from the silicon angle media office in Boston Massachusetts it's the queue now here's your host David on tape hello everybody welcome to this cube conversation my name is Dave Volante and I'm here with Dave faithful who's the chief architect of WEEI Dave thanks for coming on the cube thanks for having me so first tell me about WEEI and then I want to understand your role there sure at WTI our chief architect and responsible for driving technology solutions that we work with our customer base on so WI is a value-added reseller supporting fortunate 1,000 enterprise customers it takes us all over the world and supporting their environments and we're typically designing and architecting IT service delivery models for those customers and and aligning those those architectures with their business needs so are you typically like described like the sweet spot of your customer base you mentioned you know the basically large companies and you're interacting you know who's your point of contact is it is it the architect to architect you know who you're talking to it is it's all levels of the IT organization typically from the CIO on down so understanding what the business goals of our customers are and then working with those IT directors IT managers and and IT architecture leads to develop solutions that fit those business models so you know these days you know software-defined data center computing is is as big creating service delivery models that a cloud like in nature whether on pram or in a hybrid environment or a public service or things that our customers are trying to do migrating from that traditional IT architecture to this new software dependent world so we're gonna talk about storage later on but but I've wondered thinking about the top level this the sea level executive in IT is he or he or she are they concerned about storage what's on their mind thought what's top of mind for those guys typically it's really just how do they i tea to deliver value back to the business right how do they make their companies more competitive in the marketplace how did they get the products out to market faster faster than before and faster than our competition so they're trying to leverage IT as a service as a utility and they're trying to create that that that utility model that service delivery model to support their business needs which you know the IT has to be more responsive than ever before they don't have months to get something out they have sometimes days or hours and so they've got to build those models while at the same time right they've got to support their existing traditional environment so they've got this juggling act at the C level that's typically what we see they're worried about how they get there is up to their IT organizations right then and that's where we're helping them to architect those fears yeah so the CIOs that we talk to I think they bought into the cloud narrative of hey you don't want to do this heavy lifting you want to shift those resources to support whatever digital transformation or you know application delivery but to get them from point A to point B and keep the lights on is is obviously challenging so you talked about some of the underlying rip currents and trends you mentioned sddc so why is that important first of all what is it and in your mind how do you guys look at that and why is it so important well so you know suffer to find data center computing is really you know suffer to find anything is really the decoupling of the control plane from the data plane right how can we manage all of this data where it comes from and where it goes from a centralized automated point and so what's important about that is it allows us to provision more quickly than ever before it allows us to make changes more quickly than we before and it allows our data to be more portable than ever before giving us the ability to move information and data on prem to a public service and back be able to replicate and backup data to really any place that we need it to be and then making it more available for our global organizations to be able to get access to it at any time in development environments they can follow the Sun methodology right of being able to have access to that data for development teams all over the world is critically important and you know public services as well as hybrid other cloud delivery models allow them to do that so used to be pretty straightforward we didn't maybe realize at the time but you'd build a basically a an infrastructure stack you'd support an application you'd harden that and it kind of became its own silo as cloud comes into play hybrid cloud now you talk about multi cloud the the the picture gets a lot more complex and you mentioned separating the control plane and the data plane as you go into this you know multi-cloud well first of all multi cloud I've said it's kind of a symptom of multi vendor we sort of just got here but now I think as is often the case in IT people are saying well we have to control this we have to have governance and compliance and security so we we better get IT to come fix this problem is that a viable sort of inherited from my standpoint is that how we got here or is it really been a strategy in your view well I think it's both and I think more mature organizations understand now maybe not at first understand now that there's different reasons to use different services right so it may be that a particular public service has has some you know application environment or some process that is appealing to them maybe it complies with some sort of governance or compliance requirement but there may also be times and there are with most of our customers where they need to keep that information that data on Prem for whatever reason either due to security policy or due to compliance reasons or something else and so organizations started to figure out they couldn't just put everything all in one place right even if it was a public service that they needed the ability to have some data in different places and they needed that to be affordable and so that was the challenge and and as organizations started to realize that that hybrid cloud strategy was a sound one they needed the technology to be able to support that and so that's when we when we start taking a look at software-defined solutions we're looking at the ability of those those the solutions to be able to communicate back and forth right how do we move data back and forth what products do we select that allow us to create API connectivity to all those different end points right whether it's a public cloud service or on-prem or both how are we able to fluidly move data back and forth okay so you had and you also had a lot of shadow IT which kind of I feel like IT is beginning to reign in at least from the standpoint of setting standards but okay so you just described this this this state of cloud I'll call it cloud because to to us it seems that you're bringing the cloud experience wherever your data lives could be on Prem could be in cloud vendor a B or C some kind of hybrid structure so how do you bring that cloud experience to wherever your data lives and what role does storage play yep all right so so first there's there's there's a few high-level elements to we'll call it this hybrid cloud model right one is a financial model in a public service say you know we talked about you know the ability to go swipe a credit card and now you've got this instant access to infrastructure you know that's a financial model that is easy to consume right but how do you do that on the pram so we work with different partners to put together those financial models that are similar to public services in an on-prem consumption model and so we can do things like capacity on demand pay for what you need only when you're needed all right expand and contract on primp just like you would in a public service so that financial model is one place to start the second place to start is with the infrastructure and you mentioned storage its orders great example of that so we want to have storage that has the ability to connect out to those public services or other platforms when we need them to when we need it to matter of fact that wer that's that's one of the things that we look at very carefully is what is that you know second third mile approach to implementing all of this how do we automate the movement of that data and the connectivity of all this infrastructure together well we've got to you've got to have some some automation that is customized to your environment because it's it's not a cookie cutter approach and so to be able to develop that automation is what we call that's the second mouth or mail service where we're connecting all of these things so we want to be able to select a storage platform for instance that has API connectivity that we can leverage to connect to you know Microsoft Azure or to AWS or to Google or someplace else and that we want to also be able to connect to our compute platforms that we're leveraging on Prem and so that and our network all right that is on Prem and that is extended out to those public services and does the intelligence enables automation does that live inside the the infrastructure is it something that you have to bring to it to the table is it a combination or is it is actually intrinsic now to the architectures that are out there it's both so there is more and more of that intelligence coming to the to the hardware being developed into the hardware and you know some of our partners that we work with have done a really good job of building that into their solutions you know HP as an example with some of their storage platforms uses their info site capability to to build intelligence in an AI and machine learning into optimizing their their storage platform and being able to give customers the ability to see problems before they even arise so that's one piece of it and the other piece of it is you know are those api's already written on the platform can we leverage those already do we have to develop that or so have they been developed to work with certain automation platforms that we can leverage so so yeah it's a lot of this built into the infrastructure today and and then how you customize that for your own use case it requires you know some of the experience and and and the capability to actually develop this automation it's interesting David if you go back five six even seven maybe even longer years ago people were really afraid of automation they wanted knobs to turn and so my question is do you see people much more receptive why what what's what's jii do people see much more receptive to automation but what's changed well I think it's it's actually what you just mentioned right people thought that there was this magic dial you know magic knob but they could turn when they wanted infrastructure I want more officially I'll turn it this way I want less infrastructures man it that way not really understanding the effort it took to make that happen in the background and I think that there's more awareness now of what that effort is we see organizations moving resources me you know their people and their skills from traditional IT roles into these automation roles giving them new skills to be able to support all of this ongoing automation requirement to be able to make the the you know the business more responsive so instead of IT organizations being reactive like they used to ie they would receive a request and then they would have to go in and you know architect around that request they're actually building the infrastructure and the automations upfront so when the request comes in it can actually turn that down up so they're building the dial knob by moving those resources into new skill sets well so that's interesting point about the skill sets I mean I've always often said if your main skill set is managing Lunz you really want to update your skill sets to you know find a new job basically so what are people doing are they moving into development are they moving into sort of becoming cloud architects what what would you advise somebody who's traditionally been a a storage admin what's their growth path so that's a that's a good question so yeah it we would advise them to stop managing lawns and to move into you know different automation skill sets different programming understand some of the programming languages out there now like Python and Perl and other things that are commonly used you know and and developing these scripts understand API structures and most of this is open right so if you understand it from a general sense you'll be able to apply it to just about any platform understand automations behind provisioning infrastructure and the tools that are out there that are available to do that and there's a lot of them and we we work with many of them with our customers today and if you can if you can develop those skill sets you'll be able to manage in this new in this new hybrid you know I'd seen hybrid cloud world and we talked about DevOps a lot of talking about infrastructure is Co but I still feel as though in many organizations that love your thoughts on this it's still early days in terms of you know there's probably more ops dev than there is DevOps but but are you are you what are you seeing in terms of the uptake of that DevOps philosophy programmable infrastructure and the skill sets to be able to support that within some of your larger customers I think there's a separation there right when most organizations think about DevOps Terr thinking about you know their products or their their you know their own internal application development and I think their that when we talk about infrastructure automation and provisioning it's generally in most enterprise environments completely separate teams right and and yes a lot of that is coming together but you've got one organization an IT that is creating a service for those DevOps teams right in the past you know when we talk about shadow IT it was those DevOps teams who were swiping the credit card because they need is something instuments they could develop something and then share it globally and now we've got ite organizations whose who stop fighting that and what they really want to do is be able to deliver that same experience in a control secured and you know financially viable way right to be able to support those DevOps initiatives let's talk about your partnership with HPE what are you guys doing with HHH PE you kind of what sets you guys apart yeah sure so WEEI is an HPE Platinum Partner and we work with HP across really their entire portfolio and we understand their initiatives around data center automation creating a hybrid IT environment some of the solutions that they have around the financial models for instance HPE green link is a way to create those those cloud like financial models in an on-prem environment and extend that as a public services so that you have that same experience of swiping that credit card and a public service so we work with with HPE is you know they're they're a leader in IT infrastructure and have been for a long time and across all of their product lines for compute storage and network how important is Green Lake and and how differentiable is it from you know other companies who who do this is it pretty much table stakes to be able to have that sort of pay by the drink is there anything unique and different about Green Lake was from your perspective yeah I mean there is right essentially it's giving organizations the ability to have that public service experience on Prem and consume what they need when they need it and then more importantly capitalize that if they really want to alright so you know many organizations are are trying to juggle that in that capital expense versus operational expense you know budget and so Green Lake allows them to have that subscription like experience in a capitalized model which is important for my organization's okay but so too is it their choice to go up extra capex is that was so they can okay and I can understand why some organizations would want to do that maybe there's tax benefits etc okay good I want to ask you about sort of clouds if it's so huge mega trend you know one of the super powers as they say we've heard the stats 80% of the sort of install base is still on Prem 20% only 20% has moved to the cloud we talk a lot about cloud 2.0 kind of a play on on web 2.0 what is that well it's containers it's hybrid it's it's multi cloud if you're thinking about the next era of cloud what do you see is 2.0 if we can kind of define that on the fly boy and on camera forevermore those reasonable parameters hybrid you know multi-cloud containers maybe infrastructure as a code yeah I mean so or is it all bs just acronym soup in our industry no I don't think it's BS right I think that any so let's take a look at the evolution of cloud right if you looked at it say into you know five years ago maybe 10 years ago everyone said that'll never happen we would never put our data out there it's not secure and then you looked at it say you know five years ago or less everyone was going to cloud we're just going to move everything we're going to dr everything over the and we're gonna get rid of all our data centers you know and then a couple years ago everyone said well hi hold on a second that that's probably not realistic right there's a use there's sometimes you know there's going to be a need to keep some data on prom either you know for compliance reasons or for technology reasons I mean we need the state of close to us for other things who knows what it is so hybrid cloud right and our abilities create all of these processes internally those automations to make that on-prem experience feel the same as it would in a public service is is where most enterprises have realized they need to be right so that's kind of been the journey to get here now I think that that that hybrid cloud experience that organizations are making these investments into right now it's probably well they're where they will be for the next five to ten years right and what comes after that you mentioned multi-cloud before right and I think that's probably a realistic expectation right as the commoditization of everything NIT occurs I this is just you know my speculation that that that may occur in the cloud as well right and so as the affordability and as you know the the the network performance and the cost of that ability comes down and and more and more commoditized there'll be fewer and fewer reasons to make those on-prem investments and so I think a multi cloud strategy becomes realistic for many organizations who already started that but got some stuff in Google we got some stuff in the drawer got some stuff in AWS but as we can make the platforms that our applications are running on kind of agnostic across cloud it's just another service sorry and and and organizations are going to go for the lowest costs and you know lowest risk environment if I can containerize most of my applications and I can move them from cloud to cloud because containers are very portable why wouldn't I do that I think that's where I said where it could possibly go within the next you know decade yeah if you can create that consistent experience across cause you and I have talked about this just in terms of the the big hyper cloud guys have have taken labour cost out of the equation and now they can charge you that convenience but your you believe that you can actually close that gap with on-prem infrastructure and I've often said that the traditional companies event the tech vendors they don't have to match the cloud capabilities they just have to be cloud like they can it can be good enough and and so my question is did you buy that and have they at least close the gap to the point where you can do a lot of the things that you can get in the in the public cloud and not have to pay for the automation so you can sort of replicate those substantially on print so so I agree right and here's here's an example of how I think that is happening if you look at what for instance Microsoft is doing without your stack all right what is that your stack it's the ability to extend you know Microsoft Azure cloud on pram by putting it in your data center now I've got this consistent platform across multiple locations on Prem and the cloud 8 OS is doing the same thing so that tells me that they also believe hybrid is going to be around for a while otherwise they wouldn't put effort into developing this platforms right to extend their own platform to your to your data center so another things is your question but I that's-- example to me of why I think hybrid is the way that most organizations are going and that the the industry in general including those those hyper scalars believe that that this is gonna be around for a while I'm glad you brought up Microsoft because they're fascinating example they everybody talks about the innovators dilemma and you would think that Microsoft was a company that was going to struggle with that what they've clearly figured out and they were early on with with Azure stack at the early point it's about the control plane the data plane and being able to have that consistent experience across clouds so ok so my takeaway is so infrastructure still is important these days gonna all these new emerging workloads you know matter there's it's it's also important to be able to replicate substantially that cloud experience on Prem in hybrid and that kind of sets up this really this new architecture I wonder if you could kind of summarize your vision of what new architecture looks like over the next you know five 10 years well I'll say it once again the you know the way to how do i summarize this developing an automated IT service delivery model that is cloud like in nature on prem and as well as extending that to public services and creating a single experience for your for your for your user base is where IT organizations are trying to put their effort today that's how they're trying that's what they're trying to get you for the future at least for the next five years or so creating a hybrid cloud environment is is the way that they're going to accomplish that who they choose as public services is generally a business decision it's not as much a technical decision but what they put on Prem has got to be able to you know to work with all of those environments and that sort of sort of summarizes what I think of cloud to dotto we haven't even talked about the edge but that's a whole another equation but the idea of leaving the data where it is if that makes sense and then shipping code to data is something this and building out massive distributed networks that actually talk to each other that is a great vision they have you've been an awesome guest thanks so much for coming on the queue really appreciate your time thanks for having me you're welcome and thank you for watching everybody this is Dave a latte we'll see you next time