>> From the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, It's theCUBE, covering HoshoCon 2018. Brought to you by Hosho. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Las Vegas for theCUBE's exclusive coverage of HoshoCon. This is the first inaugural event of its kind. It's the first security blockchain conference, where all the top minds in the security blockchain decentralized world come together to try to work on, solve, and enhance the security profile of how the world's running. As we know blockchains run the infrastructure, and we need security. I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE. I'm here with David Johnson, the CEO of Latium. Welcome to theCUBE thanks for joining me. >> Thanks for having me John. >> So, you're one of the brain trusts in the industry here at this event, trying to solve the security problems. Let's get into it, but first take a minute to explain what you guys do. What does your company do? What's your purpose to exist? Why are you in business? >> Well our main goal is trying to help get the message of crypto out and increase adoption in the space. We do a lot of things, we're a multifunctional platform. We're trying to make it easy by putting everything in one place. We believe that there's a lot of complexity, there's a lot of technical knowledge required. I mean, I've been in technology for 30 years, and it's really complex to use crypto. And we just think everyday people probably will not learn that. It's like they don't know why their car moves when they press the gas pedal, but they know that it does, and we're trying to solve that for crypto. >> It's like a car, imagine having to open the hood up, throw a switch, put the screwdriver on this, get a charge, go back in, run in, I mean just turn the key, come on. >> It's asking a bit much, at least that's our philosophy. >> Okay, so when you say moving a lot of complexity into the platform, are you talking about custody, are you talking about tech stack? What specifically are you guys doing? Is it technology stack, is it a framework, is it software, is it? >> It's a platform, it's a platform as far, it is a community where they can come in. It's a multicurrency wallet, it's an exchange. They can work for crypto, they can hire for crypto. So, again we're taking it from the client side, anything they would want to do with crypto, we'll try to put that in one place. >> So, you're trying to build a multipurpose platform where someone can run turn key. >> Exactly. >> A full end to end life cycle of crypto. >> That's correct. >> And why would they do that, build an app, marketplaces, is it business model driven? So what's your target customer looking to do? Are they developers, are they big businesses? >> Well, our target market is the everyday person who wants access to crypto, they're hearing about crypto, but they don't know how to participate. So, it starts off easy for them. They can come into the platform and they can perform a task on our platform, and now they're immediately a crypto holder, right? So, we just want to expose that space and make that access point as easy as possible. >> That's where they get people into crypto, is give the crypto away. >> And that's kind of what we're doing, we're giving them crypto for their production. >> All right, so give me an example. We're into crypto, we're doing a little CUBE crypto. How do we get involved? What do we do, how do we use you? >> Well one way you could use it, is you could use us if you were trying to, say promote something. That would be one way to do it. You want the community to get behind something? You want feedback. Say you have a website and you want feedback. You need Beta testers, right? You could list a task on our platform, our community base would see that listing, they could decide, I want to perform this task, and be paid in crypto. >> So you guys are looking at the, the Upwork-like crypto model. >> Similar, similar. >> So WorkCoin is another, is they competitive to you guys? >> I don't really feel like anybody in the space is a true competitor. There's crossover in some functionality, but because we're approaching the whole solution, as a wallet, an exchange, and a tasking platform, I don't really see anybody as direct competition. >> That's good, I like the platform approach. So having platforms that are open versus closed is what people are concerned about these days. How are you handling the open versus closed question? You guys let people own their own data. How is that working on the platform? >> Well, as it stands right now, we're a hybrid between blockchain and centralization and the reason for that is for scalability purposes. Blockchain tech is just not there. I know we all want it to be there. >> That's true, that's fair. >> But if we're honest, we're not there. So we're trying to build an enterprise application and we know that if that's 100% pure blockchain right now that you're going to run into scale issues. >> And for liability, many issues, we all know that. >> Yes, and data ownership is definitely a sensitive topic. As far as our approach on that, we're pretty open on what we're storing. Our biggest data point is really a TrustScore and you have full control over that by how you participate within the system. You know, good actors get the benefits of being a good actor and there's consequences if you're a bad actor in the system. And the way that we do that is, we have a verification system that's using biometric data, off of your face, and we're creating a unique digital profile tied back to the user. So unlike other platforms where they could just make a new account, become a bad actor, you can't do that on our system. So that's one space that's very unique. >> I think crypto's got a lot of opportunities to manage bad actors, if you can make the incentive costly, that's an interesting dynamic. Is that kind of what you guys are thinking too? Bad actors, always the problem is in web it's easy to be anonymous. >> That's it. >> You start a bot and get killed, you create a new one, respawn. >> I always say that the internet gave us this amazing platform for communication and networking and opened up a whole new world, but it removed trust, totally removed trust. There is no concept of trust. >> Yeah, reputation and trust. Reputation and trust are scattered. >> It's a big issue. >> A lot of people in crypto are struggling with two things. I want to get your thoughts and reaction to. One is community. >> Yes >> And the other is marketplaces. You're a classic marketplace. If you're doing tasks, gig economy, >> Yes. >> We know what that means, you share, you're open you're publishing. >> Sure. >> It's open, so check on the marketplace. Community is another one, how do you build a community? >> Sure. >> People raise these big ICOs and they say, hey I need a community. >> Yes. >> You can't buy a community. >> No, no you have to have something people want. And so that's the question, I mean in any business model you got to define what it is that you're building that someone wants. If you can't define that, then you don't have a business. >> All right so here's a pressure question for you. What's the hallway conversations like that you're overhearing and also you're participating in here at HoshoCon? A lot of smart people, I've overheard a bunch of conversations I just want to bust in and listen. >> Yeah >> I feel rude, but I'm just leaning in. Interesting people here, great dynamics. What are some of the hallway conversations that you're overhearing, and some that you're participating in? >> Well I think there's a lot of focus on the security levels of the contracts. There's been quite a few hacks just in the last couple days so that's been a buzz, and I think it's kind of interesting that we're at a security conference and then we have hacks going on. So there's been a lot of buzz around that. >> 'Cause people have been traveling on a plane, they attack when all the security guys are traveling. (laughing) >> Absolutely. >> Social engineering at it's best. >> Yeah, that might be the case, yeah. >> All right anything else, sessions you've been to? >> As far as the sessions go, I mean I think that Max put on a great session today. He's always an eloquent speaker. And so that was a great speech as far as I was concerned. You know, I think that it's nice to see that we're moving in the direction of acknowledging that security is a big deal in the space and I think it's great that Hosho's bringing that out. >> What's the biggest surprise this week for you here? >> I would say that the biggest surprise for me is just how well organized the event is. You know, I've been to quite a few events and the Hosho team has done a great job organizing this event. >> Yeah, and it's not too crowded either. It's the right mix of people. Of course, you know, they're video taping all the sessions so just lettin' everyone know, we'll put those videos up in theCUBE cloud and make them searchable for HoshoCon. So we're going to help get those videos out as well. Cool, so what's new at the business? How's things going? Give us the update, funding status? Employees? >> Things are going really well, we've actually seen exponential growth this month. We're registering between a 1,000, 3,000 registrations a day now. We've got about 22,000 verified members in our system and when I say verified, it again means that they've actually gone through a verification process so they can't duplicate accounts. >> And they've got a wallet, they're downloading. >> Exactly. >> They've got the wallet. >> Exactly, it's all in one. You register, you get multicurrency wallet off the bat. So we've seen a lot of growth and a lot of attention so far in this month. >> And which blockchain are you using? >> Again, we're a multicurrency, so we're tied-- >> You don't care. >> Well, our token is a ERC-20, but as far as how we deal with other blockchains, right now we have Bitcoin integration, Tether integration, Ethereum integration, and we're going to be adding ERC-20s. >> So you're using the ERC-20 mainly for smart contract on the transaction? >> Yeah, we're using the ERC-20 for our own tokens, yes. >> Okay got it, and the tokens for the gigs, the work, utility tokens? >> Yes, that's our token. >> That's your token, okay got it. >> That's correct, so they're getting, but they can take that immediately and they can change it out for Bitcoin if they like or they can hold our token. >> That's the exchange piece. >> Correct, it's all there. >> So multipurpose, yeah that's interesting. Great, well hey congratulations, David Johnson, he's the CEO of Latium, check him out. End to end exchange, getting work done, tasks. We certainly could use some UI on our project so can we put that in there? >> There you go, there you go. (laughing) >> Get some business down here, theCUBE, bringing you live coverage here at HoshoCon. Stay with us, we've got two days of wall to wall coverage. We'll be back with more after this short break. (techno music)

>> Live from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE, covering VMworld 2018. Brought to you by VMware and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas. This is Lisa Martin with theCUBE. We are at Vmworld 2018, Day One. I'm with Justin Warren. Hey Justin. >> Hi Lisa, how you doin'? >> Good. This is VMware's 20th anniversary and we're very excited to welcome two new guests to theCUBE. We've got Scott Brindamour, the Senior Director of the U.S. architect team from CenturyLink. Hey Scott. >> Hello, how are ya? >> Good. And we've got Geoff Thompson, the Senior Director of VMware Cloud Provider Program. Welcome. >> Thank you very much and hello. >> The 20th anniversary of VMware. You've been with VMware a long time. >> Yes. >> Lot of momentum kicked off this show, not just this morning. You guys said you were in here yesterday. >> Yes. >> Just curious to get your perspective, Geoff, on the buzz and the opportunity that you're hearing, not just from your customers but from your partners as well. >> Oh yeah, yeah. I remember the first one I went to way, way back, even before I joined VMware, when I was at Hewlett Packard. Then, it was a little small event back in, I think it was Los Angeles. Now, here we are in 20 thousand something people in Vegas for the nth year running, so the buzz is amazing. This year, I think more than ever for us, because Cloud is just becoming more and more of a focal point and the discussion and topic area for everybody, so the buzz is incredible. Working with CenturyLink here and with Scott is just like an opportunity to dig deeper on all these relationships, find new opportunities to go all in on the strategy that you guys have really already adopted, look at Cloud Verified and take that to the next step. Yep, great so far and looking forward to more. >> So talk to us, Scott, about the partnership that CenturyLink has with VMware. VMware has a massive amount of partners. I saw a stat this morning on stage. What is it about CenturyLink's offering and VMware that's really better together for end users? >> Yeah, I think it's really in our approach and how we really listen to our customers and try to understand where they are in their journey and what they need and not just throw a widget at a customer, but really design a solution that meets their needs and VMware having a flexible architecture and a vision for the future enables us to not only plant the seed today, but where we're going; a lot of co-development with VMware, a lot of partnership with VMware, a lot of making sure our teams that operate the environment and my team on the front lines work with customers are trained and ready for the next technology. I think I've seen a remarkable change in VMware over the last several years in accelerating their road map and working with AWS and a lot of the other partners. It's refreshing. A lot of our business is private Cloud on VMware. We've been a big partner for a long time and the VMware Verified is something we hold dear and we look forward to the relationship ongoing. >> Yeah, that focus on Cloud came through loud and strong in the keynote today and you mentioned it here, the private Cloud, hybrid Cloud, multi Cloud. CenturyLink has a rich heritage in networking and networking is vital for managing Cloud. So tell us a bit more about how CenturyLink's networking skills helps customers to understand how they can manage this multi-Cloud universe they have to live in now. >> Sure and maybe I should even talk about, the viewers that don't know what CenturyLink is. I've been with the company for 15 years, a company called Savvis, but we've made a number of different acquisitions over the years to gain different technology areas, where there'd be ERP, where there'd be dev opps capabilities in the public Cloud, where there'd be Cloud management platforms, et cetera. Now, we see more data is being moved outside of the data center and more data is being originated outside the data center, so customers are really saying, what do I do with all this data? Where do I put my apps? I can't put it in my four walls. I want to move it to the Cloud. Not every customer is on the same path at the same rate and can accept the change. I think the biggest thing we do is helping customers manage pieces of that portfolio, but it's not just a take-over kind of an old ITO play. It's a co-sourcing kind of play, a co-management model where they may have some skills in one area but deficient in another. We can help them with AWS, for instance. We can help them with the new software-defined V-conformate foundation technologies that VMware is going to as well, and bring the network components as well, so that a workload that's running on premise can work and perform just as well off premise by providing that private network connectivity or public network connectivity to those end users as well. >> You mentioned that partnership idea. I'm keen to understand the partnership you can provide essentially as a service provider. Customers rely on service providers a lot to help them manage their own infrastructure, in conjunction with the vendors. So, tell us a bit more about how your partnership with VMware works for customers. >> Yeah, we work a lot with-- VMware at its roots was a software company, so lately, selling services and selling services to clients that are not just a software skew in a software package, so a lot of interaction with VMware client teams and doing strategic discussions with some of our key clients about how we can bring them to the next generation and buying a private Cloud as a service, instead of just selling them a VMware license and have the customer try and figure it out. So, how do we get a customer on the same path and working together to do a lot of that together with our clients, and really making sure we're a partnership and our sales teams are going out to customers together is a big part of6 that. >> Right. >> Yeah, I think from our side, CentralLink is a strategic global partner of ours, so that means several things. The most important thing is we get an opportunity to have more and more briefings together, go deeper on our global strategy as a combined unit so we can look at new technologies that are comin6g down the pike. You can assess them and decide if there's a customer opportunity there and if there is, we'll bring our Cloud practice team in. We'll look at how we take that opportunity and make it a go-to-market strategy together and then we'll go and do sell with. We'll go out into our field teams. We'll educate them on what the offering is and then VMware and CentralLink is co-selling that solution. >> Yeah, I think a lot of the VMware sellers, the public Cloud threat that they have and the move to the public Cloud, how does that still co-exist with customers? I still strongly see that there's a lot of legacy apps. We were talking earlier about only 20% of workloads have moved to the Cloud. There's still a lot of legacy apps that are on VMware that are their crown jewels that are running their companies. They just need to deliver that in a new model and that's where a partner like CentralLink can help, to move it out of their data centers, to move it into VMware on AWS and help a customer understand what are the right workloads to move there, do I need to replatform it, when is it ready, how do I migrate it and how not to disrupt their operations and then manage it, if the customer doesn't have the capabilities to do it off their own premise and skill sets. It's a totally different mindset managing it off your premise than inside your four walls. >> So when you're talking to a customer at the outset of an organization that has multiple Clouds maybe driven by application type, maybe driven by that on a combination of acquisitions. Where does that business conversation start? Are you starting at the C-suite level? Are you starting there to really help the business leaders understand how to extract the power of their data? Tell us a little bit about how do you help them with a multi-phased approach. >> Sure. We definitely talk to the C-suite, CIO, whoever is leading the strategy but it depends on the company. A lot of that's actually done in the line of business, the more innovative lines of business that are transferring their business that have done a first mover. You hear a lot about shadow IT, where the business is going around IT because IT can't move fast enough. CIOs who are transformative, we're typically working with them and we're trying to figure out where they are in their strategy. Are they an early adopter or are they a lagger, do they not have a strategy and then understand; do they want to take a lot of risk and move quickly. Do they want to do it slowly and not disrupt their business. Depending upon the culture and the risk nature of their organization and what is actually running on that infrastructure they're going to move, you got to make those decisions. We call it, in CentralLink terms, my team talks about what's called best execution venue. We're agnostic. We're obviously a big VMware partner, but we also do resale solutions on Azure and AWS as well, as we're a data center provider and we can put it in our four walls on old legacy dedicated server environments as well. Whatever the right venue for our customer is, which is typically going to be hybrid, some on public Cloud, some on private Cloud, some on premise, some off premise and even more moving out to the edge, that customers want to do workloads in smaller quantities in kind of a dynamic nature, spinning up and spinning down, that we work with the clients to figure out what's the right execution venue; cost factor, who's going to manage it, what's the best place to locate it, does it need to be secure, governed, is their data sovereignty or compliance regulations on it. Then, ultimately, how they're going to scale their business and what their vision is to automate as much as possible and standardize it. You heard it today this morning; it's all about automation. So, how can they automate and how can they reduce the labor that the individual persons on the keystrokes and automate the infrastructure and make it look the same. I think the software-defined data center model that VMware has is a step in the right direction and there's a big uptake on customers in that environment today. >> Yeah, we're hearing a lot today, I think Lisa, of people saying it's customer choice. The ability to automate things but in the way that I choose to do it and transforming at the speed I need to do it. It's coming up quite a lot. Maybe you could tell us a bit more from the VMware perspective about how you're enabling that customer choice and we heard a lot about the automation, so how does the automation work with partners in enabling customers to be able to transform their business. >> For us, it's about we give choice and flexibility so within our program, it's all about making sure that we give everything that we build for ourselves and our end user customers, giving that to our partners. So, in terms of Scott and CentralLink, we give them the tools to go and build the Cloud and then set up the automated operations for them to expose to their end user customers and then we also leverage VMware Cloud on AWS, so we made that available to the program as well. So, our partners have choice in flexibility and ease of operations and then they expose that to their customers as well, so it's win-win-win, I think there. >> Yeah, and the keynote this morning, it was SDDC, software-defined data center from VMware was talked about as a self-driving data center and that's ultimately what we see as well in partnership with VMware that a lot of customers understand the VMware tool sets. Extending that to a new platform that's software defined and enabling automation, that it can ultimately one day drive itself, so customers can automate the deployment of applications they're running on, something that can be spun up on AWS very quickly. Applications can be migrated over automatically with tools, managed and then no one responding to an alert that a VM or an application is down, it can autocorrect itself and it really could be automated in the future. We see that and certainly all the tools and capabilities that VMware puts in place that enable that is something that we subscribe, we use it ourselves and we have our customers use it as well. >> I'm curious what your take is, Scott, on the announcements that Andy Jassy made this morning on the stage with Pat Gelsinger. They announced VMware Cloud on AWS a year ago at this same event. There's been a lot of momentum. &They talked about the different M releases now going everywhere. From a partnership perspective, what does that mean to CentralLink and how do you think that will positively impact your business? >> Well, there's two sides of our business. We have a very large, obviously, networking business and we have a hosting and Cloud and data center business, so we see the two of them coming together. I talked about the data center dying and everything moving off; how do you network that all together, but we have a very large retail customer in the, let's say, fast food chicken business, I'll keep it at that level. We started off hosting a lot of their critical applications that run their stores and understand what's the best place to put stores and store operations. We also, from the networking side in acquiring Level three, they had a lot of the networking capabilities. They now want a single platform to run store operations from a network, from a virtual desktop, from an email, from an order fulfillment, supply chain management, all to be contained in a particular region that you can manage it locally without all the data going back. So, the ability to have a software-defined smaller component that can run it that can not only have the data center and the Cloud component as private, to keep the data safe and non-public, but also the network software-defined on one platform together with one provider that can manage the whole thing. Now you're distributing your data out, the network becomes more important, the performance of the network, the resilience of the network becomes more important too. That environment goes down, you don't sell any more chicken. That's the biggest thing that customers are seeing, is converging of those capabilities together and I think there's very few providers out there that can speak both those languages and provide both of those to clients today. >> Taking those benefits all the way out, for what the infrastructure enables from a cost in speed perspective, the Board of Directors at said chicken chain, what are they actually benefitting from? It might be this invisible software, but from a business perspective, how is this going to impact their business? Selling more chicken? >> Yeah, it's basically, they have a strategy to continue to be in more markets and the more markets they do, the time to set up and deploy infrastructure and have that ready, that's the biggest enabler. To have the store front, to have the store ready, then all the infrastructure that supports the store, especially now you have people, they can order chicken on their phones, loyalty, they can place their order ahead of time and pick it up, they don't have to go through drive-through any more, things of that nature. Everything becomes digitized and the I want it now generation that we live in today, that'll accelerate their ability to deliver services to the store and then react to the changes in the market as they happen. Everything is digital now. That's the biggest thing, is growth through stores, growth through being able to meet the demands of the stores as they change going forward, so very dynamic. >> Awesome. Scott, Geoff, thank you so much for joining us on theCUBE. You're now theCUBE alumni. We'll give you some stickers. >> Yeah, stickers. Great thank you. >> We appreciate you guys sharing what's new. >> Thanks for your time as well. It's such really good VMware. >> Thanks. >> Appreciate it. >> For Justin Warren, my co-host, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE from Vmworld Las Vegas 2018. Stick around, we'll be right back. (techno music)