(lively music) >> Thank you, Frank, for kicking us off, setting the stage, and providing the vision for the Snowflake Data Cloud. Hi, everyone, I hope you're all doing well and staying safe. Thank you for joining me at the Snowflake Summit today to dive into the role of the Data Cloud in mobilizing data at Disney Streaming. Together, we're going to discuss data governance and how to leverage some of the unique benefits of Snowflake's data platform to unlock business value for better customer experiences. I am Anita Lynch, Vice President of Data Governance at Disney Streaming, home of Disney+. I fell in love with technology at an early age. My family is originally from Chicago and we came to the Bay Area when my dad's sales career led him to Silicon Valley. Because of the exciting advancements he saw in the devices he sold and the engineers he worked with, I am so fortunate that my father created the early opportunities for me to learn about technology, like starting to code when I was 10. Decades later, over the course of my career spanning tech startups, business school, strategy consulting, and leading data at global enterprises, I have learned it is not enough to create a technology solution. It takes a real understanding of what problems your customers are trying to solve, and what resources or capabilities they can mobilize to do it. Today, this is the focus of my career in data. At Disney Streaming, we pride ourselves on delighting our customers. We commit each day to bringing beloved characters, timeless stories, and epic sporting events to a global audience. I am one member of a global data team at Disney Streaming, continuing to work through these challenging times for our world. We are deeply appreciative to be able to continue doing our part to deliver the entertainment people love on Disney+, including my new, personal favorite series, "The Mandalorian." It is important to all of us that we maintain our viewers' highest level of trust. As our data volume grows continuously on a daily basis, we need to ensure data is compliant, secure, and well-governed. Therefore, how we execute is critical. Our work ensures our business is guiding decisions with high-quality data. Doing this empowers us to challenge convention and innovate, which brings us to the role of the organization I lead at Disney Streaming. I lead data governance, which includes instrumentation, compliance, integrations, and data architecture. Collectively, we are responsible for the value, protection, and mobilization of data for Disney+. With data volumes in the thousands of petabytes after just one year and global teams depending on us to be able to perform their analysis, data science modeling, and machine learning, it is critical to maintain compliance protocols and governance standards. However, our approach to locking down the data and limiting access without becoming a blocker to critical information needs is key. Poorly informed business decisions could ultimately lead to suboptimal customer experiences. Recognizing this, I've established eight operating principles to maintain a balance between technology, people, and process. Data lifecycle, stewardship, and data quality together define the mechanisms by which we maintain, measure, and improve the value of data as an asset. Regulatory compliance and data access establish key partnerships with our legal and information security to help us ensure data complies with internal and external legal guidelines in each region. Auditability, traceability, and risk management ensure we monitor, educate, influence, and enforce best practices. And lastly, data sharing, which serves to socialize valuable datasets and shared definitions in a secure, easy way that allows us to keep pace with the fast-moving and rapidly changing nature of our world today. Principles serve only as guardrails. In real practice, we measure the value data governance delivers based on these six, quantifiable goals for the teams we serve. Underpinning all of them is the Snowflake Data Cloud. It is our platform to store, secure, integrate, and mobilize data across the organization. It enables us to make compliant data accessible for teams to collaborate without copying, moving, or reprocessing. Going beyond the notion of a single source of truth, Snowflake's Data Cloud allows us to truly have a single copy of the data, plus the ability to scale to support a near-unlimited number of concurrent users without contention for resources, and the flexibility to prioritize or deprioritize compute workloads where concurrency matters less than our ability to manage cost. What does this mean to me? Put simply, it means the ability to support business intelligence, analytics, data science, and machine learning use cases on-demand, exceeding expectations for speed and performance where they matter without sacrificing anything on governance. And that is how we deliver value through data governance for Disney+. Data sharing is at the heart of how we make this work. We'll look at three important use cases, data clean rooms that enable restricted data sharing, data discovery that ensures data is easily found and understood, and partner data management for collaboration outside of our team. Data sharing creates the opportunity to access the power of the integrated dataset in an environment that ensures both quality and compliance. Let's start with data clean rooms and the example of restricted data sharing. Better understanding the interests and preferences of our audience through analysis is how we improve experiences for our customers, such as in-app personalization or making a recommendation on what to watch. The challenge is to mobilize the right data as it is needed while blocking distribution of any data that is not required, preventing the disclosure of sensitive information and prohibiting the merging of data that should not be combined. Simultaneously, while we seek to deliver compliance, we also want to avoid the typical process delays and enormous manual repetitive work that often comes with it. Data clean rooms enable the secure sharing of data, again, without creating copies, the combining of datasets without PII or sensitive information, and the restricting of queries by use of parameterized inputs and filtered query outputs, so only permissible data can be extracted. Outlining in advance how data will be used properly ensures consistency and execution of our compliance workflows and improves transparency on constraints, so teams don't waste their valuable time. This accelerates our ability to act on data insights. Decisions can be made for the benefit of our customers. For example, for me on Disney+, I would see right away the season two trailer for "The Mandalorian," including exciting scenes with Baby Yoda, more formerly known to some of you as the Child. Sometimes unintended data silos arise due to architectural complexities. In a traditional model for data infrastructure, complexity can evolve over time as various teams need to access, integrate, and transform data from different data sources in ways that uniquely serve their specific stakeholders. This proliferation in the analytical supply chain could result in multiple instances of copying, loading, and transforming the same data and introduce significant risks to data quality throughout the system, such as a lack of traceability. For example, changing one data pipeline may create unforeseen consequences in the calculations that occur in downstream tables and reports with no clear resolution. In the spirit of challenging convention to innovate, we knew we had to do better. With the Snowflake Data Cloud, our teams are able to discover the data sources they need through a centrally organized platform for data management and data sharing. Each user knows the data visible to them is available to them. They know they can trust it, and they know how it can properly be used to drive broader customer insights. And if a team wants to share their insights for further collaboration, they can easily publish those datasets to the Data Cloud, where they benefit from the protection of our managed platform, making sure all governance protocols are in place, including who can access for what purpose and at what level of granularity. This facilitates data sharing without the administration worry that comes with sharing files. And since there is one single copy, future updates happen at once for all consumers of the data, keeping it fresh for everyone without sacrificing business continuity. Finally, data sharing improves the performance of our partner relationships with the same degree of simplicity. In this model, our partner teams can also participate in the Data Cloud by invitation to access data specifically shared to them. Or conversely, a partner can request to share their data, and upon authorization for quality and compliance, we can safely publish that data, making it simultaneously available to all the right teams who need it. As a thought exercise, one way for us to envision making it easier to work with partners is in the way we collect and analyze data from media serving and content distribution networks. Today, customer stream Disney+ on more than 13 different types of devices. Their streaming is made possible through a collection of services that vary by geography and consumer choice. Better understanding the experience for an individual client may require integration of data collected across the unique combination of services available to that customer. To better serve our content and delight our customers, data-driven analysis to detect anomalies and service impacts might benefit from a data management platform for partner data that requires a high level of data governance similar to what we do today through our Snowflake Data Cloud. Now in closing, data is at the core of our mission at Disney Streaming to delight our customers. And when it comes to data governance, we strive to always hold ourselves to the highest standard. With the Data Cloud, we power our business with a single source of truth. As we grow, it enables data sharing with data governance at massive scale and performance. I will also leave you with this often quoted African proverb I like. "If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together." We share an important cultural value. Commitment to innovation accelerated our ability to address unique use cases and the successful growth of Disney+. It was both the technology and the commitment to meet our data governance needs that has resulted in more than just another cloud data platform. We have a solution that works for us. Thank you for joining me on this journey, and thank you to Snowflake for the ongoing partnership. With the product keynote coming up next, I'm excited to see how future innovation will continue to enable us to challenge convention going forward.

>>Okay, >>listen, we're gearing up for the start of the snowflake Data Cloud Summit, and we wanna go back to the early roots of Snowflake. We've got some of the founding engineers here. Abdul Monir, Ashish Motive, Allah and Alison Lee There three individuals that were at snowflake in the early years and participated in many of the technical decisions that led to the platform and is making snowflake famous today. Folks, great to see you. Thanks so much for taking some time out of your busy schedules. Hey, it's gotta be really gratifying. Thio, See this platform that you've built, you know, taking off and changing businesses. So I'm sure it was always smooth sailing. Right? There were. There were no debates. Wherever. >>I've never seen an engineer get into the bed. >>Alright, So seriously so take us back to the early days. You guys, you know, choose whoever wants to start. But what was it like early on? We're talking 2013 here, right? >>When I think back to the early days of Snowflake, I just think of all of us sitting in one room at the time. You know, we just had an office that was one room with, you know, 12 or 13 engineers sitting there clacking away on our keyboards, uh, working really hard, turning out code, uh, punctuated by you know, somebody asking a question about Hey, what should we do about this, or what should we do about that? And then everyone kind of looking up from their keyboards and getting into discussions and debates about the work that we're doing. >>So so Abdul it was just kind of heads down headphones on, just coating or e think there was >>a lot of talking and followed by a lot of typing. Andi, I think there were periods of time where where you know, anyone could just walk in into the office and probably out of the office and all the here is probably people, uh, typing away at their keyboards. And one of my member vivid, most vivid memories is actually I used to sit right across from Alison, and there's these huge to two huge monitor monitors between us and I would just here typing away in our keyboard, and sometimes I was thinking and and and, uh and all that type and got me nervous because it seemed like Alison knew exactly what what, what she needed to do, and I was just still thinking about it. >>So she she was just like bliss for for you as a developer engineer was it was a stressful time. What was the mood? So when you don't have >>a whole lot of customers, there's a lot of bliss. But at the same time, there was a lot of pressure on us to make sure that we build the product. There was a time line ahead of us. We knew we had to build this in a certain time frame. Um, so one thing I'll add to what Alison and Abdulle said is we did a lot of white boarding as well. There are a lot of discussions, and those discussions were a lot of fun. They actually cemented what we wanted to build. They made sure everyone was in tune, and and there we have it. >>Yes, so I mean, it is a really exciting time doing any start up. But when you know when you have to make decisions and development, invariably you come to a fork in the road. So I'm curious as to what some of those forks might have been. How you guys decided You know which fork to take. Was there a Yoda in the room that served as the Jedi master? I mean, how are those decisions made? Maybe you could talk about that a little bit. >>Yeah, that's an interesting question. And I think one of a Zai think back. One of the memories that that sticks out in my mind is is this, uh, epic meeting and one of our conference rooms called Northstar. Many of our conference rooms are named after ski resorts because the founders, they're really into skiing. And that's why that's where the snowflake name comes from. So there was this epic meeting and I'm not even sure exactly what topic we were discussing. I think it was It was the sign up flow and and there were a few different options on the table and and and one of the options that that people were gravitating Teoh, one of the founders, didn't like it and and on, and they said a few times that there's this makes no sense. There's no other system in the world that does it this way, and and I think one of the other founders said, uh, that's exactly why we should do it this way. And or at least seriously, consider this option. So I think there was always this, um, this this, uh, this tendency and and and this impulse that that we needed to think big and think differently and and not see the world the way it is but the way we wanted it to be and then work our way backwards and try to make it happen. >>Alison, Any fork in the road moments that you remember. >>Well, I'm just thinking back to a really early meeting with sheesh! And and a few of our founders where we're debating something probably not super exciting to a lot of people outside of hardcore database people, which was how to represent our our column metadata. Andi, I think it's funny that you that you mentioned Yoda because we often make jokes about one of our founders. Teary Bond refer to him as Yoda because he hasn't its tendency to say very concise things that kind of make you scratch your head and say, Wow, why didn't I think of that? Or you know, what exactly does that mean? I never thought about it that way. So I think when I think of the Yoda in the room, it was definitely Terry, >>uh, excuse you. Anything you can add to this, this conversation >>I'll agree with Alison on the you're a comment for short. Another big fork in the road, I recall, was when we changed. What are meta store where we store our own internal metadata? We used >>to use >>a tool called my sequel and we changed it. Thio another database called Foundation TV. I think that was a big game changer for us. And, you know, it was a tough decision. It took us a long time. For the longest time, we even had our own little branch. It was called Foundation DB, and everybody was developing on that branch. It's a little embarrassing, but, you know, those are the kind of decisions that have altered altered the shape of snowflake. >>Yeah. I mean, these air, really, you know, down in the weeds, hardcore stuff that a lot of people that might not be exposed to What would you say was the least obvious technical decision that you had to make it the time. And I wanna ask you about the most obvious to. But what was the what was the one that was so out of the box? I mean, you kind of maybe mentioned it a little bit before, but what if we could double click on that? >>Well, I think one of the core decisions in our architectures the separation of compute and storage on Do you know that is really court architecture. And there's so many features that we have today, um, for instance, data sharing zero copy cloning that that we couldn't have without that architecture. Er, um and I think it was both not obvious. And when we told people about it in the early days, there was definitely skepticism about being able to make that work on being able Thio have that architecture and still get great performance. >>Anything? Yeah, anything that was, like, clearly obvious, that is, Maybe that maybe that was the least and the most that that separation from computing story because it allowed you toe actually take advantage of cloud native. But But was there an obvious one that, you know, it's sort of dogma that you, you know, philosophically lived behind. You know, to this day, >>I think one really obvious thing, um is the sort of no tuning, no knobs, ease of use story behind snowflake. Andi and I say it's really obvious because everybody wants their system to be easy to use. But then I would say there are tons of decisions behind that, that it's not always obvious three implications of of such a choice, right, and really sticking to that. And I think that that's really like a core principle behind Snowflake that that led to a lot of non obvious decisions as a result of sticking to that principle. So, yeah, I >>think to add to that now, now you've gotten us thinking I think another really interesting one was was really, um, should we start from scratch or or should we use something that already exists and and build on top of that? And I think that was one of these, um, almost philosophical kind of stances that we took that that a lot of the systems that were out there were the way they were because because they weren't built for the for the platforms that they were running on, and the big thing that we were targeting was the cloud. And so one of the big stances we took was that we were gonna build it from scratch, and we weren't gonna borrow a single line of code from many other database out there. And this was something that really shocked a lot of people and and many times that this was pretty crazy and it waas. But this is how you build great products. >>That's awesome. All right. She should give you the last word. We got, like, just like 30 seconds left to bring us home >>Your till date. Actually, one of those said shocks people when you talk to them and they say, Wow, you're not You're not really using any other database and you build this entirely yourself. The number of people who actually can build a database from scratch are fairly limited. The group is fairly small, and so it was really a humongous task. And as you mentioned, you know, it really changed the direction off how we design the database. What we what does the database really mean? Tow us right the way Snowflake has built a database. It's really a number of organs that come together and form the body and That's also a concept that's novel to the database industry. >>Guys, congratulations. You must be so proud. And, uh, there's gonna be awesome watching the next next decade, so thank you so much for sharing your stories. >>Thanks, dude. >>Thank you.

>> Okay, listen, we're gearing up for the start of the Snowflake Data Cloud Summit and we want to go back to the early roots of Snowflake. We got some of the founding engineers here, Abdul Muneer, Ashish Modivala, and Alison Lee. They're three individuals that were at Snowflake in the early years and participated in many of the technical decisions that led to the platform that is making Snowflake famous today. Folks, great to see you. Thanks so much for taking some time out of your busy schedules. >> Than you for having us. >> Same. >> Hey, it's got to be really gratifying to see this platform that you've built, you know, taking off and changing businesses. So, I'm sure it was always smooth sailing, right? There were no debates, were there ever? >> Never. >> Now, I've never seen an engineer get into a debate. (laughter) >> All right, so seriously though, so take us back to the early days, you guys, you know, choose whoever wants to start but, what was it like early on? We're talking 2013 here, right? >> That's right. >> When I think back to the early days of Snowflake, I just think of all of us sitting in one room at the time you know, we just had an office that was one room with you know, 12 or 13 engineers sitting there, clacking away at our keyboards, working really hard, churning out code, punctuated by, you know, somebody asking a question about, "Hey, what should we do about this? Or what should we do about that?" And then everyone kind of looking up from their keyboards and getting into discussions and debates about, about the work that we were doing. >> So Abdul, it was just kind of heads down, headphones on, just coding, or >> I think there was a lot of talking and followed by a lot of typing. And, and I think there were periods of time where, you know, anyone could just walk in into the office and probably out of the office and all they'd hear is probably people typing away at their keyboards. And one of my vivid, most vivid memories is is actually I used to sit right across from Alison and there's these huge two, two huge monitors monitors between us. And I would just hear her typing away at our keyboard. And sometimes I was thinking and and all that typing got me nervous because it seemed like Alison knew exactly what, what she needed to do, and I was just still thinking about it. >> So Ashish was this like bliss for you as a developer, an engineer, or was it, was it a stressful time? What was the mood? >> When you don't have a whole lot of customers there's a lot of bliss, but at the same time, there's a lot of pressure on us to make sure that we build the product. There was a timeline ahead of us, we knew we had to build this in a certain timeframe. So one thing I'll add to what Alison and Abdul said is we did a lot of white boarding as well. There were a lot of discussions and those discussions were a lot of fun. They actually cemented what we wanted to build. They made sure that everyone was in tune and there we have it. >> (Dave) Yeah, so, I mean, it is a really exciting time doing any startup. When you have to make decisions in development and variably you come to a fork in the road. So I'm curious as to what some of those forks might've been, how you guys decided, you know, which fork to take. Was there a Yoda in the room that served as the Jedi master? I mean, how are those decisions made? Maybe you could talk about that a little bit. >> Yeah. That's an interesting question. And I think one of, as I think back, one of the memories that, that sticks out in my mind is this epic meeting in one of our conference rooms called North star. And many of our conference rooms are named after ski resorts because the founders are really into skiing and that's why, that's where the Snowflake names comes from. So there was this epic meeting and and I'm not even sure exactly what topic we were discussing. I think it was, it was the signup flow and there were a few different options on the table. and one of the options that, that people were gravitating to one of the founders didn't like it. And they said a few times that there's this makes no sense, there's no other system in the world that does it this way. And I think one of the other founders said that's exactly why we should do it this way. And, or at least seriously considered this option. So I think there was always this this tendency and this impulse that that we needed to think big and think differently and not see the world the way it is but the, the way we wanted it to be and then work our way backwards and try to make it happen. >> Alison, any fork in the road moments that you remember? >> Well, I'm just thinking back to a really early meeting with Ashish and a few of our founders where we were debating something, probably not super exciting to a lot of people outside of hardcore database people which was how to represent our column metadata. And I think it's funny that you, that you mentioned Yoda because we often make jokes about one of our founders Terry and referred to him as Yoda, because he has this tendency to say very concise things that kind of make you scratch your head and say, "Wow why didn't I think of that?" Or, you know, what exactly does that mean? I never thought about it that way. So I think when I think of the Yoda in the room, it was definitely Terry. >> Ashish, anything you can add to this conversation? >> I'll agree with Alison on the Yoda comment, for sure. Another big fork in the road I recall was when we changed one of our meta store where we store our on internal metadata. We used to use a tool called MySQL and we changed it to another database called FoundationDB, I think that was a big game changer for us. And, you know, it was a tough decision, it took us a long time. For the longest time we even had our own little branch it was called FoundationDB and everybody who was developing on that branch. It's a little embarrassing, but, you know, those are the kinds of decisions that alter the shape of Snowflake. >> Yeah, I mean, these are really, you know, down in the weeds hardcore stuff that a lot of people might not be exposed to. What would you say was the least obvious technical decision that you had to make at the time? And I want to ask you about the most obvious too, but what was the one that was so out of the box? I mean, you kind of maybe mentioned it a little bit before but I wonder if we could double click on that? >> Well, I think one of the core decisions in our architecture is the separation of compute and storage. And, you know, that is really core to our architecture, and there are so many features that we have today for instance, data sharing, zero copy cloning, that we couldn't have without that architecture. And I think it was both not obvious, and when we told people about it in the early days there was definitely skepticism about being able to make that work and being able to have that architecture and still get great performance. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. Anything that was like clearly obvious that maybe that, maybe that was the least and the most that, that separation from compute and store, because it allowed you to actually take advantage of Cloud native. But was there an obvious one that you know, is it sort of dogma that you, you know philosophically live by, you know, to this day? >> I think one really obvious thing is the sort of no tuning, no knobs, ease of use story behind Snowflake. And I say, it's really obvious because everybody wants their system to be easy to use. But then I would say there were tons of decisions behind that, that it's not always obvious, the implications, of such a choice, right? And really sticking to that. And I think that that's really like a core principle behind Snowflake, that led to a lot of non-obvious decisions as a result of sticking to that principle. >> So >> I think, to add to that, now you've grabbed us thinking. I think another really interesting one was really, should we start from scratch or should we use something that already exists and build on top of that? And I think that was one of these almost philosophical kind of stances that we took, that a lot of the systems that were out there were the way they were, because, because they weren't built for the, for the platforms that they were running on. And the big thing that we were targeting was the Cloud. And so one of the big stances we took was that we were going to build from scratch. And we weren't going to borrow a single line of code from many other database out there. And this was something that really shocked a lot of people and many times that this was pretty crazy, and it was, but this is how you build great products. >> That's awesome. All right Ashish, I should give you the last word. We got like just like 30 seconds left, bring us home. >> Till date, actually one of those said shocks people when you talk to them and they say, "Wow, you are naturally using any other database, and you build this entirely yourself." The number of people who actually can build a database from scratch are fairly limited, the group is fairly small. And so it was really a humongous task, and as you've mentioned, you know, it really changed the direction of how we designed a database. What we, what does the database really mean to us, right? The way Snowflake has built a database, it's really a number of organs that come together and form the body. And that's also a concept that's novel to the database industry. >> Guys, congratulations, you must be so proud and it's going to be awesome watching the next decade. So thank you so much for sharing your stories. >> Thanks too. >> Thank you. >> Thank you.

>> Okay listen, we're gearing up for the start of the Snowflake Data Cloud Summit. And we want to go back to the early roots of Snowflake. We got some of the founding engineers here, Abdul Munir, Ashish Motivala and Allison Lee. They're three individuals that were at Snowflake, in the early years and participated in many of the technical decisions. That led to the platform and is making Snowflake famous today. Folks great to see you. Thanks so much for taking some time out of your busy schedules. >> Thank you for having us- >> Same. >> It's got to be really gratifying to see this platform that you've built, taking off and changing businesses. So I'm sure it was always smooth sailing, right? There were no debates, where there ever? >> I've never seen an engineer get into a debate. >> Yeah alright, so seriously. So take us back to the early days, you guys choose whoever wants to start, but what was it like, early on we're talking 2013 here, right? >> That's right. >> When I think back to the early days of Snowflake. I just think of all of us sitting in one room at the time, we just had an office that was one room with 12 or 13 engineers sitting there, clacking away at our keyboards, working really hard, churning out code punctuated by somebody asking a question about hey, what should we do about this? Or what should we do about that? And then everyone kind of looking up from their keyboards and getting into discussions and debates about the work that we were doing. >> So, Abdul was it just kind of heads down, headphones on just coding or? >> I think there was a lot of talking and followed by a lot of typing. And I think there were periods of time where anyone could just walk in into the office and probably out of the office and all they'd hear is probably people typing away their keyboards. And one of my most vivid memory is actually I used to sit right across from Allison and there was these two huge monitors between us. And I would just hear her typing away at her keyboard. And sometimes I was thinking and all that typing got me nervous because it seemed like Allison knew exactly what she needed to do. And I was just still thinking about it. >> So Ashish was this like bliss for you as a developer or an engineer? Or was it a stressful time? What was the mood? >> Then when you don't have a whole lot of customers, there's a lot of bliss, but at the same time, there's a lot of pressure on us to make sure that we build the product. There was a timeline ahead of us. We knew we had to build this in a certain timeframe. So one thing I'll add to what Allison and Abdul said is, we did a lot of whiteboarding as well. There were a lot of discussions and those discussions were a lot of fun. They actually cemented what we wanted to build. They made sure everyone was in tune and there we have it. >> Yeah, it is a really exciting time. We can do it any start-up. When you have to make decisions in development and variably you come to a fork in the road. So I'm curious as to what some of those forks might've been, how you guys decided which fork to take. Was there a Yoda in the room that served as the Jedi Master? How are those decisions made? Maybe you could talk about that a little bit. >> That's an interesting question. And as I think back one of the memories that sticks out in my mind is this epic meeting in one of our conference rooms called Northstar and many of our conference rooms are named after ski resorts because the founders are really into skiing. And that's where the Snowflake name comes from. So there was this epic meeting and I'm not even sure exactly what topic we were discussing. I think it was the sign up flow and there were a few different options on the table. And one of the options that people were gravitating to, one of the founders didn't like it. And they said a few times that this makes no sense. There's no other system in the world that does it this way. And I think one of the other founders said, that's exactly why we should do it this way or at least seriously consider this option. So, I think there was always this tendency and this impulse that we needed to think big and think differently and not see the world the way it is, but the way we wanted it to be and then work our way backwards and try to make it happen. >> Allison, any fork in the road moments that you remember? >> Well, I'm just thinking back to a really early meeting with Ashish and a few of our founders where we're debating something probably not super exciting to a lot of people outside of hardcore database people, which was how to represent our column metadata. And I think it's funny that you that you mentioned Yoda, because we often make jokes about one of our founders Thierry and referred to him as Yoda, because he has this tendency to say very concise things that kind of make you scratch your head and say, wow, why didn't I think of that? Or what exactly does that mean? I never thought about it that way. So, when I think of the Yoda in the room, it was definitely Thierry, >> Ashish is there anything you can add to this conversation? >> I'll agree with Allison on the Yoda comment for sure. Another big fork in the road I recall was when we changed one of our meadow store, where we store and are willing to try and metadata. We used to use a tool called my SQL and we changed it to another database called foundation DV. I think that was a big game changer for us. And it was a tough decision. It took us a long time, for the longest time we even had our own little branch it was called foundation DV and everybody was developing on that branch, it's a little embarrassing but those are the kinds of decisions that have altered the shape of Snowflake. >> Yeah, these are really down in the weeds hardcore stuff that a lot of people might not be exposed to. What would you say was the least obvious technical decision that you had to make at the time? And I want to ask you about the most obvious too, but what was the one that was so out of the box? You kind of maybe mentioned it a little bit before, but I wonder if we could double click on that? >> Well, I think one of the core decisions in our architecture is the separation of compute and storage that is really core to our architecture. And there's so many features that we have today, for instance data sharing, zero-copy cloning, that we couldn't have without that architecture. And I think it was both not obvious. And when we told people about it in the early days, there was definitely skepticism about being able to make that work and being able to have that architecture and still get great performance. >> Exactly- >> Yeah, anything that was like clearly obvious, maybe that was the least and the most that separation from compute and store, 'cause it allowed you to actually take advantage of cloud native, but was there an obvious one that is it sort of dogma that you philosophically live behind to this day? >> I think one really obvious thing is the sort of no tuning, no knobs, ease of use story behind Snowflake. And I say it's really obvious because everybody wants their system to be easy to use. But then I would say there were tons of decisions behind that, that it's not always obvious the implications of such a choice, right? And really sticking to that. And I think that that's really like a core principle behind Snowflake that led to a lot of non-obvious decisions as a result of sticking to that principle. >> To wrap to that now you've gotten us thinking, I think another really interesting one was really, should we start from scratch or should we use something that already exists and build on top of that. And I think that was one of these almost philosophical kind of stances that we took, that a lot of the systems that were out there were the way they were because they weren't built for the platforms that they were running on. And the big thing that we were targeting was the cloud. And so one of the big stances we took was that we were going to build it from scratch and we weren't going to borrow a single line of code from any other database out there. And this was something that really shocked a lot of people and many times that this was pretty crazy. And it was, but this is how you build great products. >> That's awesome, all right, Ashish give your last word, we got like just 30 seconds left take, bring us home. >> Till date actually one of those that shocks people when you talk to them and they say, wow, you're not really using any other database? And you build this entirely yourself? The number of people who actually can build a database from scratch are fairly limited. The group is fairly small. And so it was really a humongous task. And as you've mentioned, it really changed the direction of how we designed the database. What does the database really mean to us, right? The way Snowflake has built a database, it's really a number of organs that come together and form the body. And that's also a concept that's novel to the database industry. >> Guys congratulations, you must be so proud and it's going to be awesome watching the next decade. So thank you so much for sharing your stories. >> Thanks Dave. >> Thank you- >> Thank you.

>> Male's Voice: From around the globe, its theCUBE. With digital coverage of a special announcement, brought to you by Nutanix. (soft music) >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman. And welcome to this special announcement for Nutanix, about some new product releases in the public cloud. To help us kick this off for the Asia Pacific and Japan region. Happy to welcome to the program Jordan Reizes, who's the vice president of marketing, for APJ and Nutanix. Jordan, help us introduce it. Thanks Stu. So today we're really pleased to announce Nutanix Clusters, availability in Asia Pacific and Japan, at the same time as the rest of the world. And we think this technology is really important to our geographically dispersed customers, all across the region, in terms of helping them, On-Ramp to the cloud. So, we're really excited about this launch today. And Stu, I can't wait to see the rest of the program. And make sure you stay tuned at the end, for our interview with our CTO, Justin Hurst. Who's going to be answering a bunch of questions that are really specific to the APJ region. >> All right, thank you so much Jordan, for helping us kick this off. We're now going to cut over to my interview with Monica and Tarkan, with the news. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman. And I want to welcome you to this special event that we are doing with Nutanix. Of course, in 2020 many things have changed. And that has changed some of the priorities, for many companies out there. Acceleration of cloud adoption, absolutely have been there. I've talked to many companies that were dipping their toe, or thinking about, where they were going to cloud. And of course it's rapidly moved to accelerate to be able to leverage work from home, remote contact centers, and the like. So, we have to think about how we can accelerate what's happening, and make sure that our workforce, and our customers are all taken care of. So, one of the front seats of this, is of course, companies working to help modernize customers out there. And, Nutanix is part of that discussion. So, I want to welcome to join us for this special discussion of cloud and Nutanix. I have two of our CUBE alumnus. First of all, we have Monica Kumar. She's the senior vice president of product, with Nutanix. And Tarkan Maner, who's a relative newcomer. Second time on theCUBE, in his new role many time guests. Previously, Tarkan is the chief commercial officer with Nutanix. Monica and Tarkan, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you so much. So happy to be back on theCUBE. >> Yeah, thank you. >> All right. So, Tarkan as I was teeing up, we know that, IT staffs in general, CIO specifically, and companies overall, are under a lot of pressure in general. But in 2020, there are new pressures on them. So, why don't you explain to us, the special cloud announcement. Tell us, what's Nutanix launching, and why it's so important today. >> So, Stu first of all, thank you. And glad to be here with Monica. And basically you and I, spend some time with a few customers in the past few weeks and months. I'll tell you, the things in our industry are changing at a pace that we never seen before. Especially with this pandemic backdrop, as we're going through. And obviously, all the economic challenges that creates beyond the obviously, health challenges and across the world, all the pain it creates. But also it creates some opportunities for our customers and partners to deliver solutions to our enterprise customers, and commercial customers, and in a public sector customers, in multiple industries. From healthcare, obviously very importantly, to manufacturing, to supply chains, and to all the other industries, including financial services and public sector again. So in that context, Monica knows as well as she's our leader. You know, our strategy, we're putting lots of effort in this new multi-class strategy as a company. As you know, is too well, Nutanix wrote the book, in digital infrastructures with its own private, (mumbles) infrastructure story. Now they're taking that next level, via our data center solutions, via DevOps solutions, and end user computer solutions. Now, the multicloud fashion, working with partners like AWS. So, in this launch, we have our new, hybrid cloud infrastructure, Nutanix Clusters product now available in the AWS. We are super excited. We have more than 20 tech firms, and customers, and partners at sealable executive level support in this big launch. Timing is usually important, because of this pandemic backdrop. And the goal is obviously to help our customers save money, focus what's important for them, save money for them, and making sure they streamlined their IT operation. So it's a huge launch for us. And we're super excited about it. >> Yeah. And the one thing I would add too, what Tarkan said too is, look, we talk to a lot of customers, and obviously cloud is the constant, in terms of enabling innovation. But I think more with COVID, what's on top of mind is also how do we use cloud for innovation? But really be intelligent about cost optimization. So with this new announcement, what we are excited about is we're bringing, making really a hybrid cloud reality, across public and private cloud. But also making sure customers, get the cost efficiency they need, when they're deploying the solution. So we are super excited to bring true hybrid cloud offering with AWS to the market today. >> Well, I can tell you Nutanix cluster is absolutely one of the exciting technologies I've enjoyed, watching and getting ready for. And of course, a partnership with the largest public cloud player out there AWS, is really important. When I think about Nutanix from the earliest days, the word that we always used for the HI Space and Nutanix specifically, was simplicity. Anybody in the tech space know that, true simplicity is really hard to do. When I think about cloud, when I think about multicloud, simplicity is not the first thing that I think of. So, Tarkan has helped us connect, how is Nutanix going to extend the simplicity that it's done, for so long now in the data center, into places like AWS with this solution? >> So, Stu you're spot on. Look, Monica and I spend a lot of time with our customers. One thing about Nutanix executive team, you're very customer-driven. And I'm not just saying this to make a point. We really spent tons of time with them because our solutions are basically so critical for them to run their businesses. So, just recently I was with a senior executive, C level executive of an airline. Right before that, Monica and I spent actually with one of the largest banks in the world in France, in Paris. Right before the pandemic, we were actually traveling. Talking to, not all the CIO, the chief operating officer on one of these huge banks. And the biggest issue was, how these companies are trying to basically adjust their plans, business plans. I'm not talking about tech plans, IT plans, the business plans around this backdrop with the economic stress. And obviously, now pandemic is in a big way. One of the CIOs told me, he was an airline executive. "Look Tarkan, in the next four months, my business might be half of what it is today. And I need to do more with less, in so many different ways, while I'm cutting costs." So it's a tough time. So, in that context is to... Your actually right. Multicloud is in a difficult proposition, but it's critical, for these companies to manage their cost structures across multiple operating models. Cloud to us, is not a destination, it's a means to an ends. It is an operating model. At the end of the day, the differentiation is still the software. The unique software that we provide from digital infrastructures, to deliver, end to end discreet data center solutions, DevOps solutions for developers, as well as for end user computing individuals, to making sure to take advantage of, these VDI decibels service topic capability. So in that context, what we are providing now to this CIOs who are going through, this difficult time is, a platform, in which they can move their workloads from cloud to cloud, based on their needs, with freedom of choice. Look, one of these big banks that Monica and I visited in France, huge global bank. They have a workloads on AWS, they have workload on Azure, they have workloads on Google, workloads on (indistinct), the local XP, they have workloads in Germany. They have workloads providers in Asia, in Taiwan, and other locations. On top of that, they're also using Nutanix on-prem as well as Nutanix cloud, our own cloud services for VR. And then, this is not just in this nation. This is an operating model. So the biggest request from them is, look, can you guys make this cost effective? Can we use, all these operating models and move our data, and applications from cloud to cloud? In simple terms, can we get, some kind of a flexibility with commits as well as we pay credits they paid for so far? And, those are things we're working on. And I'm sure Monica is going to get a little bit more into detail, as we talk to this. You are super excited, to start this journey with AWS, with this launch, but you're not going to stop there. Our goal is, we just kind of discussed with Monica earlier, provide freedom of choice across multiple clouds, both on-prem and off-prem, for our customers to cut costs, and to focus on what's important for them. >> Yeah, and I would just add, to sum it up, we are really simplifying the multicloud complexity for our customers. And I can go into more detail, but that's really the gist of it. Is what Nutanix is doing with this announcement, and more coming up in the future. >> Well, Monica, when I think about customers, and how do they decide, what stays in their data center, what goes into the public cloud? It's really their application portfolio. I need to look at my workloads, I need to look at my skillset. So, when I look at the cluster solution, what are some of the key use cases? What workloads are going to be the first ones that you expect, or you're having customers use with it today? >> Sure. And as we talk to customers too, this clearly few key use cases that they've been trying to, build a hybrid strategy around. The first few ones are bursting into cloud, right? In case of, a demand of sudden demand, how do I burst and scale my, let's say a VDI environment. or database environment into the cloud? So that's clearly one that many of our customers want to be able to do simply, and without having to incur this extreme complexity of managing these environments. Number two, it's about DR, and we saw with COVID, right? Business continuity became a big deal for many organizations. They weren't prepared for it. So the ability to actually spin up your applications and data in the cloud seamlessly, in case of a disaster, that's another big use case. The third one, of which many customers talk about is, can I lift and shift my applications as is, into the cloud? Without having to rewrite a single line of code, or without having to rewrite all of it, right? That's another one. And last but not least, the one that we're also hearing a lot about is, how do I extend my current applications by using cloud native services, that's available on public cloud? So those are four, there's many more, of course. But in terms of workloads, I mentioned two examples, right? VDI, which is Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, and is a computing, and also databases. More and more of our customers, don't want to invest in again having, on-premises data center assets sitting there idly. And, wait for when the capacity surges, the demand for capacity surges, they want to be able to do that in the cloud. So I'd say those are the few use cases and workloads. One thing I want to go back to what Tarkan was talking about, really their three key reasons, why the current hybrid cloud solutions, haven't really panned out for customers. Number one, it's having a unified management environment across public and private cloud. There's a few solutions out there, but none of them have proved to be simple enough, to actually put into real execution. You know, with Nutanix, the one thing you can do is literally build a hybrid cloud within, under an hour. Under an hour, you can spin up Nutanix Clusters, which you have on-premises, the same exact cluster in Amazon, under one hour. There you go. And you have the same exact management plan, that we offer on-prem, that now can manage your AWS Nutanix Clusters. It's that easy, right? And then, you can easily move your data and applications across, if you choose to. You want to move and burst into public cloud? Do it. You want to keep some stuff on-prem? Do it. If you're going to develop in the cloud, do it. Want to keep production on-prem, do it. Single management plan, seamless mobility. And the third point is about cost. Simplicity of managing the costs, making sure you know, how you're going to incur costs. How about, if you can hibernate your AWS cluster when you're not using it? We allow the... We have the capability now in our software to do that. How about knowing, where to place which workload. Which workload goes into public cloud, which stays on-premises. We have an amazing tool called beam, that gives the customers that ability to assess, which is the right cloud for the right workload. So I can go on and on about this. You know, we've talked to so many customers, but this is in a nutshell. You know, the use cases and workloads that we are delivering to customers right out the gate. >> Well, Monica, I'd love to hear a little bit about the customers that have had early access to this. What customer stories can you share? Understand of course? You're probably going to need to anonymize. But, I'd like to understand, how they've been leveraging clusters, the value that they're getting from it. >> Absolutely. We've been working with a number of customers. And I'll give you a few examples. There's a customer in Australia, I'll start with that. And they basically run a big event that happens every five years for them. And that they have to scale something to 24 million people. Now imagine, if they have to keep capacity on site, anticipating the needs for five years in a row, well, they can't do that. And the big event is going to happen next year for them. So they are getting ready with now clusters, to really expand the VDI environments into the cloud, in a big way with AWS. So from Nutanix on-prem to AWS, and expand VDI and burst into the cloud. So that's one example. That's obviously when you have an event-driven capacity bursting into the cloud. Another customer, who is in the insurance business. For them, DR is of course very important. I mean, DR is important for every industry in every business. But for them, they realize that they need to be able to, transparently run the applications in the case of a disaster on the cloud. So they've been using non Nutanix Clusters with AWS to do that. Another customer is looking at lifting and shifting some of the database applications into, AWS with Nutanix, for example. And then we have yet another customer who's looking at retiring, their a part of the data center estate, and moving that completely to AWS, with Nutanix as a backbone, Nutanix Clusters as a backbone. I mean, and we have tons of examples of customers who during COVID, for example, were able to burst capacity, and spin up hundreds and thousands of remote employees, using clusters into AWS cloud. Using Citrix also by the way, as the desktop provider. So again, I can go on, we have tons of customers. There's obviously a big demand for the solution. Because now it's so easy to use. We have customers, really surprised going, "Wait, I now have built a whole hybrid card within an hour. And I was able to scale from, six nodes, to 60 nodes, just like that, on AWS cloud from on-prem six nodes, to 16 in AWS cloud. Our customers are really, really pleasantly surprised with the ease of use, and how quickly they can scale, using clusters in AWS. >> Yeah. Tarkan I have to imagine that, this is a real change for the conversation you have with customers. I mean, Nutanix has been partner with AWS for a number of years. I remember the first time that I saw Nutanix, at the reinvent show. But, cloud is definitely front and center, in a lot of your customer's conversations. So, with your partners, with your customers, has to be just a whole different aspect, to the conversations that you can have. >> Actually Stu, as you heard from Monica too. As I mentioned earlier, this is not just a destination for the customers, right? I know you using these buzzwords, at the end of day, there's an open end model. If it's an open end model they want to take advantage of, to cut costs and do more with less. So in that context, as you heard, even in this conversation, there is many pinpoint in this. Like again, being able to move the workloads from location to location, cost optimize those things, provide a streamlined operations. Again, as Monica suggested, making the apps, and the data relating those apps mobile, and obviously provide built-in networking capabilities. All those capabilities make it easier for them to cut costs. So we're hearing constantly, from the enterprises is small and large, private sector and public sector, nothing different. Clearly they have options. They want to have the freedom of choice. Some of these workloads are going to run on-prem, some of them off prem. And off prem is going to have, tons of different radiations. So in that context, as I mentioned earlier, we have our own cloud as well. We provide 20 plus skews to 17,000 customers around the world. It's a $2 billion software business run rate is as you know. And, a lot of those questions on-prem customers now, also coming to our own cloud services. With cloud partners, we have our own cloud services, with our own billing, payments, logistics, and service capabilities. With a credit card, you can actually, you can do DR. (mumbles) a service to Nutanix itself. But some of these customers also want to go be able to go to AWS, or Azure, or to a local service provider. Sometimes it's US companies, we think US only. But think about this, this is a global phenomenon. I have customers in India. We have customers in Australia as Monica talked about. In China, in Japan, in Germany. And some of these enterprise customers, public sector customers, they want to DR, Disaster Recovery as a service to a local service provider, within the country. Because of the new data governance, laws and security concerns, they don't want the data and us, to go outside of the boundaries of the country. In some cases, in the same continent, if you're in Switzerland, not even forget about the country, the same city. So we want to make sure, we give capabilities for customers, use the cloud as an operating model the way they want. And as part of this, just you know Stu, you're not alone in this, we can not do this alone. We have, tremendous level of partner support as you're going to see in the new announcements. From HP as one of our key partners, Lenovo, AMD, Intel, Fujitsu, Citrix for end user computing. You're partnering with Palo Alto networks for security, Azure partners, as you know we support (indistinct). We have partners like Red Hat, whose in tons of work in the Linux front. We partnered with IBM, we partner with Dell. So, the ecosystem makes it so much easier for our customers, especially with this pandemic backdrop. And I think what you're going to see from Nutanix, more partners, more customer proof points, to help the customers innovate the cut costs, in this difficult backdrop. Especially for the next 24 months, I think what you're going to see is, tremendous so to speak adoption, of this multicloud approach that you're focusing on right now. >> Yeah, and let me add, I know our partner list is long. So Tarkan also, we have the global size, of course. The WebPros, and HCL, and TCS, and Capgemini, and Zensar, you name it all. We're working with all of them to bring clusters based solutions to market. And, for the entire Nutanix stack, also partners like Equinix and Yoda. So it's a long list of partnerships. The one thing I did want to bring up Stu, which I forgot to mention earlier, and Tarkan reminded me is a superior architecture. So why is it that Nutanix can deliver this now to customers, right? I mean, our customers have been trying to build hybrid cloud for a little while now, and work across multiple clouds. And, we know it's been complex. The reason why we are able to deliver this in the way we are, is because of our architecture. The way we've architected clusters with AWS is, it's built in native network integration. And what that means is, if your customer and end user who's a practitioner, you can literally see the Nutanix VMs, in the same space as Amazon VMs. So for a customer, it's in the exact same space, it's really easy to then use other AWS services. And we bypass any, complex and latency issues with networking, because we are exactly part of AWS VPC for the customer. And also, the customers can use by the way, the Amazon credits, with the way we've architected this. And we allow for bringing your own license, by the way. That's the other true part about simplicity is, same license that our customers use on-premises today for Nutanix, can be brought exactly the same way to AWS, if they choose to. And now of course, we do also offer other licensing models that are cloud only. But I want to point out that DVIOL is something that we are very proud of. It's truly enabling, bring your own license to AWS cloud in this case. >> Well, it's interesting, Monica. Of course, one of the things everybody's watched of Nutanix over the last few years is that move, from an appliance primarily to a software model. And, as an industry as a whole, it's much more moving to the cloud model for pricing. And it sounds like, that's the primary model with some flexibility and options that you have, when you're talking about the cluster solution here, is that correct? >> Yeah, we also offer the pay as you go model of course, and cloud as popular. So, customers can decide they just want to pay for the amount they use, that's fine. Or they can bring their existing on-prem license, to AWS. Or we also have a commit model, where they commit for a certain capacity for the year, and they go with that. So we have two or three different kinds of models. Again, going with the freedom of choice for our customers. We offer them different models they can choose from. But to me, the best part is to bring your own license model. That's again, a true hybrid pricing model here. They can choose to use Nutanix where they want to. >> Yeah. Well, and Monica, I'm glad you brought up some of the architectural pieces here. 'Cause you talked about all the partners that you have out there. If I'm sitting in the partner world, I've been heard nothing over the last few years, but I've been inundated by all of the hybrid solutions. So, every public cloud provider, including AWS now, is talking about hybrid solutions. You've got virtualization players, infrastructure players, all talking out there. So, architecture you talked a bit about. Anything else, key differentiators that you want people to understand, as what sets Nutanix apart from the crowd, when it comes to hybrid cloud. >> Well, like I said, it's because of our architecture, you can build a hybrid cloud in under an hour. I mean, prove to me if you can do with other providers. And again, I don't mean that, having that ego. But really, I mean, honestly for our customers, it's all about how can we, speed up a customer's experience to cloud. So, building a cloud under an hour, being able to truly manage it with a single plan, being able to move apps and data, with one click in many cases. And last but not least, the license portability. All of that together. I think the way, (indistinct) I've talked about this as, we may not have been the first to market, but we believe they are the best to market in this space today. That's what I would say. >> Tarkan and I'd love to hear a little bit of the vision. So, with Monica kind of alluded to, anybody that kind of digs underneath the covers is, it's bare metal offerings from the cloud providers that are enabling this technology. There was a certain partnership that AWS had, that enabled this, and now you're taking advantage of it. What do you feel when you look at clusters going forward, give us a little bit what should we be looking for, when it comes to AWS and maybe even beyond. >> Thank you Stu. Actually, is spot on question. Most companies in the space, they follow these buzzwords, right? (indistinct) multicloud. And when you killed on, you and you find out, okay, you support two cloud services, and you actually own some kind of a marketplace. And you're one of the 19,000 services. We don't see this as a multicloud. Our view is, complete freedom of choice. So our vision includes a couple of our private clouds, government clouds success with our customers. We've got enterprise commercial and public sector customers. Also delivered to them choice, with Nutanix is own cloud as I mentioned earlier. With our own billing payment, we're just as capable starting with DR as a service, Disaster Recovery as a service. But take that to next level, the database as a service, with VDI based up as a service, and other services that we deliver. But on top of that also, as Monica talked about earlier, partnerships we have, with service providers, like Yoda in India, a lot going on with SoftBank in Japan, Brooklyn going on with OBH in France. And multiple countries that we are building this XSP (indistinct) telco relationships, give those international customers, choice within that own local region, in their own country, in some cases in their city, where they are, making sure the network latency is not an issue. Security, data governance, is not an issue. And obviously, third leg of this multilayer stool is, hyperscalers themselves like AWS. AWS has been a phenomenal partner, working with Doug (indistinct), Matt Garmin, the executive team under Andy Jassy and Jeff Bezos, biggest super partners. Obviously, that bare metal service capability, is huge differentiator. And with the typical AWS simplicity. And obviously, with Nutanix simplicity coming together. But given choice to our customers as we move forward obviously, our customer set a multicloud strategy. So I'm reading an amazing book called Silk Roads. It's an amazing book. I strongly suggest you all read it. It's all talking about partnerships. Throughout the history, those empires, those countries who have been successful, partnered well, connect the dots well. So that's what we're trying to learn from our own history. Connecting dots with the customers and partners as we talked about earlier. Working with companies that with Wipro. And we over deliver to the end user computer service called, best of a service door to desk. Database as a service, digital data services get that VA to other new services started in HCL and others. So all these things come together as a complete end to end strategy with our partners. So we want to make sure, as we move forward in upcoming weeks and months, you're going to see, these announcements coming up, one partner at a time. And obviously we are going to measure success, one customer at a time as we more forward with the strategy. >> All right. So Monica, you mentioned that if you were an existing Nutanix customer, you can spin up in the public cloud, in under an hour. I guess final question I have for you is, number one, if I'm not yet a Nutanix customer, is this something I could start in the public cloud. and leverage some capabilities? And, whether I'm an existing customer or a prospect, how do I get started with Nutanix Clusters? >> Absolutely. We are all about making it easy for our customers to get started. So in fact, I know seeing is believing. So if you go to nutanix.com today, you'll see we have a link there for something called a test drive. So we are giving our prospects, and customers the ability to go try this out. Either just take a tour, or even do a 30 day free trial today. So they can try it out. They can just get spun up in the cloud completely, and then connect to on-premises if they choose to. Or just, if they choose to stay in public cloud only with Nutanix, that's absolutely the customer choice. And I would say this is really, only the beginning for us as Tarkan was saying. I mean, I'm just really super excited about our future, and how we are going to enable customers, to use cloud for innovation going forward. In a really simple, manner that's cost efficient for our customers. >> All right. Well, Monica and Tarkan, thank you so much for sharing the updates. Congratulations to the team on bringing this solution out. And as you said, just the beginning. So, we look forward to, talking to you, your partners, and your customers going forward. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you Stu. Thank you, Monica. >> Hi, and welcome back. We've just heard Nutanix's announcement about Nutanix Clusters on AWS, from Monica and Tarkan, And, to help understand some of the specific implications for the Asia Pacific and Japan region. Happy to welcome Justin Hurst, who is the CTO, for APJ with Nutanix. Justin, thanks for joining us. >> Well, thanks Stu. Thanks for having me. >> Absolutely. So, we know Justin of course, 2020, has had a lot of changes, for everyone globally. Heard some exciting news from your team. And, wondering if you can bring us inside the APJ region. And what will the impact specifically be for your customers in your region? >> Yeah, let's say, that's a great question. And, it has been a tremendously unusual year, of course, for everyone. We're all trying, to figure out how we can adapt. And how we can take this opportunity, to not only respond to the situation, but actually build our businesses in a way, that we can be more agile going forward. So, we're very excited about this announcement. And, the new capabilities it's going to bring to our customers in the region. >> Justin, one of the things we talk about is, right now, there's actually been an acceleration of how customers are looking to On-Ramp to the cloud. So when you look at the solution, what's the operational impact of Nutanix Clusters? And that acceleration to the cloud? >> Well, sure. And I think that, is really what we're trying to accomplish here, with this new technology is to take away a lot of the pain, in onboarding to the public cloud. For many customers I talk to, the cloud is aspirational at this point. They may be experimenting. They may have a few applications they've, spun up in the cloud or using a SaaS service. But really getting those core applications, into the public cloud, has been something they've struggled with. And so, by harmonizing the control plan and the data plan, between on-premises and the public cloud, we just completely remove that barrier, and allow that mobility, that's been, something people have really been looking forward to. >> All right, well, Justin, of course, the announcement being with AWS, is the global leader in public cloud. But we've seen the cluster solution, when has been discussed in earlier days, isn't necessarily only for AWS. So, what can you tell us about your customer's adoption with AWS, and maybe what we should look at down the road for clusters with other solutions? >> Yeah, for sure. Now of course, AWS is the global market leader, which is why we're so happy to have this launch event today of clusters on AWS. But with many of our customers, depending on their region, or their regulatory requirements, they may want to work as well, with other providers. And so when we built the Nutanix cluster solution, we were careful not to lock in, to any specific provider. Which gives us options going forward, to meet our customer demands, wherever they might be. >> All right. Well, when we look at cloud, of course, the implications are one of the things we need to think about. We've seen a number of hybrid solutions out there, that haven't necessarily been the most economical. So, what are the financial considerations, when we look at this solution? >> Yeah, definitely. I think when we look at using the public cloud, it's important not to bring along, the same operational mindset, as traditional on-premise infrastructure. And that's the power of the cloud, is the elasticity. And the ability to burst workloads, to grow and to shrink as needed. And so, to really help contain those costs, we've built in this amazing ability, to hibernate workloads. So that customers can run them, when they need them. Whether it's a seasonal business, whether it's something in education, where students are coming and going, for different terms. We've built this functionality, that allows you to take traditional applications that would normally run on-premises 24/7. And give them that elasticity of the public cloud, really combining the best of both worlds. And then, building tooling and automation around that. So it's not just guesswork. We can actually tell you, when to spin up a workload, or where to place a workload, to get the best financial impact. >> All right, Justin, final question for you is, this has been the works on Nutanix working on the cluster solution world for a bit now. What's exciting you, that you're going to be able to bring this to your customers? >> Yeah. There's a lot of new capabilities, that get unlocked by this new technology. I think about a customer I was talking to recently, that's expanding their business geographically. And, what they didn't want to do, was invest capital in building up a new data center, in a new region. Because here in APJ, the region is geographically vast, and connectivity can vary tremendously. And so for this company, to be able to spin up, a new data center effectively, in any AWS region around the world, really enables them to bring the data and the applications, to where they're expanding their business, without that capital outlay. And so, that's just one capability, that we're really excited about. And we think we'll have a big impact, in how people do business. And keeping those applications and data, close to where they're doing that business. >> All right. Well, Justin, thank you so much for giving us a look inside the APJ region. And congratulations to you and the team, on the Nutanix Clusters announcement. >> Thanks so much for having me Stu. >> All right. And thank you for watching I'm Stu Miniman. Thank you for watching theCUBE. (soft music)

>> From around the globe, it's theCUBE. With digital coverage, have a special announcement, brought to you by Nutanix. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman. And I want to welcome you to this special event that we are doing with Nutanix. Of course, in 2020 many things have changed and that has changed some of the priorities for many companies out there, acceleration of cloud adoption, absolutely have been there. I've talked to many companies that were dipping their toe or thinking about where they were going to the cloud and of course it's rapidly moved to accelerate to be able to leverage work from home, remote contact centers and the like. So we have to think about how we can accelerate what's happening and make sure that our workforce and our customers are all taken care of. So at one of the front seats of this is of course companies working to help modernize customers out there and Nutanix is part of that discussion. So I want to welcome to join us for this special discussion of cloud and Nutanix, I've two of our CUBE alumnis. First of all, we have Monica Kumar, she's the Senior vice President of Product with Nutanix and Tarkan Maner, who's a relative newcomer, second time on theCUBE in his new role, many-time guest previously. Tarkan is the Chief Commercial Officer with Nutanix. Monica and Tarkan, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you so much. So happy to be back on theCUBE. >> Yeah, Thank you. >> All right, so Tarkan as I was teeing up, we know that IT staffs in general, CIO specifically, and companies overall, are under a lot of pressure in general, but in 2020, there are new pressures on them. So why don't you explain to us the special cloud announcement, tell us what's Nutanix's launching and why it's so important today. >> So first of all, thank you. Glad to be here with Monica. Basically, you and I spent some time with a few customers in the past few weeks and months. I'll tell you the things in our industry are changing at a pace that we've never seen before, especially with this pandemic backdrop as we're going through. And obviously all the economic challenges that creates beyond the obviously health challenges and across the globe, all the pain it creates, but also create some opportunities for our customers and partners to deliver solutions to our enterprise customers and infomercial customers and public sector customers in multiple industries. From healthcare, obviously very importantly, to manufacturing, to supply chains and to all the other industries, including financial services and public sector again. So in that context and Monica knows this well as she's our leader in our strategy, we're putting lots of effort in this new multi-cloud strategy as a company. As you know too well, Nutanix wrote the book in digital infrastructures with its own hybrid infrastructure story. Now they're taking that next level via our data center solutions, via DevOps solutions and end user computer solutions now in multi-cloud fashion, working with partners like AWS. So in this launch, we have our new multi-cloud infrastructure, clusters product now available on AWS. We are super excited. We have more than 20 tech firms and customers and partners at senior executive level support in this big launch. Timing is usually important because of this pandemic backdrop. And the goal is obviously to help our customers save money, focus on what's important for them, save money for them and making sure they streamline their IT operations. So it's a huge launch for us and we're super excited about it. >> Yeah, and the one thing I would add to what Tarkan said too is, look, we talked to a lot of customers and obviously cloud is the constant in terms of enabling innovation. But I think more with COVID, what's on top of mind is also how do we use cloud for innovation, but really be intelligent about cost optimization. So with this new announcement, what we're excited about is we're making really a hybrid cloud a reality across public and private cloud, but also making sure customers get the cost efficiency they need when they're deploying the solution. So we are super excited to bring true hybrid cloud offering with AWS to the market today. >> Well, I can tell you Nutanix cluster is absolutely one of the exciting technologies I've enjoyed watching and getting ready for. And of course, a partnership with the largest public cloud player out there, AWS, is really important. When I think about Nutanix from the earliest days, the word that we always used for the HI space in Nutanix specifically, was simplicity. Anybody in the tech space know that true simplicity is really hard to do. When I think about cloud, when I think about multi-cloud, simplicity's not the first thing that I think of. So Tarkan, help us connect, how is Nutanix going to extend the simplicity that it's done for so long now in the data center into places like AWS with this solution? >> So, Stu, you're right on, spot on. Look, Monica and I spend a lot of time with our customers. One thing about an Nutanix executive team we're very customer driven, and I'm not just saying this to make a point. We really spent tons of time with them because our solutions are basically so critical for them to run their businesses. So just recently, I was with a senior executives of an airline right before that Monica and I spent actually with one of the largest banks in the world in France, in Paris, right before pandemic, we were actually traveling, talking to not only the CIO, the Chief Operating Officer on one of these huge banks, and the biggest issue was how these companies are trying to basically adjust their plans, business plans. I'm not talking about tech plans, IT plans, the business plans around this backdrop that the economic stress and obviously now pandemic is in a big way. One of the CIOs told me, it was an airline executive, "Look, Tarkan, in the next 12 months, my business might be half of what it is today. And I need to do more with less in so many different ways, while I'm cutting cost." So it's a tough time. So in that context is to, you're actually right, multi-cloud is a difficult proposition, but it's critical for these companies to manage their cost structures across multiple operating models. Cloud to us is not a destination. It's a means to an end. It is an operating model. At the end of the day, the differentiation is to the software. The unique software that we provide from digital infrastructures to deliver end to end discreet data center solutions, DevOps solutions for developers, as well as for end user computing individuals, to make you sure to take advantage of these EDI disability service topic capability. So in that context, what we're providing now, to these CIOs who are going through this difficult time is a platform in which they can move their workloads from cloud to cloud based on their needs, the freedom of choice. Look, one of these big banks that Monica and I visited in France, huge global bank, they have a workloads on AWS, they have workloads on Azure, they have workloads on Google, they have workloads on (mumbles), the local XP, they have workloads in Germany, they have workloads on cloud service providers in Asia, in Taiwan and other locations, On top of that, they're also using Nutanix on Prem as well as Nutanix cloud, our own cloud services for BR. And for them, this is not just a destination, this is an operating model. So the biggest request from them is, "Look, can you guys make this cost effective? Can we use all these operating models and move our data and applications from cloud to cloud?" In simple terms, can we get some flexibility with commits as well as with the credits they paid for so far? And those are the things we're working on, and I'm sure Monica is going to get a little bit more into detail as we talk though this. We're super excited to start this journey with AWS with this launch, but we're not going to stop there. Our goal is, we just discussed it with Monica earlier, provide freedom of choice across multiple clouds both on Prem and off Prem for our customers to cut costs and to focus on what's important for them. >> Yeah, and I would just add to sum it up, we are really simplifying the multi-cloud complexity for our customers,. And I can go into more details but that's really the gist of it. Is what Nutanix is doing with this announcement and more coming up in the future. >> Well, Monica, when I think about customers and how do they decide what stays in their data center, what goes into the public cloud, it's really their application portfolio. I need to look at my workloads, I need to look at my skillset. So when I look at the cluster solution, what are some of the key use cases? What workloads are going to be the first ones that you expect or you're having customers use with it today? >> Sure, and as we talk to customer too, there's clearly few key use cases that they've been trying to build a hybrid strategy around. The first few ones are bursting into cloud. In case of sudden demand, how do I burst and scale my let's say a VDI environment or database environment into the cloud? So that's clearly one that many of our customers want to be able to do simply and without having to incur this extreme complexity of managing these environments. Number two, it's about DR. And we saw it with COVID, business continuity became a big deal for many organizations. They weren't prepared for it. So the ability to actually spin up your applications and data in the cloud seamlessly in case of a disaster, that's another big use case. The third one, which many customers talk about is can I lift and shift my applications as is into the cloud without having to rewrite a single line of code or without having to rewrite all of it? That's another one. And last but not least, the one that we're also hearing a lot about is how do I extend my current applications by using cloud native services that's available on public cloud? So those are four, there's many more, of course, but in terms of workloads, I mentioned two examples, VDI, which is virtual desktop infrastructure, and there's a computing and also databases. More and more of our customers don't want to invest, in again, having on premises data center assets, sitting there idlely and wait for when the capacity surges, the demand for capacity surges, they want to be able to do that in the cloud. So I'd say those are the few use cases and workloads. One thing I want to go back to, what Tarkan was talking about, really there're three key reasons why the current hybrid cloud solutions haven't really panned out for customers. Number one, it's having a unified management environment across public and private cloud. There's a few solutions out there, but none of them have proved to be simple enough to actually put into real execution. With Nutanix, the one thing you can do is literally build a hybrid cloud within under an hour. Under an hour, you can spin up new data clusters which you have on premises, the same exact cluster in Amazon. Under one hour. There you go. And you have the same exact management plan that we offer on Prem that now can manage your AWS Nutanix clusters. It's that easy, right? And then you can easily move your data and applications across, if you choose to. You want to move and burst into cloud, public cloud? Do it. You want to keep some stuff on prem? Do it. If you want to develop in the cloud, do it. Want to keep production on prem, do it. Single management plan, seamless mobility. And the third point is about cost. Simplicity of managing the costs making sure you know how are you going to incur costs? How about if you can hibernate your AWS cluster when you're not using it? We have the capability now in our software to do that. How about knowing where to place, which workload, which workload goes into public node, which stays on premises. We have an amazing tool called beam that gives the customers that ability to assess which is the right cloud for the right workload. So I can go on and on about this, we've talked to so many customers, but this is in a nutshell, the use cases and workloads that we are delivering to customers right out the gate. >> Well, Monica, I'd love to hear a little bit about the customers that have had an early access to this. What customer stories can you share? Understand, of course, you're probably going to need to anonymize, but I'd like to understand how they've been leveraging clusters, the value that they're getting from it. >> Absolutely. We've been working with a number of customers. And I'll give you a few examples. There's a customer in Australia. I'll start with that. And they basically run a big event that happens every five years for them. And that they have to scale something to 24 million people. Now imagine if they have to keep capacity on site, anticipating the needs for five years in a row. Well, they can't do that. And the big event is going to happen next year for them. So they're getting ready with our clusters to really expand the VDI environments into the cloud in a big way with AWS. So from Nutanix on prem to AWS and expand VDI and burst into the cloud. So that's one example. That's obviously when you have an event driven capacity bursting into the cloud. Another customer who is in the insurance business. For them DR Is of course very important. I mean, DR is important for every industry and every business, but for them they realize that they need to be able to transparently run their applications in the case of a disaster on the cloud. So they've been using Nutanix clusters with AWS to do that. Another customer is looking at lifting and shifting some of their database applications into AWS with Nutanix, for example. And then we have yet another customer who's looking at retiring a part of the data center estate and moving that completely to AWS with Nutanix as a backbone, Nutanix clusters as the backbone. I mean, and we have tons of examples of customers who during COVID, for example, were able to burst capacity and spin up remote, hundreds and thousands of remote employees using clusters into AWS cloud, using Citrix also by the way, as the desktop provider. So again, I can go on, we have tons of customers. There's obviously a big demand for this solution because now it's so easy to use. We have customers really surprised going, "Wait, I have built a whole hybrid cloud within an hour? And I was able to scale from six nodes to 16 nodes just like that on AWS cloud from on prem six nodes to 16 and AWS cloud? Our customers are really, really pleasantly surprised with the ease of use and how quickly they can scale using clusters in AWS. >> Yeah, Tarkan, I have to imagine that this is a real change for the conversations that you have with customers. I mean, Nutanix has been partnering with AWS for a number of years. I remember the first time that I saw Nutanics at the re:Invent show, but cloud is definitely front and center in a lot of your customer's conversations. So with your partners, with your customers, has to be just a whole different aspect to the conversations that you can have. >> Absolutely, Stu. As you heard from Monica too, as I mentioned earlier, this is not just a destination for the customers. I know you using these buzzwords, at the end of day, it's an operating model. It's an operating model they want to take advantage of to cut costs and do more with less. So in that context, as you heard even in this conversation, there's any pain point in this. Like, again, being able to move the workloads from location to location, cost-optimize those things, provide a streamlined operations, again, as Monica suggested, making the apps and the data related to those apps mobile, and obviously provide built-in networking capabilities, all those capabilities make it easier for them to cut costs. So what we're hearing constantly from the enterprises is, small and large, private sector and public sector, nothing different, clearly they have options, they want to have the freedom of choice, some of these workloads are going to run on prem, some of them off prem and off prem is going to have tons of different reactions. So in that context, as I mentioned earlier, we have our own cloud as well. We provide 20 plus skells to 17,000 customers around the world. There's a $2 billion software business run rate as you know and a lot of those customers, prem customers, now are also coming to our own cloud services with cloud partners we have our own cloud services with our own billing, payments, logistics, and service capabilities, fit a credit card, you can do DR it's actually come with this service to Nutanix itself. But some of these customers also want to go be able to go to AWS or Azure or to a local service provider. Sometimes as US companies we think US only, but think about this, this is a global phenomenon. I have customers in India. We have customers in Australia as Monica talked about. In China, in Japan, in Germany. And some of these enterprise customers, public sector customers, they want a DR, Disaster Recovery as a service to a local service provider within the country. Because of the new data governance laws and security concerns, they don't want the data and us to go outside of the boundaries of the country, in some cases in the same town. If you're in Switzerland, forget about the country, the same city. So we want to make sure we give capabilities to customers, use the cloud as an operating model the way they want. And as part of this, Stu, we're not alone on this. We can not do this alone. We have tremendous level of partner support as you're going to see the announcements from HP as one of our key partners, Lenovo, AMD, Intel, Fujitsu, Citrix for end user computing, we're partnering with Palo Alto Networks for security, a slew partners, as you know we support VMware is excited, We have partners like Red Hat who's done tons of work in the Linux front, we partnered with IBM, we partnered with Dell. So the ecosystem makes it so much easier for our customers, especially in this pandemic backdrop. And I think what you're going to see from Nutanix, more partners, more customer proof points to help the customers at of the day to cut costs in this typical backdrop. Especially for the next 24 months, I think what you're going to see is tremendous, so to speak, adoption of this multi-cloud approach that we're focusing on right now. >> Yeah. And let me add, I know a partner list is long. So Tarkan also, we have the global size, of course, the WebPros and FCL and TCS and Capgemini and Zinsser, you name it all. We're working with all of them to bring clusters based solutions to market. And for the entire Nutanix stack, also partners like Equinix and Yoda. So it's a long list of partnerships. The one thing I did want to bring up still, which I forgot to mention earlier and Tarkan reminded me, is our superior architecture. So why is it that Nutanix can deliver this now to customers? I mean, our customers have been trying to build hybrid cloud for a little while now and work across multiple clouds and we know it's been complex. The reason why we are able to deliver this in the way we are, is because of our architecture. The way we've architected clusters with AWS it's built-in native network integration. And what that means is if your customer and end user who's a practitioner, you can literally see the Nutanix VMs in the same space as Amazon VMs. So for a customer, it's in the exact same space, it's really easy to then use other AWS services and we bypass any complex and latency issues with networking because we're exactly part of AWS VPC for the customer. And also, the customers can use by the way, their Amazon credits with the way we've architected this. We allow for bringing your own license, by the way, that's the other true part about, simplicity is same license that our customers use on premises today for Nutanix can be brought exactly the same way to AWS, if they choose to. And, of course, we do also offer other licensing models that are cloud only, but I want to point out that (indistinct) is, is something that we're very proud of. It's truly enabling bring your own license to AWS cloud in this case. >> Well, it's interesting, Monica. Of course, one of the things everybody's watched of Nutanix over the last few years is that move from an appliance primarily to a software model and as an industry as a whole, it's much more moving to the cloud model for pricing. And it sounds like that's the primary model with some flexibility and options that you have when you're talking about the cluster solution here, is that correct? >> Yeah, we also offer the pay as you go model of course, on cloud it's popular. So customers can decide they just want to pay for the amount they use, that's fine, or they can bring their existing on prem license to AWS, or we also have a commit model where they commit for a certain capacity for the year and they go with that. So we have two or three different kinds of models. Again, going with the freedom of choice for our customers, we offer them different models they can choose from. But to me, the best part is to bring own license model. That's again, a true hybrid pricing model here. They can choose to use Nutanix where they want to. >> Yeah, well, and, and Monica, I'm glad you brought up some of the architectural pieces here. 'Cause you talked about all the partners that you have out there, if I'm sitting in the partner world, I've been heard nothing over the last few years, but I've been inundated by all the hybrid solutions. So every public cloud provider, including AWS now, is talking about hybrid solutions. You've got virtualization players, infrastructure players, all talking out there. So architecture, you talked a bit about, anything else, key differentiators that you want people to understand as what sets Nutanix apart from the crowd when it comes to hybrid cloud? >> Well, like I said, it's because of our architecture, you can build a hybrid cloud in under an hour. I mean, prove to me if you can do with other providers. And again, I don't mean that, having that ego, but really, honestly for our customers, it's all about how can we speed up a customer's experience to cloud. So building a cloud under an hour, being able to truly manage it with a single plane, being able to move apps and data with one click in many cases and last but not least the license portability, all of that together, I think the way, Durage RCO sums it and Tarkan have talked about this is, we may not have been the first to market, but we believe we're the best to market in this space today. That's what I would say. >> Now, Tarkan, I'd love to hear a little bit of the vision. So as Monica alluded to, anybody that digs underneath the covers it's bare metal offerings from the cloud providers that are enabling this technology. There was a certain partnership that AWS had that enabled this and now you're taking advantage of it. When you look at clusters going forward, give us a little bit, what should we be looking for when it comes to AWS and maybe even beyond? >> Thank you, Tsu, actually is spot on question. Most companies in this space, they follow these buzzwords like, "Oh, multi-cloud." And when you (indistinct) down and you find out, Okay, you support two cloud services and you actually own some kind of a marketplace and you're one of the 19,000 services, you don't see this as a multi-cloud. Our view is complete freedom of choice. So our vision includes a couple of our private clouds, government cloud success with our customers, with enterprise, commercial and public sector customers also delivered to them choice with Nutanix's own cloud, as I mentioned earlier, with our own billing payment, we'll just escapable these started with DR as a service, disaster recovery as a service. But take that next level, the database as a service, VDI, desktop as a service and other services that we deliver. But on top of that, also as Monica talked about earlier, partnerships we have with service providers like Yoda in India, work going on with SoftBank in Japan, work going on with OVH in France and multiple countries that we're building this XSP service provider- customer relationships, give those international customers choice within their own local region in their own country, in some cases, even in their city where they are making sure the network latency is not an issue, security, data governance is not an issue. And obviously, third leg of this multi legged stool is hyperscalers themselves, like AWS. AWS has been a phenomenal partner working with Hume, Matt Garmin, the executive team under Andy Jassy and Jeff Bezos they're just super partners, obviously that bare metal service capability is huge differentiator and typical AWS simplicity, and obviously data simplicity coming together, but giving choice to our customers has we move forward, obviously our customers have a multi-cloud strategy. So I'm reading an amazing book called "Silk Roads." It's an amazing book. I strongly suggest you all read it. It's all talking about partnerships. Throughout history, those empires, those countries who've been successful, partnered well, connect dots well. So that's what we're trying to learn from our own history, connecting the dots with the customers and partners as we talked about earlier, working with companies like WebPro and we all deliver an end user company service called database service go to desk, database as a service, digital data services with MBA, few other new services started in HCL and others. So all these things come up together as a complete end to end strategy with our partners. So we want to make sure as we move forward, in upcoming weeks and months, your going to see these announcements coming up one partner at a time and obviously we're going to measure success one customer at a time as we move forward with this strategy. >> All right, so Monica, you mentioned that if you were an existing Nutanix customer, you can spin up in the public cloud in under an hour, I guess final the question I have for you is number one, if I'm not yet a Nutanix customer, is this something I could start in the public cloud and leverage some capabilities and whether I'm an existing customer or a prospect, how do I get started with Nutanix clusters? >> Absolutely, we're all about making it easy for our customers to get started. So in fact, I know seeing is believing, so if you go to nutanix.com today, you'll see we have a link there for something called a test drive. So we are giving our prospects and customers the ability to go try this out, either just take a tour or even do a 30 day free trial today. So they can try it out, they can just get spun up in the cloud completely and then connect on premises if they choose to, or if they just sustain public cloud only with Nutanix, that's absolutely the customer choice. And I would say, this is really only the beginning for us as Tarkan saying. Our future, I mean, I'm just really super excited about our feature and how we're going to enable customers to use cloud for innovation going forward in a really simple manner that's cost efficient for our customers. >> All right. Well, Monica and Tarkan, thank you so much for sharing the updates. Congratulations to the team on bringing this solution out. And as you said, just the beginning so we look forward to talking to you, your partners and your customers going forward. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Stu, thank you, Monica. >> All right, for Tarkan and Monica, I'm Stu Miniman with theCUBE. Thank you as always for watching this special Nutanix announcement. (upbeat music)

(upbeat electronic music) >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're having a CUBE Conversation in the Palo Alto studio, a little bit of a break from the crazy conference season, so we can have a little more intimate conversation without the madness of some of the shows. So we're really excited to have many-time CUBE alumni, Guy Churchward, on. He's the president and CEO of DataTorrent. Guy, great to see you. >> Thank you, Jeff, 'preciate it. >> So how have you been surviving the crazy conference season? >> It's been crazy. This is very unusual. It's just calm and quiet and relaxed, and there's not people buzzing around, so it's different. >> So you've been at DataTorrent for a while now, so give us kind of the quick update, where you guys are, how things are moving along for you. >> Yeah, I mean, I've kicked in about five months, so I think I'm just coming up to sort of five and a half, six months, so it's a enough time to get my feet wet, understand whether I made a massive mistake or whether it's exciting. I'm still-- >> Jeff: Still here, you're wearing the T-shirt. >> Yeah, I'm pleased to say I'm still very excited about it. It's a great opportunity, and the space is just hot, hot. >> So you guys are involved in streaming data and streaming analytics, and you know, we had Hadoop, was kind of the hot thing in big data, and really the focus has shifted now to streaming analytics. You guys are playing right in that space and have been for a while, but you're starting to make some changes and come at the problem from a slightly different twist. Give us an update on what you guys are up to. >> Yeah, I mean, so when I dropped into DataTorrent, obviously, it's real-time data analytics, based on stream processing or event processing. So the idea is to say instead of doing things like analytics, insight, and action on data at rest, you know, traditional way of doing things is sucking data into a data store and then poking it litigiously at sort of a real-time analytics basis. And what the company decided to do, and again, this is around the founders, is to say if you could take the insight and action piece and shift it left of the data store in memory and then literally garner the insight and action when an event happens, then that's obviously faster and it's quicker. And it was interesting, a client said to us recently that batch, or stream, or near real-time, or microbatch, is sort of like real-time for a person, 'cause a person can't think that fast. So the latency is a factor of that, but what we do is real-time for a computer. So the idea here is that you literally have sub-second latency and response and actions and insight. But anyway, they built a toolkit, and they built a development platform, and it's completely extensible, and we've got a dozen customers on board, and they're high production, and people are running a billion events per second, so it's very cool. But there wasn't this repeatable business, and I think the deeper I got into it, you also look at it and you say, "Well, Hadoop isn't the easiest thing to deploy." >> Jeff: Right, right, consistently. >> And, the company had this mantra, really, of going to solve total cost of ownership and time to value, so in other words, how fast can I get to an outcome and how cheap is it to run it. So can you create unique IP on top of opensource that allows you to basically get up and running quickly, it's got a good budget constraint from a scale-up perspective and scale-out, but at the same time, you don't need these genius developers to work on it because there's only a small portion of people who basically can deploy a Hadoop cluster in a massive scale in a reliable way. So we thought, well, the thing to do is to really bring it into the masses. But again, if you bring a toolkit down, you're really saying here's a toolkit and an opportunity, and then build the applications and see what you can do. What we figured is actually what you want to do is to say, no, let's just see if we can take Hadoop out of the picture and the complexity of it, and actually provide an end-to-end application. So we looked to each of the customers' current deployments and then figured out, can we actually industrialize that pipeline? In other words, take the opensource components, ruggedize them, scale them, make sure that they stay up, they're full torrents, 7x24, and then provide them as an application. So we're actually shifting our focus, I think, from just what are called the apex platform and the stream-based processing platform to an application factory and actually producing end-to-end applications. >> 'Cause it's so interesting to think of batch and batch in not real-time compared to real-time streaming, right? We used to take action on a sample of old data, and now, you've got the opportunity to actually take action on all of the now data. Pretty significant difference. >> Yeah, I mean, it kills me. I've got to say, since the last time we met, I literally wrote a blog series, and one of them was called Analytics, Real-Time Analytics versus Real-Time Analytics. And I had this hilarious situation where I was talking to a client, and I asked then, and I said, "Do you do real-time analytics?" They go, "Yeah." And I said, "Do you work on real-time data?" And they said, "Yeah." And I said, "What's your latency between an event happening "and you being able to take an action on the event?" And he said, "Well, 60 milliseconds." It's just amazing. I said, "Well, tell me what your architecture looks like." And he says, "Well I take Kafka into Apex as a stream. "I then import it in essence into Cassandra, "and then I allow my customers to poke the data." So I said, "Well, but that's not 60 milliseconds." And he goes, "No, no, it is." And I said, "What are you measuring?" He goes, "Well, the customer basically puts "an inquiry onto the data store." And so literally, what he's doing is a real-time query against a stale data that's sitting inside of a date lake. But he swore blind. >> But it's fast though, right? >> And that's the thing is he's looking, he say, "Hey, well, I can get a really quick response." Well, I can as well. I mean, I can look at Google World and I can look at my house, and I can find out that my house is not real-time. And that's really what it was. So you then say to yourself, well look, the whole security market is based around this technology. It's classic ETL, and it's basically get the data, suck it in, park it into a data store, and then poke at it. >> Jeff: Right >> But that means that that latency, by just the sheer fact that you're taking the data in and you're normalizing it and dropping it into a data store, your latency's already out there. And so one of the applications that we looked at is around fraud, and specifically payment fraud and credit card fraud. And everything out there in the market today is basically, it's detection because of the latency. If you kind of think about it, credit card swipe, the transaction's happened, they catch the first one, they look at it and say, "Well, that's a bit weird." If another one of these ones comes up, then we know we've got fraud. Well, of course, what happens is they suck the data in, it sits inside a data store, they poke the data a little bit later, and they figure out, actually, it is fraud. But the second action has happened. So they detected fraud, but they couldn't prevent it, so everything out there is payment fraud prevention, or payment fraud detection because it's basically got that latency. So what we've done is we said to ourself, "No, we actually can prevent it." Because if you can move the insight and actions to the left-hand side of the data store, and as the event is happening, you literally can grab that card swipe and say no, no, no, you don't do it anymore, you prevent it. So, it's literally taking that whole market from, in essence, detection to prevention. And this is, it's kind of fascinating because there's other angles to this. There's a marketplace inside the credit card site that talks about card not present, and there's a thing called OmniChannel, and OmniChannel's interesting, 'cause most retailers have gone out there and they've got their bricks and mortar infrastructure and architecture and data centers, and they've gone and acquired an online company. And so, now, they have these two different architectures, and if you imagine if you got to hop between the two, it kind of has gaps. And so, the fraudsters will exploit OmniChannel because there's multiple different architectures around, right? So if you think about it, there's one side of saying, hey, if we can prevent that, so taking in a huge amount of data, having it talk, having a life cycle around it, and literally being able to detect and then prevent fraud before the fraudsters can actually figure out what to do, that's fantastic, and then on the plus side, you could take that same pipeline and that same application, and you can actually provide it to the retailers and say, well, what you'd want to do is things like, again, I wrote another blog on it, loyalty brand. You know, on the retail side, is for instance, my wife, we shop like crazy, everybody does. I try not to, but let's say she's been on the Nordstrom site, and we've got a Nordstrom. So Nordstrom has a cookie on their system and they can figure what had been done. And she's surfing around, and she finds a dress she kind of likes, but she doesn't buy it because she doesn't want to spend the money. Now, I'm in Nordstrom's about four weeks later, and I'm literally buying a pair of socks. A card swipe, and what it does is because you've got this OmniChannel and you can connect the two, what they want to do is to be able to turn around and say, "Oh, Guy, before we run this credit card, "we noticed that your wife was looking at this dress. "We know her birthday's coming up. "And by the way, we've checked our store, "and we've got the color and the size "she wants it in, and if you want, "we'll put it on the credit card." >> Don't tell her that, she already bought too much. She won't want you to get that dress. Nah, it's a great, it's a really interesting example, right? >> But it is that, and if you kind of think about it, and this where, when they say every second counts, it's like every millisecond counts. And so it really is machine-to-machine, real-time, and that's what we're providing. >> Well, that's the interesting, you know, a couple things just jump into mind as you're talking. One is by going the application route, right, you're reducing the overhead for just pure talent that we keep hearing about. It's such a shortage in some of these big data applications, Hadoop, specifically. So now, you're delivering a bunch of that, that's already packaged to do a degree in an application, is that accurate? >> Yeah, I mean I kind of look at the engineering talent inside an organization is like a triangle. And at the very top, you have talented engineers that basically can hard code and that's really where our technology has sat traditionally. So, we go to a large organization. They have a hundred people dedicated to this sport. The challenge is then it means the small organizations who don't have it can't take advantage. And then you've got at the base end, you have technologies like Tableau, you know, as a GUI that you can use by an IT guy. And in the middle you've got this massive swath of engineering talent that literally isn't the, Yoda hardcode on the analytics stuff and really can't do the Hadoop cluster. But they want to basically get dangerous on this technology, and if you can take your, you know, the top talent, and you bring that in to that center and then provide it at a cost economics that makes sense, then you're away. And that's really what we've seen is. So our client base is going to go from the 1410, 1420, 1450s, into the 14,000s and you bring it down, and that's really, if you think about it, that's where Splunk kind of got their roots. Which is really, get an application, allow people to use it, execute against it and then build that base up. >> That's ironically that you bring up Splunk 'cause George Gilbert, one of our Wikibon analysts, loves to say that Splunk is the best imitation of Hadoop that was ever created. He thinks of it really as a Hadoop application as opposed to Splunk, because they're super successful. They found a great application. They've been doing a terrific job. But the other piece that you brought up that triggered my mind was really the machine-to-machine. And real-time is always an interesting topic. What is real time? I always think of real time means in time to do something about it. That can be a wide spectrum depending on what you're actually doing. And the machine-to-machine aspect is really important because they do operate at a completely different level of speed. And time is very different for a machine-to-machine operation interaction interface than trying to provide some insight to a human, so they can start to make a decision. >> Yeah, I mean, you know, it was, again, one of those moments through the last five months I was looking at it. There's a very popular technology in our space called Spark, Apache Spark. And it's successful and it's great in batch and it's got micro-batch and there's actually a thing called Spark Streaming, which is micro-batch. But in essence, it's about a second latency, and so you look at it and you go, but what's in a second? You know what I mean? I mean, surely that's good enough. And absolutely, it's good enough for some stuff. But if you were, I mean we joke about it with things like autonomous cars. If you have cruise control, adaptive cruise control, you don't want that run on batch because that second is the difference between you slamming into a truck or not. If you have DHL, they're doing delivery drops to you, and you're actually measuring weather patterns against it, and correlating where you're going to drive and how and high and where, there's no way that you're going to run on a batch process. And then batch is just so slow in comparison. We actually built an application and it's a demo up on our web. And it's a live app, and when I sat down with the engineering team, and I said, "Look, I need people to understand "what real real-time does and the benefits of it." And it's simply doing is shifting the analytics and actions from the right-hand side of where the data store is, to the left-hand side. So you take all of the latency of parting the data and then go find the data. And what we did is we said, look, well, I want to do this really fair and, when you were a kid, there used to be games like Snap, you know, where the cards that you would turn over and you'd go snap and it's mine. So we're just looking and say, "Okay, "why don't we do something like that?" It's like fishing, you know, tickling fish and who sees the first fish, you grab it, it's yours. So we created an application that basically creates random numbers at a very, very huge speed, and whichever process, we have three processes running, whichever one sees it the first time, puts their hands up and says, "I got that." And if somebody else says, "I've got that," but they see a timestamp on the other one, they can't claim it. One wins, and the other two lose. And I did it, and we optimized around, basically, the Apache Apex code, which is ours in stream mode, the Apache Apex, believe it or not, in a micro-batch mode, and Spark Streaming, as fast as they can, and we literally engineered the hell out of them to get them as fast as possible. And if you look at the results, it literally is, win every time for stream, and a loss every time for the other two. So from a speed perspective, now the reality is like I said, is if I'm showing a dashboard to you, by the time you blink, all three have gotten you the data. It's immaterial, and this isn't knocking on Spark. Our largest deployments all run on what we call, like a cask-type architecture, which is basically Kafka Apache, Spark. So we see this in Hadoop, and it's always in there. So it's kind of this cache thing. So we like it for what it is, but where customers come unbundled, is where they try and force-fit a technology into the wrong space. And so again, you mentioned Splunk, these sort of waves of innovation. We find every client sitting there, going, "I want to get inside quicker". The amount of meetings that we're all in, where you sit there and go, "If I'd only known that now "or before, then I would've made a decision." And, you know, in the good old days, we worked at-rest data. At-rest was really the kingdom of Splunk. If you think about it, we're now in the tail end of batch, which is really where Spark's done. So Splunk and Spark are kind of there, and now you're into this real-time. So again, it's running at a fair pace, but the learnings that we've had over the last few months is toolkits are great, platforms are great, but to bring this out into a mass adoption, you really need to make sure that you've provided hardened application. So we see ourselves now as, you know, real-time big data applications company, not just Apache. >> And when you look at the application space that you're going to attack, do you look at it kind of vertically, do you look at it functionally, kind of, you mentioned fraud as one of the earlier ones. How are you kind of organizing yourself around the application space? >> Yeah, and so, the best way for me to describe it, and I want to spin it in a better way than this, but I'll tell you exactly as we've done it, which is, I've looked at what the customers have currently got and we have deployments in about a dozen big customers and they're all different use cases, and then I've looked at it and said, "What you really want to do is you want to go "to a market that people have a current problem, "and also in a vertical where they're prepared "to pay for something and solving a problem "that if they give you money, they either "make money quickly or they save money quickly." So it's actually-- >> So simple. (laughs) >> But it would be much better if I said it in a pure way and I made some magical thing up, but in reality is I'm looking and going, "You got to go where the hardest problems are," And right now, a few things like card not present, you look at roaming abuse and you look at OmniChannel from payment fraud, everybody is looking for something. Now, the challenge is the market's noisy there, and so what happens is everybody's saying, "But I've got it." >> That's what strikes me about the fraud thing is you would think that that's a pretty sophisticated market place in which to compete. So you clearly have to have an advantage to even get a meeting, I would imagine. >> Yeah, and again, we've tested the market. The market's pretty hard on the back of it. We've got an application coming out shortly, and we're actually doing design partnerships with a couple of big banks. So but we don't want to be seen as just a fraud, now, just a fraud, just a fraud prevention company. (chuckles) I'll stay with a fraud, myself. But you kind of look and you say, look, they'll be a set of fraud applications because there's about half a dozen only to be done, retail, like I mentioned on things like the loyalty brand stuff. We have a number of companies that are using us for ad tech. So again, I can't mention the names. Actually, we've just published one, Publix, no, PubMatic is one of the ad tech organizations that's using our products. But we'll literally come out and harden that pipeline as well. So we're going to strut along but instead of just saying, "Hey, we've solved absolutely everything," what I want to do is to solve a problem for someone and then just move forward. You know, most of our customers have somewhere between three to five different applications that are running up and that are in production. So once the platform's in, you know, then they see the value of it. But we really want to make sure that we're closer to the end result and to an outcome, because that's the du jour way that customers want to buy things now. >> Well, and they always have, right? Like you said, they've got a burning issue. You either got to make money or save money. And if it's not a burning issue, it falls to the bottom of the pile, 'cause there's something that's burning that they need to fix quickly. >> And the other thing, Jeff, is if you, and again, it's dirty laundry, but if you think about it, I go to an account and the account's got a fraud solution, and it's all right but it's not doing what they want, but we come along up with a platform, say, "We can do absolutely anything." And then they go, "Well, I've got this really difficult "problem that no one's solved for me, "but I'm not even sure if I've got a budget for it. "Let's spend two year messing around with it. And that's no good, you know? From a small company, you really want that tractionable event, so my thing is just say, "No, what we want to do is I want to go "talk to John about John's problem," and say, "I can solve it better than the current one." And there is nothing in the market today, on the payment fraud side, that will provide prevention. It is all detection. So, there's a unique value. The question is whether we can get the noise out. >> All right, well, we look forward to watching the progress and we'll check again in five months or so. >> Thank you, Jeff, 'preciate it. >> Guy Churchward, he's from DataTorrent, President and CEO. Took over about five months ago and kind of changed the course a little bit. Exciting to watch, thanks for stopping by. >> Guy: Thank you >> All right, Jeff Frick, you're watching the theCUBE. See you next time. Thanks for watching. (upbeat electronic music)