(upbeat music) >> We are back, approaching the finish line here at Supercomputing 22, our last interview of the day, our last interview of the show. And I have to say Dave Nicholson, my co-host, My name is Paul Gillin. I've been attending trade shows for 40 years Dave, I've never been to one like this. The type of people who are here, the type of problems they're solving, what they talk about, the trade shows are typically, they're so speeds and feeds. They're so financial, they're so ROI, they all sound the same after a while. This is truly a different event. Do you get that sense? >> A hundred percent. Now, I've been attending trade shows for 10 years since I was 19, in other words, so I don't have necessarily your depth. No, but seriously, Paul, totally, completely, completely different than any other conference. First of all, there's the absolute allure of looking at the latest and greatest, coolest stuff. I mean, when you have NASA lecturing on things when you have Lawrence Livermore Labs that we're going to be talking to here in a second it's a completely different story. You have all of the academics you have students who are in competition and also interviewing with organizations. It's phenomenal. I've had chills a lot this week. >> And I guess our last two guests sort of represent that cross section. Armando Acosta, director of HPC Solutions, High Performance Solutions at Dell. And Matt Leininger, who is the HPC Strategist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Now, there is perhaps, I don't know you can correct me on this, but perhaps no institution in the world that uses more computing cycles than Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and is always on the leading edge of what's going on in Supercomputing. And so we want to talk to both of you about that. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today. >> Sure, glad to be here. >> For having us. >> Let's start with you, Armando. Well, let's talk about the juxtaposition of the two of you. I would not have thought of LLNL as being a Dell reference account in the past. Tell us about the background of your relationship and what you're providing to the laboratory. >> Yeah, so we're really excited to be working with Lawrence Livermore, working with Matt. But actually this process started about two years ago. So we started looking at essentially what was coming down the pipeline. You know, what were the customer requirements. What did we need in order to make Matt successful. And so the beauty of this project is that we've been talking about this for two years, and now it's finally coming to fruition. And now we're actually delivering systems and delivering racks of systems. But what I really appreciate is Matt coming to us, us working together for two years and really trying to understand what are the requirements, what's the schedule, what do we need to hit in order to make them successful >> At Lawrence Livermore, what drives your computing requirements I guess? You're working on some very, very big problems but a lot of very complex problems. How do you decide what you need to procure to address them? >> Well, that's a difficult challenge. I mean, our mission is a national security mission dealing with making sure that we do our part to provide the high performance computing capabilities to the US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. We do that through the Advanced Simulation computing program. Its goal is to provide that computing power to make sure that the US nuclear rep of the stockpile is safe, secure, and effective. So how we go about doing that? There's a lot of work involved. We have multiple platform lines that we accomplish that goal with. One of them is the advanced technology systems. Those are the ones you've heard about a lot, they're pushing towards exit scale, the GPU technologies incorporated into those. We also have a second line, a platform line, called the Commodity Technology Systems. That's where right now we're partnering with Dell on the latest generation of those. Those systems are a little more conservative, they're right now CPU only driven but they're also intended to be the everyday work horses. So those are the first systems our users get on. It's very easy for them to get their applications up and running. They're the first things they use usually on a day to day basis. They run a lot of small to medium size jobs that you need to do to figure out how to most effectively use what workloads you need to move to the even larger systems to accomplish our mission goals. >> The workhorses. >> Yeah. >> What have you seen here these last few days of the show, what excites you? What are the most interesting things you've seen? >> There's all kinds of things that are interesting. Probably most interesting ones I can't talk about in public, unfortunately, 'cause of NDA agreements, of course. But it's always exciting to be here at Supercomputing. It's always exciting to see the products that we've been working with industry and co-designing with them on for, you know, several years before the public actually sees them. That's always an exciting part of the conference as well specifically with CTS-2, it's exciting. As was mentioned before, I've been working with Dell for nearly two years on this, but the systems first started being delivered this past August. And so we're just taking the initial deliveries of those. We've deployed, you know, roughly about 1600 nodes now but that'll ramp up to over 6,000 nodes over the next three or four months. >> So how does this work intersect with Sandia and Los Alamos? Explain to us the relationship there. >> Right, so those three laboratories are the laboratories under the National Nuclear Security Administration. We partner together on CTS. So the architectures, as you were asking, how do we define these things, it's the labs coming together. Those three laboratories we define what we need for that architecture. We have a joint procurement that is run out of Livermore but then the systems are deployed at all three laboratories. And then they serve the programs that I mentioned for each laboratory as well. >> I've worked in this space for a very long time you know I've worked with agencies where the closest I got to anything they were actually doing was the sort of guest suite outside the secure area. And sometimes there are challenges when you're communicating, it's like you have a partner like Dell who has all of these things to offer, all of these ideas. You have requirements, but maybe you can't share 100% of what you need to do. How do you navigate that? Who makes the decision about what can be revealed in these conversations? You talk about NDA in terms of what's been shared with you, you may be limited in terms of what you can share with vendors. Does that cause inefficiency? >> To some degree. I mean, we do a good job within the NSA of understanding what our applications need and then mapping that to technical requirements that we can talk about with vendors. We also have kind of in between that we've done this for many years. A recent example is of course with the exit scale computing program and some things it's doing creating proxy apps or mini apps that are smaller versions of some of the things that we are important to us. Some application areas are important to us, hydrodynamics, material science, things like that. And so we can collaborate with vendors on those proxy apps to co-design systems and tweak the architectures. In fact, we've done a little bit that with CTS-2, not as much in CTS as maybe in the ATS platforms but that kind of general idea of how we collaborate through these proxy applications is something we've used across platforms. >> Now is Dell one of your co-design partners? >> In CTS-2 absolutely, yep. >> And how, what aspects of CTS-2 are you working on with Dell? >> Well, the architecture itself was the first, you know thing we worked with them on, we had a procurement come out, you know they bid an architecture on that. We had worked with them, you know but previously on our requirements, understanding what our requirements are. But that architecture today is based on the fourth generation Intel Xeon that you've heard a lot about at the conference. We are one of the first customers to get those systems in. All the systems are interconnected together with the Cornell Network's Omni-Path Network that we've used before and are very excited about as well. And we build up from there. The systems get integrated in by the operations teams at the laboratory. They get integrated into our production computing environment. Dell is really responsible, you know for designing these systems and delivering to the laboratories. The laboratories then work with Dell. We have a software stack that we provide on top of that called TOSS, for Tri-Lab Operating System. It's based on Redhead Enterprise Linux. But the goal there is that it allows us, a common user environment, a common simulation environment across not only CTS-2, but maybe older systems we have and even the larger systems that we'll be deploying as well. So from a user perspective they see a common user interface, a common environment across all the different platforms that they use at Livermore and the other laboratories. >> And Armando, what does Dell get out of the co-design arrangement with the lab? >> Well, we get to make sure that they're successful. But the other big thing that we want to do, is typically when you think about Dell and HPC, a lot of people don't make that connection together. And so what we're trying to do is make sure that, you know they know that, hey, whether you're a work group customer at the smallest end or a super computer customer at the highest end, Dell wants to make sure that we have the right setup portfolio to match any needs across this. But what we were really excited about this, this is kind of our, you know big CTS-2 first thing we've done together. And so, you know, hopefully this has been successful. We've made Matt happy and we look forward to the future what we can do with bigger and bigger things. >> So will the labs be okay with Dell coming up with a marketing campaign that said something like, "We can't confirm that alien technology is being reverse engineered." >> Yeah, that would fly. >> I mean that would be right, right? And I have to ask you the question directly and the way you can answer it is by smiling like you're thinking, what a stupid question. Are you reverse engineering alien technology at the labs? >> Yeah, you'd have to suck the PR office. >> Okay, okay. (all laughing) >> Good answer. >> No, but it is fascinating because to a degree it's like you could say, yeah, we're working together but if you really want to dig into it, it's like, "Well I kind of can't tell you exactly how some of this stuff is." Do you consider anything that you do from a technology perspective, not what you're doing with it, but the actual stack, do you try to design proprietary things into the stack or do you say, "No, no, no, we're going to go with standards and then what we do with it is proprietary and secret."? >> Yeah, it's more the latter. >> Is the latter? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're not going to try to reverse engineer the industry? >> No, no. We want the solutions that we develop to enhance the industry to be able to apply to a broader market so that we can, you know, gain from the volume of that market, the lower cost that they would enable, right? If we go off and develop more and more customized solutions that can be extraordinarily expensive. And so we we're really looking to leverage the wider market, but do what we can to influence that, to develop key technologies that we and others need that can enable us in the high forms computing space. >> We were talking with Satish Iyer from Dell earlier about validated designs, Dell's reference designs for for pharma and for manufacturing, in HPC are you seeing that HPC, Armando, and is coming together traditionally and more of an academic research discipline beginning to come together with commercial applications? And are these two markets beginning to blend? >> Yeah, I mean so here's what's happening, is you have this convergence of HPC, AI and data analytics. And so when you have that combination of those three workloads they're applicable across many vertical markets, right? Whether it's financial services, whether it's life science, government and research. But what's interesting, and Matt won't brag about, but a lot of stuff that happens in the DoE labs trickles down to the enterprise space, trickles down to the commercial space because these guys know how to do it at scale, they know how to do it efficiently and they know how to hit the mark. And so a lot of customers say, "Hey we want what CTS-2 does," right? And so it's very interesting. The way I love it is their process the way they do the RFP process. Matt talked about the benchmarks and helping us understand, hey here's kind of the mark you have to hit. And then at the same time, you know if we make them successful then obviously it's better for all of us, right? You know, I want to secure nuclear stock pile so I hope everybody else does as well. >> The software stack you mentioned, I think Tia? >> TOSS. >> TOSS. >> Yeah. >> How did that come about? Why did you feel the need to develop your own software stack? >> It originated back, you know, even 20 years ago when we first started building Linux clusters when that was a crazy idea. Livermore and other laboratories were really the first to start doing that and then push them to larger and larger scales. And it was key to have Linux running on that at the time. And so we had the. >> So 20 years ago you knew you wanted to run on Linux? >> Was 20 years ago, yeah, yeah. And we started doing that but we needed a way to have a version of Linux that we could partner with someone on that would do, you know, the support, you know, just like you get from an EoS vendor, right? Security support and other things. But then layer on top of that, all the HPC stuff you need either to run the system, to set up the system, to support our user base. And that evolved into to TOSS which is the Tri-Lab Operating System. Now it's based on the latest version of Redhead Enterprise Linux, as I mentioned before, with all the other HPC magic, so to speak and all that HPC magic is open source things. It's not stuff, it may be things that we develop but it's nothing closed source. So all that's there we run it across all these different environments as I mentioned before. And it really originated back in the early days of, you know, Beowulf clusters, Linux clusters, as just needing something that we can use to run on multiple systems and start creating that common environment at Livermore and then eventually the other laboratories. >> How is a company like Dell, able to benefit from the open source work that's coming out of the labs? >> Well, when you look at the open source, I mean open source is good for everybody, right? Because if you make a open source tool available then people start essentially using that tool. And so if we can make that open source tool more robust and get more people using it, it gets more enterprise ready. And so with that, you know, we're all about open source we're all about standards and really about raising all boats 'cause that's what open source is all about. >> And with that, we are out of time. This is our 28th interview of SC22 and you're taking us out on a high note. Armando Acosta, director of HPC Solutions at Dell. Matt Leininger, HPC Strategist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. Great discussion. Hopefully it was a good show for you. Fascinating show for us and thanks for being with us today. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you for having us >> Dave it's been a pleasure. >> Absolutely. >> Hope we'll be back next year. >> Can't believe, went by fast. Absolutely at SC23. >> We hope you'll be back next year. This is Paul Gillin. That's a wrap, with Dave Nicholson for theCUBE. See here in next time. (soft upbear music)

value in jobs is probably the most rewarding >>things I've ever been involved >>in And I bring that energy to the queue because the cube is where all the ideas are and where the experts are, where the people are And I think what's most exciting about the cube is that we get to talk to people who are making things happen, entrepreneurs ceo of companies, venture capitalists, people who are really on a day in and day out basis, building great companies and the technology business is just not a lot of real time live tv coverage and and the cube is a non linear tv operation. We do everything that the T. V guys on cable don't do. We do longer interviews. We asked tougher questions. We >>ask sometimes some light questions. We talked about the person and what >>they feel about it's not prompted and scripted. It's a conversation authentic and for shows that have the cube coverage and makes the show buzz that creates excitement. More importantly, it creates great content, great digital assets that can be shared instantaneously to the world. Over 31 million people have viewed the cube and that is the result of great content, great conversations and I'm so proud to be part of a Q with great team. Hi, I'm john barrier, Thanks for watching the cube boy. >>Okay, welcome back everyone cube coverage of AWS amazon web services public sector summit in person here in Washington D. C. I'm john Kerry host of the cube with Sandy carter and Lynn martin Vm ware Vice president of government education and healthcare. Great to see you both cube alumni's although she's been on since 2014 your first time in 2018 18 2018. Great to see you. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having us. So VM ware and 80 of us have a huge partnership. We've covered that announcement when Andy and Pat nelson was the Ceo. Then a lots happened, a lot of growth. A lot of success. Congratulations. Thank you. What's the big news with AWS this year in >>public sector. So we just received our authorization to operate for Fed ramp high. Um and we actually have a lot of joint roadmap planning. You are kicking off our job today with the Department of Defense and I. L five for the defense customers is also in process. So um a lot of fruits of a long time of labor. So very excited, >>awesome. So explain what does the Fed ramp authority to operate mean? What is >>that all about? So I would say in a nutshell, it's really putting a commercial offering through the security protocols to support the federal government needs. Um and there's different layers of that depending on the end user customers. So Fed ramp i across this, across all the civilian and non classified workloads in the federal government. Um probably applicability for state, local government as well with the new state Gramp focus. Um Fed ramp. I will meet or exceed that. So it will be applicable across the other parts of the government as well and all operated, you know, in a controlled environment jointly. So you get the VM ware software stack on top of the platform from A W. S and all the services that is more VM >>ware, faster deployed usage, faster acceleration. >>Yeah, so I would say um today the government operates on VM ware across all of the government, state, local and federal, um some workloads are still on prem many and this will really accelerate that transformation journey to the cloud and be able to move workloads quicker onto the BMC on AWS platform without free architect in your >>application, without giving away any kind of VM World Secret because that's next week. What is the value proposition of VM ware cloud, on AWS? What is the, what is the, what is the main value proposition you guys see in the public >>sector? So I see three and then Sandy chime in their two, I would say, you know, the costs in general to operate In the Cloud vs on prem or significant savings, we've seen savings over 300% on some customers. Um the speed on the application movement I think is a >>huge >>unique benefit on BMC on AWS. So traditionally to move to native cloud, you have to really do a lot of application were to be able to move those workloads where on BMC on AWS to move them pretty fast. And it also leverages the investments that the government agencies have already made in their operational tools and things of that nature. So it's not like a full reinvestment for something new but really leveraging both the skill sets in the data center in the I. T. Shops and the tools and investments you've bought over the past. And then the third area I would say is really getting the agility and flexibility and speed of a cloud experience. >>What's your, what's your reaction to the partnership? >>You know, we were just talking uh in a survey to our customers and 67% of them said that the velocity of the migration really matters to them. And one of the things that we do really well together is migrate very quickly, so we have workloads that we've migrated that have taken you know weeks months uh as opposed to years as they go over, which is really powerful. And then also tomorrow VM ware is with us in a session on data led migration. We were talking about data earlier and VM ware cloud on Aws also helps to migrate over like sequel server, database oracle databases so that we can also leverage that data now on the cloud to make better decisions and >>real time decisions as >>well. It's been really interesting to watch the partnership and watching VM ware transform as well, not only the migrations are in play with the public sector, there's a lot of them, believe me, healthcare, you name every area. It's all, all those old systems are out there. You know, I'm talking about out there. But now with microservices and containers, you've got tansy and you got the whole cloud, native VM ware stack emerging that's going to allow customers to re factor This is a dynamic that is kind of under reported >>Migration is one thing. But I think, I think that the whole Tan Xue portfolio is one of the most interesting things going on in VM ware. And we also have some integration going on on D. M. C on AWS with tan to we don't have that pentagram. Yeah. For the government market, but it's on the road mapping plans and we have other customers And I would say, you know, some of my non federal government customers were able to move workloads in hours, not even days or weeks. There you go, literally back and forth. And very impressive on the BMC on AWS platform. So, um, as we expand things in with the Tan Xue platform is, you know, Sandy talked about this yesterday and our partners summit, Everyone's talking about containers and things like that. VM ware is doing a lot of investment around the cooper Netease plus the application migration work and things of that nature. >>I'd love to get you guys reaction to this comment because I've seen a lot of change. Obviously we're all seeing it. I've actually interviewed a bunch of aWS and VM ware customers and I would call um some of the categories skeptics the old school cloud holding the line. And then when the pandemic hit those skeptics flip over because they see the value. In fact I actually interviewed a skeptic who became an award winner who went on the record and said I love hey w I love the cloud. I was a skeptic because you saw the value the time to value. This is really a key dynamic. I know it's kind of thrown out a lot of digital transformation or I. T. Modernization but the agility and that kind of speed. It becomes the number one thing. What's your reaction to the skeptics converting? And then what happens >>next? Um So I think there's still a lot of folks in I. T. That our tree huggers or I call him several huggers uh um pick your term. And I think that um there is some concern about what their role will be. So I think one of the differences delivering cloud services to your internal constituents is really understand the business value of the applications and what that delivers from a mission perspective back to your client. And that's a shift for data center owners to really start thinking more from the customer mission perspective than or my servers running you know, do you have enough storage capacity blah blah blah. So I think that creates that skepticism and part of that's around what's my role going to be. So in the cloud transformation of a customer, there's all this old people part that becomes really the catalyst and I think the customers that have been very sad and really leverage that and then retool the business value back to the end users around the mission have done the best job. >>I mean we talk about this all the time, it's really hard to get the best debris partners together and then make it all work cloud, it becomes easier than doing it very bespoke or waterfall way >>Yeah, I have to say with the announcement yesterday, we're going to have a lot more partner with partners. So you and I have talked about this a few times where we bring partners together to work with each other. In fact, Lynn is going to go meet with one of those partners right after the interview um that want to really focus in on a couple of particular areas to really drive this and I think, you know, part of the, you know, as your re factoring or migrating VMro over the other big benefit is skills, people have really strong, these fear skills, the sand skills, >>operation >>operation tools Yeah. And so they want to preserve those, I think that's part of the beauty of doing VM ware cloud on Aws is you get to take those skills with you into the new world as well, >>you know, I was going to just ask the next question ai ops or day two operations, a big buzzword Yeah and that is essentially operation mindset, that devoPS DEVOps two is coming. Emily Freeman gave a keynote with our last event we had with with amazon public showcase revolution and devops devoPS 2.0 is coming which is now faster, security is built in the front end, so all these things are happening so now it's coming into the public sector with the GovCloud. So I have to ask you Lynn what are some of the big successes you've had with on the gulf cloudy, just Govcloud. >>So I would say we've had a lot of customers across the state local side especially um that weren't waiting for fed ramp and those customers were able to move like I mentioned this earlier and you guys just touched on it. So I think the benefit and the benefit, one of our best customers is Emmett Right? Absolutely mitt, God bless them. They've been on every cloud journey with VM ware since 2014 we moved in my three years now and talk about a skeptic. So although Mark is very revolutionary and tries new things, he was like oh who knows and literally when we moved those workloads it was minutes and the I. T shop day one there was no transformation work for them, it was literally using all the tools and things in that environment. So the progress of that and the growth of the applications that have been able to move their things. That took 2 to 3 years before we're all done within six months and really being able to expand those business values back out for the services that he delivers to the customers. So I think you'll see quite a bit across state, local federal government. You know, we have U. S. Marshals, thank them very much. They were our sponsor that we've been working with the last few years. We have a defense customer working with us around aisle five. >>Um you know, if we could also thank Coal Fire because Cold Fire is one of our joint partners talking about partner partners and they were played a critical role in helping BM We're cloud on AWS and get the fed ramp high certifications. >>They were R three p. O. We hired them for their exercise expertise with AWS as well as helping the BMR. >>Well the partnership with the war has been a really big success. Remember the naysayers when that was announced? Um it really has worked out well for you guys. Um I do want to ask you one more thing and we don't mind. Um One of the biggest challenges that you see the blockers or challenges from agencies moving to the cloud cover cloud because you know, people are always trying to get those blockers out of the way but it's an organizational culture is a process technology. What's your what's your take on that land. Um >>I think a lot does have to do with the people and the organizational history. I think somewhere you need a leader and a champion that really wants to change for good. I call Pat, used to call a tech for good. I love that. Right to really, you know, get things moving for the customers. I mean one of the things I'm most proud about supporting the government business in general though is really the focus on the mission is unparalleled, you know, in the sectors we support, you say, education or government or healthcare. Right? All three of those sectors, there's never any doubt on what that focuses. So I think the positives of it are like, how do you get into that change around that? And that could be systems, there's less what's VMC ON AWS as we mentioned, because the tools already in the environment so they know how to use it. But I do think there's a transformation on the data center teams and really becoming moving from technology to the business aspects a little bit more around the missions and things of that. >>What's interesting is that it's so, I mean, I actually love this environment even though it's kind of hard on everyone. Education and health care have been disrupted unprecedented ways and it's never gonna change back? Remember healthcare, hip data silos, silos, education don't spend on it. >>That education was the most remarkable part. Unbelievable. I started working in february before school started with one of the large cities everyone can guess and just the way they were able to pivot so fast was amazing and I don't think anybody, I think we did like five years of transformation in six months and it's never going to go back. >>I completely a great yes education. We just did a piece of work with CTS around the world and education is one of the most disrupted as you said health care and then the third one is government and all three of those are public sector. So the three most disruptive sectors or mission areas are in public sector which has created a lot of opportunity for us and our partnership to add value. I mean that's what we're all about right customer obsession working backwards from the customer and making sure that our partnership continues to add value to those customers >>while we love the tech action on the cube. Obviously we'd like to document and pontificate and talk about it. Digital revolution. Every application now is in play globally. Not just for I. T. But for society, public sector more than ever is the hottest area on the planet. >>Absolutely. And I would say that now our customers are looking at E. S. G. Environmental, they want to know what you're doing on sustainability. They want to know what you're doing for society. We just had a bid that came in and they wanted to understand our diversity plan and then open governance. They're looking for that openness. They're not just artificial intelligence but looking at explainable AI as well. So I think that we have a chance to impact environment societies and governance >>and you mentioned space earlier. Another way I talked with closure. I mean I'm an interview today too, but what's happening with space and what you can monitor disasters, understand how to deploy resources to areas that might have challenges, earthquakes or fires or other things. All new things are happening. >>Absolutely. And all that data people like to say, why are you spending money on space? There's so many problems here, but that data that comes from space is going to impact us here on earth. And so all the things that we're doing, all that data could be used with VM ware cloud on AWS as well. >>Well, you watch closely we got some space coverage coming. I got a big scoop. I'm gonna release soon about something behind the dark side of the moon on in terms of space sovereignty coming a lot of action, cybersecurity in space. That's really heavy right now. But >>aren't you glad that VMC cloud on AWS isn't hidden on the dark side of the moon. It's >>right on the congratulations. Thanks for coming on. You guys are doing great. Thanks for >>thanks for sharing. Congratulations. >>Okay, cube coverage here continues. AWS public sector summit in Washington D. C live for two days of coverage be right back. Thank you. Mhm. Mhm mm mm hmm.

>>from >>Around the globe, it's the cube with digital coverage of IBM think 2020 >>one brought to you by IBM. Hello everyone and welcome back to the cubes ongoing virtual coverage of IBM think 2021 this is our second virtual think and we're going to talk about what's on the minds of C. T. O. S with a particular point of view from the EMEA region. I'm pleased to welcome rasheed Parmer, who is an IBM fellow and vice president of technology for Armenia that region. Hello rashid, Good to see you. >>Hey David, great to see you. >>So let me start by by asking talk a little bit about the role of the C. T. O. And why is it necessarily important to focus on the C. T. O. Role versus say some of the other technology practitioner roles? >>Yeah. You know, you know, they as you look at all the range of roles of the got in in the I. T. Department, the CTO is uniquely placed in looking forward how technology and how digitization is gonna make a difference in the business but also at the same time is there as the kind of thought leader for how they're going to really you re imagine the use of technology reimagine automation, reimagining, how digitalization helps them go to market different ways. So the CTO is a unique unique position from idea to impact. And in the past we've kind of lost the C. T. A little bit but they're now re emerging as being the thought leader that's owning and driving digitalization going forward in our big plants. >>Yeah I agree. And it really has a deep understanding of that vision and can apply that vision to business success. So you obviously have a technical observation space and you also have some data so maybe you could share with our audience how you inform yourself and your colleagues and IBM on on what C. T. O. S. Are thinking about and what they're worried about. >>Yeah. So what we've done over the last four years now is gone out and interviewed Cdos and we do a very unstructured interviews. It's not it's not a survey in the form of uh you know, filling these uh these 10 questions and tell us yes or no. It really is a structured interviews. We asked things like what's top of mind for you, what are the decisions you're making? What's holding you back? What decisions do you think you shouldn't have made or you wouldn't have liked to make? And it's that range of a real input from the the interview. So last year we interviewed 100 CTO s um this year we're actually doing a lot more. We're working with the IBM Institute Business Value and we're gonna interview a lot more teachers but but the material we're gonna talk about today is is really from those 100 CTO interviews. >>Yeah. And I think that having done a lot of these myself, when you do those, we call them, you know in depth interviews, our I. D. S. You kind of have a structure and you sort of follow that but you learn so much and that it maybe does inform those more structured interviews that you do down the road. You learn so much, but maybe you could summarize some of the concerns in the region. What's on the minds of Ceos? >>Yeah. And you know, the the real decisions are made based around seven points. Right? So the first one is we all know, we're on a journey to the cloud but it's a hybrid multi cloud. How do I think about the range of capabilities and need to be able to unlock the latent potential of existing investments and the cloud based capabilities of God. So, so the hybrid cloud platform is one of the the first and foundational pieces. The second challenge is the C e O s want to modernize their applications and that modernization is a journey of moving towards microservices. That microservices journey has two parts. One is the business facing view and that's what containers is all about, choosing the right container platform at the same time. They also want to use containers as a way of automation and management and reducing the effort in the infrastructure. So, so that's kind of two parts of the whole container journey. So Microsoft, this has really become the business developer view and containers become the operational view At the same time. They want infused new data, they want to climb the ladder, they want to get the new new insights from that data that plugs into those new workflows to get to those workflows. There's a decision around how do I isolate myself from some of the services of using that? And we created a layer in the decisions around what's called cloud services integration. So cloud services integration is kind of the modern day E S B as we might think about it, but it's a way in which you choose which technology, which a P I is. I'm going to use from where and then ultimately, the CTS are trying to build what are the new, the new workflows, intelligent workflows and they're really worried about how do I get the right level of automation that managing that issue between what becomes creepy and valuable, Right? You know, the some workflows that happen, you think, why the hell did that happen? Right. That doesn't make sense. And and and and it really sort of nerves. The consumer, the user where some which are, wow, that's really cool. I really enjoyed that. To try to get the intelligent workflows right is a big concern. And then on the two big perils of that is how do we manage the system, the operational automation right from having the right data observe ability of all the infrastructure, recognizing they've got a spectrum of things from 30 40 50 year old systems to modern day cloud native systems, how to manage how operationally automate that keep that efficient, effective. And then of course protecting from the perpetrators, right? Business, a lot of people out there wanting to begin to the systems and, and, and and draw all kinds of, you know, a data from their system. So security, privacy and making sure that align with the ethics and privacy of the business. So those are those are the kind of range of issues right from the journey to cloud, through to operational automation, through through intelligent workflows, right into manage and protecting the services. >>It's interesting. Thank you for that. I mean I remember and you will as well some of the post Y two K you know, thrust and part part of the modernization back then was during that they had budget to do that. But a lot of times organizations would make the mistake that they would they're going to migrate off of a system that was working just fine. That was there sort of mental model of of modernization. And it turned out to be disastrous in many cases. And so when I talk to Ceos they talk about maybe, you know, I'd look at it is this this abstraction layer we want to protect what we have that works. Yes. Some stuff is going to go into the public cloud, but this hybrid connection that you talk about and then we want control and the way we're gonna get control is we're gonna use microservices to modernize and use modern A. P. I. S. And so very very sort of different thinking. And of course they want to avoid migration at all costs because it's so expensive and risky. I wonder if you could talk about, are there any patterns in terms of where people get started and the kinds of outcomes that they're working towards that they can measure? >>Yeah, we we kind of lumped the learning from the work into three broad patterns, right? Um one pattern is primarily around survival. They recognize that this journey is very complex. The pandemic has created tremendous challenges. The market dynamics means they've got to try and really be thoughtful in in taking cost out and making sure they survive some of these issues. And so the pattern is really around cost reduction. It may start with a hybrid cloud, it may start with intelligent workflows but it's really about taking costs out of the systems. The second pattern is what is referred to as a simplification pattern and this is about saying but we've got we've got so much complexity because of technical debt because of you know systems that we've half migrated and half done things with. So how do I how do I simplify my I. T. Landscape from applications through infrastructure for data and make it more consistent, manageable and and effective. And then the 3rd 1 is their city is saying look we've got a really pick the time when we super scale something, we've got something which we are unique and effective on and I want to take that and really super scale that very quickly and make that consistent and really maximize value of it so that the pattern is really fall into three categories of driving, driving, cost reduction and survival, simplification and modernisation transformation. And then those that have got something which is unique and special and really super scaring up. >>Yeah. Right, right, doubling down on those things. That unique competitive advantage in the, in the studies that you've done over the years. You use this term ADP architectural decision points and some of them are quite compelling. Maybe you could talk about some of those. Were there some anxieties from the cdos that you uncovered? >>Yeah. You know, the, the NDP s talk about the 70 Gps and it starts from the higher ability crowd through to two intelligent workflows and so on. And the NDP s themselves are really distilling the client's words and the clients way of thinking about how they're going to drive those, those technologies, um and also how they're going to use those techniques to make a difference. But if we went through those interviews, what became apparent is, see us do have some anxieties as you refer to, and those anxieties, they couldn't necessarily put words on them and their anxieties. Like, are we thinking enough about the carbon footprint? Are we are we being thoughtful in how we make sure we're reducing carbon footprint or reducing the environmental impact of the infrastructure? You've got, we've got sprawling infrastructure um ripping out rare metals from the earth. Are we being thoughtful in how we reduce the amount of rare metals we have water consumption right through to is the code that we're producing efficient, secure and and fit for for the future. Are we being ethical in capturing the data for its right use? Um Is the ai systems that we're building? Are they explainable? Are they ethical? Are they free from bias or are we kind of amplifying things that we shouldn't be amplifying? So there was a whole bunch of those call anxieties and what we did along with the architectural decision report. A point after decision report was was identify what we call a set of responsibilities. And and we've built a framework about around responsible computing which is which is a basis for how you think through what your responsibilities are as a as a Ceo are as an I. T. Leader. And we're right in the process of building out that that kind of responsible computing framework. >>You know it's interesting a lot of people may may think about they think about the responsible computing and and and the sustainability and they might think that's a 1 80 from Milton Friedman Economics, which is the job of businesses to make profits. But in fact responsible computing, there's a strong business case around it. It actually can help you reduce costs that can help you attract better employees. Because young people are passionate about this. I wonder if you could talk about how how people can get involved with responsible computing and lean in. >>Yeah, so what we're about to publish it is actually manifesto for responsible computing. So I think everybody wants to get that published. I'm hoping to do that in the next two or three months. We're working with a few clients. So there's actually three clients that have chosen through your client cts from the ones that we interviewed were very keen to collaborate with us in laying out that that manifesto and the opportunity really is from anybody listening. If if you if you find this of great value, please do come and reach out to me more than happy to collaborate. We're looking for more insights on this. We've also had some competitions. So in in in a media we've had a competition with business partners, looking for ideas of how we can really showcase examples or exemplars of being responsible computing provider, whether it's at the level of responsible data center, whether it's about responsible code data, use Responsible systems right through the responsible impact. And obviously a lot of our work around things like your tech for good is tied directly to responsible impact. And of course, if you want to see what we have never been doing are responsible responsibility report, which we've been voluntarily publishing for the last 30 years, provides a tremendous set of insights on how we've done that over the years. And and that's a that's a great way for you to see how we've been doing things and see if there are people in your business. >>Yeah. So there's so there's the, the ADP report is available. You can check it out on on linkedin. Um, go to, go to Russia linked in profile, you'll find it. There's a blog post that talks about the next wave of, of digitization, uh, you know, the learnings that you just talked about. So there's a lot of resources for for people to get involved. I'll give you the last word. >>Yeah. And look, this is this is what I call job big and it's not job done that the whole ADP responsible computing is a digitization journey where we want to balance delivering business value and making a difference to the organization, but at the same time being responsible in making sure that we're thoughtful what's needed for the future and we create impact that really matters. And we can feel proud that we've put a foundation for digitization which will which will serve the businesses for many years to come, >>love it, impact investing in your business and in the future. Russia, thanks so much for coming on the cube. Really appreciate it. >>A pleasure. Thank you. >>Okay, keep it right there for more coverage from IBM think 2021 this is Dave Volonte for the Cube. Yeah, yeah.

Jeffrey Kier with the Qbert Computer History Museum in Mountain View California for the 14th annual association of corporate growth Silicon Valley grow Awards we've been here for a couple years now and it's a big event 300 people coming in to talk about really an ecosystem that helping other companies grow always great to be on the cube [Music] essentially what we are is an organization that's dedicated towards providing networking opportunities educational opportunities programming for c-level executives and other senior level executives at companies to help them develop their career and also grow their businesses tonight it's about tech as a force for good and I'm gonna talk about what I call the four superpowers today mobile unlimited reach cloud unlimited scale ai unlimited intelligence and IOT bridging from the digital to the physical world and how those four superpowers are reinforcing each other today very sophisticated population I mean it's just wonderful living in this seventy some people our biggest thing that we see is just the whole better together message that all of the resources from the strategically line businesses all working together to support the customers technology is evolving at a remarkable speed you know that's being driven largely by the availability of increased processing power less and less expensive faster and faster digital transformation IT transformation security transformation and work force transformation those are the big things for us this year it's great to be able to have a computer that really understands how to generate meaningful realistic text it's our opportunity to improve the quality of lives for every human on the planet as a result of those superpowers and really how it's our responsibility as a tech community to shape those superpowers for good there are issues created operationally day to day that we have to sort of always be on the watch for like you know readiness distance or these technologies it's the two sides of the same point always you can use it for good or you can use it for bad and unfortunately the bads within the news more than the good but there's so many exciting things going on in medicine health care oh yeah agriculture energy that the opportunities are almost endless not just the first world problems those of us here in the Silicon Valley see every day but really open our eyes to what's happening in other parts of the globe the need for water clean water water filtration clean air having access to information education so these are some things that are you know really personally dear to me in the last 50 years we've taken the extreme poverty rate from over 40 percent to less than 10 percent on the planet we've increased the length of life by almost 20 years these are stunning things and largely the result of the technological breakthroughs that we're doing that's the beauty of this right that's all of these things actually create opportunities you just have to stick with it and look at solutions and there's no shortage of really talented creative people to go address these opportunities and it's so fun to be involved in it right now the scale that we're able to now conduct business to be able to develop software to reach customers and truly write to change people's lives there are in many ways the technology halves and the technology have not absolutely and a lot of it is not just about making the product but then taking the product you've made and then implementing it in various use cases that really make a change from about in the world as I say today is the fastest day of tech evolution of your life it's also the slowest day of tech devolution of the rest of your life the rest of your life I'm Jeff Rick you're watching the cube from the a cts-v Awards thanks for watching [Music]