, time to decode", you know, to debug the codes like five hours. So you know, the whole equation >> Well, this ChatGPT is a hot wave, everyone's been talking about it because I think it illustrates something that's NextGen, feels NextGen, and it's just getting started so it's going to get better. I mean people are throwing stones at it, but I think it's amazing. It's the equivalent of me seeing the browser for the first time, you know, like, "Wow, this is really compelling." This is game-changing, it's not just keyword chat bots. It's like this is real, this is next level, and I think the Supercloud wave that people are getting behind points to that and I think the question of Ops and Dev comes up because I think if you limit the infrastructure opportunity for a developer, I think they're going to be handicapped. I mean that's a general, my opinion, the thesis is you give more aperture to developers, more choice, more capabilities, more good things could happen, policy, and that's why you're seeing the convergence of networking people, virtualization talent, operational talent, get into the conversation because I think it's an infrastructure engineering opportunity. I think this is a seminal moment in a new stack that's emerging from an infrastructure, software virtualization, low-code, no-code layer that will be completely programmable by things like the next Chat GPT or something different, but yet still the mechanics and the plumbing will still need engineering. >> Sarbjeet: Oh yeah. >> So there's still going to be more stuff coming on. >> Yeah, we have, with the cloud, we have made the infrastructure programmable and you give the programmability to the programmer, they will be very creative with that and so we are being very creative with our infrastructure now and on top of that, we are being very creative with the silicone now, right? So we talk about that. That's part of it, by the way. So you write the code to the particle's silicone now, and on the flip side, the silicone is built for certain use cases for AI Inference and all that. >> You saw this at CES? >> Yeah, I saw at CES, the scenario is this, the Bosch, I spoke to Bosch, I spoke to John Deere, I spoke to AWS guys, >> Yeah. >> They were showcasing their technology there and I was spoke to Azure guys as well. So the Bosch is a good example. So they are building, they are right now using AWS. I have that interview on camera, I will put it some sometime later on there online. So they're using AWS on the back end now, but Bosch is the number one, number one or number two depending on what day it is of the year, supplier of the componentry to the auto industry, and they are creating a platform for our auto industry, so is Qualcomm actually by the way, with the Snapdragon. So they told me that customers, their customers, BMW, Audi, all the manufacturers, they demand the diversity of the backend. Like they don't want all, they, all of them don't want to go to AWS. So they want the choice on the backend. So whatever they cook in the middle has to work, they have to sprinkle the data for the data sovereign side because they have Chinese car makers as well, and for, you know, for other reasons, competitive reasons and like use. >> People don't go to, aw, people don't go to AWS either for political reasons or like competitive reasons or specific use cases, but for the most part, generally, I haven't met anyone who hasn't gone first choice with either, but that's me personally. >> No, but they're building. >> Point is the developer wants choice at the back end is what I'm hearing, but then finish that thought. >> Their developers want the choice, they want the choice on the back end, number one, because the customers are asking for, in this case, the customers are asking for it, right? But the customers requirements actually drive, their economics drives that decision making, right? So in the middle they have to, they're forced to cook up some solution which is vendor neutral on the backend or multicloud in nature. So >> Yeah, >> Every >> I mean I think that's nirvana. I don't think, I personally don't see that happening right now. I mean, I don't see the parody with clouds. So I think that's a challenge. I mean, >> Yeah, true. >> I mean the fact of the matter is if the development teams get fragmented, we had this chat with Kit Colbert last time, I think he's going to come on and I think he's going to talk about his keynote in a few, in an hour or so, development teams is this, the cloud is heterogenous, which is great. It's complex, which is challenging. You need skilled engineering to manage these clouds. So if you're a CIO and you go all in on AWS, it's hard. Then to then go out and say, "I want to be completely multi-vendor neutral" that's a tall order on many levels and this is the multicloud challenge, right? So, the question is, what's the strategy for me, the CIO or CISO, what do I do? I mean, to me, I would go all in on one and start getting hedges and start playing and then look at some >> Crystal clear. Crystal clear to me. >> Go ahead. >> If you're a CIO today, you have to build a platform engineering team, no question. 'Cause if we agree that we cannot tell the great developers what to do, we have to create a platform engineering team that using pieces of the Supercloud can build, and let's make this very pragmatic and give examples. First you need to be able to lay down the run time, okay? So you need a way to deploy multiple different Kubernetes environment in depending on the cloud. Okay, now we got that. The second part >> That's like table stakes. >> That are table stake, right? But now what is the advantage of having a Supercloud service to do that is that now you can put a policy in one place and it gets distributed everywhere consistently. So for example, you want to say, "If anybody in this organization across all these different buildings, all these developers don't even know, build a PCI compliant microservice, They can only talk to PCI compliant microservice." Now, I sleep tight. The developers still do that. Of course they're going to get their hands slapped if they don't encrypt some messages and say, "Oh, that should have been encrypted." So number one. The second thing I want to be able to say, "This service that this developer built over there better satisfy this SLA." So if the SLA is not satisfied, boom, I automatically spin up multiple instances to certify the SLA. Developers unencumbered, they don't even know. So this for me is like, CIO build a platform engineering team using one of the many Supercloud services that allow you to do that and lay down. >> And part of that is that the vendor behavior is such, 'cause the incentive is that they don't necessarily always work together. (John chuckling) I'll give you an example, we're going to hear today from Western Union. They're AWS shop, but they want to go to Google, they want to use some of Google's AI tools 'cause they're good and maybe they're even arguably better, but they're also a Snowflake customer and what you'll hear from them is Amazon and Snowflake are working together so that SageMaker can be integrated with Snowflake but Google said, "No, you want to use our AI tools, you got to use BigQuery." >> Yeah. >> Okay. So they say, "Ah, forget it." So if you have a platform engineering team, you can maybe solve some of that vendor friction and get competitive advantage. >> I think that the future proximity concept that I talk about is like, when you're doing one thing, you want to do another thing. Where do you go to get that thing, right? So that is very important. Like your question, John, is that your point is that AWS is ahead of the pack, which is true, right? They have the >> breadth of >> Infrastructure by a lot >> infrastructure service, right? They breadth of services, right? So, how do you, When do you bring in other cloud providers, right? So I believe that you should standardize on one cloud provider, like that's your primary, and for others, bring them in on as needed basis, in the subsection or sub portfolio of your applications or your platforms, what ever you can. >> So yeah, the Google AI example >> Yeah, I mean, >> Or the Microsoft collaboration software example. I mean there's always or the M and A. >> Yeah, but- >> You're going to get to run Windows, you can run Windows on Amazon, so. >> By the way, Supercloud doesn't mean that you cannot do that. So the perfect example is say that you're using Azure because you have a SQL server intensive workload. >> Yep >> And you're using Google for ML, great. If you are using some differentiated feature of this cloud, you'll have to go somewhere and configure this widget, but what you can abstract with the Supercloud is the lifecycle manage of the service that runs on top, right? So how does the service get deployed, right? How do you monitor performance? How do you lifecycle it? How you secure it that you can abstract and that's the value and eventually value will win. So the customers will find what is the values, obstructing in making it uniform or going deeper? >> How about identity? Like take identity for instance, you know, that's an opportunity to abstract. Whether I use Microsoft Identity or Okta, and I can abstract that. >> Yeah, and then we have APIs and standards that we can use so eventually I think where there is enough pain, the right open source will emerge to solve that problem. >> Dave: Yeah, I can use abstract things like object store, right? That's pretty simple. >> But back to the engineering question though, is that developers, developers, developers, one thing about developers psychology is if something's not right, they say, "Go get fixing. I'm not touching it until you fix it." They're very sticky about, if something's not working, they're not going to do it again, right? So you got to get it right for developers. I mean, they'll maybe tolerate something new, but is the "juice worth the squeeze" as they say, right? So you can't go to direct say, "Hey, it's, what's a work in progress? We're going to get our infrastructure together and the world's going to be great for you, but just hang tight." They're going to be like, "Get your shit together then talk to me." So I think that to me is the question. It's an Ops question, but where's that value for the developer in Supercloud where the capabilities are there, there's less friction, it's simpler, it solves the complexity problem. I don't need these high skilled labor to manage Amazon. I got services exposed. >> That's what we talked about earlier. It's like the Walmart example. They basically, they took away from the developer the need to spin up infrastructure and worry about all the governance. I mean, it's not completely there yet. So the developer could focus on what he or she wanted to do. >> But there's a big, like in our industry, there's a big sort of flaw or the contention between developers and operators. Developers want to be on the cutting edge, right? And operators want to be on the stability, you know, like we want governance. >> Yeah, totally. >> Right, so they want to control, developers are like these little bratty kids, right? And they want Legos, like they want toys, right? Some of them want toys by way. They want Legos, they want to build there and they want make a mess out of it. So you got to make sure. My number one advice in this context is that do it up your application portfolio and, or your platform portfolio if you are an ISV, right? So if you are ISV you most probably, you're building a platform these days, do it up in a way that you can say this portion of our applications and our platform will adhere to what you are saying, standardization, you know, like Kubernetes, like slam dunk, you know, it works across clouds and in your data center hybrid, you know, whole nine yards, but there is some subset on the next door systems of innovation. Everybody has, it doesn't matter if you're DMV of Kansas or you are, you know, metaverse, right? Or Meta company, right, which is Facebook, they have it, they are building something new. For that, give them some freedom to choose different things like play with non-standard things. So that is the mantra for moving forward, for any enterprise. >> Do you think developers are happy with the infrastructure now or are they wanting people to get their act together? I mean, what's your reaction, or you think. >> Developers are happy as long as they can do their stuff, which is running code. They want to write code and innovate. So to me, when Ballmer said, "Developer, develop, Developer, what he meant was, all you other people get your act together so these developers can do their thing, and to me the Supercloud is the way for IT to get there and let developer be creative and go fast. Why not, without getting in trouble. >> Okay, let's wrap up this segment with a super clip. Okay, we're going to do a sound bite that we're going to make into a short video for each of you >> All right >> On you guys summarizing why Supercloud's important, why this next wave is relevant for the practitioners, for the industry and we'll turn this into an Instagram reel, YouTube short. So we'll call it a "Super clip. >> Alright, >> Sarbjeet, you want, you want some time to think about it? You want to go first? Vittorio, you want. >> I just didn't mind. (all laughing) >> No, okay, okay. >> I'll do it again. >> Go back. No, we got a fresh one. We'll going to already got that one in the can. >> I'll go. >> Sarbjeet, you go first. >> I'll go >> What's your super clip? >> In software systems, abstraction is your friend. I always say that. Abstraction is your friend, even if you're super professional developer, abstraction is your friend. We saw from the MFC library from C++ days till today. Abstract, use abstraction. Do not try to reinvent what's already being invented. Leverage cloud, leverage the platform side of the cloud. Not just infrastructure service, but platform as a service side of the cloud as well, and Supercloud is a meta platform built on top of these infrastructure services from three or four or five cloud providers. So use that and embrace the programmability, embrace the abstraction layer. That's the key actually, and developers who are true developers or professional developers as you said, they know that. >> Awesome. Great super clip. Vittorio, another shot at the plate here for super clip. Go. >> Multicloud is awesome. There's a reason why multicloud happened, is because gave our developers the ability to innovate fast and ever before. So if you are embarking on a digital transformation journey, which I call a survival journey, if you're not innovating and transforming, you're not going to be around in business three, five years from now. You have to adopt the Supercloud so the developer can be developer and keep building great, innovating digital experiences for your customers and IT can get in front of it and not get in trouble together. >> Building those super apps with Supercloud. That was a great super clip. Vittorio, thank you for sharing. >> Thanks guys. >> Sarbjeet, thanks for coming on talking about the developer impact Supercloud 2. On our next segment, coming up right now, we're going to hear from Walmart enterprise architect, how they are building and they are continuing to innovate, to build their own Supercloud. Really informative, instructive from a practitioner doing it in real time. Be right back with Walmart here in Palo Alto. Thanks for watching. (gentle music)

>>Hello everyone. Welcome to the Super Cloud Event preview. I'm John Forry, host of the Cube, and with Dave Valante, host of the popular Super cloud events. This is Super Cloud two preview. I'm joined by industry leader and Cube alumni, Victoria Vigo, vice president of klos Cross Cloud Services at VMware. Vittorio. Great to see you. We're here for the preview of Super Cloud two on January 17th, virtual event, live stage performance, but streamed out to the audience virtually. We're gonna do a preview. Thanks for coming in. >>My pleasure. Always glad to be here. >>It's holiday time. We had the first super cloud on in August prior to VMware, explore North America prior to VMware, explore Europe prior to reinvent. We've been through that, but right now, super Cloud has got momentum. Super Cloud two has got some success. Before we dig into it, let's take a step back and set the table. What is Super Cloud and why is important? Why are people buzzing about it? Why is it a thing? >>Look, we have been in the cloud now for like 10, 15 years and the cloud is going strong and I, I would say that going cloud first was deliberate and strategic in most cases. In some cases the, the developer was going for the path of risk resistance, but in any sizable company, this caused the companies to end up in a multi-cloud world where 85% of the companies out there use two or multiple clouds. And with that comes what we call cloud chaos, because each cloud brings their own management tools, development tools, security. And so that increase the complexity and cost. And so we believe that it's time to usher a new era in cloud computing, which we, you call the super cloud. We call it cross cloud services, which allows our customers to have a single way to build, manage, secure, and access any application across any cloud. Lowering the cost and simplifying the environment. Since >>Dave Ante and I introduced and rift on the concept of Supercloud, as we talked about at reinvent last year, a lot has happened. Supercloud one, it was in August, but prior to that, great momentum in the industry. Great conversation. People are loving it, they're hating it, which means it's got some traction. Berkeley has come on board as with a position paper. They're kind of endorsing it. They call it something different. You call it cross cloud services, whatever it is. It's kind of the same theme we're seeing. And so the industry has recognized something is happening that's different than what Cloud one was or the first generation of cloud. Now we have something different. This Super Cloud two in January. This event has traction with practitioners, customers, big name brands, Sachs, fifth Avenue, Warner, media Financial, mercury Financial, other big names are here. They're leaning in. They're excited. Why the traction in the customer's industry converts over to, to the customer traction. Why is it happening? You, you get a lot of data. >>Well, in, in Super Cloud one, it was a vendor fest, right? But these vendors are smart people that get their vision from where, from the customers. This, this stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. We all talk to customers and we tend to lean on the early adopters and the early adopters of the cloud are the ones that are telling us, we now are in a place where the complexity is too much. The cost is ballooning. We're going towards slow down potentially in the economy. We need to get better economics out of, of our cloud. And so every single customers I talked to today, or any sizable company as this problem, the developers have gone off, built all these applications, and now the business is coming to the operators and asking, where are my applications? Are they performing? What is the security posture? And how do we do compliance? And so now they're realizing we need to do something about this or it is gonna be unmanageable. >>I wanna go to a clip I pulled out from the, our video data lake and the cube. If we can go to that clip, it's Chuck Whitten Dell at a keynote. He was talking about what he calls multi-cloud by default, not by design. This is a state of the, of the industry. If we're gonna roll that clip, and I wanna get your reaction to that. >>Well, look, customers have woken up with multiple clouds, you know, multiple public clouds. On-premise clouds increasingly as the edge becomes much more a reality for customers clouds at the edge. And so that's what we mean by multi-cloud by default. It's not yet been designed strategically. I think our argument yesterday was it can be, and it should be, it is a very logical place for architecture to land because ultimately customers want the innovation across all of the hyperscale public clouds. They will see workloads and use cases where they wanna maintain an on-premise cloud. On-premise clouds are not going away. I mentioned edge Cloud, so it should be strategic. It's just not today. It doesn't work particularly well today. So when we say multi-cloud, by default we mean that's the state of the world. Today, our goal is to bring multi-cloud by design, as you heard. Yeah, I >>Mean, I, okay, Vittorio, that's, that's the head of Dell Technologies president. He obvious he runs it. Michael Dell's still around, but you know, he's the leader. This is a interesting observation. You know, he's not a customer. We have some customer equips we'll go to as well, but by default it kind of happened not by design. So we're now kind of in a zoom out issue where, okay, I got this environment just landed on me. What, what is the, what's your reaction to that clip of how multi-cloud has become present in, in everyone's on everyone's plate right now to deal with? Yeah, >>I it is, it is multi-cloud by default, I would call it by accident. We, we really got there by accident. I think now it's time to make it a strategic asset because look, we're using multiple cloud for a reason, because all these hyperscaler bring tremendous innovation that we want to leverage. But I strongly believe that in it, especially history repeat itself, right? And so if you look at the history of it, as was always when a new level of obstruction that simplify things, that we got the next level of innovation at the lower cost, you know, from going from c plus plus to Visual basic, going from integrating application at the bits of by layer to SOA and then web services. It's, it's only when we simplify the environment that we can go faster and lower cost. And the multi-cloud is ready for that level of obstruction today. >>You know, you've made some good points. You know, developers went crazy building great apps. Now they got, they gotta roll it out and operationalize it globally. A lot of compliance issues going on. The costs are going up. We got an economic challenge, but also agility with the cloud. So using cloud and or hybrid, you can get better agility. And also moving to the cloud, it's kind of still slow. Okay, so I get that at reinvent this year and at VMware explorer we were observing and we reported that you're seeing a transition to a new kind of ecosystem partner. Ones that aren't just ISVs anymore. You have ISVs, independent software vendors, but you got the emergence of bigger players that just, they got platforms, they have their own ecosystems. So you're seeing ecosystems on top of ecosystems where, you know, MongoDB CEO and the Databricks CEO both told me, we're not an isv, we're a platform built on a cloud. So this new kind of super cloudlike thing is going on. Why should someone pay attention to the super cloud movement? We're on two, we're gonna continue to do these out in the open. Anyone can participate. Why should people pay attention to this? Why should they come to the event? Why is this important? Is this truly an inflection point? And if they do pay attention, what should they pay attention to? >>I would pay attention to two things. If you are customers that are now starting to realize that you have a multi-cloud problem and the costs are getting outta control, look at what the leading vendors are saying, connect the dots with the early adopters and some of the customers that we are gonna have at Super Cloud two, and use those learning to not fall into the same trap. So I, I'll give you an example. I was talking to a Fortune 50 in Europe in my latest trip, and this is an a CIO that is telling me >>We build all these applications and now for compliance reason, the business is coming to me, I don't even know where they are, right? And so what I was telling him, so look, there are other customers that are already there. What did they do? They built a platform engineering team. What is the platform? Engineering team is a, is an operation team that understands how developers build modern applications and lays down the foundation across multiple clouds. So the developers can be developers and do their thing, which is writing code. But now you as a cio, as a, as a, as a governing body, as a security team can have the guardrail. So do you know that these applications are performing at a lower cost and are secure and compliant? >>Patura, you know, it's really encouraging and, and love to get your thoughts on this is one is the general consensus of industry leaders. I talked to like yourself in the round is the old way was soft complexity with more complexity. The cloud demand simplicity, you mentioned abstraction layer. This is our next inflection point. It's gotta be simpler and it's gotta be easy and it's gotta be performant. That's the table stakes of the cloud. What's your thoughts on this next wave of simplicity versus complexity? Because again, abstraction layers take away complexity, they should make it simpler. What's your thoughts? >>Yeah, so I'll give you few examples. One, on the development side and runtime. You, you one would think that Kubernetes will solve all the problems you have Kubernetes everywhere, just look at, but every cloud has a different distribution of Kubernetes, right? So for example, at VMware with tansu, we create a single place that allows you to deploy that any Kubernetes environment. But now you have one place to set your policies. We take care of the differences between this, this system. The second area is management, right? So once you have all everything deployed, how do you get a single object model that tells you where your stuff is and how it's performing, and then apply policies to it as well. So these are two areas and security and so on and so forth. So the idea is that figure out what you can abstract and make common across cloud. Make that simple and put it in one place while always allowing the developers to go underneath and use the differentiated features for innovation. >>Yeah, one of the areas I'm excited, I want to get your thoughts of too is, we haven't talked about this in the past, but it, I'll throw it out there. I think the, the new AI coming out chat, G P T and other things like lens, you see it and see new kinds of AI coming that's gonna be right in the heavy lifting opportunity to make things easier with AI and automation. I think AI will be a big factor in super cloud and, and cross cloud. What's your thoughts? >>Well, the one way to look at AI is, is one of the main, main services that you would want out of a multi-cloud, right? You want eventually, right now Google seems to have an edge, but you know, the competition creates, you know, innovation. So later on you wanna use something from Azure or from or from Oracle or something that, so you want at some point that is gonna be prone every single service in in the cloud is gonna be prone to obstruction and simplification. And I, I'm just excited about to see >>What book, I can't wait for the chat services to write code automatically for us. Well, >>They >>Do, they do. They're doing it now. They do. >>Oh, the other day, somebody, you know that I do this song par this for. So for fun sometimes. And somebody the other day said, ask the AI to write a parody song for multi-cloud. And so I have the lyrics stay >>Tuned. I should do that from my blog post. Hey, write a blog post on this January 17th, Victoria, thanks for coming in, sharing the preview bottom line. Why should people come? Why is it important? What's your final kind of takeaway? Billboard message >>History is repeat itself. It goes to three major inflection points, right? We had the inflection point with the cloud and the people that got left behind, they were not as competitive as the people that got on top o of this wave. The new wave is the super cloud, what we call cross cloud services. So if you are a customer that is experiencing this problem today, tune in to to hear from other customers in, in your same space. If you are behind, tune in to avoid the, the, the, the mistakes and the, the shortfalls of this new wave. And so that you can use multi-cloud to accelerate your business and kick butt in the future. >>All right. Kicking kick your names and kicking butt. Okay, we're here on J January 17th. Super Cloud two. Momentum continues. We'll be super cloud three. There'll be super cloud floor. More and more open conversations. Join the community, join the conversation. It's open. We want more voices. We want more, more industry. We want more customers. It's happening. A lot of momentum. Victoria, thank you for your time. Thank you. Okay. I'm John Farer, host of the Cube. Thanks for watching.

(bright music) >> Welcome back to Supercloud 22. I'm John Furrier, host of "theCUBE" with Dave Vellante, with the opening keynote conversation with Vittorio Viarengo. He's the Vice President of Cross-Cloud at VMware, Cube Alumni. Vittorio, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Ah, my pleasure. >> So you're kicking off the Supercloud event. Again, a pilot. Again, we were texting just a few months ago around some of the momentum. You identified this right away. You saw it, you saw the momentum. What's the reality around supercloud? What's your perspective? >> Well, I think that we have to go back to the history of IT, over the last ever. I feel like in IT, we're always running after the developers. The developers, they're smart. They go for the path of least resistance, and they create innovations, and then the entire stacks moves around, and if you look at developers over the last, you know, 15 years, they've been going to the cloud, right? And the reason they're going for the cloud is, you now, they say software is eating the world. Is really who builds software? Developers, so I think it's developers are eating the world, and so initially, there was one game in town, so they went with AWS, but eventually, we got the multiple clouds, and now, the reality is that the applications there, it's how we make money, how we save money. They're running on multiple cloud, the 75% of the companies running on multiple clouds today, and so, I think that creates the new computing platform for the next, you know, 10 years, 15 years, and I think that that multi-cloud world brings tremendous advantages, as we just talked, but also some challenges, and it's prime to a simplification, and that's where we're trying. >> One of the things we observe is this abstraction layer across clouds to create a consistent experience for customers, and very importantly, as you point out, developers. So when you think about the history of abstractions, we see another one sort of forming in the 2020s, which is really different, as you pointed out, that we had in the 2010s, where there was really, you know, one main cloud. Now, you have all these clouds. What are your thoughts on the history of abstractions? >> Well, if you look at IT, we always needed abstraction to unleash the next level of growth, right? I grew up as a... I started my career as a C++ developer. So initially, you know, on Windows, if you wanted to open a window on the screen, you had to write 200 lines of code. Then the MFC library came in, and now, you still have to be a C++ developer, but now, with a one line of code, you can initiate, open the yellow world and start to build your applications, but it's only when Visual Basic comes along, then now, we get five millions developers building applications that are 20 years later, we're still using, okay? And then the list goes on and on, and in the application integration, we used to look at the bytes on the bus and say, "Okay, this is the customers, and we're going to map it to SAP," and then we went one level higher with SOA and web services and the rest of history, and then unleashed tremendous, you know, growth and look at, you know, how we now, you know, we be able to throw APIs, integrate anything, and so then the ultimate example of abstraction is virtualization. We made all these different servers and networking and storage look like one, and now, you know, and the business never cares if you're running SAP back on-prem on HP or some other piece of hard drive. They care that it runs, right? And so I think that now, we need to bring a level of abstraction in the cloud that not only abstracts the low level APIs at the highest level, but also uniforms and unify the APIs and the way do management and security across multiple cloud. >> Let's unpack that because I think the virtualization angle is interesting 'cause with virtualization enabled AWS. If you look at AWS' success, virtualization, the Hypervisor, got them going, and that established that value. Now, the new structural change is happening. How do you define that specifically? What is supercloud in your mind? >> So in our mind, supercloud is a set of cloud native services that, first of all... Let's unpack that and go back to the virtualization. Virtualization was a great way to do it on-prem and is no wonder that AWS and Azure, they did it on their cloud, right? But the lingo franca of the cloud is not the virtualization layer. That's taken, it's hidden. It's down there, it just does its thing. The lingo franca of cloud is microservices, API, Kubernetes as the orchestration layer, and one would think, "Okay, now, we have Kubernetes, life is good. I just, you know, deploy on- Well, there are six, seven, eight Kubernetes distribution, and so to us, the supercloud is the ability to take, to factor out the common things that you can do across cloud and give you a single pane or glass to manage your application and single pipeline so you can build your application once and deploy it consistently across multiple clouds, and then, basically, factor out the other two important things with the security and observability of the application. >> One of the trade-offs of abstraction, you go back to the mainframe. They had to squeeze out the performance overheads. VMware had to do the same and done a tremendous job of it. So are we going to see that across clouds with multi-cloud or what we call supercloud. Are you going to see a trade-off? What trade-off do you see that the industry, technically, has to attack? >> Abstractions are always about trade-offs, right? You're trading off the speed. You know, I'm writing C++ code goes really fast for scale. You know, now, I have five million developers writing applications, but I think, eventually, what happens is that or you're trading off specialized skills for, you know, more valuable skills, and if I had a dollar every time I heard, "Oh, we cannot run Oracle Databases on virtualization," well, or the JVM is too slow, but guess what? How many Java developers, how many Java application are running out on the JVM? So I think, eventually, there will be trade-offs, but the technology catches up and it's a matter of like how much value are you getting in terms of scales and saving cost versus maybe the performance trade-off you were making on the lower level. >> On the evolution of hybrid cloud, 'cause right now, hybrid cloud is a steady state. People see that clearly, you know, on-premise and Edge, right around the corner. Public native cloud, there's benefits to be in the native cloud. How does multi-cloud fit? 'Cause by default, people have multiple clouds. If they run on Azure, they probably have some sort of productivity software with Microsoft or other Microsoft products, but it's best to breed. It's not yet connected. So multi-cloud has kind of become a default kind of thing. It's not yet a strategy in some people's minds, yet some people are thinking about it. So we think, and I think you might agree, that multi-cloud will happen, multiple clouds in the sense of workloads running seamlessly. Is that a pipe dream or is that near in our future? (men laugh) >> So there is a lot of unpack there. First of all, our definition of multi-cloud is that because most customers are operating their on-prem as the cloud, so the moment you have your on-prem cloud and AWS, your multi-cloud, so 75%, 85% going to 85%- >> You mean Private Cloud on-premise cloud operations? >> Yeah, and then you have another cloud, you're already multi-cloud. >> I'm assuming the experiences is identical, right? That's the assumption you- >> Well, initially, it's not identical, right? That's why you need a supercloud, right? >> Yeah, exactly. >> And most customers though are in denial, meaning that I see them being in five stages of acceptance or adoption of the multi-cloud. One is denial. We are on-prem and maybe we have one cloud. We're standardized. The second one is euphoria. Oh, look, you know, look how fast we go. All these developers are happy to do whatever they want, and then the third one is like, holy crap. They got the first bill. They realize that the security share responsibility model to deal with. They realize that somebody is to deploy this application and manage the application. Nobody does it for them, and then they go into like, (indistinct). Okay, now, we need to do something about this, right? It's a new normal, and then you end up with the enlightment, right? Now, we're really being productive and strategic about how we use multi-cloud. Very, very few customers are in that stage. Most customers are still within the denial and the new normal, and within the spectrum, you see multi-cloud as, "Okay, I have an application here, an application there. Okay, great, big deal." The next level is, "Okay, I have an application here that uses a pieces of a service of an application over there. Okay, now, I'm coordinating application. I'm using microservices," and then the third stage is like, "Okay, I am designing my application to use multiple services or multiple cloud because each uses differentiated features of that particular cloud." >> Is it part of the problem too, Vittorio, that the industry, the technology industry, you guys have not caught up. The cloud vendors aren't solving that problem. What's VMware doing to solve that problem? >> So we have seen this coming four or five years ago, right? That's why we acquired Pivotal, and then we made a number of acquisition around it because we saw that... Well, let's go back. What is VMware DNA? If you look, I've been running engineering, product management in the company then I moved to the dark side, more on the marketing side, but I've seen, and I sweat with those engineers, and when I look at those engineers, these people know how to make stuff that was not designed to work together work together and deliver value, and so if we go back to, you know, on-prem, we did it with virtualization. In the cloud, we did a new level of abstraction, which is, you know, at the APIs at the... And so over the last five years, we built what we believe is very comprehensive portfolio that unified how you build, you run, manage, secure, and access any application across any cloud. No Hypervisor required. >> So that's the game changer right there. So let me ask you a question. How does the choice factor come in because can VMware do all this or do they need to rely on partners? Because most customers have HashiCorp and other companies in there doing services for them as well. So how do you see the multi-partner strategy approach? Can you do it alone or are you going to need help from the ecosystem? >> First of all, if you look at the success of your event today, look how many vendors from multiple backgrounds and multiple level of the stack that are coming together to talk about the supercloud. So that to me is success already, and, of course, there are tremendous companies that are going to deliver fantastic value for, you know, management like HashiCorp or security and the development experience. Our approach is to bring them together as an integrated platform, and I think VMware has both the DNA and the muscles, the investment to be able to pull that off. >> Okay, you saw Keith Townsend. He had that very cool blackboard, and he called, this was maybe eight or nine months ago, he called the supercloud and VMware's multi-cloud vision aspirational. When is this going to be real? >> I think it's absolutely real today in some of the pieces. Right, there's always an aspiration. You have to look at a company like VMware as a company that looks out five, 10 years, right? You know, we have Raghu as our CEO, you know, which is a technical visionary, and so he saw five years ago, the advent of multi-cloud, and we invested in first part of the stack. What is it? How to build applications natively in the cloud using Tanzu. So with Tanzu, you can build application, manage Kubernetes cluster, secure, creating this service match, and so that's the reality today. Then on the next step is security. We recently announced our security approach. We have a very peculiar position in the stack to be able to see security, not just on the endpoint, not just, you know, in the application, but in between, right? By looking at all the Hypervisor, if you're using Hypervisor. You looking at East-West traffic with NSX and cross cloud networks, and so these are the three main places that are in place today, right? And then I cannot spoil our user conference coming in a couple of weeks where we're going to make more announcement around the supercloud, which we called cross-cloud services. >> Vittorio, I remember in 2016, I interviewed Andy Jassy and Raghu when they announced the deal with VMware. VMware and AWS had the relationship, and you're running on the cloud on AWS VMware, and you look at what's happened since, and this is where the supercloud conversation starts to kick in where Amazon's really good at moving bits around and optimizing the power and the silicon of the infrastructure, which means that the higher level services are going to be much more open for people to innovate around. So Dave calls it, the super pass. This area platform is a service to change the SaaS game. So I have to ask you, how do you see the SaaS game changing with supercloud? Because if you have a Private Cloud or Edge, you're now multiple clouds, technically, as you pointed out. How has that changed the SaaS configuration? Because SaaS and IaaS and PaaS had great relationships in native clouds to solve problems. Now, you have the multi-cloud. How do you see this platform as a service area changing or maybe enabling? >> So I think that that's where the innovation, the ability to aggregate common... Because look, there is a reason why people use multiple cloud, right? They choose it because they have differentiated features. So we don't want to ever hide those features, like if you're using Google, because you need AI capabilities, absolutely. We don't want to prevent that, right? But at the PaaS level, you know, when you are orchestrated these microservices, you don't want to do it in five different ways, right? So those are the areas where I think are prime for aggregation and simplification. How you, you know, look at all this Kubernetes environment and being able to monitor your application and force security policies, both from a resource consumption, this group of developers can only use this many resources, but also a run time that you don't run out of like, you know, you get that bill shock, and so those are the areas where I think there's this more ability for us to innovate and deliver value, not at the lower level which is taken by the- >> So you try to have your cake and eat it too, which is if you can pull that off it's game over, right? You have a specific set of cross-cloud services that are unique and value added that are differentiable in the industry, but at the same time, you're trying to give access to developers, if in fact, they want access to those primitives, right? >> Yeah. >> That's a bold aspiration. >> Well, we want to have the cake, eat it, and lose weight. (men laugh) But seriously, I think, going back to your point about the ecosystem, of course, we're not going to do it alone, right? If we were doing it alone, there is not a market, right? And so I think that the market is so big and the area of challenges for IT is so large that there's room for many companies to add value, and I think that, as I said, our approach is to, you know, we're a platform company, right? So you're going to find tremendous companies that will solve one problem for multiple clouds. You're going to find the hyperscaler that have a platform approach for one cloud. We like to think that we can position ourself in that two by two as the company that has a platform approach across multiple clouds. >> You know, it's great. That's where we've known each other for a long time. It's 12 years of "CUBE" coverage. Watching things like the CNCF emerge and do great work, watching cloud native kind of go that next level's been fun to watch, and the developers have had a great run. I mean, open sources booming, developer goodness is out there. People are shifting left, a lot of great stuff going with containers and Kubernetes. So looking good on the developer experience front right now, and I think it's only going to get better, but developers don't think about locking. They just want to get the job done. Move on to the next line of code. It's the ops teams that we're hearing from that are saying, "Hey, we love this, too, but we got to align with the developer." Level up, so to speak. So ops and security teams are saying, "Hey, I got to run this with automation with the higher level services." So there seems to be a focus around the supercloud conversation around ops teams. This is your wheelhouse, VMware. You guys do a lot of IT operations and things of that nature. How do you see that and what's the message cross-cloud brings to and supercloud brings to the development teams and the ops teams who are really going to be doing DevOps together and/or faster? >> I think if you go back to what where we started, right? Developers run the show, and I think there's been a little bit of inertia in IT organization on the op side and the security side in catching up to see how to catch up to where developers are, right? And with the DevOps revolution, if operators don't really understand what the developers need and get ahead of that, they're going to be left behind. So I'll give you an example, like SMB Global, one of our customers, their band runs their operation. Basically, told me I had to sit down and figure out what these developers were doing because I was being left behind and then or Cerner, one of our partners and customers, same thing they say, okay, we sat down. We realized that we needed to get ahead of the developers and set those guard rails, right? These are the Kubernetes environment you want to use? Okay, this is how we're going to set them up. This is want to make sure that we shift left security, that we have a single pipeline that feeds that, and Cerner, using our technology was able to... They made a business decision to move from one hyperscaler, was going to go unnamed to another hyperscaler, It was going to go unnamed, and they managed to change all the deployments in four hours. So that's the power of the supercloud, being able to say, "Hey, developers, do whatever you want, but these are the guard rails, and we're going to be able to like stay ahead of you and give you the flexibility, but also, make sure that operation and security, as a saying." >> Shift left shield right, basically. >> Awesome, awesome stuff. We've got 15 seconds. What is supercloud? What's the bumper sticker? >> The supercloud is a level of abstraction across any of the public clouds that allows developers to go fast, operators to make sense of what's happening, security to enforce security, and end users to access any application with a great user experience and security. >> And it's inclusive of on-prem. I'll just throw that in. (John laughs) >> All right, great stuff. Thanks for coming on. We're going to have a industry panel to talk about and debate Supercloud 22. We'll be right back after this break.

(upbeat music) >> Live from Orlando Florida. It's the Cube. Covering Cisco Live 2018. Brought to Cisco NetApp and the Cube's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to the Cube's Live coverage here in Orlando Florida for Cisco Live 2018. It's the Cube's coverage. >> I'm John Furrier. The host. Here for three days of wall-to wall-coverage. Our next guest is Shubha Govil. Whose the director of product management for Cisco DevNet. Welcome to the Cube. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks John. Thanks for having me on Cube. >> Great conversation before the cameras came out. We're talking about development and Cloud Native. But we're super impressed with the work you guys have done at DevNet. Certainly it's the top story of the show here is that Cisco has now crossed over the flywheel of innovation where 500,000 registered developers. >> Developers. Not visitors to a website. >> Yes. Or some marketing program. >> Correct. >> Real engaging developers. >> Absolutely. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you John. Thank you. >> A couple of years. Four years and you're here. You've got DevNet. And DevNet Create. Which we've been covering extensively as well. >> Yes. >> Which is the Cloud Native world coming together. >> Yes. >> This is for the first time in Cisco's history where you have now a clear line of sight for network engineers network developers network experts who have been certified in the CCIE and other certifications. CCNA, CCNP. All the stuff you guys do. You can now see a clear line where you can extend the capabilities and knowledge and expertise in power of networking. >> Absolutely. >> Up the stack. >> Absolutely. >> Finally Cisco's moving up the stack. >> Yes. >> Tell us what's going on in the product side? >> Yeah Absolutely. And I'm gonna talk about very specific example today. And today if you heard the keynote speak. And Susie opened up a few things and announcement. One of them was DNA developer center. And I'm gonna talk about that. Because part of it is how network is an open platform now. And that was part of the announcement. You will hear a lot about that. And linking it back to Dev reports. Quite right. They should care about why they should look into it. So three things I'm gonna talk about. DNA, developer center and what they can find there. And once they go there and they really start learning about our platform on API's on DevNet. What cord exchange does for them. And how they can start not only programming the Intent based on our Intent API's and what they want network to do for them but also sharing some community cord. Are using that community cord. Community Cord if they are just getting started. Right? So on DNA Developers Center we have four capabilities highlighted. These are the API's. Whether they are Intent API's Integration API's to connect with other third parties. Or SDK's to manage multi-party devices. Or there for ITSM or a specific use case integrations. >> So hold up. Go slow. >> I'm kind of not on the uptake as you are on this. Because you're in it. IF DNA is a set of abstractions API's on top of the equipment. >> Correct. >> So it's not natively. It's a set of API. >> Set of API's. >> So that people could use those API's to create services. >> To manage their network wealth. To automate and drive these right use cases. So I might. >> Give me an example. >> Yeah let's talk about an example. Intent. My intent might be to. We were talking about radio conferences awhile back. And I come from that environment. I want to drive a Butler QS for certain level of execs. Right? If they are on the call this was the thing of like eight ten years back. If my execs are on a call make sure they have the best experience. So the QS quality of your network should be set up to a level that there's no disruption. There's no latency in the call. Right? So that's an intent. That's a business intent. Give best experience to my execs. >> So really that's combining policy and QOS together to make it meet the outcome. Which is no latency. >> To meet the outcome. But for the network engineer now let's connect back to the developer. The network engineer whose trying to make this intent possible for the execs. There's a places they need to set up the SQSS. And won't it be easy of them if there was a simple API that they can use to create that solution to drive that policy across the devices. Whether Cisco devices or non Cisco devices. >> This has been the challenge for network engineers in general. Because you want to have things in control and locked down but as you want to do more things that are programmable. >> Correct. >> There's been some provisioning and some configuration management things. >> Correct. >> You're saying, hey you're gonna lock down all the architecture and then move up. Use the API's to do better integration. Make things run smoothly without disrupting the network. Is that right? >> That's part of it. But also it's about making it easy for them. Correct? Simplify the process of doing it. The process of making it happen was long steps of CLI command. That now that network engineer was going continuously. A lot of the time people actually tells us that they would have this cut and paste copy of the command. That they will take from one place go to the next place next device and next device. And continue to do that step. And that's the productivity game we are driving by simplifying where one API call can go across all the devices and make that change happen. >> We've heard that a lot from on DevNet and the hallway conversations that said DevNet's made my life easier. >> Yes. >> I don't have to do those mundane tasks. >> Exactly. >> That were part of getting things done. Okay. Let me ask you personal question. As director of product management for DevNet. What is your product scope? What are you working on? Can you take a minute? >> That's a very good question. And that's where some of these offers we were talking about earlier come in to play. So for example, within Devnet we create a lot of offers to make developers lives simple. Whether we are talking about giving them the best quality of learning content. Or giving them hosted Sandbox environment to try and test. All of that requires a lot of product management knowledge and the need. But really what the 2ADS we have work more closely to get them out to market. One is the thing called Code Exchange. It's a tool for our developer committee. Where we have aggregated the public git code across the Cisco technologies. >> That's on GitHub I think. >> GitHub code right. Absolutely. But the second powerful thing on top of that is our Ecosystem Exchange. This is where we are bringing an aggregated view of every partner out there. Every Cisco partner whose creating great solutions on our API's in a single place our developers can go and find that solution. To really address the business outcome they are looking to address. >> Shubha, I want you to put some color commentary around of some of the feedback you've heard. We hear people of the DevNet community saying I've come to Cisco Live and I spend all my week here in DevNet. Because it really is kind of like a kid in the candy store. (Shubha laughs) >> From a computer science or developer prospective. >> Yeah. >> What are some of the cool examples and demos that you guys have here? What's your favorite? What are some of the things that are jumping out that people are gravitating towards? >> I will tell you one of the most popular sessions that I have seen in the last few days here is Network Programmability for Networking Juniors. That's one. There's also a very Network Programmability one-on-one. Coding one-on-one class. It's basic Python. But applying it in network context. Those are some of the most popular sessions that I have seen. But when it comes to cool demos there's a cool demo around Flex IQ. I think you might be talking to Ashish later about that. >> Yes. >> And really it's a retail scenario how you are tracking. Using the location based service example. But in this case camera feed. Really analyzing where people are. And you'll get to hear more about this. >> We took a ad. I saw the demo. >> Yeah. >> The Flex IQ. First of all I love the name. I said trademark it immediately. (Shubha laughs) Get it out there. First use wins. And it's already out there. But it's really taking a A access point. >> This is an access point. >> And it plugs into a camera. And a great example of some of the coolness you can do with a preexisting condition. In this case an access point. >> So each of these information points that data one that they are collecting. Whether it's a camera feed. It's a location service. Like information about the devices and the environment. Each set of data is the relevance in this. Which is driving the newest use cases. And this data is coming through API's that have labeled but I'd say morockie access point API. All the camera API that are labeled that have enabled C Space. >> This is really the aha moment for me. I've been following Cisco really since the 90's. >> Yeah. >> Or at least when they formed. Being the young gun at the time. Younger than I am now. 30 years ago. But it was really networking. Connecting companies together. It was the plumbing. It was the core. >> Yes. Unstoppable since then. Now the success is still there. But it's really the problem solving is never going away. I saw this security challenges that were outlined in the keynote. We all know Cybe Ops is a huge issue. Cloud is here. You've got industrial IOT going on. And IOT. But these examples that DevNet is showing is that these new capabilities with I won't say a hack but a maker faire culture. >> It is a maker culture right. Which is lot of DIY stuff. So this lot of learning by playing with the API's and multiple one of them. And you'd really find use cases you have never addressed before. We also have a design thinking workshop here going on. And part of it is really thinking about the use cases from the user prospective. What you are trying to address. Before finding the cool technologies. Really understand what your users' needs are. >> Yeah. >> And we are doing a lot of things around that. And bringing it connecting it back to the APIs. Once we learn the right needs. And finding these use cases that were never possible before. >> Well I talked to Susie all the time about this. >> Yeah. >> And I know she's really hardcore on this. But you guys have nailed the community aspect as well. You've brought that open source ethos into the formula. Which makes it more collaborative. No one wants to be alone. I mean the last thing a network engineer wants to do is be the old way of being tied to the chair on the network. Troubleshooting problems. They want to have more collaboration As some of this creativity kicks in. So it's really a new time. How are you guys handling this? Is it like people are having an awakening moment? Or what are you guys doing to nature this? What are some of the exciting things? >> And the best part about the community is that communities learning with each other. Right? It's this feeling of we are enabling our community both traditionally and through even like Cisco Live and DevNet Create. We bring them together to be able to learn from each other much as we learn with them. And trying to define the right use cases and solutions. And that's what the company's behind. The 500,000 developers who are coming and learning with us. They have found the use cases they were addressing for their business. They also found a new skill set that they were looking to learn before. >> Yeah. >> And a lot of them have come along where they are showing their tech cred in the community. Really being the community leaders. >> You know it's been kind of a downer some of the narrative I've seen from press outlets other press outlets and other kind of naysayers has been Hey network guys. You're gonna be automated away. Go learn how to code to save your career. Actually that's not happening. >> That is not happening at all. >> The power of networking certainly as security moves down lower on the stack. And policy and these cool service oriented service meshes. Kubernetes. Really points to the relevance of the network engineer more than ever. You've got SDN. Software Defined Data Center. That's not going away. Automation is going to take mundane tasks away. >> Yes. >> But actions happening at the app layer. >> They have that expertise and 20 years plus experience knowing how networks should be running to make these things possible. The use cases around the applications possible. >> They're more relevant than ever. >> They are more relevant than ever. I would say. Exactly. That's the key. >> Well you guys are at the beginning I think of another set of inflection point. Certainly DevNet's gone in a quick four years. You're connecting to the Cloud Native World with DevNet Create. Which is phenomenal. Those are two worlds that are coming together. I just see another inflection point coming. Maybe it's a million developers. But you've been success in the enterprise where it's been really difficult. Even Microsoft with their legacy developer program .net. The Visual Basic and all the MSDM stuff. >> At the by GitHub >> Yup. >> To kind of maintain relevance. Other companies like Oracle VM wear and other ones they're having a hard time. You guys are just kicking butt. >> So part of it for us is not only focusing on traditional infrastructure. But also talking about the app developer. So these application developers who did not know about network at all. A lot of times they had to fight with their networking juniors to get their application the particular function they wanted to have. Right? So that what we are enabling by bringing them together. Also we have been running small programs like we are trying new markets. Global markets. China, India and some of the things like really reaching out to the big large hackathons. Which are traditionally. For example in India we were recently doing a smart India hackathon. >> Nice. >> There are 500,00 students participated in solving real problems for the country. And DevNet was the provider of applications and API's. Bringing them into the application world with the understanding of network. >> A lot of growth in India and China. Certainly massive new developers coming on board. Okay final question to wrap up the segment. I gotta get your prospective. Take your DevNet hat off for a second. >> Okay. Put your Cisco hat on. >> Sure. For the folks who couldn't make Cisco Live this year what's the big story coming out of the event this year? You guys have been successful with the 500,000 developers. What's the big story developing here? What should people know is the most important story for Cisco Live 2018? >> I think the biggest story I would like to call out is that network is open for business. Network is really open for you to really come and make your intent. Your use cases. Your business outcomes possible. And that's the biggest story I will call out. >> Shubha Govil here product management for DevNet. Here on the Cube. Live coverage. Day two of three days. I'm John Furrier. Stay with us for more live coverage. As we start winding down day two. A lot of great action. The network is programmable. It's creating value and new use cases. And the developers are in the center of the action. The network engineers seeing a clear path of the Cloud and more. We'll be back with more after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> This is George Gilbert from Wikibon. We're back on the ground with Aman Naimat at Demandbase. >> Hey. >> And, we're having a really interesting conversation About building next-gen enterprise applications. >> It's getting really deep. (laughing) >> So, so let's look ahead a little bit. >> Sure. >> We've talked in some detail about the foundation technologies. >> Right. >> And you told me before that we have so much technology, you know, still to work with. >> Yeah. >> That is unexploited. That we don't need, you know, a whole lot of breakthroughs, but we should focus on customer needs that are unmet. >> Yeah. >> Let's talk about some problems yet to be solved, but that are customer facing with, as you have told me, existing technology. >> Right, can solve. >> Yes. >> Absolutely, I mean, there's a lot of focus in Silicon Valley about, like, scaling machine learning and investing in, you know, GPUs and what have you. But I think there's enough technology there. So where's the gap? The really gap is in understanding how to build AI applications, and how to monetize it, because it is quite different than building traditional applications. It has different characteristics. You know, so it's much more experimental in nature. Although, you know, with lean engineering, we've moved towards iterative to (mumbles) development, for example. Like, for example, 90% of the time, I, you know, after 20 years of building software, I'm quite confident I can build software. It turns out, in the world of data science and AI driven, or AI applications, you can't have that much confidence. It's a lot more like discovering molecules in pharma. So you have to experiment more often, and methods have to be discovered, there's more discovery and less engineering in the early stages. >> Is the discovery centered on do you have the right data? >> Yeah, or are you measuring the right thing, right? If you thought you were going to maximize, work the model to maximize revenue, but really, maybe the end function should be increasing engagement with the customer. So, often, we don't know the end objective function, or incorrectly guess the right or wrong objective function. The only way to do that is to be able to build and end-to-end system in days, and then iterate through the different models in hours and days as quickly as possible with the end goal and customer in mind. >> This is really fascinating because we were, some of the research we're doing is on the really primitive capabilities of the, sort of, analytic data pipeline. >> Yes. >> Where, you know, all the work that has to do with coming up with the features. >> Yeah. >> And then plugging that into a model, and then managing the model's life cycle. That those, that whole process is so fragmented. >> Yeah. >> And it's, you know, chewing gum and bailing wire. >> Sure. >> And I imagine that that's slows dramatically that experimentation process. >> I mean, it slows it down, but it's also mindset, right? >> Okay. >> So, now that we have built, you know, we probably have a hundred machine learning models now, Demandbase, that I've contributed to the build with our data scientists, and in the end we've found out that you can actually do something in a day or two with extremely small amount of data over, using Python and SKLearn, today, very quickly, that will give you, and then, you know, build some simple UI that a human can evaluate and give feedback or whatever action you're trying to get to. And get to that as quickly as possible, rather than worrying about the pipelines, rather than worry about everything else because in 80% of the cases, it will fail anyways. Or you will realize that either you don't have the right data, or nobody wants it, or it can never be done, or you need to approach it completely different, from a completely different objective function. >> Let me parse what you've said in a different way. >> Sure. >> And see if I understand it. Traditional model building is based, not on sampling, but on the full data set. >> That's right. >> And what you're saying, in terms of experimentation. >> Start doing that, yes. >> Is to go back to samples. >> That's right. Go back to, there's a misunderstanding that we need, you know, while Demandbase processes close to a trillion rows of data today, we found that almost all big data, AI solutions, can be initially proven with very small amounts of data, and small amount of features. And if they don't work that, if you cannot have a hundred rows of data and have a human look at some rows and make a judgment, then it's not possible, most likely, with one billion, and with ten billion. So, if you cannot work it, now there are exceptions to this, but in 90% of the cases, if the solution is not at, you know, few thousand or million rows of data. Now the problem is that all the easy, you know, libraries and open-source stuff that's out there, it's all designed to be workable in small amounts of data. So, what we don't want to do is build this whole massive infrastructure, which is getting easier, and worrying about data pipelines and putting it all together, only to realize that this is not going to work. Or, more often, it doesn't solve any problem. >> So, if I were to sort of boil that down into terms of product terms. >> Yeah. >> The notion that you could have something like Spark running on your laptop. >> Yeah. >> And scaling out to a bit cluster. >> Yeah, just run it on laptop. >> That, yeah. >> In fact, you don't even need Spark. >> Or, I was going to say, not even spark. >> No. >> Just use Python. >> Just by scale learning is much better for something like this. >> It's almost like, this is, so it's back to Visual Basic. You know, you're not going to build a production app in >> I wouldn't go that far. >> Well >> It's a prototype. >> No I meant for the prototype GUI app you do in Visual Basic, and then, you know, when you're going to build a production one, you use Microsoft Foundation Class. >> Because most often, right, more often, you don't have the right data, you have the wrong objective function, or your customer is not happy with the results or wants to modify. And that's true for conventional business applications, the old school whatever internet applications. But it is more true for here because it's much, the data is much more noisy, the problems are much more complex, and ultimately you need to be able to take real world action, and so build something that can take the real world action, be it for a very narrow problem or use case. And get to it, even without any model. And the first model that I recommend, or I do, or my data scientists do, is I just do it yourself by hand. Just label the data and say as if, let's pretend that this was the right answer, and we can take this action and the workflow works, like, did something good happen? You know, will it be something that will satisfy some problem? And if that's not true, then why build it? And you can do that manually, right? So I guess it's no different than any other entrepreneurial endeavor. But it's more true in data science projects, firstly, because they're more likely to be wrong than I think we have learned now how to build good software. >> Imperative software. >> The imperative software. And data science is called data science for a reason. It's much more experimental, right? Like, in science, you don't know. A negative experiment is a fine experiment. >> This is actually, of all that we've been talking about, it might sound the most abstract, but it's also the most profound because what you're saying is this elaborate process and the technology to support it, you know, this whole pipeline, that it's like you only do that once you've proven the prototype. >> That's right. And get the prototype in a day. >> You don't want that elaborate structure and process when you're testing something out. >> No, yeah, exactly. And, you know, like when we build our own machine learning models, obviously coming out of academia, you know, there was a class project that it took us a year or six months to really design the best models, and test it, and prove it out intrinsic, intrinsic testing, and we knew it was working. But what we should really have done, what should we do now is we build models, we do experiments daily. And get to, in essence, the patient with our molecule every day, so, you know, we have the advantage given that we entail the marketing, that we can get to test our molecules or drugs on a daily basis. And we have enough data to test it, and we have enough customers, thankfully, to test it. And some of them are collaborating with us. So, we get to end solution on a daily basis. >> So, now I understand why you said, we don't need these radical algorithmic breakthroughs or, you know, new super, turbo-charged processors. So, with this approach of really fast prototyping, what are some of the unmet needs in, you know, it's just a matter of cycling through these experiments? >> Yeah, so I think one of the biggest unmet need today, we're able to understand language, we're able to predict who should you do business with and what should you talk about, but I think natural language generation, or creating a personalized email, really personalized and really beautifully written, is still something that we haven't quite, you know, have a full grasp on. And to be able to communicate at human level personalization, to be able to talk, you know, we can generate ads today, but that's not really, you know, language, right? It is language, but not as sophisticated as what we're talking here. Or to be able to generate text or have a bot speak to you, right? We can have a bot, we can now understand and respond in text, but really speak to you fluently with context about you is definitely an area we're heavily investing in, or looking to invest in in the near future. >> And with existing technology. >> With existing technology. I think, we think if you can narrow it down, we can generate emails that are much better than what are salesperson would write. In fact, we already have a product that can personalize a website, automatically, using AI, reinforcement learning, all the data we have. And it can rewrite a website to be customized for each visitor, personalized to each visitor, >> Give us an example of what. >> So, you know, for example if you go to Siemens or SAP and you come from pharma, it will take you and surface different content about pharmaceuticals. And, you know, in essence, at some point you can generate a whole page that's personalized to if somebody comes to pharma from a CFO versus an IT person, it will change the entire page content, right? To that, to, in essence, the entire buyer journey could be personalized. Because, you know, today buying from B2B, it's quite jarring, it's filled with spam, it's, you know, it's not a pleasant experience. It's not concierge level experience. And really, in an ideal world, you want B2B or marketing to be personalized. You want it to be like you're being, you know, guided through, if you need something, you can ask a question and you have a personalized assistant talking to you about it. >> So that there's, the journey is not coded in. >> It isn't, yeah. >> The journey, or the conversation response reacts to the >> To the customer. >> To the customer. >> Right, and B2B buyers want, you know, they want something like that. They don't have time to waste to it. Who want's to be lost on a website? >> Right. >> You know, you go to any Fortune 500 company's website and you, it's a mess. >> Okay, so let's back up to the Demandbase in the Bay Area, software ecosystem. >> Sure. >> So, SalesForce is a big company. >> Yes. >> Marketing is one of their pillars. >> Yes. >> Tell us, what is it about this next gen technology that is so, we touched on this before, but so anathema to the way traditional software companies build their products? >> Yeah, I mean, SalesForce is a very close partner, they're a customer, we work with them very closely. I think they're also an investor, small investor for Demandbase. We have a deep relationship with them. And I, myself, come from the traditional software background, you know, I've been building CRM, so I'll talk about myself, because I've seen how different and, you know, I have to sort of transition at a very early stage from a human centric CRM to a data driven CRM, or a human driven versus data driven. And it's, you have to think about things differently. So, one difference is that, when you look at data in human driven CRM, you trust it implicitly because somebody in your org put it in. You may challenge it, it's old, it's stale, but there's no fear that it's a machine recommending you and driving you. And it requires the interfaces to be much different. You have to think about how do you build trust between the person, you know, who's being driven in a Tesla, also, similar problem. And, you know, how do you give them the controls so they can turn of the autopilot, right? And how do you, you know, take feedback from humans to improve the models? So, it's a different way that human interface even becomes more different, and simpler. The other interesting thing is that if you look at traditional applications, they're quite complicated. They have all these fields because, you know, just enter all this data and you type it in. But the way you interact with our application, is that we already know everything, or a lot. So, why bother asking you? We already know where you are, who you are, what you should do, so we are in essence, guiding you more of a, using the Tesla autopilot example, it already knows where you are. It knows you're sitting in the car and it knows that you need to break because, you know, you're going to crash, so it'll just break by itself. So, you know, the interface is. >> That's really an interesting analogy. Tesla is a data driven piece of software. >> It is. >> Whereas, you know, my old BMW or whatever is a human driven piece of software. >> And there's some things in the middle. So, I recently, I mean, looking at cars, I just had a baby, and Volvo is something in the middle. Where, if you're going to have an accident or somebody comes close, it blinks. So, it's like advanced analytics, right? Which is analogous to that. Tesla just stops if you're going to have an accident. And that's the right idea, because if I'm going to have an accident, you don't want to rely on me to look at some light, what if I'm talking on the phone or looking at my kid? You know, some blinking light over there. Which is why advanced analytics hasn't been as successful as it should be. >> Because the hand off between the data driven and the human driven is a very difficult hand off. >> It's a very difficult hand off. And whenever possible, the right answer for us today is if you know everything, and you can take the action, like if you're going to have an accident just stop. Or, if you need to go, go, right? So if you come out in the morning, you know, and you go to work at 9 am, it should just put itself out, like, you know, why wait for human to, you know, get rid of all the monotonous problems that we ourselves have, right? >> That's a great example. On that note, let's break and this is George Gilbert. I'm with, and having a great conversation with Aman Naimat, Senior VP and CTO of Demandbase, and we will be back shortly with a member of the data science team. >> Thank you, George.