More bottoms up and have more technical early adopters. And generally speaking, they're free to use. They're free to try. They're very commonly community source or open source companies where you have a large technical community that's supporting them. So there's a, there's kind of a new normal now I think in great enterprise software and it starts with great technical founders with great products and great bottoms of emotions. And I think there's no better place to, uh, service those people than in the cloud and uh, in, in your community. >>Well, first of all, congratulations, and by the way, you got a great pedigree and great background, super smart, but Myer of your work and your, and, and your founding, but let's face it. Enterprise is hot because digital transformation is all companies there's no, I mean, consumer is enterprise now, everything is what was once a niche. No, I won't say niche category, but you know, not for the faint of heart, you know, investors, >>You know, it's so funny that you say that enterprise is hot because you, and I feel that way now. <laugh> but remember, like right now there's also a tech and VC conference in Miami <laugh> and it's covering cryptocurrencies and FCS and web three. So I think beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder <laugh> but no, I, I will tell you, >>Ts is one big enterprise, cuz you gotta have imutability you got performance issues. You have, I IOPS issues. >>Well, and, and I think all of us here that are, uh, may maybe students of history and have been involved in open source in the cloud would say that we're, you know, much of what we're doing is, uh, the predecessors of the web web three movement. And many of us I think are contributors to the web three >>Movement. The hype is definitely one web three. Yeah. >>But, >>But you know, >>For sure. Yeah, no, but now you're taking us further east of Miami. So, uh, you know, look, I think, I, I think, um, what is unquestioned with the case now? And maybe it's, it's more obvious the more time you spend in this world is this is the fastest growing part of enterprise software. And if you include cloud infrastructure and cloud infrastructure spend, you know, it is by many measures over, uh, $500 billion in growing, you know, 20 to 30% a year. So it it's a, it's a just incredibly fast, well, >>Let's get, let's get into some of the cultural and the, the shifts that are happening, cuz again, you, you have the luxury of being in enterprise when it was hard, it's getting easier and more cooler. I get it and more relevant <laugh> but there's also the hype of like the web three, for instance, but you know, for, uh, um, um, the CEO snowflake, okay. Has wrote a book and Dave Valenti and I were talking about it and uh, Frank Luman has says, there's no playbooks. We always ask the CEOs, what's your playbook. And he's like, there's no playbook, situational awareness, always Trump's playbooks. So in the enterprise playbook, oh, higher, a direct sales force and SAS kind of crushed that now SAS is being redefined, right. So what is SAS is snowflake assassin or is that a platform? So again, new unit economics are emerging, whole new situation, you got web three. So to me there's a cultural shift, the young entrepreneurs, the, uh, user experience, they look at Facebook and say, ah, you know, they own all my data and you know, we know that that cliche, um, they, you know, the product. So as this next gen, the gen Z and the millennials come in and our customers and the founders, they're looking at things a little bit differently and the tech better. >>Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think we can, we can see a lot of common across all successful startups and the overall adoption of technology. Um, and, and I would tell you, this is all one big giant revolution. I call it the user driven revolution. Right. It's the rise of the user. Yeah. And you might say product like growth is currently the hottest trend in enterprise software. It's actually like growth, right. They're one and the same. So sometimes people think the product, uh, is what is driving growth. >>You just pull the product >>Through. Exactly, exactly. And so that's that I, that I think is really this revolution that you see, and, and it does extend into things like cryptocurrencies and web three and, you know, sort of like the control that is taken back by the user. Um, but you know, many would say that, that the origins of this, but maybe started with open source where users were contributors, you know, contributors were users and looking back decades and seeing how it, how it fast forward to today. I think that's really the trend that we're all writing. It's enabling these end users. And these end users in our world are developers, data engineers, cybersecurity practitioners, right. They're really the, and they're really the, the beneficiaries and the most, you know, kind of valued people in >>This. I wanna come back to the data engineers in a second, but I wanna make a comment and get your reaction to, I have a, I'm a gen Xer technically. So for not a boomer, but I have some boomer friends who are a little bit older than me who have, you know, experienced the sixties. And I have what been saying on the cube for probably about eight years now that we are gonna hit digital hippie revolution, meaning a rebellion against in the sixties was rebellion against the fifties and the man and, you know, summer of love. That was a cultural differentiation from the other one other group, the predecessors. So we're kind of having that digital moment now where it's like, Hey boomers, Hey people, we're not gonna do that anymore. You, we hate how you organize shit. >>Right. But isn't this just technology. I mean, isn't it, isn't it like there used to be the old adage, like, you know, you would never get fired for buying IBM, but now it's like, you obviously probably would get fired if you bought IBM. And I mean, it's just like the, the, I think, I think >>During the mainframe days, those renegades were breaking into Stanford, starting the home group. So what I'm trying to get at is that, do you see the young cultural revolution also, culturally, just, this is my identity NFTs to me speak volumes about my, I wanna associate with NFTs, not single sign on. Well, >>Absolutely. And, and I think like, I think you're hitting on something, which is like this convergence of, of, you know, societal it'll trends with technology trends and how that manifests in our world is yes. I think like there is unquestionably almost a religion yeah. Around the way in which a product is built. Right. And we can use open source, one example of that religion. Some people will say, look, I'll just never try a product in the cloud if it's not open source. Yeah. I think cloud, native's another example of that, right? It's either it's, you know, it either is cloud native or it's not. And I think a lot of people will look at a product and say, look, you know, you were not designed in the cloud era. Therefore I just won't try you. And sometimes, um, like it or not, it's a religious decision, right? Yeah. It's so it's something that people just believe to be true almost without, uh, necessarily caring >>About data. Data drives all decision making. Let me ask you this next question. As a VC. Now you look at pitch, well, you've been a VC for many years, but you also have the founder entrepreneurial mindset, but you can get empathize with the founders. You know, hustle is a big part of the, that first founder check, right? You gotta convince someone to part with their ch their money and the first money in which you do a lot of it's about believing in the person. So faking it till you make it is hard. Now you, the data's there, you either have it cloud native, you either have the adaption or traction. So honesty is a big part of that pitch. You can't fake it. >>Oh, AB absolutely. You know, there used to be this concept of like the persona of an entrepreneur. Right. And the persona of the entrepreneur would be, you know, so somebody who was a great salesperson or somebody who tell a great story, and I still think that that's important, right. It still is a human need for people to believe in narratives and stories. Yeah. But having said that you're right. The proof is in the pudding, right. At some point you click download and you try the product and it does what it says it gonna it's gonna do, or it doesn't, or it either stands up to the load test or it doesn't. And so I, I feel like in the new economy that we live in, really, it's a shift from maybe the storytellers and the creators to, to the builders, right. The people that know how to build great product. And in some ways the people that can build great product yeah. Stand out from the crowd. And they're the ones that can build communities around their products. And, you know, in some ways can, um, you know, kind of own more of the narrative of because their product begins exactly >>The volume you back to the user led growth. >>Exactly. And it's the religion of, I just love your product. Right. And I, I, I, um, Doug song is the founder of du security used to say, Hey, like, you know, the, the really like in today's world of like consumption based software, like the user is only gonna give you 90 seconds to figure out whether or not you're a company that's easy to do business with. Right. And so you can say, and do all the things that you want about how easy you are to work with. But if the product isn't easy to install, if it's not easy to try, if it's not, if, if the it's gotta speak to the, >>Speak to the user, but let me ask a question now that for the people watching, who are maybe entrepreneurial entre, preneurs, um, masterclass here in session. So I have to ask you, do you prefer, um, an entrepreneur come in and say, look at John. Here's where I'm at. Okay. First of all, storytelling's fine with you an extrovert or introvert, have your style, sell the story in a way that's authentic, but do you, what do you prefer to say? Here's where I'm at? Look, I have an idea. Here's my traction. I think here's my MVP prototype. I need help. Or do, do you wanna just see more stats? What's the, what's the preferred way that you like to see entrepreneurs come in and engage? >>There's tons of different styles, man. I think the single most important thing that every founder should know is that we, we don't invest in what things are today. We invest in what we think something will become. Right. And I think that's why we all get up in the morning and try to build something different, right? It's that we see the world a different way. We want it to be a different way. And we wanna work every single moment of the day to try to make that vision a reality. So I think the more that you can show people where you want to be the, of more likely somebody is gonna align with your vision and, and wanna invest in you and wanna be along for the ride. So I, I wholeheartedly believe in showing off what you got today, because eventually we all get down to like, where are we and what are we gonna do together? But, um, no, I, you gotta >>Show the >>Path. I think the single most important thing for any founder and VC relationship is that they have the same vision. Uh, if you have the same vision, you can, you can get through bumps in the road, you can get through short term spills. You can all sorts of things in the middle. The journey can happen. Yeah. But it doesn't matter as much if you share the same long term vision, >>Don't flake out and, and be fashionable with the latest trends because it's over before you can get there. >>Exactly. I think many people that, that do what we do for a living, we'll say, you know, ultimately the future is relatively easy to predict, but it's the timing that's impossible to predict. <laugh> so you, you know, you sort of have to balance the, you know, we, we know that the world is going in this way and therefore we're gonna invest a lot of money to try to make this a reality. Uh, but some times it happens in six months. Sometimes it takes six years. Sometimes it takes 16 years. Uh, >>What's the hottest thing in enterprise that you see the biggest wave that people should pay attention to that you're looking at right now with Bel partners, Tebel dot your site. What's the big wave. What's your big >>Wave. There's three big trends that we invest in. And the they're the only things we do day in, day out one is the explosion and open source software. So I think many people think that all software is unquestionably moving to an open source model in some form or another yeah. Tons of reasons to debate whether or not that is gonna happen, an alwa timeline >>Happening forever. >>But, uh, it is, it is accelerating faster than we've ever seen. So I, I think it's, it's one big, massive wave that we continue to ride. Um, second is the rise of data engineering. Uh, I think data engineering is in and of itself now, a category of software. It's not just that we store data. It's now we move data and we develop applications on data. And, uh, I think data is in and of itself as big of a market as any of the other markets that we invest in. Uh, and finally, it's the gift that keeps on giving. I've spent my entire career in it. We still feel that security is a market that is underinvested. It is, it continues to be the place where people need to continue to invest and spend more money. Yeah. Uh, and those are the three major trends that we run >>And security, you think we all need a dessert do over, right? I mean, do we need you do over in security or is what's the core problem? I, >>I, I keep using this word underinvested because I think it's the right way to think about the problem. I think if you, I think people generally speaking, look at cybersecurity as an add-on. Yeah. But if you think about it, the whole economy is moving online. And so in, in some ways like security is core to protecting the digital economy. And so it's, it shouldn't be an afterthought, right? It should be core to what everyone is doing. And that's why I think relative to the trillions of dollars that are at stake, uh, I believe the market size for cybersecurity is run $150 billion. And it still is a fraction of what we're, >>What we're and national security even boom is booming now. So you get the convergence of national security, geopolitics, internet digital that's >>Right. You mean arguably, right? I mean, arguably again, it's the area of the world that people should be spending more time and more money given what to stake. >>I love your thesis. I gotta, I gotta say, you gotta love your firm. Love. You're doing we're big supporters, your mission. Congratulations on your entrepreneurial venture. And, uh, we'll be, we'll be talking and maybe see a Cuban. Uh, absolutely not. Certainly EU maybe even north Americans in Detroit this year. >>Huge fan of what you guys are doing here. Thank you so much for helping me on the show. >>Guess be VC Johnson here on the cube. Check him out. Founder for founders here on the cube, more coverage from San Francisco, California. After this short break, stay with us. Everyone. Welcome to the cue here. Live in San Francisco. K warn you for AWS summit 2022 we're live we're back with events. Also we're virtual. We got hybrid all kinds of events. This year, of course, summit in New York city is happening this summer. We'll be there with the cube as well. I'm John. Again, John host of the cube. Got a great guest here, Justin Kobe owner, and CEO of innovative solutions. Their booth is right behind us. Justin, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. Thank you for having me. >>So we're just chatting, uh, uh, off camera about some of the work you're doing. You're the owner of and CEO. Yeah. Of innovative. Yeah. So tell us the story. What do you guys do? What's the elevator pitch. >>Yeah. <laugh> so the elevator pitch is we are, uh, a hundred percent focused on small to mid-size businesses that are moving to the cloud, or have already moved to the cloud and really trying to understand how to best control security, compliance, all the good stuff that comes along with it. Um, exclusively focused on AWS and, um, you know, about 110 people, uh, based in Rochester, New York, that's where our headquarters is, but now we have offices down in Austin, Texas, up in Toronto, uh, Canada, as well as Chicago. Um, and obviously in New York, uh, you know, the business was never like this, uh, five years ago, um, founded in 1989, made the decision in 2018 to pivot and go all in on the cloud. And, uh, I've been a part of the company for about 18 years, bought the company about five years ago. And it's been a great ride. >>It's interesting. The manages services are interesting with cloud cause a lot of the heavy liftings done by a of us. So we had Matt on your team on earlier talking about some of the edge stuff. Yeah. But you guys are a managed cloud service. You got cloud advisory, you know, the classic service that's needed, but the demands coming from cloud migrations and application modernization, but obviously data is a huge part of it. Huge. How is this factoring into what you guys do and your growth cuz you guys are the number one partner on the SMB side for edge. Yeah. For AWS, you got results coming in. Where's the, where's the forcing function. What's the pressure point. What's the demand like? >>Yeah. It's a great question. Every CEO I talk to, that's a small mids to size business. They're all trying to understand how to leverage technology better to help either drive a revenue target for their own business, uh, help with customer service as so much has gone remote now. And we're all having problems or troubles or issues trying to hire talent. And um, you know, tech is really at the, at the forefront and the center of that. So most customers are coming to us and they're of like, listen, we gotta move to the cloud or we move some things to the cloud and we want to do that better. And um, there's this big misnomer that when you move to the cloud, you gotta automatically modernize. Yeah. And what we try to help as many customers understand as possible is lifting and shifting, moving the stuff that you maybe currently have OnPrem and a data center to the cloud first is a first step. And then so, uh, progressively working through a modernization strategy is always the better approach. And so we spend a lot of time with small to mid-size businesses who don't have the technology talent on staff to be able to do >>That. Yeah. And they want to get set up. But the, the dynamic of like latency is huge. We're seeing that edge product is a big part of it. This is not a one-off happening around everywhere. It is not it's manufacturing, it's the physical plant or location >>Literally. >>And so, and you're seeing more IOT devices. What's that like right now from a challenge and problem statement standpoint, are the customers, not staff, is the it staff kind of old school? Is it new skills? What's the core problem. And you guys solve >>In the SMB space. The core issue nine outta 10 times is people get enamored with the latest and greatest. And the reality is not everything that's cloud based. Not all cloud services are the latest and greatest. Some things have been around for quite some time and our hardened solutions. And so, um, what we try to do with, to technology staff that has traditional on-prem, uh, let's just say skill sets and they're trying to move to a cloud-based workload is we try to help those customers through education and through some practical, let's just call it use case. Um, whether that's a proof of concept that we're doing or whether that's, we're gonna migrate a small workload over, we try to give them the confidence to be able to not, not necessarily go it alone, but, but to, to, to have the, uh, the Gusto and to really have the, um, the, the opportunity to, to do that in a wise way. Um, and what I find is that most CEOs that I talk to yeah. Feel like, listen, at the end of the day, I'm gonna be spending money in one place or another, whether that's on primer in the cloud, I just want know that I'm doing that way. That helps me grow as quickly as possible status quo. I think every, every business owner knows that COVID taught us anything that status quo is, uh, is, is no. No. Good. >>How about factoring in the, the agility and speed equation? Does that come up a lot? It >>Does. I think, um, I think there's also this idea that if, uh, if we do a deep dive analysis and we really take a surgical approach to things, um, we're gonna be better off. And the reality is the faster you move with anything cloud based, the better you are. And so there's this assumption that we gotta get it right the first time. Yeah. In the cloud, if you start down your journey in one way and you realize midway that it's not the right, let's just say the right place to go. It's not like buying a piece of iron that you put in the closet and now you own it in the cloud. You can turn those services on and off. It's a, gives you a much higher density for making decisions and failing >>Forward. Well actually shutting down the abandoning, the projects that early, not worrying about it, you got it mean most people don't abandon stuff cuz they're like, oh, I own it. >>Exactly. >>And they get, they get used to it. Like, and then they wait too long. >>That's exactly. >>Yeah. Frog and boiling water, as we used to say, oh, it's a great analogy. So I mean, this, this is a dynamic. That's interesting. I wanna get more thoughts on it because like I'm a, if I'm a CEO of a company, like, okay, I gotta make my number. Yeah. I gotta keep my people motivated. Yeah. And I gotta move faster. So this is where you guys come in. I get the whole thing. And by the way, great service, um, professional services in the cloud right now are so hot because so hot, you can build it and then have option optionality. You got path decisions, you got new services to take advantage of. It's almost too much for customers. It is. I mean, everyone I talked to at reinvent, that's a customer. Well, how many announcements did Andy jazzy announcer Adam? You know, the 5,000 announcement or whatever. They did huge amounts. Right. Keeping track of it all. Oh, is huge. So what's the, what's the, um, the mission of, of your company. How does, how do you talk to that alignment? Yeah. Not just processes. I can get that like values as companies, cuz they're betting on you and your people. >>They are, they are >>Values. >>Our mission is, is very simple. We want to help every small to midsize business leverage the power of the cloud. Here's the reality. We believe wholeheartedly. This is our vision that every company is going to become a technology company. So we go to market with this idea that every customer's trying to leverage the power of the cloud in some way, shape or form, whether they know it or don't know it. And number two, they're gonna become a 10 a company in the process of that because everything is so tech-centric. And so when you talk about speed and agility, when you talk about the, the endless options and the endless permutations of solutions that a customer can buy in the cloud, how are you gonna ask a team of one or two people in your it department to make all those decisions going it alone or trying to learn it as you go, it only gets you so far working with a partner. >>I'll just give you some perspective. We work with about a thousand small to midsize business customers. More than 50% of those customers are on our managed services. Meaning they know that we have their back and we're the safety net. So when a customer is saying, right, I'm gonna spend a couple thousand and dollars a month in the cloud. They know that that bill, isn't gonna jump to $10,000 a month going in alone. Who's there to help protect that. Number two, if you have a security posture and let's just say your high profile and you're gonna potentially be more vulnerable to security attacks. If you have a partner that's offering you some managed services. Now you, again, you've got that backstop and you've got those services and tooling. We, we offer, um, seven different products, uh, that are part of our managed services that give the customer the tooling, that for them to go out and buy on their own for a customer to go out today and go buy a new Relic solution on their own. It, it would cost 'em a four, >>The training alone would be insane. A risk factor. I mean the cost. Yes, absolutely opportunity cost is huge, >>Huge, absolutely enormous training and development. Something. I think that is often, you know, it's often overlooked technologists. Typically they want to get their skills up. They, they love to get the, the stickers and the badges and the pins, um, at innovative in 2018. When, uh, when we, he made the decision to go all in on the club, I said to the organization, you know, we have this idea that we're gonna pivot and be aligned with AWS in such a way that it's gonna really require us all to get certified. My executive assistant at the time looks at me. She said, even me, I said, yeah, even you, why can't you get certified? Yeah. And so we made, uh, a conscious, it wasn't requirement. It still isn't today to make sure everybody in the company has the opportunity to become certified. Even the people that are answering the phones at the front >>Desk and she could be running the Kubernetes clusters. I >>Love it. It's >>Amazing. >>But I'll tell you what, when that customer calls and they have a real Kubernetes issue, she'll be able to assist and get >>The right people with. And that's a cultural factor that you guys have. So, so again, this is back to my whole point out SMBs and businesses in general, small and large it staffs are turning over the gen Z and millennials are in the workforce. They were provisioning top of rack switches. Right. First of all. And so if you're a business, there's also the, I call the buildout, um, uh, return factor, ROI piece. At what point in time as an owner, SMB, do I get to ROI? Yeah. I gotta hire a person to manage it. That person's gonna have five zillion job offers. Yep. Uh, maybe who knows? Right. I got cyber security issues. Where am I gonna find a cyber person? Yeah. A data compliance. I need a data scientist and a compliance person. Right. Maybe one in the same. Right. Good luck. Trying to find a data scientist. Who's also a compliance person. Yep. And the list goes on. I can just continue. Absolutely. I need an SRE to manage the, the, uh, the sock report and we can pen test. Right. >>Right. >>These are, these are >>Like critical issues. >>This is just like, these are the table stakes. >>Yeah. And, and every, every business owner's thinking about this, >>That's, that's what, at least a million in loading, if not three or more Just to get that app going. Yeah. Then it's like, where's the app. Yeah. So there's no cloud migration. There's no modernization on the app side. No. And they remind AI and ML. >>That's right. That's right. So to try to go it alone, to me, it's hard. It it's incredibly difficult. And the other thing is, is there's not a lot of partners, so the partner, >>No one's raising their hand boss. I'll do all that exactly. In the it department. >>Exactly. >>So like, can we just call up, uh, you know, our old vendor that's >>Right. <laugh> right. Our old vendor. I like it, >>But that's so true. I mean, when I think about how, if I was a business owner starting a business today and I had to build my team, um, and the amount of investment that it would take to get those people skilled up and then the risk factor of those people now having the skills and being so much more in demand and being recruited away, that's a real, that's a real issue. And so how you build your culture around that is, is very important. It's something that we talk about every, with every one of our small to mid-size >>Businesses. So just, I want get, I want to get your story as CEO. Okay. Take us through your journey. You said you bought the company and your progression to, to being the owner and CEO of innovative yeah. Award winning guys doing great. Uh, great bet on a good call. Yeah. Things are good. Tell your story. What's your journey? >>It's real simple. I was, uh, I was a sophomore at the Rochester Institute of technology in 2003. And, uh, I knew that I, I was going to school for it and I, I knew I wanted to be in tech. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't wanna code or configure routers and switches. So I had this great opportunity with the local it company that was doing managed services. We didn't call it at that time innovative solutions to come in and, uh, jump on the phone and dial for dollars. I was gonna cold call and introduced other, uh, small to midsize businesses locally in Rochester, New York go to Western New York, um, who innovative was now. We were 19 people at the time. Yeah. I came in, I did an internship for six months and I loved it. I learned more in those six months than I probably did in my first couple of years at, uh, at RT long story short. >>Um, for about seven years, I worked, uh, to really help develop, uh, sales process and methodology for the business so that we could grow and scale. And we grew to about 30 people. And, um, I went to the owners at the time in 2000 and I was like, Hey, I'm growing the value of this business. And who knows where you guys are gonna be another five years? What do you think about making me an owner? And they were like, listen, you got long ways before you're gonna be an owner. But if you stick it out in your patient, we'll, um, we'll work through a succession plan with you. And I said, okay, there were four other individuals at the time that were gonna also buy the business with me. >>And they were the owners, no outside capital, >>None zero, well, 2014 comes around. And, uh, the other folks that were gonna buy into the business with me that were also working at innovative for different reasons. They all decided that it wasn't for them. One started a family. The other didn't wanna put capital in. Didn't wanna write a check. Um, the other had a real big problem with having to write a check. If we couldn't make payroll, I'm like, well, that's kind of like, if we're own, we're gonna have to like cover that stuff. <laugh> so >>It's called the pucker factor. >>Exactly. So, uh, I sat down with the CEO in early 2015 and, uh, we made the decision that I was gonna buy the three partners out, um, go through an earn out process, uh, coupled with, uh, an interesting financial strategy that wouldn't strap the BI cuz they cared very much. The company still had the opportunity to keep going. So in 2016 I bought the business, um, became the sole owner. And, and at that point we, um, we really focused hard on what do we want this company to be? We had built this company to this point. Yeah. And, uh, and by 2018 we knew that pivoting all going all in on the cloud was important for us. And we haven't looked back. >>And at that time, the proof points were coming clearer and clearer 2012 through 15 was the early adopters, the builders, the startups and early enterprises. Yes. The capital ones of the world. Exactly the, uh, and those kinds of big enterprises. The GA I don't wanna say gamblers, but ones that were very savvy. The innovators, the FinTech folks. Yep. The hardcore glass eating enterprises >>Agreed, agreed to find a small to midsize business to migrate completely to the cloud is as infrastructure was considered, that just didn't happen as often. Um, what we were seeing where the, a lot of our small to midsize business customers, they wanted to leverage cloud based backup, or they wanted to leverage a cloud for disaster recovery because it lent itself. Well, early days, our most common cloud customer though, was the customer that wanted to move messaging and collaboration. The, the Microsoft suite to the cloud. And a lot of 'em dipped their toe in the water. But by 2017 we knew infrastructure was around the corner. Yeah. And so, uh, we only had two customers on AWS at the time. Um, and we, uh, we, we made the decision to go all in >>Justin. Great to have you on the cube. Thank you. Let's wrap up. Uh, tell me the hottest product that you have. Is it migrations? Is the app modernization? Is it data? What's the hot product and then put a plugin for the company. Awesome. >>So, uh, there's no question. Every customer is looking migrate workloads and try to figure out how to modernize for the future. We have very interesting, sophisticated yet elegant funding solutions to help customers with the cash flow, uh, constraints that come along with those migrations. So any SMB that's thinking about migrating into the cloud, they should be talking innovative solutions. We know how to do it in a way that allows those customer is not to be cash strapped and gives them an opportunity to move forward in a controlled, contained way so they can modernize. So >>Like insurance, basically for them not insurance class in the classic sense, but you help them out on the, on the cash exposure. >>Absolutely. We are known for that and we're known for being creative with those customers and being empathetic to where they are in their journey. >>And that's the cloud upside is all about doubling down on the variable win that's right. Seeing the value and ING down on it. Absolutely not praying for it. Yeah. <laugh> all right, Justin. Thanks for coming on. You really appreciate >>It. Thank you very much for having me. >>Okay. This is the cube coverage here live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching. We're back with more great coverage for two days after this short break >>Live on the floor in San Francisco for Aus summit. I'm John for host of the cube here for the next two days, getting all the actual back in person we're at AWS reinvent a few months ago. Now we're back events are coming back and we're happy to be here with the cube. Bring all the action. Also virtual. We have a hybrid cube, check out the cube.net, Silicon angle.com for all the coverage. After the event. We've got a great guest ticking off here. Matthew Park, director of solutions, architecture with innovation solutions. The booth is right here. Matthew, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here. >>So we're back in person. You're from Tennessee. We were chatting before you came on camera. Um, it's great to be back through events. It's >>Amazing. This is the first, uh, summit I've been to, to in what two, three >>Years. That's awesome. We'll be at the, uh, a AWS summit in New York as well. A lot of developers and the big story this year is as developers look at cloud going distributed computing, you got on premises, you got public cloud, you got the edge. Essentially the cloud operations is running everything devs sec ops, everyone kind of sees that you got containers, you got Benet, he's got cloud native. So the, the game is pretty much laid out. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and the edge is with the actions you guys are number one, premier partner at SMB for edge. >>That's >>Right. Tell us about what you guys doing at innovative and, uh, what you do. >>That's right. Uh, so I'm the director of solutions architecture. Uh, me and my team are responsible for building out the solutions. The at our around, especially the edge public cloud for us edge is anything outside of an AWS availability zone. Uh, we are deploying that in countries that don't have AWS infrastructure in region. They don't have it. Uh, give >>An example, >>Uh, example would be Panama. We have a customer there that, uh, needs to deploy some financial tech data and compute is legally required to be in Panama, but they love AWS and they want to deploy AWS services in region. Uh, so they've taken E EKS anywhere. We've put storage gateway and, uh, snowball, uh, in region inside the country and they're running or FinTech on top of AWS services inside Panama. >>You know, what's interesting, Matthew is that we've been covering Aw since 2013 with the cube about their events. And we watched the progression and jazzy was, uh, was in charge and became the CEO. Now Adam slaps in charge, but the edge has always been that thing they've been trying to avoid. I don't wanna say trying to avoid, of course, Amazon would listens to the customer. They work backwards from the customer. We all know that. Uh, but the real issue was they were they're bread and butters EC two and S three. And then now they got tons of services and the cloud is obviously successful and seeing that, but the edge brings up a whole nother level. >>It does >>Computing. >>It >>Does. That's not centralized in the public cloud now they got regions. So what is the issue with the edge what's driving? The behavior. Outpost came out as a reaction to competitive threats and also customer momentum around OT, uh, operational technologies. And it merging. We see with the data at the edge, you got five GM having. So it's pretty obvious, but there was a slow transition. What was the driver for the edge? What's the driver now for edge action for AWS >>Data in is the driver for the edge. Data has gravity, right? And it's pulling compute back to where the customer's generating that data and that's happening over and over again. You said it best outpost was a reaction to a competitive situation. Whereas today we have over 15 AWS edge services and those are all reactions to things that customers need inside their data centers on location or in the field like with media companies. >>Outpost is interesting. We always use the riff on the cube, uh, cause it's basically Amazon in a box, pushed in the data center, running native, all this stuff, but now cloud native operations are kind of becoming standard. You're starting to see some standard. Deepak syncs group is doing some amazing work with opensource Raul's team on the AI side, obviously, uh, you got SW who's giving the keynote tomorrow. You got the big AI machine learning big part of that edge. Now you can say, okay, outpost, is it relevant today? In other words, did outpost do its job? Cause EKS anywhere seems to be getting a lot of momentum. You see local zones, the regions are kicking ass for Amazon. This edge piece is evolving. What's your take on EKS anywhere versus say outpost? >>Yeah, I think outpost did its job. It made customers that were looking at outpost really consider, do I wanna invest in this hardware? Do I, do I wanna have, um, this outpost in my datas center, do I want to manage this over the long term? A lot of those customers just transitioned to the public cloud. They went into AWS proper. Some of those customers stayed on prem because they did have use cases that were, uh, not a good fit for outpost. They weren't a good fit. Uh, in the customer's mind for the public AWS cloud inside an availability zone now happening is as AWS is pushing these services out and saying, we're gonna meet you where you are with 5g. We're gonna meet you where you are with wavelength. We're gonna meet you where you are with EKS anywhere. Uh, I think it has really reduced the amount of times that we have conversations about outposts and it's really increased. We can deploy fast. We don't have to spin up outpost hardware can go deploy EKS anywhere in your VMware environment. And it's increasing the speed of adoption >>For sure. Right? So you guys are making a lot of good business decisions around managed cloud service. That's right. Innovative. Does that get the cloud advisory, the classic professional services for the specific edge piece and, and doing that outside of the availability zones and regions for AWS, um, customers in these new areas that you're helping out are they want cloud, like they want to have modernization a modern applications. Obviously they got data machine learning and AI, all part of that. What's the main product or, or, or gap that you're filling for AWS, uh, outside of their availability zones or their regions that you guys are delivering. What's the key is that they don't have a footprint. Is it that it's not big enough for them? What's the real gap. What's why, why are you so successful? >>So what customers want when they look towards the cloud is they want to focus on what's making them money as a business. They wanna focus on their applications. They wanna focus on their customers. So they look towards AWS cloud and a AWS. You take the infrastructure, you take, uh, some of the higher layers and we'll focus on our revenue generating business, but there's a gap there between infrastructure and revenue generating business that innovative slides into, uh, we help manage the AWS environment. Uh, we help build out these things in local data centers for 32 plus year old company. We have traditional on-premises people that know about deploying hardware that know about deploying VMware to host EKS anywhere. But we also have most of our company totally focused on the AWS cloud. So we're that gap in helping deploy these AWS services, manage them over the long term. So our customers can go to just primarily and totally focusing on their revenue generating business. So >>Basically you guys are basically building AWS edges, >>Correct? >>For correct companies, correct? Mainly because the, the needs are there, you got data, you got certain products, whether it's, you know, low latency type requirements, right. And then they still work with the regions, right. It's all tied together, right. Is that how it >>Works? Right. And, and our customers, even the ones in the edge, they also want us to build out the AWS environment inside the availability zone, because we're always gonna have a failback scenario. If we're gonna deploy fin in the Caribbean, we're gonna talk about hurricanes. And we're gonna talk about failing back into the AWS availability zones. So innovative is filling that gap across the board, whether it be inside the AWS cloud or on the AWS edge. >>All right. So I gotta ask you on the, since you're at the edge in these areas, I won't say underserved, but developing areas where now have data and you have applications that are tapping into that, that requirement. It makes total sense. We're seeing that across the board. So it's not like it's a, it's an outlier it's actually growing. Yeah. There's also the crypto angle. You got the blockchain. Are you seeing any traction at the edge with blockchain? Because a lot of people are looking at the web three in these areas like Panama, you mentioned FinTech. And in, in the islands there a lot of, lot of, lot of web three happening. What's your, what your view on the web three world right now, relative >>To we, we have some customers actually deploying crypto, especially, um, especially in the Caribbean. I keep bringing the Caribbean up, but it's, it's top of my mind right now we have customers that are deploying crypto. A lot of, uh, countries are choosing crypto to underlie parts of their central banks. Yeah. Um, so it's, it's up and coming. Uh, I, I have some, you know, personal views that, that crypto is still searching for a use case. Yeah. And, uh, I think it's searching a lot and, and we're there to help customers search for that use case. Uh, but, but crypto, as a, as a, uh, technology, um, lives really well on the AWS edge. Yeah. Uh, and, and we're having more and more people talk to us about that. Yeah. And ask for assistance in the infrastructure, because they're developing new cryptocurrencies every day. Yeah. It's not like they're deploying Ethereum or anything specific. They're actually developing new currencies and, and putting them out there on >>It's interesting. I mean, first of all, we've been doing crypto for many, many years. We have our own little, um, you know, project going on. But if you look talk to all the crypto people that say, look, we do a smart contract, we use the blockchain. It's kind of over a lot of overhead and it's not really their technical already, but it's a cultural shift, but there's underserved use cases around use of money, but they're all using the blockchain just for like smart contracts, for instance, or certain transactions. And they go to Amazon for the database. Yeah. <laugh> they all don't tell anyone we're using a centralized service. Well, what happened to decentralized? >>Yeah. And that's, and that's the conversation performance issue. Yeah. And, and it's a cost issue. Yeah. And it's a development issue. Um, so I think more and more as, as some of these, uh, currencies maybe come up, some of the smart contracts get into, uh, they find their use cases. I think we'll start talking about how does that really live on, on AWS and, and what does it look like to build decentralized applications, but with AWS hardware and services. >>Right. So take me through, uh, a use case of a customer Matthew around the edge. Okay. So I'm a customer, pretend I'm a customer, Hey, you know, I'm, we're in an underserved area. I want to modernize my business. And I got my developers that are totally peaked up on cloud, but we've identified that it's just a lot of overhead latency issues. I need to have a local edge and serve my a, I also want all the benefit of the cloud. So I want the modern, and I wanna migrate to the cloud for all those cloud benefits and the goodness of the cloud. What's the answer. >>Yeah. Uh, big thing is, uh, industrial manufacturing, right? That's, that's one of the best use cases, uh, inside industrial manufacturing, we can pull in many of the AWS edge services we can bring in, uh, private 5g, uh, so that all the, uh, equipment that, that manufacturing plant can be hooked up, they don't have to pay huge overheads to deploy 5g it's, uh, better than wifi for the industrial space. Um, when we take computing down to that industrial area, uh, because we wanna do pre-procesing on the data. Yeah. We want to gather some analytics. We deploy that with a regular commercially available hardware running VMware, and we deploy EKS anywhere on that. Inside of that manufacturing plant, we can do pre-procesing on things coming out of the robotics, depending on what we're manufacturing. Right. And then we can take those refined analytics and for very low cost with maybe a little bit longer latency transmit those back, um, to the AWS availability zone, the, the standard >>For data, data lake, or whatever, >>To the data lake. Yeah. Data lake house, whatever it might be. Um, and we can do additional data science on that once it gets to the AWS cloud. Uh, but a lot of that, uh, just in time business decisions, just time manufacturing decisions can all take place on an AWS service or services inside that manufacturing plant. And that's, that's one of the best use cases that we're >>Seeing. And I think, I mean, we've been seeing this on the queue for many, many years, moving data around is very expensive. Yeah. But also compute going to the data that saves that cost yeah. On the data transfer also on the benefits of the latency. So I have to ask you, by the way, that's standard best practice now for the folks watching don't move the data unless you have to. Um, but those new things are developing. So I wanna ask you what new patterns are you seeing emerging once this new architecture's in place? Love that idea, localize everything right at the edge, manufacturing, industrial, whatever, the use case, retail, whatever it is. Right. But now what does that change in the, in the core cloud? There's a, there's a system element here. Yeah. What's the new pattern. There's >>Actually an organizational element as well, because once you have to start making the decision, do I put this compute at the point of use or do I put this compute in the cloud? Uh, now you start thinking about where business decisions should be taking place. Uh, so not only are you changing your architecture, you're actually changing your organization because you're thinking, you're thinking about a dichotomy you didn't have before. Uh, so now you say, okay, this can take place here. Uh, and maybe, maybe this decision can wait. Right. And then how do I visualize that? By >>The way, it could be a bot tube doing the work for management. Yeah. <laugh> exactly. You got observability going, right. But you gotta change the database architecture on the back. So there's new things developing. You've got more benefit. There >>Are, there are, and we have more and more people that, that want to talk less about databases and want to talk about data lakes because of this. They want to talk more about customers are starting to talk about throwing away data. Uh, you know, for the past maybe decade. Yeah. It's been store everything. And one day we will have a data science team that we hire in our organization to do analytics on this decade of data. And well, >>I mean, that's, that's a great point. We don't have time to drill into, maybe we do another session this, but the one pattern we're seeing come of the past year is that throwing away data's bad. Even data lakes that so-called turn into data swamps, actually, it's not the case. You look at data, brick, snowflake, and other successes out there. And even time series data, which may seem irrelevant efforts over actually matters when people start retrain their machine learning algorithms. Yep. So as data becomes co as we call it in our last showcase, we did a whole whole an event on this. The data's good in real time and in the lake. Yeah. Because the iteration of the data feeds the machine learning training. Things are getting better with the old data. So it's not throw away. It's not just business benefits. Yeah. There's all kinds of new scale. There >>Are. And, and we have, uh, many customers that are running petabyte level. Um, they're, they're essentially data factories on, on, on premises, right? They're, they're creating so much data and they're starting to say, okay, we could analyze this, uh, in the cloud, we could transition it. We could move petabytes of data to AWS cloud, or we can run, uh, computational workloads on premises. We can really do some analytics on this data transition, uh, those high level and sort of raw analytics back to AWS run 'em through machine learning. Um, and we don't have to transition 10, 12 petabytes of data into AWS. >>So I gotta end the segment on a, on a, kind of a, um, fun, I was told to ask you about your personal background on premise architect, Aus cloud, and skydiving instructor. How does that all work together? What tell, what does this mean? >>Yeah. Uh, I, >>You jumped out a plane and got a job. You got a customer to jump >>Out kind of. So I was, you jumped out. I was teaching Scott eing, uh, before I, before I started in the cloud space, this was 13, 14 years ago. I was a, I still am a Scott I instructor. Uh, I was teaching Scott eing and I heard out of the corner of my ear, uh, a guy that owned an MSP that was lamenting about, um, you know, storing data and how his customers are working. And he can't find enough people to operate all these workloads. So I walked over and said, Hey, this is, this is what I went to school for. Like, I'd love to, you know, I was living in a tent in the woods, teaching skydiving. I was like, I'd love to not live in a tent in the woods. So, uh, I started in the first day there, we had a, and, uh, EC two had just come out <laugh> um, and, uh, like, >>This is amazing. >>Yeah. And so we had this discussion, we should start moving customers here. And, uh, and that totally revolutionized that business, um, that, that led to, uh, that that guy actually still owns a skydiving airport. But, um, but through all of that, and through being in on premises, migrated me and myself, my career into the cloud, and now it feels like, uh, almost, almost looking back and saying, now let's take what we learned in the cloud and, and apply those lessons and those services to premises. >>So it's such a great story. You know, I was gonna, you know, you know, the, the, the, the whole, you know, growth mindset pack your own parachute, you know, uh, exactly. You know, the cloud in the early days was pretty much will the shoot open. Yeah. It was pretty much, you had to roll your own cloud at that time. And so, you know, you, you jump on a plane, you gotta make sure that parachute is gonna open. >>And so was Kubernetes by the way, 2015 or so when, uh, when that was coming out, it was, I mean, it was, it was still, and I, maybe it does still feel like that to some people, right. Yeah. But, uh, it was, it was the same kind of feeling that we had in the early days of AWS, the same feeling we have when we >>It's much now with you guys, it's more like a tandem jump. Yeah. You know, but, but it's a lot of, lot of this cutting stuff like jumping out of an airplane. Yeah. You guys, the right equipment, you gotta do the right things. Exactly. >>Right. >>Matthew, thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate it. Absolutely great conversation. Thanks for having me. Okay. The cubes here, lot in San Francisco for AWS summit, I'm John for your host of the cube. Uh, we'll be at a summit in New York coming up in the summer as well. Look up for that. Look at this calendar for all the cube, actually@thecube.net. We'll right back with our next segment after this break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone to San Francisco live coverage here, we're at the cube, a summit 2022. We're back in person. I'm John furry host of the cube. We'll be at the, a us summit in New York city this summer, check us out then. But right now, two days in San Francisco getting all coverage, what's going on in the cloud, we got a cube alumni and friend of the cube, my dos car CEO, investor, a Sierra, and also an investor and a bunch of startups, angel investor. Gonna do great to see you. Thanks for coming on the cube. Good to see you. Good to see you, Pam. Cool. How are you? Good. >>How are you? >>So congratulations on all your investments. Uh, you've made a lot of great successes, uh, over the past couple years, uh, and your company raising, uh, some good cash as Sarah so give us the update. How much cash have you guys raised? What's the status of the company product what's going on? First >>Of all, thank you for having me. We're back to be business with you never while after. Great to see you. Um, so is a company started around four years back. I invested with a few of the investors and now I'm the CEO there. Um, we have raised close to a hundred million there. Uh, the investors are people like nor west Menlo, true ventures, coast, lo ventures, Ram Shera, and all those people, all known guys that Antibe chime Paul Mayard web. So a whole bunch of operating people and, uh, Silicon valley vs are involved. >>And has it gone? >>It's going well. We are doing really well. We are going almost 300% year over year. Uh, for last three years, the space ISR is going after is what I call the applying AI for customer service. It operations, it help desk the same place I used to work at ServiceNow. We are partners with ServiceNow to take, how can we argument for employees and customers, Salesforce, and ServiceNow to take it to the next stage? Well, >>I love having you on the cube, Dave and I, and Dave Valenti as well loves having you on too, because you not only bring the entrepreneurial CEO experience, you're an investor. You're like a, you're like a guest analyst. <laugh>, >>You know, >>You >>Get, the comment is fun to talk to you though. >>You get the commentary, you, your, your finger on the pulse. Um, so I gotta ask you obviously, AI and machine learning, machine learning AI, or you want to phrase it. Isn't every application. Now, AI first, uh, you're seeing a lot of that going on. You're starting to see companies build the modern applications at the top of the stack. So the cloud scale has hit. We're seeing cloud out scale. You predicted that we talked about in the cube many times. Now you have that past layer with a lot more services and cloud native becoming a standard layer. Containerizations growing Docker just raised a hundred million on our $2 billion valuation back from the dead after they pivoted from an enterprise services. So open source developers are booming. Um, where's the action. I mean, is there data control, plane emerging, AI needs data. There's a lot of challenges around this. There's a lot of discussions and a lot of companies being funded observability there's 10 million observability companies. Data is the key. This is what's your angle on this. What's your take. Yeah, >>No, look, I think I'll give you the view that I see, right? I, from my side, obviously data is very clear. So the things that room system of record that you and me talked about, the next layer is called system of intelligence. That's where the AI will play. Like we talk cloud native, it'll be called AI. NA NA is a new buzzword and using the AI for customer service, it operations. You talk about observability. I call it AI ops, applying AOPs for good old it operation management, cloud management. So you'll see the AOPs applied for whole list of, uh, application from observability doing the CMDB, predicting the events insurance. So I see a lot of work clicking for AIOps and AI service desk. What needs to be helped desk with ServiceNow BMC <inaudible> you see a new ALA emerging as a system of intelligence. Uh, the next would be is applying AI with workflow automation. So that's where you'll see a lot of things called customer workflows, employee workflows. So think of what UI path automation, anywhere ServiceNow are doing, that area will be driven with AI workflows. So you'll see AI going >>Off is RPA a company is AI, is RPA a feature of something bigger? Or can someone have a company on RPA UI S one will be at their event this summer? Um, or is it a product company? I mean, I mean, RPA is almost, should be embedded in everything. >>It's a feature. It is very good point. Very, very good thinking. So one is, it's a category for sure. Like, as we thought, it's a category, it's an area where RPA may change the name. I call it much more about automation, workflow automation, but RPA and automation is a category. Um, it's a company also, but that automation should be a, in every area. Yeah. Like we call cloud NA and AI NATO it'll become automation. NA yeah. And that's your thinking. >>It's almost interesting me. I think about the, what you're talking about what's coming to mind is I'm kind having flashbacks to the old software model of middleware. Remember at middleware, it was very easy to understand it was middleware. It sat between two things and then the middle and it was software was action. Now you have all kinds of workflows abstractions everywhere. Right? So multiple databases, it's not a monolithic thing. Right? Right. So as you break that down, is this the new modern middleware? Because what you're talking about is data workflows, but they might be siloed or they integrated. I mean, these are the challenges. This is crazy. What's the, >>So don't about the databases become all polyglot databases. I call this one polyglot automation. So you need automation as a layer, as a category, but you also need to put automation in every area, like, as you were talking about, it should be part of ServiceNow. It should be part of ISRA, like every company, every Salesforce. So that's why you see MuleSoft and Salesforce buying RPA companies. So you'll see all the SaaS companies could cloud companies having an automation as a core. So it's like how you have a database and compute and sales and networking. You'll also will have an automation as a layer <inaudible> inside every stack. >>All right. So I wanna shift gears a little bit and get your perspective on what's going on behind us. You can see, uh, behind us, you got the expo hall. You got, um, we're back to vents, but you got, you know, am Clume Ove, uh, Dynatrace data dog, innovative all the companies out here that we know, we interview them all. They're trying to be suppliers to this growing enterprise market. Right. Okay. But now you also got the entrepreneurial equation. Okay. We're gonna have John Sado on from Deibel later today. He's a former NEA guy and we always talk to Jerry, Jen, we know all the, the VCs. What does the startups look like? What does the state of the, in your mind, cause you, I know you invest the entrepreneurial founder situation. Cloud's bigger. Mm-hmm <affirmative> global, right? Data's part of it. You mentioned data's. Yes. Basically. Data's everything. What's it like for a first an entrepreneur right now who's starting a company. What's the white space. What's the attack plan. How do they get in the market? How do they engineer everything? >>Very good. So I'll give it to, uh, two things that I'm seeing out there. Remember leaders, how Amazon created the startups 15 years back, everybody built on Amazon now, Azure and GCP. The next layer would be is people don't just build on Amazon. They're gonna build it on top of snowflake. Companies are snowflake becomes a data platform, right? People will build on snowflake. Right? So I see my old boss flagman try to build companies on snowflake. So you don't build it just on Amazon. You build it on Amazon and snowflake. Snowflake will become your data store. Snowflake will become your data layer. Right? So I think that's the next level of <inaudible> trying to do that. So if I'm doing observability AI ops, if I'm doing next level of Splunk SIM, I'm gonna build it on snowflake, on Salesforce, on Amazon, on Azure, et cetera. >>It's interesting. You know, Jerry Chan has it put out a thesis of a couple months ago called castles in the cloud where your Mo is what you do in the cloud. Not necessarily in, in the, in the IP. Um, Dave LAN and I had last reinvent, coined the term super cloud, right? He's got a lot of traction and a lot of people throwing, throwing mud at us, but we were, our thesis was, is that what Snowflake's doing? What Goldman S Sachs is doing. You starting to see these clouds on top of clouds. So Amazon's got this huge CapEx advantage, and guys, Charles Fitzgerald out there who we like was kind of shitting on us saying, Hey, you guys terrible, they didn't get it. Like, yeah, I don't think he gets it, but that's a whole, can't wait to debate him publicly on this. <laugh> cause he's cool. Um, but snowflake is on Amazon. Now. They say they're on Azure now. Cause they've got a bigger market and they're public, but ultimately without a AWS snowflake doesn't exist. And, and they're reimagining the data warehouse with the cloud, right? That's the billion dollar opportunity. It >>Is. It is. They both are very tight. So imagine what Frank has done at snowflake and Amazon. So if I'm a startup today, I want to build everything on Amazon where possible whatever is, I cannot build. I'll make the pass layer. Remember the middle layer pass will be snowflake so I can build it on snowflake. I can use them for data layer if I really need to size build it on force.com Salesforce. Yeah. Right. So I think that's where you'll see. So >>Basically the, if you're an entrepreneur, the, the north star in terms of the, the outcome is be a super cloud. >>It is, >>That's the application on another big CapEx ride, the CapEx of AWS or cloud, >>And that reduce your product development, your go to market and you get use the snowflake marketplace to drive your engagement. Yeah. >>Yeah. How are, how is Amazon and the clouds dealing with these big whales, the snowflakes of the world? I mean, I know they got a great relationship, uh, but snowflake now has to run a company they're public. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll say, I think they had Redshift. Amazon has got Redshift. Um, but Snowflake's a big customer in the, they're probably paying AWS, I think big bills too. So >>Joe on very good. Cause it's like how Netflix is and Amazon prime, right. Netflix runs on Amazon, but Amazon has Amazon prime that co-optation will be there. So Amazon will have Redshift, but Amazon is also partnering with, uh, snowflake to have native snowflake data warehouses or data layer. So I think depending on the application use case, you have to use each of the above. I think snowflake is here for a long term. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm building an application, I want to use snowflake then writing from stats. >>Well, I think that it comes back down to entrepreneurial hustle. Do you have a better product? Right. Product value will ultimately determine it as long as the cloud doesn't, you know, foreclose, your, you that's right with some sort of internal hack. Uh, but I think, I think the general question that I have is that I, I think it's okay to have a super cloud like that because the rising tide is still happening at some point, when does the rising tide stop and do the people shopping up their knives, it gets more competitive or is it just an infinite growth? So >>I think it's growth. You call it cloud scale, you invented the word cloud scale. So I think look, cloud will continually agree, increase. I think there's as long as there more movement from on, uh, OnPrem to the classical data center, I think there's no reason at this point, the rumor, the old lift and shift that's happening in like my business. I see people lift and shifting from the it operations. It helpless, even the customer service service now and, uh, ticket data from BMCs CAS like Microfocus, all those workloads are shifted to the cloud, right? So cloud ticketing system is happening. Cloud system of record is happening. So I think this train has still a long way to go >>Made. I wanna get your thoughts for the folks watching that are, uh, enterprise buyers are practitioners, not suppliers to the more market, feel free to text me or DMing. The next question's really about the buying side, which is if I'm a customer, what's the current, um, appetite for startup products, cuz you know, the big enterprises now and you know, small, medium, large and large enterprise are all buying new companies cuz a startup can go from zero to relevant very quickly. So that means now enterprises are engaging heavily with startups. What's it like what's is there a change in order of magnitude of the relationship between the startup selling to, or growing startup selling to an enterprise? Um, have you seen changes there? I mean I'm seeing some stuff, but why don't get your thoughts on that? What, >>No, it is. If I growing by or 2007 or eight, when I used to talk to you back then and Amazon started very small, right? We are an Amazon summit here. So I think enterprises on the average used to spend nothing with startups. It's almost like 0% or 1% today. Most companies are already spending 20, 30% with startups. Like if I look at a CIO or line of business, it's gone. Yeah. Can it go more? I think it can in the next four, five years. Yeah. Spending on the startups. >>Yeah. And check out, uh, AWS startups.com. That's a site that we built for the startup community for buyers and startups. And I want to get your reaction because I reference the URL cause it's like, there's like a bunch of companies we've been promoting because the solutions that startups have actually are new stuff. Yes. It's bending, it's shifting for security or using data differently or um, building tools and platforms for data engineering. Right. Which is a new persona that's emerging. So you know, a lot of good resources there. Um, and goes back now to the data question. Now, getting back to your, what you're working on now is what's your thoughts around this new, um, data engineering persona, you mentioned AIOps, we've been seeing AIOps IOPS booming and that's creating a new developer paradigm that's right. Which we call coin data as code data as code is like infrastructure is code, but it's for data, right? It's developing with data, right? Retraining machine learnings, going back to the data lake, getting data to make, to do analysis, to make the machine learning better post event or post action. So this, this data engineers like an SRE for data, it's a new, scalable role we're seeing. Do you see the same thing? Do you agree? Um, do you disagree or can you share >>Yourself a lot of first is I see the AIOP solutions in the future should be not looking back. I need to be like we are in San Francisco bay. That means earthquake prediction. Right? I want AOPs to predict when the outages are gonna happen. When there's a performance issue. I don't think most AOPs vendors have not gone there yet. Like I spend a lot of time with data dog, Cisco app Dyna, right? Dynatrace, all this solution. We will go future towards predict to proactive solution with AOPs. But what you bring up a very good point on the data side. I think like we have a Amazon marketplace and Amazon for startup, there should be data exchange where you want to create for AOPs and AI service desk. Customers are give the data, share the data because we thought the data algorithms are useless. I can them, but I gotta train them, modify them, tweak them, make them >>Better, >>Make them better. Yeah. And I think their whole data exchange is the industry has not thought through something you and me talk many times. Yeah. Yeah. I think the whole, that area is very important. >>You've always been on, um, on the Vanguard of data because, uh, it's been really fun. Yeah. >>Going back to big data days back in 2009, you know, >>Look at, look how much data Rick has grown. >>It is. They doubled the >>Key cloud air kinda went private. So good stuff, man. What are you working on right now? Give a, give a, um, plug for what you're working on. You'll still investing. >>I do still invest, but look, I'm a hundred percent on ISRA right now. I'm the CEO there. Yeah. Okay. So right. ISRA is my number one baby right now. So I'm looking at that growing customers and my customers are some of them, you like it's zoom auto desk McAfee, uh, grand to so all the top customers, um, mainly for it help desk customer service. AIOps those are three product lines and going after enterprise and commercial deals. >>And when should someone buy your product? What's what's their need? What category is it? >>I think they look whenever somebody needs to buy the product is if you need AOP solution to predict, keep your lights on predict is one area. If you want to improve employee experience, you are using a slack teams and you want to automate all your workflows. That's another value problem. Third is customer service. You don't want to hire more people to do it. Some of the areas where you want to scale your company, grow your company, eliminate the cost customer service. >>Great stuff, man. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the success of your company and your investments. Thanks for coming on the cube. Okay. I'm John fur here at the cube live in San Francisco for day one of two days of coverage of Aish summit 2022. And we're gonna be at Aus summit in San, uh, in New York in the summer. So look for that on this calendar, of course go to eight of us, startups.com. I mentioned that it's decipher all the hot startups and of course the cube.net and Silicon angle.com. Thanks for watching. We'll be back more coverage after this short break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. This the cubes coverage here in San Francisco, California, a Davis summit, 2022, the beginning of the event season, as it comes back, little bit smaller footprint, a lot of hybrid events going on, but this is actually a physical event, a summit in new York's coming in the summer. We'll be there too with the cube on the set. We're getting back in the groove psych to be back. We were at reinvent, uh, as well, and we'll see more and more cube, but you're can see a lot of virtual cube outta hybrid cube. We wanna get all those conversations, try to get more interviews, more flow going. But right now I'm excited to have Corey Quinn here on the back on the cube chief cloud economists with bill group. He's the founder, uh, and chief content person always got great angles, fun comedy, authoritative Corey. Great to see you. Thank >>You. Thanks. Coming on. Sure is a lot of words to describe is shit posting, which is how I describe what I tend to do. Most days, >>Shit posting is an art form now. And if you look at mark, Andrew's been doing a lot of shit posting lately. All a billionaires are shit hosting, but they don't know how to do it. Like they're not >>Doing it right? So there's something opportunity there. It's like here's how to be even more obnoxious and incisive. It's honestly the most terrifying scenario for anyone is if I have that kind of budget to throw at my endeavors, it's like, I get excited with a nonsense I can do with a $20 gift card for an AWS credit compared to, oh well, if I could buy a midsize island, do begin doing this from, oh, then we're having fun. >>This shit posting trend. Interesting. I was watching a thread go on about, saw someone didn't get a job because of their shit posting and the employer didn't get it. And then someone on this side I'll hire the guy cuz I get that's highly intelligent shit posting. So for the audience that doesn't know what shit posting is, what is shit posting? >>It's more or less talking about the world of enter prize technology, which even that sentence is hard to finish without falling asleep and toppling out of my chair in front of everyone on the livestream. But it's doing it in such a way that brings it to life that says the quiet part. A lot of the audience is thinking, but generally doesn't say either because they're polite or not a jackass or more prosaically are worried about getting fired for better or worse. I don't don't have that particular constraint, >>Which is why people love you. So let's talk about what you, what you think is, uh, worthy and not worthy in the industry right now, obviously, uh, coupons coming up in Spain, which they're having a physical event, you see the growth of cloud native Amazon's of all the Adams, especially new CEO. Andy's move on to be the chief of all Amazon. Just so I'm the cover of was it time met magazine? Um, he's under a lot of stress. Amazon's changed. Invoice has changed. What's working. What's not, what's rising, what's falling. What's hot. What's not, >>It's easy to sit here and criticize almost anything. These folks do. They're they're effectively in a fishbowl, but I have trouble imagining the logistics. It takes to wind up handling the catering for a relatively downscale event like this one this year, let alone running a 1.7 million employee company having to balance all the competing challenges and pressures and the rest. I, I just can't fathom what it would be like to look at all of AWS. And it's, it's sprawling immense that dominates our entire industry and say, okay, this is a good start, but I, I wanna focus on something with a broader remit. What is that? How do you even get into that position? And you can't win once you're there. All you can do is hold onto the tiger and hope you don't get mold. >>Well, there's a lot of force for good conversations. Seeing a lot of that going on, Amazon's trying to port eight of us is trying to portray themselves as you know, the Pathfinder, you know, you're the pioneer, um, force for good. And I get that and I think that's a good angle as cloud goes mainstream. There's still the question of, we had a guy on just earlier, who was a skydiving instructor and we were joking about the early days of cloud. Like that was like skydiving, build a parachute open, you know, and now same kind of thing. As you move to edge, things are like reliable in some areas, but still new, new fringe, new areas. That's crazy. Well, >>Since the last time we've spoken, uh, Steve Schmidt is now the CISO for all of Amazon and his backfill replacement. The AWS CISO is CJ. Moses who as a hobby races, a as a semi-pro race car driver to my understanding, which either, I don't know what direction to take that in either. This is what he does to relax or ultimately, or ultimately it's. Huh? That, that certainly says something about risk assessment. I'm not entirely sure what, but okay. <laugh> either way, sounds like more exciting. Like I better >>Have a replacement ready <laugh> I, in case something goes wrong on the track, highly >>Available >>CSOs. I gotta say one of the things I do like in the recent trend is that the tech companies are getting into the formula one, which I was never a fan of until I watched that Netflix series. But when you look at the formula one, it's pretty cool. Cause it's got some tech angles, I get the whole data instrumentation thing, but the most coolest thing about formula one is they have these new rigs out. Yeah. Where you can actually race in east sports with other people in pure simulation of the race car. You gotta get the latest and videographic card, but it's basically a tricked out PC with amazing monitors and you have all the equipment of F1 and you're basically simulating racing. >>Oh, it's great too. And I can see the appeal of these tech companies getting into it because these things are basically rocket shifts. When those cars go, like they're sitting there, we can instrument every last part of what is going on inside that vehicle. And then AWS crops up. And we can bill on every one of those dimensions too. And it's like slow down their hasty pudding one step at a time. But I do see the appeal. >>So I gotta ask you about, uh, what's going on in your world. I know you have a lot of great success. We've been following you in the queue for many, many years. Got a great newsletter, check out Corey Quinn's newsletter, uh, screaming in the cloud program. Uh, you're on the cutting edge and you've got a great balance between really being snarky and, and, and really being delivering content. That's exciting, uh, for people, uh, with a little bit of an edge, um, how's that going? Uh, what's the blowback, any blowback late? Has there been uptick? What was, what are some of the things you're hearing from your audience, more Corey, more Corey. And then of course the, the PR team's calling you >>The weird thing about having an audience beyond a certain size is far and away as a landslide. The most common response I get is silence where it's high. I'm emailing an awful lot of people at last week in AWS every week and okay. They must not have heard me it. That is not actually true. People just generally don't respond to email because who responds to email newsletters. That sounds like something, a lunatic might do same story with response to live streams and podcasts. It's like, I'm gonna call into that am radio show and give them a piece of my mind. People generally don't do >>That. We should do that. Actually. I think you're people would call in, oh, >>I, I think >>I guarantee we had that right now. People would call in and say, Corey, what do you think about X? >>Yeah. It not, everyone understands the full context of what I do. And in fact, increasingly few people do and that's fine. I, I keep forgetting that sometimes people do not see what I'm doing in the same light that I do. And that's fine. Blowback has been largely minimal. Honestly, I am surprised about anything by how little I have gotten over the last five years of doing this, but it would be easier to dismiss me if I weren't generally. Right. When, okay, so you launch this new service and it seems pretty crappy to me cuz when I try and build something, it falls over and begs for help. And people might not like hearing that, but it's what customers are finding too. Yeah. I really am the voice of the >>Customer. You know, I always joke with Dave Alane about how John Fort's always at, uh, um, reinvent getting the interview with jazzy now, Andy we're there, you're there. And so we have these rituals at the events. It's all cool. Um, one of the rituals I like about your, um, your content is you like to get on the naming product names. Um, and, and, and, and, and kind of goof on that. Now why I like is because I used to work at ETT Packard where they used to name things as like engineers, HP 1 0, 0 5, or we can't call, we >>Have a new monitor. How are we gonna name it? Throw the wireless keyboard down the stairs again. And then there you go. Yeah. >>It's and the old joke at HP was if they, if they invented SU sushi, they'd say, yeah, we can't call sushi. It's cold, dead fish. That's what it is. And so the joke was cold. Dead fish is a better name than sushi. So you know is fun. So what's the, what are the, how's the Amazon doing in there? Have they changed their naming, uh, strategy, uh, on some of their, their >>Producting. So they're going in different directions. When they named Amazon Aurora, they decided to explore a new theme of Disney princesses as they go down those paths. And some things are more descriptive. Some people are clearly getting bonused on number of words, they can shove into it. Like the better a service is the longer it's name. Like AWS systems manager, session manager is a great one. I love the service ridiculous name. They have a systems manager, parameter store, which is great. They have secrets manager, which does the same thing. It's two words less, but that one costs money in a way that systems manage your parameter store does not. It's fun. >>What's your, what's your favorite combination of acronyms >>Combination >>Of gots. You got EMR, you got EC two, you got S3 SQS. Well, RedShift's not an acronym you >>Gets is one of my personal favorites because it's either elastic block store or elastic bean stock, depending entirely on the context of the conversation, they >>Shook up bean stock or is that still around? Oh, >>They never turn anything off. They're like the anti Google, Google turns things off while they're still building it. Whereas Amazon is like, well, we built this thing in 2005 and everyone hates it, but while we certainly can't change it, now it has three customers on it. John three <laugh>. Okay. Simple BV still haunts our dreams. >>I, I actually got an email on, I saw one of my, uh, servers, all these C twos were being deprecated and I got an email I'm I couldn't figure out. Why can you just like roll it over? Why, why are you telling me? Just like, give me something else. All right. Okay. So let me talk about, uh, the other things I want to ask you, is that like, okay. So as Amazon better in some areas where do they need more work in your opinion? Because obviously they're all interested in new stuff and they tend to like put it out there for their end to end customers. But then they've got ecosystem partners who actually have the same product. Yes. And, and this has been well documented. So it's, it's not controversial. It's just that Amazon's got a database Snowflake's got out database service. So Redshift, snowflake data breach is out there. So you got this co-op petition. Yes. How's that going? And what do you hearing about the reaction to any of that stuff? >>Depends on who you ask. They love to basically trot out a bunch of their partners who will say nice things about them. And it very much has heirs of, let's be honest, a hostage video, but okay. Cuz these companies do partner with, and they cannot afford to rock the boat too far. I'm not partnered with anyone. I can say what I want. And they're basically restricted to taking away my birthday at worse so I can live with that. >>All right. So I gotta ask about multicloud. Cause obviously the other cloud shows are coming up. Amazon hated that word multicloud. Um, a lot of people though saying, you know, it's not a real good marketing word. Like multicloud sounds like, you know, root canal. Mm-hmm <affirmative> right. So is there a better description for multicloud? >>Multiple single >>Cloudant loves that term. Yeah. >>You know, you're building in multiple single points of failure, do it for the right reasons or don't do it as a default. I believe not doing it is probably the right answer. However, and if I were, if I were Amazon, I wouldn't want to talk about my multi-cloud either as the industry leader, let's talk about other clouds, bad direction to go in from a market cap perspective. It doesn't end well for you, but regardless of what they want to talk about, or don't want to talk about what they say, what they don't say, I tune all of it out. And I look at what customers are doing and multi-cloud exists in a variety of forms. Some brilliant, some brain dead. It depends a lot on, but my general response is when someone gets on stage from a company and tells me to do a thing that directly benefits their company. I am skeptical at best. Yeah. When customers get on stage and say, this is what we're doing because it solves problems. That's when I shut up and listen. >>Yeah, course. Awesome. Corey, I gotta ask you a question cause I know you we've been, you know, fellow journeyman and the, and the cloud journey going to all the events and then the pandemic hit. We now in the third year, who knows what it's gonna gonna end. Certainly events are gonna look different. They're gonna be either changing footprint with the virtual piece, new group formations. Community's gonna emerge. You've got a pretty big community growing and it's growing like crazy. What's the weirdest or coolest thing or just big changes you've seen with the pandemic, uh, from your perspective, cuz you've been in the you're in the middle of the whitewater rafting. You've seen the events you circle offline. You saw the online piece, come in, you're commentating, you're calling balls and strikes in the industry. You got a great team developing over there. Duck build group. What's the big aha moment that you saw with the pandemic. Weird, funny, serious, real in the industry and with customers what's >>Accessibility. Reinvent is a great example. When in the before times it's open to anyone who wants to attend, who can pony up two grand and a week in Las Vegas and get to Las Vegas from wherever they happen to be by moving virtually suddenly it, it embraces the reality that talent is evenly. Distributed. Opportunity is not. And that means that suddenly these things are accessible to a wide swath of audience and potential customer base and the rest that hadn't been invited to the table previously, it's imperative that we not lose that. It's nice to go out and talk to people and have people come up and try and smell my hair from time to time, I smelled delightful. Let me assure you. But it was, but it's also nice to be. >>I have a product for you if you want, you know? Oh, >>Oh excellent. I look forward to it. What is it? Pudding? Why not? <laugh> >>What else have you seen? So when accessibility for talent. Yes. Which by the way is totally home run. What weird things have happened that you've seen? Um, that's >>Uh, it's, it's weird, but it's good that an awful lot of people giving presentation have learned to tighten their message and get to the damn point because most people are not gonna get up from a front row seat in a conference hall, midway through your Aing talk and go somewhere else. But they will change a browser tab and you won't get them back. You've gotta be on point. You've gotta be compelling if it's going to be a virtual discussion. Yeah. >>And you turn off your iMessage too. >>Oh yes. It's always fun in the, in the meetings when you're ho to someone and their colleague is messaging them about, should we tell 'em about this? And I'm sitting there reading it and it's >>This guy is really weird. Like, >>Yes I am and I bring it into the conversation and then everyone's uncomfortable. It goes, wow. Why >>Not? I love when my wife yells at me over I message. When I'm on a business call, like, do you wanna take that about no, I'm good. >>No, no. It's better off. I don't the only entire sure. It's >>Fine. My kids text. Yeah, it's fine. Again, that's another weird thing. And, and then group behavior is weird. Now people are looking at, um, communities differently. Yes. Very much so, because if you're fatigued on content, people are looking for the personal aspect. You're starting to see much more of like yeah. Another virtual event. They gotta get better. One and two who's there. >>Yeah. >>The person >>That's a big part of it too is the human stories are what are being more and more interesting. Don't get up here and tell me about your product and how brilliant you are and how you built it. That's great. If I'm you, or if I wanna work with you or I want to compete with you or I want to put on my engineering hat and build it myself. Cause why would I buy anything? That's more than $8. But instead, tell me about the problem. Tell me about the painful spot that you specialize in. Yeah. Tell me a story there. >>I, I think >>That gets a glimpse in a hook and makes >>More, more, I think you nailed it. Scaling storytelling. Yes. And access to better people because they don't have to be there in person. I just did a thing. I never, we never would've done the queue. We did. Uh, Amazon stepped up in sponsors. Thank you, Amazon for sponsoring international women's day, we did 30 interviews, APAC. We did five regions and I interviewed this, these women in Asia, Pacific eight, PJ, they call for in this world. And they're amazing. I never would've done those interviews cuz I never, would've seen 'em at an event. I never would've been in pan or Singapore, uh, to access them. And now they're in the index, they're in the network. They're collaborating on LinkedIn. So a threads are developing around connections that I've never seen before. Yes. Around the content. >>Absolutely >>Content value plus and >>Effecting. And that is the next big revelation of this industry is going to realize you have different companies. And, and I Amazon's case different service teams all competing with each other, but you have the container group and you have the database group and you have the message cuing group. But customers don't really want to build things from spare parts. They want a solution to a problem. I want to build an app that does Twitter for pets or whatever it is I'm trying to do. I don't wanna basically have to pick and choose and fill my shopping cart with all these different things. I want something that's gonna basically give me what I'm trying to get as close to turnkey as possible. Moving up the stack. That is the future. And just how it gets here is gonna be >>Well we're here at Corey Quinn, the master of the master of content here in the a ecosystem. Of course we we've been following up from the beginning. His great guy, check out his blog, his site, his newsletter screaming podcast. Corey, final question for, uh, what are you here doing? What's on your agenda this week in San Francisco and give a plug for the duck build group. What are you guys doing? I know you're hiring some people what's on the table for the company. What's your focus this week and put a plug in for the group. >>I'm here as a customer and basically getting outta my cage cuz I do live here. It's nice to actually get out and talk to folks who are doing interesting things at the duck bill group. We solved one problem. We fixed the horrifying AWS bill, both from engineering and architecture, advising as well as negotiating AWS contracts because it turns out those things are big and complicated. And of course my side media projects last week in aws.com, we are, it it's more or less a content operation where I in my continual and ongoing love affair with the sound of my own voice. >><laugh> and you're good. It's good content it's on, on point fun, Starky and relevant. So thanks for coming to the cube and sharing with us. Appreciate it. No >>Thank you button. >>You. Okay. This the cube covers here in San Francisco, California, the cube is back going to events. These are the summits, Amazon web services summits. They happen all over the world. We'll be in New York and obviously we're here in San Francisco this week. I'm John fur. Keep, keep it right here. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break. Okay. Welcome back everyone. This's the cubes covers here in San Francisco, California, we're live on the show floor of AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for host of the cube and remember AWS summit in New York city coming up this summer, we'll be there as well. And of course reinvent the end of the year for all the cube coverage on cloud computing and AWS two great guests here from the APN global APN Sege chef Jenko and Jeff Grimes partner lead Jeff and Sege is doing partnerships global APN >>AWS global startup program. Yeah. >>Okay. Say that again. >>AWS. We'll start >>Program. That's the official name. >>I love >>It too long, too long for me. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, >>Of course. >>Appreciate it. Tell us about what's going on with you guys. What's the, how was you guys organized? You guys we're obviously we're in San Francisco bay area, Silicon valley, zillions of startups here, New York. It's got another one we're gonna be at tons of startups. A lot of 'em getting funded, big growth and cloud big growth and data secure hot in all sectors. >>Absolutely. >>So maybe, maybe we could just start with the global startup program. Um, it's essentially a white glove service that we provide to startups that are built on AWS. And the intention there is to help identify use cases that are being built on top of AWS. And for these startups, we want to pro vibe white glove support in co building products together. Right. Um, co-marketing and co-selling essentially, um, you know, the use cases that our customers need solved, um, that either they don't want to build themselves or are perhaps more innovative. Um, so the, a AWS global startup program provides white glove support. Dedicat at headcount for each one of those pillars. Um, and within our program, we've also provided incentives, programs go to market activities like the AWS startup showcase that we've built for these startups. >>Yeah. By the way, AWS startup, AWS startups.com is the URL, check it out. Okay. So partnerships are key. Jeff, what's your role? >>Yeah. So I'm responsible for leading the overall effort for the AWS global startup program. Um, so I've got a team of partner managers that are located throughout the us, uh, managing a few hundred startup ISVs right now. <laugh> >>Yeah, you got a >>Lot. We've got a lot. >>There's a lot. I gotta, I gotta ask a tough question. Okay. I'm I'm a startup founder. I got a team. I just got my series a we're grown. I'm trying to hire people. I'm super busy. What's in it for me. Yeah. What do you guys bring to the table? I love the white glove service, but translate that what's in it for what do I get out of it? What's >>A story. Good question. I focus, I think. Yeah, because we get, we get to see a lot of partners building their businesses on AWS. So, you know, from our perspective, helping these partners focus on what, what do we truly need to build by working backwards from customer feedback, right? How do we effectively go to market? Because we've seen startups do various things, um, through trial and error, um, and also just messaging, right? Because oftentimes partners or rather startups, um, try to boil the ocean with many different use cases. So we really help them, um, sort of laser focus on what are you really good at and how can we bring that to the customer as quickly as possible? >>Yeah. I mean, it's truly about helping that founder accelerate the growth of their company, right. And there's a lot that you can do with AWS, but focus is truly the key word there because they're gonna be able to find their little piece of real estate and absolutely deliver incredible outcomes for our customers. And then they can start their growth curve there. >>What are some of the coolest things you've seen with the APN that you can share publicly? I know you got a lot going on there, a lot of confidentiality. Um, but you know, we're here a lot of great partners on the floor here. I'm glad we're back at events. Uh, a lot of stuff going on digitally with virtual stuff and, and hybrid. What are some of the cool things you guys have seen in the APN that you can point to? >>Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can point to few, you can take them. So, um, I think what's been fun over the years for me personally, I came from a startup brand sales at an early stage startup and, and I went through the whole thing. So I have a deep appreciation for what these guys are going through. And what's been interesting to see for me is taking some of these early stage guys, watching them progress, go public, get acquired and see that big day mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, and being able to point to very specific items that we help them to get to that point. Uh, and it's just a really fun journey to watch. >>Yeah. I, and part of the reason why I really, um, love working at the AWS, uh, global startup program is working with passionate founders. Um, I just met with a founder today that it's gonna, he's gonna build a very big business one day, um, and watching them grow through these stages and supporting that growth. Um, I like to think of our program as a catalyst for enterprise is sort of scale. Yeah. Um, and through that we provide visibility, credibility and growth opportunities. >>Yeah. A lot, a lot of partners too. What I found talking to staff founders is when they have that milestone, they work so hard for it. Whether it's a B round C round Republic or get bought. Yeah. Um, then they take a deep breath and they look back at wow, what a journey it's been. So it's kind of emotional for sure. But still it's a grind. Right? You gotta, I mean, when you get funding, it's still day one. You don't stop. It's no celebrate, you got a big round or valuation. You still gotta execute >>And look it's hypercompetitive and it's brutally difficult. And our job is to try to make that a little less difficult and navigate those waters. Right. Where ever everyone's going after similar things. >>Yeah. And I think as a group element too, I observe that startups that I, I meet through the APN has been interesting because they feel part of AWS. Yeah, totally. As a group of community, as a vibe there. Um, I know they're hustling, they're trying to make things happen. But at the same time, Amazon throws a huge halo effect. I mean, that's a huge factor. I mean, you guys are the number one cloud in the business, the growth in every sector is booming. Yeah. And if you're a startup, you don't have that luxury yet. And look at companies like snowflake that built on top of AWS. I mean, people are winning by building on AWS. >>Yeah. And our, our, our program really validates their technology first. So we have, what's all the foundation's technical review that we put all of our startups through before we go to market. So that when enterprise customers are looking at startup technology, they know that it's already been vetted. And, um, to take that a step further and help these partners differentiate, we use programs like the competency programs, the DevOps competencies, the security competency, which continues to help, um, provide sort of a platform for these startups, help them differentiate. And also there's go to market benefits that are associated with that. >>Okay. So let me ask the, the question that's probably on everyone's mind, who's watching, certainly I asked this a lot. There's a lot of companies startups out there who makes the cut, is there a criteria cut? It's not like it's sports team or anything, but like sure. Like there's activate program, which is like, there's hundreds of thousands of startups out there. Not everyone is at the APN. Right? Correct. So ISVs again, that's a whole nother, that's a more mature partner that might have, you know, huge market cap or growth. How, how do you guys focus? How do you guys focus? I mean, you got a good question, you know, thousand flowers blooming all the time. Is there a new way you guys are looking at it? I know there's been some talk about restructure or, or new focus. What's the focus. >>Yeah. It's definitely not an easy task by any means. Um, but you know, I recently took over this role and we're really trying to establish focus areas, right. So obviously a lot of the ISVs that we look after are infrastructure ISVs. That's what we do. Uh, and so we have very specific pods that look after different type of partners. So we've got a security pod, we've got a DevOps pod, we've got core infrastructure, et cetera. And really, we're trying to find these ISVs that can solve, uh, really interesting AWS customer. >>You guys have a deliberate, uh, focus on these pillars. So what infrastructure, >>Security, DevOps, and data and analytics, and then line of business >>Line, business line business, like web >>Marketing, business apps, >>Owner type thing. Exactly. >>Yeah, exactly. >>So solutions there. Yeah. More solutions and the other ones are like hardcore. So infrastructure as well, like storage back up ransomware kind of stuff, or, >>Uh, storage, networking. >>Okay. Yeah. The classic >>Database, et cetera. Right. >>And so there's teams on each pillar. >>Yep. So I think what's, what's fascinating for the startups that we cover is that they've got, they truly have support from a build market sell perspective, right. So you've got someone who's technical to really help them get the technology, figured out someone to help them get the marketing message dialed and spread, and then someone to actually do the co-sell, uh, day to day activities to help them get in front of customers. >>Probably the number one request that we always ask for Amazon is can wish that sock report, oh, download it on the console, which we use all the time. <laugh> exactly. But security's a big deal. I mean, you know, ask the res are evolving, that role of DevOps is taking on dev SecOps. Um, I, I can see a lot of customers having that need for a relationship to move things faster. Do you guys provide like escalation or is that a part of a service or that not part of, uh, uh, >>Yeah, >>So the partner development manager can be an escalation for absolutely. Think of that. 'em as an extension of your business inside of AWS. >>Great. And you guys, how is that partner managers, uh, measure >>On those three pillars? Right. Got it. Are we billing, building valuable use cases? So product development go to market, so go to market activities, think blog, posts, webinars, case studies, so on and so forth. And then co-sell not only are we helping these partners win their current opportunities that they are sourcing, but can we also help them source net new deals? Yeah. Right. That's very, >>I mean, top asked from the partners is get me in front of customers. Right. Um, not an easy task, but that's a huge goal of ours to help them grow their top line. >>Right. Yeah. In fact, we had some interviews here on the cube earlier talking about that dynamic of how enterprise customers are buying. And it's interesting, a lot more POCs. I have one partner here that you guys work with, um, on observability, they got a huge POC with capital one mm-hmm <affirmative> and the enterprises are engaging the star ups and bringing them in. So the combination of open source software enterprises are leaning into that hard and bringing young growing startups in mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yep. So I could see that as a huge service that you guys can bring people in. >>Right. And they're bringing massively differentiated technology to the table. The challenge is they just might not have the brand recognition. The, at the big guys have mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so that's, our job is how do you get that great tech in front of the right situations? >>Okay. So my next question is about the show here, and then we'll talk globally. So here in San Francisco sure. You know, Silicon valley bay area, San Francisco bay area, a lot of startups, a lot of VCs, a lot of action. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so probably a big market for you guys. Yeah. So what's exciting here in SF. And then outside of SF, you guys have a global pro, have you see any trends that are geography based or is it sure areas more mature? There's certain regions that are better. I mean, I just interviewed a company here. That's doing, uh, a AWS edge really well in these cases. It's interesting that these, the partners are filling a lot of holes and gaps in the opportunities with a AWS. So what's exciting here. And then what's the global perspective. >>Yeah, totally. So obviously see a ton of partners from the bay area that we support. Um, but we're seeing a lot of really interesting technology come out of AMEA specifically. Yeah. Uh, and making a lot of noise here in the United States, which is great. Um, and so, you know, we definitely have that global presence and, and starting to see super differentiated technology come out of those regions. >>Yeah. Especially Tel Aviv. Yeah. >>Amy and real quick before you get into surge. It's interesting. The VC market in, in Europe is hot. They've got a lot of unicorns coming in. We've seen a lot of companies coming in. They're kind of rattling their own, you know, cage right now. Hey, look at us. Let's see if they crash, you know, but we don't see that happening. I mean, people have been predicting a crash now in, in the startup ecosystem for least a year. It's not crashing. In fact, funding's up. >>Yeah. The pandemic was hard on a lot of startups for sure. Yeah. Um, but what we've seen is many of these startups, they, as quickly as they can grow, they can also pivot as, as, as well. Um, and so I've actually seen many of our startups grow through the demo because their use cases are helping customers either save money, become more operationally efficient and provide value to leadership teams that need more visibility into their infrastructure during a pandemic. >>It's an interesting point. I talked to Andy jazzy and Adam Celski both say the same thing during the pandemic. Necessity's the mother of all invention. Yep. And startups can move fast. So with that, you guys are there to assist if I'm a startup and I gotta pivot cuz remember iterate and pivot, iterate and pivot. So you get your economics, that's the playbook of the ventures and the models. >>Exactly. How >>Do you guys help me do that? Give me an example of what me through. Pretend me, I'm a start up. Hey, I'm on the cloud. Oh my God. Pandemic. They need video conferencing. Hey cube. Yeah. What do I need? Search? What, what do >>I do? That's a good question. First thing is just listen. Yeah. I think what we have to do is a really good job of listening to the partner. Um, what are their needs? What is their problem statement? Where do they want to go at the end of the day? Um, and oftentimes because we've worked with, so how many successful startups that have come out of our program, we have, um, either through intuition or a playbook determined what is gonna be the best path forward and how do we get these partners to stop focusing on things that will eventually, um, just be a waste of time. Yeah. And, or not provide, or, you know, bring any fruit to the table, which, you know, essentially revenue. >>Well, we love startups here in the cube because one, um, they have good stories, they're oil and cutting edge, always pushing the envelope and they're kind of disrupting someone else. Yeah. And so they, they have an opinion. They don't mind sharing on camera. So love talking to startups. We love working with you guys on our startups. Showcases startups.com. Check out AWS startups.com and she got the showcase. So is, uh, final word. I'll give you guys the last word. What's the bottom line bumper sticker for AP globe. The global APN program summarize the opportunity for startups, what you guys bring to the table and we'll close it out. Totally. We'll start >>With you. Yeah. I think the AWS global startup programs here to help companies truly accelerate their business full stop. Right. And that's what we're here for. Love it. >>It's a good way to, it's a good way to put it. Dato yeah. >>All right. Thanks for coming out. Thanks John. Great to see you love working with you guys. Hey, startups need help. And the growing and huge market opportunities, the shift cloud scale data engineering, security infrastructure, all the markets are exploding in growth because of the digital transformation of realities here, open source and cloud. I'll making it happen here in the cube in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, your host. Thanks for >>Watching Cisco, John. >>Hello and welcome back to the Cube's live coverage here in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for host of the cube. Uh, two days of coverage, AWS summit, 2022 in New York city coming up this summer will be there as well. Events are back. The cube is back of course, with the cube virtual cube hybrid, the cube.net. Check it out a lot of content this year more than ever a lot more cloud data cloud native, modern applic is all happening. Got a great guest here. Jeremy Burton, Cub alumni, uh, CEO of observe Inc in the middle of all the cloud scale, big data observability, Jeremy. Great to see you. Thanks. >>Coming on. Always great to come and talk to you on the queue, man. It's been been a few years, so, >>Um, well you, you got your hands. You're in the trenches with great startup, uh, good funding, great board, great people involved in the observability Smith hot area, but also you've been a senior executive president of Dell EMC. Um, 11 years ago you had a vision and you actually had an event called cloud meets big data. Um, yeah. And it's here, you predicted it 11 years ago. Um, look around it's cloud meets big data. >>Yeah. I mean the, the cloud thing I think, you know, was, was probably already a thing, but the big data thing I do claim credit for, for sort of catching that bus early, um, you know, we, we were on the, the, the bus early and, and I think it was only inevitable. Like, you know, if you could bring the economics and the compute of cloud to big data, you, you could find out things you could never possibly imagine. >>So you're close to a lot of companies that we've been covering deeply snowflake, obviously you involved, uh, at the board level, the other found, you know, the people there, uh, cloud, you know, Amazon, you know, what's going on here? Yeah. You're doing a startup as the CEO at the helm, uh, chief of observ, Inc, which is an observability, which is to me in the center of this confluence of data engineering, large scale integrations, um, data as code integrating into applications. I mean, it's a whole nother world developing, like you see with snowflake, it means snowflakes is super cloud as we call it. So a whole nother wave is here. What's your, what's this wave we're on what's how would you describe the wave? >>Well, a couple of things, I mean, people are, I think right in more software than, than ever before are why? Because they've realized that if, if you don't take your business online and offer a service, then you become largely irrelevant. And so you you've got a whole set of new applications. I think, I think more applications now than any point. Um, not, not just ever, but the mid nineties, I always looked at as the golden age of application development. Now, back then people were building for windows. Well, well now they're building for things like AWS is now the platform. Um, so you've got all of that going on. And then at the same time, the, the side effect of these applications is they generate data and lots of data. And the, you know, there's sort of the transactions, you know, what you bought today are something like that. But then there's what we do, which is all the telemetry, all the exhaust fumes. And I think people really are realizing that their differentiation is not so much their application. It's their understanding of the data. Can, can I understand who my best customers are, what I sell today. If people came to my website and didn't buy, then why not? Where did they drop off all of that? They wanna analyze. And, and the answers are all in the data. The question is, can you understand it >>In our last startup showcase, we featured data as code one of the insights that we got out of that, and I wanna get your opinion on our reaction to is, is that data used to be put into a data lake and turns into a data swamp or throw into the data warehouse. And then we'll do some queries, maybe a report once in a while. And so data, once it was done, unless it was real time, even real time was not good anymore after real time. That was the old way. Now you're seeing more and more, uh, effort to say, let's go look at the data, cuz now machine learning is getting better. Not just train once mm-hmm <affirmative> they're iterating. Yeah. This notion of iterating and then pivoting, iterating and pivoting. Yeah, that's a Silicon valley story. That's like how startups work, but now you're seeing data being treated the same way. So now you have another, this data concept that's now yeah. Part of a new way to create more value for the apps. So this whole, this whole new cycle of >>Yeah. >>Data being reused and repurposed and figured out and yeah, >>Yeah. I'm a big fan of, um, years ago. Uh, uh, just an amazing guy, Andy McAfee at the MIT C cell labs I spent time with and he, he had this line, which still sticks to me this day, which is look I'm I'm. He said I'm part of a body, which believes that everything is a matter of data. Like if you have enough data, you can answer any question. And, and this is going back 10 years when he was saying these kind of things and, and certainly, you know, research is on the forefront. But I think, you know, starting to see that mindset of the, the sort of MIT research be mainstream, you know, in enterprises, they they're realizing that. Yeah, it is about the data. You know, if I can better understand my data better than my competitor, then I've got an advantage. And so the question is is, is how, what, what technologies and what skills do I need in my organization to, to allow me to do that. >>So let's talk about observing you the CEO of, okay. Given you've seen the ways before you're in the front lines of observability, which again is in the center of all this action what's going on with the company. Give a quick minute to explain, observe for the folks who don't know what you guys do. What's the company doing? What's the funding status, what's the product status and what's the customer status. Yeah. >>So, um, we realized, you know, a handful of years ago, let's say five years ago that, um, look, the way people are building applications is different. They they're way more functional. They change every day. Uh, but in some respects they're a lot more complicated. They're distributed. They, you know, microservices architectures and when something goes wrong, um, the old way of troubleshooting and solving problems was not gonna fly because you had SA so much change going into production on a daily basis. It was hard to tell like where the problem was. And so we thought, okay, it's about time. Somebody looks at the exhaust fumes from this application and all the telemetry data and helps people troubleshoot and make sense of the problems that they're seeing. So, I mean, that's observability, it's actually a term that goes back to the 1960s. It was a guy called, uh, Rudolph like, like everything in tech, you know, it's, it's a reinvention of something from years gone by. >>Um, there's a guy called, um, Rudy Coleman in 1960s coiner term and, and, and the term was being able to determine the state of a system by looking at its external outputs. And so we've been going on this for, uh, the best part of four years now. Um, it took us three years just to build the product. I think, I think what people don't appreciate these days often is the barrier to entry in a lot of these markets is quite high. You, you need a lot of functionality to have something that's credible with a customer. Um, so yeah, this last year we, we, we did our first year selling, uh, we've got about 40 customers now. Um, we just we've got great investors for the hill ventures. Uh, I mean, Mike SP who was, you know, the, the guy who was the, really, the first guy in it snowflake and the, the initial investor were fortunate enough to, to have Mike and our board. And, um, you know, part of the observed story is closely knit with snowflake all of that time with your data, you know, we, we store in there. >>So I want to get, uh, yeah. Pivot to that. Mike SP snowflake, Jeremy Burton, the cube kind of, kind of same thinking this idea of a super cloud or what snowflake became. Yeah. Snowflake is massively successful on top of AWS. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and now you're seeing startups and companies build on top of snowflake. Yeah. So that's become an entrepreneurial story that we think that to go big in the cloud, you can have a cloud on a cloud, uh, like as Jerry, Jerry Chan and Greylock calls it, castles in the cloud where there are moats in the cloud. So you're close to it. I know you, you're doing some stuff with snowflake. So as a startup, what's your view on building on top of say a snowflake or an AWS, because again, you gotta go where the data is. You need all the data. >>Yeah. So >>What's your take on that? I mean, >>Having enough gray hair now, um, you know, again, in tech, I think if you wanna predict the future, look at the past. And, uh, you know, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, I was at a, a smaller company called Oracle and an Oracle was the database company. And, uh, their, their ambition was to manage all of the world's transactional data. And they built on a platform or a couple of platforms, one, one windows, and the other main one was Solaris. And so at that time, the operating system was the platform. And, and then that was the, you know, ecosystem that you would compete on top of. And then there were companies like SAP that built applications on top of Oracle. So then wind the clock forward 25 years gray hairs. <laugh> the platform, isn't the operating system anymore. The platform is AWS, you know, Google cloud. I gotta probably look around if I say that in. Yeah, >>It's okay. Columbia, but hyperscale. Yeah. CapX built out >>That is the new platform. And then snowflake comes along. Well, their aspiration is to manage all of the, not just human generated data, but machine generated data in the world of cloud. And I think they they've done an amazing job are doing for the, I'd say, say the, the big data world, what Oracle did for the relational data world, you know, way back 25 years ago. And then there are folks like us come along and, and of course my ambition would be, look, if, if we can be as successful as an SAP building on top of snowflake, uh, as, as they were on top of Oracle, then, then we'd probably be quite happy, >>Happy. So you're building on top of snowflake, >>We're building on top of snowflake a hundred percent. And, um, you know, I've had folks say to me, well, aren't you worried about that? Isn't that a risk? It's like, well, that that's a risk. You're >>Still on the board. >>Yeah. I'm still on the board. Yeah. That's a risk I'm prepared to take. I am more on snowing. >>It sounds well, you're in a good spot. Stay on the board, then you'll know what's going on. Okay. No, yeah. Serious one. But the, this is a real dynamic. It is. It's not a one off its >>Well, and I do believe as well that the platform that you see now with AWS, if you look at the revenues of AWS is in order of magnitude, more than Microsoft was 25 years ago with windows mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so I've believe the opportunity for folks like snowflake and, and folks like observe it. It's an order of magnitude more than it was for the Oracle and the SAPs of the old world. >>Yeah. And I think this is really, I think this is something that this next generation of entrepreneurship is the go big scenario is you gotta be on a platform. Yeah. >>It's quite easy >>Or be the platform, but it's hard. There's only like how seats were at that table left >>Well value migrates up over time. So, you know, when the cloud thing got going, there were probably 10, 20, 30, you know, rack space and there's 1,000,001 infrastructure, a service platform as a service. My, my old, uh, um, employee EMC, we had pivotal, you know, pivotal was a platform as a service. Don't hear so much about it these days, but initially there's a lot of players and then it consolidates. And then to, to like extract, uh, a real business, you gotta move up, you gotta add value, you gotta build databases, then you gotta build applications. So >>It's interesting. Moving from the data center of the cloud was a dream for starters within if the provision, the CapEx. Yeah. Now the CapEx is in the cloud. Then you build on, on top of that, you got snowflake. Now you got on top of that. >>The assumption is almost that compute and storage is free. I know it's not quite free. Yeah. It's almost free, but you can, you know, as an application vendor, you think, well, what can I do if I assume compute and storage is free, that's the mindset you've gotta get >>Into. And I think the platform enablement to value. So if I'm an entrepreneur, I'm gonna get a series us multiple of value in what I'm paying. Yeah. Most people don't even blanket their Avis pills unless they're like massively huge. Yeah. Then it's a repatriation question or whatever discount question, but for most startups or any growing company, the Amazon bill should be a small factor. >>Yeah. I mean, a lot of people, um, ask me, uh, like, look you build in on snowflake. Um, you, you know, you, you, you're gonna be, you're gonna be paying their money. How, how, how, how does that work with your business model? If you're paying their money, you know, do, do you have a viable business? And it's like, well, okay. I, we could build a database as well and observe, but then I've got half the development team working on something that will never be as good as snowflake. And so we made the call early on that. No, no, we, we want a eight above the database. Yeah. Right. Snowflake are doing a great job of innovating on the database and, and the same is true of something like Amazon, like, like snowflake could have built their own cloud and their own platform, but they didn't. >>Yeah. And what's interesting is that Dave <inaudible> and I have been pointing this out and he's obviously a more on snowflake. I've been looking at data bricks, um, and the same dynamics happening, the proof is the ecosystem. Yeah. I mean, if you look at Snowflake's ecosystem right now and data bricks it's exploding. Right. I mean, the shows are selling out the floor. Space's book. That's the old days at VMware. Yeah. The old days at AWS. >>Well, and for snowflake and, and any platform from VI, it's a beautiful thing because, you know, we build on snowflake and we pay them money. They don't have to sell to us. Right. And we do a lot of the support. And so the, the economics work out really, really well. If you're a platform provider and you've got a lot of >>Ecosystems. Yeah. And then also you get, you get a, um, a trajectory of, uh, economies of scale with the institutional knowledge of snowflake integrations, right. New product, you're scaling a step function with them. >>Yeah. I mean, we manage 10 petabytes of data right now. Right. When I, when I, when I arrived at EMC in 2010, we had, we had one petabyte customer. And, and so at observe, we've been only selling the product for a year. We have 10 petabytes of data under management. And so been able to rely on a platform that can manage that is inve >>You know, well, Jeremy great conversation. Thanks for sharing your insights on the industry. Uh, we got a couple minutes left, um, put a plug in for observe. What do you guys know? You got some good funding, great partners. I don't know if you can talk about your, your, your POC customers, but you got a lot of high ends folks that are working with you. You getting in traction. >>Yeah. Yeah. Scales >>Around the corner. Sounds like, are you, is that where you are scale? >>We've got a big that that's when coming up in two or three weeks, we've got, we've got new funding, um, which is always great. Um, the product is, uh, really, really close. I think, as a startup, you always strive for market fit, you know, which is at which point can you just start hiring salespeople? And the revenue keeps going. We're getting pretty close to that right now. Um, we've got about 40 SaaS companies that run on the platform. They're almost all AWS Kubernetes, uh, which is our sweet spot to begin with, but we're starting to get some really interesting, um, enterprise type customers. We're, we're, you know, F five networks we're POC in right now with capital one, we got some interest in news around capital one coming up. I, I can't share too much, but it's gonna be exciting. And, and like I said, so hill continue to, to, >>I think capital one's a big snowflake customer as well. Right. >>They were early in one of the things that attracted me to capital one was they were very, very good with snowflake early on. And, and they put snowflake in a position in the bank where they thought that snowflake could be successful. And, and today that, that is one of Snowflake's biggest accounts, >>Capital, one, very innovative cloud, obviously Atos customer, and very innovative, certainly in the CISO and CIO, um, on another point on where you're at. So you're, Prescale meaning you're about to scale, >>Right? >>So you got POCs, what's that trajectory look like? Can you see around the corner? What's, what's going on? What's on, around the corner. That you're, that you're gonna hit this straight and narrow and, and gas it fast. >>Yeah. I mean, the, the, the, the key thing for us is we gotta get the product. Right. Um, the nice thing about having a guy like Mike Pfizer on the board is he doesn't obsess about revenue at this stage. His questions that the board are always about, like is the product, right? Is the product right? Is the product right? Have you got the product right? And cuz we know when the product's right, we can then scale the sales team and, and the revenue will take care of itself. Yeah. So right now all the attention is on the product. Um, the, this year, the exciting thing is we we're, we're adding all the tracing visualizations. So people will be able to the kind of things that by in the day you could do with the new relics and AppDynamics, the last generation of, of APM tools, you're gonna be able to do that within observe. And we've already got the logs and the metrics capability in there. So for us this year is a big one, cuz we sort of complete the trifecta, you know, the, the >>Logs, what's the secret sauce observe. What if you had the, put it into a, a, a sentence what's the secret sauce? >>I, I, I think, you know, an amazing founding engineering team, uh, number one, I mean, at the end of the day, you have to build an amazing product and you have to solve a problem in a different way. And we've got great long term investors and, and the biggest thing our investors give is it actually, it's not just money. It gives us time to get the product, right. Because if we get the product right, then we can get the growth. >>Got it. Final question. While I got you here, you've been on the enterprise business for a long time. What's the buyer landscape out there. You got people doing POCs on capital one scale. So we know that goes on. What's the appetite at the buyer side for startups and what are their requirements that you're seeing? Uh, obviously we're seeing people go in and dip into the startup pool because new ways to refactor their, this restructure. So, so a lot of happening in cloud, what's the criteria. How are enterprises engaging in with startups? >>Yeah. I mean, enterprises, they know they've gotta spend money transforming the business. I mean, this was, I almost feel like my old Dell or EMC self there, but, um, what, what we were saying five years ago is happening. Um, everybody needs to figure out a way to take their business to this digital world. Everybody has to do it. So the nice thing from a startup standpoint is they know at times they need to risk or, or take a bet on new technology in order to, to help them do that. So I think you've got buyers that a have money, uh, B it prepared to take risks and it's, it's a race against time to you'll get their, their offerings in this, a new digital footprint. >>Final, final question. What's the state of AWS. Where do you see them going next? Obviously they're continuing to be successful. How does cloud 3.0, or they always say it's day one, but it's more like day 10, but what's next for Aw. Where do they go from here? Obviously they're doing well. They're getting bigger and bigger. Yeah, >>Better. It's an amazing story. I mean, you know, we're, we're on AWS as well. And so I, I think if they keep nurturing the builders and the ecosystem, then that is their superpower. They, they have an early leads. And if you look at where, you know, maybe the likes of Microsoft lost the plot in the, in the late nineties, it was, they stopped, uh, really caring about developers in the folks who were building on top of their ecosystem. In fact, they started buying up their ecosystem and competing with people in their ecosystem. And I see with AWS, they, they have an amazing headstart and if they did more, you know, if they do more than that, that's, what's gonna keep this juggernaut rolling for many years to come. >>Yeah. They got the Silicon and got the stack. They're developing Jeremy Burton inside the cube, great resource for commentary, but also founding with the CEO of a company called observing in the middle of all the action on the board of snowflake as well. Um, great startup. Thanks for coming on the cube. Always a pleasure. Okay. Live from San Francisco. It's to cube. I'm John for your host. Stay with us more coverage from San Francisco, California after the short break. >>Hello. Welcome back to the cubes coverage here live in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, host of the cubes cube coverage of AWS summit 2022 here in San Francisco. We're all the developers are the bay air at Silicon valley. And of course, AWS summit in New York city is coming up in the summer. We'll be there as well. SF and NYC cube coverage. Look for us. Of course, reinforcing Boston and re Mars with the whole robotics, AI. They all coming together. Lots of coverage stay with us today. We've got a great guest from Bel VC. John founding partner, entrepreneurial venture is a venture firm. Your next act, welcome to the cube. Good to see you. >>Good to see you, man. I feel like it's been forever since we've been able to do something in person. Well, >>I'm glad you're here because we run into each other all the time. We've known each other for over decade. Um, >>It's been at least 10 years, >>At least 10 years more. And we don't wanna actually go back as bring back the old school web 1.0 days. But anyway, we're in web three now. So we'll get to that in a second. We, >>We are, it's a little bit of a throwback to the path though, in my opinion, >>It's all the same. It's all distributed computing and software. We ran each other in cube con. You're investing in a lot of tech startup founders. Okay. This next level, next gen entrepreneurs have a new makeup and it's software. It's hardcore tech in some cases, not hardcore tech, but using software to take an old something old and make it better new, faster. So tell us about Bel what's the firm. I know you're the founder, uh, which is cool. What's going on. Explain >>What you, I mean, you remember I'm a recovering entrepreneur, right? So of course I, I, >>No, you're never recovering. You're always entrepreneur >>Always, but we are also always recovering. So I, um, started my first company when I was 24. If you remember, before there was Facebook and friends, there was instant messaging. People were using that product at work every day, they were creating a security vulnerability between their network and the outside world. So I plugged that hole and built an instant messaging firewall. It was my first company. The company was called IM logic and we were required by Symantec. Uh, then spent 12 years investing in the next generation of software companies, uh, early investor in open source companies and cloud companies and spent a really wonderful years, uh, at a firm called NEA. So I, I feel like my whole life I've been either starting enterprise software companies or helping founders start enterprise software companies. And I'll tell you, there's never been a better time than right now to start an enterprise software company. >>So, uh, the passion for starting a new firm was really a recognition that founders today that are starting an enterprise software company, they, they tend to be, as you said, a more technical founder, right? Usually it's a software engineer or a builder mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, they are building that are serving a slightly different market than what we've traditionally seen in enterprise software. Right? I think traditionally we've seen it buyers or CIOs that have agendas and strategies, which, you know, purchase software that is traditionally bought and sold tops down. But you know, today I think the most successful enterprise software companies are the ones that are built more bottoms up and have more technical early adopters. And generally speaking, they're free to use. They're free to try. They're very commonly community source or open source companies where you have a large technical community that's supporting them. So there's a, there's kind of a new normal now I think in great enterprise software. And it starts with great technical founders with great products and great bottoms of motions. And I think there's no better place to, uh, service those people than in the cloud and uh, in, in your community. >>Well, first of all, congratulations, and by the way, you got a great pedigree and great background. You're super smart admire of your work and your, and, and your founding, but let's face it. Enterprise is hot because digital transformation is, is all companies there's no, I mean, consumer is enterprise now. Everything is what was once a niche, not, I won't say niche category, but you know, not for the faint of heart, you know, investors, >>You know, it's so funny that you say that enterprise is hot because you, and I feel that way now. But remember, like right now, there's also a giant tech in VC conference in Miami <laugh> and it's covering cryptocurrencies and FCS and web three. So I think beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder <laugh> but no, I, I will tell you, well, >>MFTs is one big enterprise, cuz you gotta have imutability you got performance issues. You have, I IOPS issues. >>Well, and, and I think all of us here that are of may, maybe students of his stream have been involved in open source in the cloud would say that we're, you know, much of what we're doing is, uh, the predecessors of the web web three movement. And many of us I think are contributors to the web three >>Movement. The hype is definitely web >>Three. Yeah. But, >>But you know, >>For sure. Yeah, no, but now you're taking us further east to Miami. So, uh, you know, look, I think, I, I think, um, what is unquestioned with the case and maybe it's, it's more obvious the more time you spend in this world is this is the fastest growing part of enterprise software. And if you include cloud infrastructure and cloud infrastructure spend, you know, it is by many measures over, uh, $500 billion in growing, you know, 20 to 30 a year. So it it's a, it's a just incredibly fast >>Let's getting, let's get into some of the cultural and the, the shifts that are happening, cuz again, you, you have the luxury of being in enterprise when it was hard, it's getting easier and more cooler. I get it and more relevant <laugh> but there's also the hype of like the web three, for instance, but you know, for, uh, um, um, the CEO snowflake, okay. Has wrote a book and Dave Valenti and I were talking about it and uh, Frank Lutman has says, there's no playbooks. We always ask the CEOs, what's your playbook. And he's like, there's no playbook, situational awareness, always Trump's playbooks. So in the enterprise playbook, oh, hire a direct sales force and sass kind of crushed that now SAS is being redefined, right. So what is SAS? Is snowflake a SAS or is that a platform? So again, new unit economics are emerging, whole new situation, you got web three. So to me there's a cultural shift, the young entrepreneurs, the, uh, user experience, they look at Facebook and say, ah, you know, and they own all my data. And you know, we know that that cliche, um, they, you know, the product. So as this next gen, the gen Z and the millennials come in and our customers and the founders, they're looking at things a little bit differently and the tech better. >>Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think we can, we can see a lot of commonalities across all six of startups and the overall adoption of technology. Uh, and, and I would tell you, this is all one big giant revolution. I call it the user driven revolution. Right. It's the rise of the user. Yeah. And you might say product like growth is currently the hottest trend in enterprise software. It's actually user like growth, right. They're one in the same. So sometimes people think the product, uh, is what is driving. >>You just pull the product >>Through. Exactly, exactly. And so that's that I, that I think is really this revolution that you see, and, and it does extend into things like cryptocurrencies and web three and, you know, sort of like the control that is taken back by the user. Um, but you know, many would say that, that the origins of this movement may be started with open source where users were contributors, you know, contributors were users and looking back decades and seeing how it, how it fast forward to today. I think that's really the trend that we're all writing and it's enabling these end users. And these end users in our world are developers, data engineers, cybersecurity practitioners, right. They're really the users. And they're really the, the offic and the most, you know, kind of valued people in >>This. I wanna come back to the data engineers in a second, but I wanna make a comment and get your reaction to, I have a, I'm a gen Xer technically. So for not a boomer, but I have some boomer friends who are a little bit older than me who have, you know, experienced the sixties. And I've, I've been saying on the cube for probably about eight years now that we are gonna hit a digital hippie Revolut, meaning a rebellion against in the sixties was rebellion against the fifties and the man and, you know, summer of love. That was a cultural differentiation from the other one of group, the predecessors. So we're kind of having that digital moment now where it's like, Hey boomers, Hey people, we're not gonna do that anymore. We hate how you organize shit. >>Right. But isn't this just technology. I mean, isn't it, isn't it like there used to be the old adage, like, you know, you would never get fired for buying IBM, but now it's like, you obviously probably would get fired if you bought IBM. And I mean, it's just like the, the, I think, I think >>During the mainframe days, those renegades were breaking into Stanford, starting the home brew club. So what I'm trying to get at is that, do you see the young cultural revolution also, culturally, just, this is my identity NFTs to me speak volumes about my, I wanna associate with NFTs, not single sign on like, well, >>Absolutely. And, and I think like, I think you're hitting on something, which is like this convergence of, of, you know, societal trends with technology trends and how that manifests in our world is yes. I think like there is unquestionably almost a religion around the way in which a product is built. Right. And we can use open source. One example of that religion. Some people say, look, I'll just never try a product in the cloud if it's not open source. Yeah. I think cloud, native's another example of that, right? It's either it's, you know, it either is cloud native or it's not. And I think a lot of people will look at a product and say, look, you know, you were not designed in the cloud era. Therefore I just won't try you. And sometimes, um, like it or not, it's a religious decision, right? It's, it's something that people just believe to be true almost without, uh, necessarily. I mean, >>The data drives all decision making. Let me ask you this next question. As a VC. Now you look at pitch, well, you've been a VC for many years, but you also have the founder entrepreneurial mindset, but you can empathize with the founders. You know, hustle is a big part of the, that first founder check, right? You gotta convince someone to part with their ch their money and the first money in which you do a lot of is about believing in the first. So faking it till you make it is hard. Now you, the data's there, you either have it cloud native, you either have the adaption or traction. So honesty is a big part of that pitch. You can't fake it. Oh, >>AB absolutely. You know, there used to be this concept of like the persona of an entrepreneur, right. And the persona of the entrepreneur would be, you know, somebody who was a great salesperson or somebody who tell a great story. And I still think that that's important, right. It still is a human need for people to believe in narratives and stories. Yeah. But having said that you're right. The proof is in the pudding, right. At some point you click download and you try the product and it does what it says it's gonna, it's gonna do, or it doesn't, or it either stands up to the load test or it doesn't. And so I, I feel like in this new economy, that're, we live in really, it's a shift from maybe the storytellers and the creators to, to the builders, right. The people that know how to build great product. And in some ways the people that can build great product yeah. Stand out from the crowd. And they're the ones that can build communities around their products. And, you know, in some ways can, um, you know, kind of own more of the narrative because their product begin for exactly >>The volume you back to the user led growth. >>Exactly. And it's the religion of, I just love your product. Right. And I, I, I, um, Doug song is the founder of du security used to say, Hey, like, you know, the, the really like in today's world of like consumption based software, like the user is only gonna give you 90 seconds to figure out whether or not you're a company that's easy to do business with for right. And so you can say, and do all the things that you want about how easy you are to work with. But if the product isn't easy to install, if it's not easy to try, if it's not, if, if the it's gotta speak to the, >>Exactly. Speak to the user. But let me ask a question now that for the people watching, who are maybe entrepreneurial entre entrepreneurs, um, masterclass here is in session. So I have to ask you, do you prefer, um, an entrepreneur to come in and say, look at John. Here's where I'm at. Okay. First of all, storytelling's fine. Whether you're an extrovert or introvert, have your style, sell the story in a way that's authentic, but do you, what do you prefer to say? Here's where I'm at? Look, I have an idea. Here's my traction. I think here's my MVP prototype. I need help. Or do you wanna just see more stats? What's the, what's the preferred way that you like to see entrepreneurs come in and engage? >>There's tons of different styles, man. I think the single most important thing that every founder should know is that we, we don't invest in what things are today. We invest in what we think will become, right. And I think that's why we all get up in the morning and try to build something different, right? It's that we see the world a different way. We want it to be a different way, and we wanna work every single moment of the day to try to make that vision a reality. So I think the more that you can show people where you want to be, the more likely somebody is gonna to align with your vision and, and want to invest in you and wanna be along for the ride. So I, I wholeheartedly believe in showing off what you got today, because eventually we all get down to like, where are we and what are we gonna do together? But, um, no, I, you gotta show the path. I think the single most important thing for any founder and VC relationship is that they have the same vision. Uh, if you have the same vision, you can, you can get through bumps in the road, you can get through short term spills. You can all sorts of things in the middle of the journey can happen. Yeah. But it doesn't matter as much if you share the same long term vision, >>Don't flake out and, and be fashionable with the, the latest trends because it's over before you even get there. >>Exactly. I think many people that, that do what we do for a living will say, you know, ultimately the future is relatively easy to predict, but it's the timing that's impossible to predict. So you, you know, you sort of have to balance the, you know, we, we know that the world is going this way and therefore we're gonna invest a lot of money to try to make this a reality. Uh, but sometimes it happens ins six months. Sometimes it takes six years. Sometimes it takes 16 years. Uh, >>What's the hottest thing in enterprise that you see the biggest wave that people should pay attention to that you're looking at right now with Tebel partners, Tebel dot your site. What's the big wave. What's your big >>Wave. There there's three big trends that we invest in. And then the, the only things we do day in day out one is the explosion at open source software. So I think many people think that all software is unquestionably moving to an open source model in some form or another yeah. Tons of reasons to debate whether or not that is gonna happen an alwa timeline happening forever, but it is, it is accelerating faster than we've ever seen. So I, I think it's its one big mass of wave that we continue to ride. Um, second is the rise of data engineering. Uh, I think data engineering is in and of itself now a category of software. It's not just that we store data. It's now we move data and we develop applications on data. And, uh, I think data is in and of itself as big of a market as any of the other markets that we invest in. Uh, and finally it's the gift that keeps on giving. I've spent my entire career in it. We still feel that security is a market that is underinvested. It is, it continues to be the place where people need to continue to invest and spend more money. Yeah. Uh, and those are the three major trends that we run >>And security, you think we all need a do over, right? I mean, do we need a do over in security or is what's the core problem? I, >>I, I keep using this word underinvested because I think it's the right way to think about the problem. I think if you, I think people generally speaking, look at cyber security as an add-on. Yeah. But if you think about it, the whole like economy is moving online. And so in, in some ways like security is core to protecting the digital economy. And so it's, it shouldn't be an afterthought, right? It should be core to what everyone is doing. And that's why I think relative to the trillions of dollars that are at stake, uh, I believe the market size for cybersecurity is around 150 billion and it still is a fraction of what >>We're, what we're and even boom is booming now. So you get the convergence of national security, geopolitics, internet digital >>That's right. You mean arguably, right. Arguably again, it's the area of the world that people should be spending more time and more money given what to stake. >>I love your thesis. I gotta, I gotta say you gotta love your firm. Love who you're doing. We're big supporters of your mission. Congrat is on your entrepreneurial venture. And uh, we'll be, we'll be talking and maybe see a Cuban. Uh, >>Absolutely >>Not. Certainly EU maybe even north America's in Detroit this year. >>Huge fan of what you guys are doing here. Thank you so much for helping me on the show. >>Des bell VC Johnson here on the cube. Check him out. Founder for founders here on the cube, more coverage from San Francisco, California, after the short break, stay with us. Hey everyone. Welcome to the cue here. Live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022 we're live we're back with events. Also we're virtual. We got hybrid all kinds of events. This year, of course, 80% summit in New York city is happening this summer. We'll be there with the cube as well. I'm John. Again, John host of the cube. Got a great guest here. Justin Colby, owner and CEO of innovative solutions they booth is right behind us. Justin, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. Thank you for having me. >>So we're just chatting, uh, off camera about some of the work you're doing. You're the owner of and CEO. Yeah. Of innovative. Yeah. So tell us the story. What do you guys do? What's the elevator pitch. Yeah. >><laugh> so the elevator pitch is we are, uh, a hundred percent focused on small to midsize businesses that are moving to the cloud or have already moved to the cloud and really trying to understand how to best control, cost, security, compliance, all the good stuff, uh, that comes along with it. Um, exclusively focused on AWS and, um, you know, about 110 people, uh, based in Rochester, New York, that's where our headquarters is. But now we have offices down in Austin, Texas up in Toronto, uh, Canada, as well as Chicago. Um, and obviously in New York, uh, you know, the, the business was never like this, uh, five years ago, um, founded in 1989, made the decision in 2018 to pivot and go all in on the cloud. And, uh, I've been a part of the company for about 18 years, bought the company about five years ago. And it's been a great ride. >>It's interesting. The manages services are interesting with cloud cause a lot of the heavy liftings done by AWS. So we had Matt on your team on earlier talking about some of the edge stuff. Yeah. But you guys are a managed cloud service. You got cloud advisory, you know, the classic service that's needed, but the demands coming from cloud migrations and application modernization and obviously data is a huge part of it. Huge. How is this factoring into what you guys do and your growth cuz you guys are the number one partner on the SMB side for edge. Yeah. For AWS, you got results coming in. Where's the, where's the forcing function. What's the pressure point. What's the demand like? Yeah. >>It's a great question. Every CEO I talk to, that's a small to mid-size business. I'll try and understand how to leverage technology better to help either drive a revenue target for their own business, uh, help with customer service as so much has gone remote now. And we're all having problems or troubles or issues trying to hire talent. And um, you know, tech is really at the, at the forefront and the center of that. So most customers are coming to us and they're like, listen, we gotta move to the out or we move some things to the cloud and we want to do that better. And um, there's this big misnomer that when you move to the cloud, you gotta automatically modernize. Yeah. And what we try to help as many customers understand as possible is lifting and shifting, moving the stuff that you maybe currently have OnPrem and a data center to the cloud first is a first step. And then, uh, progressively working through a modernization strategy is always the better approach. And so we spend a lot of time with small to midsize businesses who don't have the technology talent on staff to be able to do >>That. Yeah. They want to get set up. But the, the dynamic of like latency is huge. We're seeing that edge product is a big part of it. This is not a one-off happening around everywhere. It is. And it's not, it's manufacturing, it's the physical plant or location >>Literally. >>And so, and you're seeing more IOT devices. What's that like right now from a challenge and problem statement standpoint, are the customers, not staff, is the it staff kind of old school? Is it new skills? What's the core problem you guys solve >>The SMB space. The core issue nine outta 10 times is people get enamored with the latest and greatest. And the reality is not everything that's cloud based. Not all cloud services are the latest and greatest. Some things have been around for quite some time and are hardened solutions. And so, um, what we try to do with technology staff that has additional on-prem, uh, let's just say skill sets and they're trying to move to a cloud-based workload is we try to help those customers through education and through some practical, let's just call it use case. Um, whether that's a proof of concept that we're doing or whether that's, we're gonna migrate a small workload over, we try to give them the confidence to be able to not, not necessarily go it alone, but to, to, to have the, uh, the Gusto and to really have the, um, the, the opportunity to, to do that in a wise way. Um, and what I find is that most CEOs that I talk to, yeah, they're like, listen, the end of the day, I'm gonna be spending money in one place or another, whether that's OnPrem or in the cloud. I just want to know that I'm doing that in a way that helps me grow as quickly as possible status quo. I think every, every business owner knows that COVID taught us anything that status quo is, uh, is, is no. No. Good. >>How about factoring in the, the agility and speed equation? Does that come up a lot? It >>Does. I think, um, I think there's also this idea that if, uh, if we do a deep dive analysis and we really take a surgical approach to things, um, we're gonna be better off. And the reality is the faster you move with anything cloud based, the better you are. And so there's this assumption that we gotta get it right the first time. Yeah. In the cloud, if you start the, on your journey in one way, and you realize midway that it's not the right, let's just say the right place to go. It's not like buying a piece of iron that you put in the closet and now you own it in the cloud. You can turn those services on and off. It's a, gives you a much higher density for making decisions and failing >>Forward. Well actually shutting down the abandoning, the projects that early and not worrying about it, you got it. I mean, most people don't abandon stuff cuz they're like, oh, I own it. >>Exactly. >>And they get, they get used to it. Like, and then they wait too long. >>That's exactly. Yeah. >>Frog and boiling water as we used to say so, oh, it's a great analogy. So I mean this, this is a dynamic that's interesting. I wanna get more thoughts on it because like I'm a, if I'm a CEO of a company, like, okay, I gotta make my number. Yeah. I gotta keep my people motivated. Yeah. And I gotta move faster. So this is where you guys come in. I get the whole thing. And by the way, great service, um, professional services in the cloud right now are so hot because so hot, you can build it and then have option optionality. You got path decisions, you got new services to take advantage of. It's almost too much for customers. It is. I mean, everyone I talk to at reinvent, that's a customer. Well, how many announcements did Andy jazzy announcer Adam, you know, five, a thousand announcement or whatever they did with huge amounts. Right. Keeping track of it all. Oh, is huge. So what's the, what's the, um, the mission of, of your company. How does, how do you talk to that alignment? Yeah. Not just product. I can get that like values as companies, cuz they're betting on you and your people. >>They are, they are >>The values. >>Our mission is, is very simple. We want to help every small to mid-size business, leverage the power of the cloud. Here's the reality. We believe wholeheartedly. This is our vision that every company is going to become a technology company. So we go to market with this idea that every customer's trying to leverage the power of the cloud in some way, shape or form, whether they know it or don't know it. And number two, they're gonna become a tech company in the pro of that because everything is so tech-centric. And so when you talk about speed and agility, when you talk about the, the endless options and the endless permutations of solutions that a customer can buy in the cloud, how are you gonna ask a team of one or two people in your it department to make all those decisions going it alone or trying to learn it as you go, it only gets you so far working with a partner. >>I'll just give you some perspective. We work with about a thousand small to midsize business customers. More than 50% of those customers are on our managed services. Meaning know that we have their back and we're the safety net. So when a customer is saying, all right, I'm gonna spend a couple thousand dollars a month in the cloud. They know that that bill, isn't gonna jump to $10,000 a month going on loan. Who's there to help protect that. Number two, if you have a security posture and let's just say you're high profile and you're gonna potentially be more vulnerable to security attack. If you have a partner that's offering you some managed services. Now you, again, you've got that backstop and you've got those services and tooling. We, we offer, um, seven different products that are part of our managed services that give the customer the tooling, that for them to go out and buy on their own for a customer to go out today and go buy a new Relic solution on their own, it would cost 'em a fortune. If >>It's training alone would be insane. A risk factor not mean the cost. Yes, absolutely. Opportunity cost is huge, >>Huge, absolutely enormous training and development. Something. I think that is often, you know, it's often overlooked technologists. Typically they want to get their skills up. Yeah. They, they love to get the, the stickers and the badges and the pins, um, at innovative in 2018, when, uh, when we made the decision to go all on the club, I said to the organization, you know, we have this idea that we're gonna pivot and be aligned with AWS in such a way that it's gonna really require us all to get certified. My executive assistant at the time looks at me. She said, even me, I said, yeah, even you, why can't you get certified? Yeah. And so we made, uh, a conscious decision. It wasn't requirement isn't today to make sure everybody in the company has the opportunity to become certified. Even the people that are answering the phones at the front desk >>And she could be running the Kubernetes clusters. I >>Love it. It's amazing. So I'll tell you what, when that customer calls and they have a real Kubernetes issue, she'll be able to assist and get the right >>People involved. And that's a cultural factor that you guys have. So, so again, this is back to my whole point about SMBs and BIS is in general, small and large. It staffs are turning over the gen Z and millennials are in the workforce. They were provisioning top of rack switches. Right. First of all. And so if you're a business, there's also the, I call the build out, um, uh, return factor, ROI piece. At what point in time as an owner or SMB, do I get the why? Yeah. I gotta hire a person to manage it. That person's gonna have five zillion job offers. Yep. Uh, maybe who knows? Right. I got cyber security issues. Where am I gonna find a cyber person? Yeah. A data compliance. I need a data scientist and a compliance person. Right. Maybe one in the same. Right. Good luck. Trying to find a data scientist. Who's also a compliance person. Yep. And the list goes on. I can just continue. Absolutely. I need an SRE to manage the, the, uh, the sock report and we can pen test. Right. >>Right. >>These are, these are >>Like critical issues. This >>Is just like, these are the table stakes. >>Yeah. And, and every, every business owner's thinking about this, that's, >>That's what, at least a million in bloating, if not three or more Just to get that going. Yeah. Then it's like, where's the app. Yeah. So there's no cloud migration. There's no modernization on the app side now. Yeah. No. And nevermind AI and ML. That's >>Right. That's right. So to try to go it alone, to me, it's hard. It's incredibly difficult. And the other thing is, is there's not a lot of partners, so the partner, >>No one's raising their hand boss. I'll do all that exactly. In the it department. >>Exactly. >>Like, can we just call up, uh, you know, our old vendor that's >>Right. <laugh> right. Our old vendor. I like >>It, >>But that's so true. I mean, when I think about how, if I were a business owner starting a business today and I had to build my team, um, and the amount of investment that it would take to get those people skilled up and then the risk factor of those people now having the skills and being so much more in demand and being recruited away, that's a real, that's a real issue. And so how you build your culture around that is, is very important. And it's something that we tell, talk about every, with every one of our small to mid-size >>Businesses. So just, I wanna get, I want to get your story as CEO. Okay. Take us through your journey. You said you bought the company and your progression to, to being the owner and CEO of innovative yeah. Award winning guys doing great. Uh, great bet on a good call. Yeah. Things are good. Tell your story. What's your journey? >>It's real simple. I was, uh, I was a sophomore at the Rochester Institute of technology in 2003. And, uh, I knew that I, I was going to school for it and I, I knew I wanted to be in tech. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't wanna code or configure routers and switches. So I had this great opportunity with the local it company that was doing managed services. We didn't call it at that time innovative solutions to come in and, uh, jump on the phone and dial for dollars. I was gonna cold call and introduce other, uh, small to midsize businesses locally in Rochester, New York go to Western New York, um, who innovative was now. We were 19 people at the time. And I came in, I did an internship for six months and I loved it. I learned more in those six months that I probably did in my first couple of years at, uh, at RT long story short. >>Um, for about seven years, I worked, uh, to really help develop, uh, sales process and methodology for the business so that we could grow and scale. And we grew to about 30 people. And, um, I went to the owners at the time in 2010 and I was like, Hey, on the value of this business and who knows where you guys are gonna be another five years, what do you think about making me an owner? And they were like, listen, you got long ways before you're gonna be an owner, but if you stick it out in your patient, we'll, um, we'll work through a succession plan with you. And I said, okay, there were four other individuals at the time that were gonna also buy into the business with me. >>And they were the owners, no outside capital, none >>Zero, well, 2014 comes around. And, uh, the other folks that were gonna buy into the business with me that were also working at innovative for different reasons, they all decided that it wasn't for them. One started a family. The other didn't wanna put capital in. Didn't wanna write a check. Um, the other had a real big problem with having to write a check. If we couldn't make payroll, I'm like, well, that's kind of like if we're owners, we're gonna have to like cover that stuff. <laugh> so >>It's called the pucker factor. >>Exactly. So, uh, I sat down with the CEO in early 2015, and, uh, we made the decision that I was gonna buy the three partners out, um, go through an early now process, uh, coupled with, uh, an interesting financial strategy that wouldn't strap the business, cuz they cared very much. The company still had the opportunity to keep going. So in 2016 I bought the business, um, became the sole owner. And, and at that point we, um, we really focused hard on what do we want this company to be? We had built this company to this point. Yeah. And, uh, and by 2018 we knew that pivoting going all in on the cloud was important for us and we haven't looked back. >>And at that time the proof points were coming clearer and clearer 2012 through 15 was the early adopters, the builders, the startups and early enterprises. Yes. The capital ones of the world. Exactly. And those kinds of big enterprises, the GA I don't wanna say gamblers, but ones that were very savvy. The innovators, the FinTech folks. Yep. The hardcore glass eating enterprises >>Agreed, agreed to find a small to mid-size business, to migrate completely to the cloud as, as infrastructure was considered. That just didn't happen as often. Um, what we were seeing where a lot of our small to mid-size as customers, they wanted to leverage cloud-based backup or they wanted to leverage a cloud for disaster recovery because it lent itself. Well, early days, our most common cloud customer though, was the customer that wanted to move messaging and collaboration, the Microsoft suite to the cloud. And a lot of 'em dipped their toe in the water. But by 2017 we knew infrastructure was around the corner. Yeah. And so, uh, we only had two customers on AWS at the time. Um, and we, uh, we, we made the decision to go all in >>Justin. Great to have you on the cube. Thank you. Let's wrap up. Uh, tell me the hottest product that you have. Is it migrations? Is it the app modernization? Is it data? What's the hot product and then put a plug in for the company. Awesome. >>So, uh, there's no question. Every customer is looking to migrate workloads and try to figure out how to modernize for the future. We have very interesting, sophisticated yet elegant funding solutions to help customers with the cash flow, uh, constraints that come along with those migrations. So any SMB that's thinking about migrating to the cloud, they should be talking innovative solutions. We know how to do it in a way that allows those customers not to be cash strap and gives them an opportunity to move forward in a controlled, contained way so that they can modernize. >>So like insurance, basically for them not insurance class in the classic sense, but you help them out on the, on the cash exposure. >>Absolutely. We are known for that and we're known for being creative with those customers and being empathetic to where they are in their journey. >>And that's the cloud upside is all about doubling down on the variable wind. That's right. Seeing the value and Ling down on it. Absolutely not praying for it. Yeah. <laugh> all right, Justin. Thanks for coming on. You really appreciate it. >>Thank you very much for having me. >>Okay. This is the cube coverage here live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching. We're back with more great coverage for two days after this short break, >>Live on the floor and see San Francisco for a AWS summit. I'm John ferry, host of the cube here for the next two days, getting all the action we're back in person. We're at a AWS reinvent a few months ago. Now we're back. Events are coming back and we're happy to be here with the cube. Bring all the action. Also virtual. We have a hybrid cube. Check out the cube.net, Silicon angle.com for all the coverage. After the event. We've got a great guest ticking off here. Matthew Park, director of solutions, architecture with innovation solutions. The booth is right here. Matthew, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you very much. I'm glad to be >>Here. So we're back in person. You're from Tennessee. We were chatting before you came on camera. Um, it's great to have to be back through events. >>It's amazing. This is the first, uh, summit I've been to and what two, three years. >>It's awesome. We'll be at the UHS summit in New York as well. A lot of developers and a big story this year is as developers look at cloud going distributed computing, you got on premises, you got public cloud, you got the edge. Essentially the cloud operations is running everything dev sec ops, everyone kind of sees that you got containers, you got Kubernetes, you got cloud native. So the game is pretty much laid out mm-hmm <affirmative> and the edge is with the actions you guys are number one, premier partner at SMB for edge. >>That's right. >>Tell us about what you guys doing at innovative and, uh, what you do. >>That's right. Uh, so I'm the director of solutions architecture. Uh, me and my team are responsible for building out the solutions that are around, especially the edge public cloud for us edge is anything outside of an AWS availability zone. Uh, we are deploying that in countries that don't have AWS infrastructure in region. They don't have it. Uh, give an example, uh, example would be Panama. We have a customer there that, uh, needs to deploy some financial tech and compute is legally required to be in Panama, but they love AWS and they want to deploy AWS services in region. Uh, so they've taken E EKS anywhere. We've put storage gateway and, uh, snowball, uh, in region inside the country and they're running their FinTech on top of AWS services inside Panama. >>You know, it's interesting, Matthew is that we've been covering a, since 2013 with the cube about their events. And we watched the progression and jazzy was, uh, was in charge and became the CEO. Now Adam's in charge, but the edge has always been that thing they've been trying to avoid. I don't wanna say trying to avoid, of course, Amazon would listen to the customers. They work backwards from the customer. We all know that. Uh, but the real issue was they were they're bread and butters EC two and S three. And then now they got tons of services and the cloud is obviously successful and seeing that, but the edge brings up a whole nother level. >>It does computing. It >>Does. That's not centralized in the public cloud now they got regions. So what is the issue at the edge what's driving the behavior. Outpost came out as a reaction to competitive threats and also customer momentum around OT, uh, operational technologies. And it merging. We see that the data at the edge, you got 5g having. So it's pretty obvious, but there's a slow transition. What was the driver for the edge? What's the driver now for edge action for AWS >>Data is the driver for the edge. Data has gravity, right? And it's pulling compute back to where the customer's generating that data and that's happening over and over again. You said it best outpost was a reaction to a competitive situation where today we have over 15 AWS edge services and those are all reactions to things that customers need inside their data centers on location or in the field like with media companies. >>Outpost is interesting. We always used to riff on the cube cause it's basically Amazon and a box pushed in the data center, running native, all the stuff, but now cloud native operations are kind of becoming standard. You're starting to see some standard Deepak syncs. Group's doing some amazing work with open source Rauls team on the AI side, obviously, uh, you got SW, he was giving the keynote tomorrow. You got the big AI machine learning big part of that edge. Now you can say, okay, outpost, is it relevant today? In other words, did outpost do its job? Cause EKS anywhere seems to be getting a lot of momentum. You see local zones, the regions are kicking ass for Amazon. This edge piece is evolving. What's your take on EKS anywhere versus say outpost? >>Yeah, I think outpost did its job. It made customers that were looking at outpost really consider, do I wanna invest in this hardware? Do I, do I wanna have, um, this outpost in my data center, do I want to manage this over the long term? A lot of those customers just transitioned to the public cloud. They went into AWS proper. Some of those customers stayed on prem because they did have use cases that were, uh, not a good fit for outposts. They weren't a good fit. Uh, in the customer's mind for the public AWS cloud inside an availability zone. Now what's happening is as AWS is pushing these services out and saying, we're gonna meet you where you are with 5g. We're gonna meet you where you are with wavelength. We're gonna meet you where you are with EKS anywhere. Uh, I think it has really reduced the amount of times that we have conversations about outposts and it's really increased. We can deploy fast. We don't have to spin up outpost hardware. We can go deploy EKS anywhere or in your VMware environment. And it's increasing the speed of adoption >>For sure. Right? So you guys are making a lot of good business decisions around managed cloud service. That's right. Innovative as that you get the cloud advisory, the classic professional services for the specific edge piece and, and doing that outside of the availability zones and regions for AWS, um, customers in, in these new areas that you're helping out are, they want cloud, like they want to have modernization a modern applications. Obviously they got data machine learning and AI, all part of that. What's the main product or, or, or gap that you're filling for AWS, uh, outside of their availability zones or their regions that you guys are delivering. What's the key is it. They don't have a footprint. Is it that it's not big enough for them? What's the real gap. What's why, why are you so successful? >>So what customers want when they look towards the cloud is they want to focus on, what's making them money as a business. They want on their applications. They want to focus on their customers. So they look towards AWS cloud and say, AWS, you take the infrastructure. You take, uh, some of the higher layers and we'll focus on our revenue generating business, but there's a gap there between infrastructure and revenue generating business that innovative slides into, uh, we help manage the AWS environment. Uh, we help build out these things in local data centers for 32 plus year old company. We have traditional on-premises people that know about deploying hardware that know about deploying VMware to host EKS anywhere. But we also have most of our company totally focused on the AWS cloud. So we're filling that gap in helping of these AWS services, manage them over the long term. So our customers can go to just primarily and totally focusing on their revenue generating business. So >>Basically you guys are basically building AWS edges, >>Correct? >>For correct companies, correct? Mainly because the, the needs are there, you got data, you got certain products, whether it's, you know, low latency type requirements, right. And then they still work with the regions, right. It's all tied together, right. Is that how it works? Right. >>And, and our customers, even the ones in the edge, they also want us to build out the AWS environment inside the availability zone, because we're always gonna have a failback scenario. If we're gonna deploy FinTech in the Caribbean, we talk about hurricanes and we're gonna talk about failing back into the AWS availability zones. So innovative is filling that gap across the board, whether it be inside the AWS cloud or on the AWS edge. >>All right. So I gotta ask you on the, since you're at the edge in these areas, I won't say underserved, but developing areas where you now have data and you have applications that are tapping into that, that required. It makes total sense. We're seeing that across the board. So it's not like it's, it's an outlier it's actually growing. Yeah. There's also the crypto angle. You got the blockchain. Are you seeing any traction at the edge with blockchain? Because a lot of people are looking at the web three in these areas like Panama, you mentioned FinTech. And in, in the islands there a lot of, lot of, lot of web three happening. What's your, what's your view on the web three world right now, relative >>To we, we have some customers actually deploying crypto, especially, um, especially in the Caribbean. I keep bringing the Caribbean up, but it's, it's top of my mind right now we have customers that are deploying crypto. A lot of, uh, countries are choosing crypto to underlie parts of their central banks. Yeah. Um, so it's, it's up and coming a, uh, I, I have some, you know, personal views that, that crypto is still searching for a use case. Yeah. And, uh, I think it's searching a lot and, and we're there to help customers search for that use case. Uh, but, but crypto, as a, as a, uh, technology, um, lives really well on the AWS edge. Yeah. Uh, and, and we're having more and more people talk to us about that. Yeah. And ask for assistance in the infrastructure, because they're developing new cryptocurrencies every day. Yeah. It's not like they're deploying Ethereum or anything specific. They're actually developing new currencies and, and putting them out there on it's >>Interesting. I mean, first of all, we've been doing crypto for many, many years. We have our own little, um, you know, projects going on. But if you look talk to all the crypto people that say, look, we do a smart concept. We use the blockchain. It's kind of over a lot of overhead and it's not really their technical already, but it's a cultural shift, but there's underserved use cases around use of money, but they're all using the blockchain, just for this like smart contracts for instance, or certain transactions. And they go into Amazon for the database. Yeah. <laugh> they all don't tell anyone we're using a centralized service, but what happened to decentralized. >>Yeah. And that's, and that's the conversation performance issue. Yeah. And, and it's a cost issue. Yeah. And it's a development issue. Um, so I think more and more as, as some of these, uh, currencies maybe come up, some of the smart contracts get into, uh, they find their use cases. I think we'll start talking about how does that really live on, on AWS and, and what does it look like to build decentralized applications, but with AWS hardware and services. >>Right. So take me through, uh, a use case of a customer, um, Matthew around the edge. Okay. So I'm a customer, pretend I'm a customer, Hey, you know, I'm, we're in an underserved area. I want to modernize my business. And I got my developers that are totally peaked up on cloud. Um, but we've identified that it's just a lot of overhead latency issues. I need to have a local edge and serve my ad. And I also want all the benefit of the cloud. So I want the modernization and I wanna migrate to the cloud for all those cloud benefits and the goodness of the cloud. What's the answer. Yeah. >>Uh, big thing is, uh, industrial manufacturing, right? That's, that's one of the best use cases, uh, inside industrial manufacturing, we can pull in many of the AWS edge services we can bring in, uh, private 5g, uh, so that all the, uh, equipment inside that, that manufacturing plant can be hooked up. They don't have to pay huge overheads to deploy 5g it's, uh, better than wifi for the industrial space. Um, when we take computing down to that industrial area, uh, because we wanna do pre-procesing on the data. Yeah. We want to gather some analytics. We deploy that with, uh, regular commercial available hardware running VMware, and we deploy EKS anywhere on that. Uh, inside of that manufacturing plant, uh, we can do pre-procesing on things coming out of the, uh, the robotics that depending on what we're manufacturing, right. Uh, and then we can take those refined analytics and for very low cost with maybe a little bit longer latency transmit those back, um, to the AWS availability zone, the, the standard for >>Data, data lake, or whatever, to >>The data lake. Yeah. Data lake house, whatever it might be. Um, and we can do additional data science on that once it gets to the AWS cloud. Uh, but a lot of that, uh, just in time business decisions, just in time, manufacturing decisions can all take place on an AWS service or services inside that manufacturing plant. And that's, that's one of the best use cases that we're >>Seeing. And I think, I mean, we've been seeing this on the queue for many, many years, moving data around is very expensive. Yeah. But also compute going to the data that saves that cost yep. On the data transfer also on the benefits of the latency. So I have to ask you, by the way, that's standard best practice now for the folks watching don't move the data, unless you have to, um, those new things are developing. So I wanna ask you what new patterns are you seeing emerging once this new architecture's in place? Love that idea, localize everything right at the edge, manufacturing, industrial, whatever, the use case, retail, whatever it is. Right. But now what does that change in the, in the core cloud? This is a, there's a system element here. Yeah. What's the new pattern. There's >>Actually an organizational element as well, because once you have to start making the decision, do I put this compute at the point of use or do I put this compute in the cloud out? Uh, now you start thinking about where business decisions should be taking place. Uh, so not only are you changing your architecture, you're actually changing your organization because you're thinking, you're thinking about a dichotomy you didn't have before. Uh, so now you say, okay, this can take place here. Uh, and maybe maybe decision can wait. Right? Yeah. Uh, and then how do I visualize that? By >>The way, it could be a bot too, doing the work for management. Yeah. <laugh> exactly. You got observability going, right. But you gotta change the database architecture on the back. So there's new things developing. You've got more benefit. There >>Are, there are. And, and we have more and more people that, that want to talk less about databases and want to talk more about data lakes because of this. They want to talk more about customers are starting to talk about throwing away data, uh, you know, for the past maybe decade. Yeah. It's been store everything. And one day we will have a data science team that we hire in our organization to do analytics on this decade of data. And >>Well, I mean, that's, that's a great point. We don't have time to drill into, maybe we do another session on this, but the one pattern was income of the past year is that throwing away data's bad. Even data lakes that so-called turn into data swamps, actually, it's not the case. You look at data, brick, snowflake, and other successes out there. And even time series data, which may seem irrelevant efforts over actually matters when people start retrain their machine learning algorithms. Yep. So as data becomes code, as we call it our lab showcase, we did a whole, whole, that event on this. The data's good in real time and in the lake. Yeah. Because the iteration of the data feeds the machine learning training. Things are getting better with the old data. So it's not throw away. It's not just business benefits. Yeah. There's all kinds of new scale. There >>Are. And, and we have, uh, many customers that are run petabyte level. Um, they're, they're essentially data factories on, on, uh, on premises, right? They're, they're creating so much data and they're starting to say, okay, we could analyze this, uh, in the cloud, we could transition it. We could move petabytes of data to the AWS cloud, or we can run, uh, computational workloads on premises. We can really do some analytics on this data transition, uh, those high level and sort of raw analytics back to AWS run 'em through machine learning. Um, and we don't have to transition 10, 12 petabytes of data into AWS. >>So I gotta end the segment on a, on a kind of a, um, fun note. I was told to ask you about your personal background on premise architect, a cloud and skydiving instructor. <laugh> how does that all work together? What tell, what does this mean? Yeah. >>Uh, you >>Jumped out a plane and got a job. You, you got a customer to jump out >>Kind of. So I was jump, I was teaching Scott eing, uh, before I, before I started in the cloud space, this was 13, 14 years ago. I was a, I still am a Scott I instructor. Yeah. Uh, I was teaching Scott eing and I heard out of the corner of my ear, uh, a guy that owned an MSP that was lamenting about, um, you know, storing data and, and how his cus customers are working. And he can't find enough people to operate all these workloads. So I walked over and said, Hey, this is, this is what I went to school for. Like, I'd love to, you know, uh, I was living in a tent in the woods teaching scout. I think I was like, I'd love to not live in a tent in the woods. So, uh, uh, I started in the first day there, uh, we had a, a discussion, uh, EC two, just come out <laugh> um, and, uh, like, >>This is amazing. >>Yeah. And so we had this discussion, we should start moving customers here. And, uh, and that totally revolutionized that business, um, that, that led to, uh, that that guy actually still owns a skydiving airport. But, um, but through all of that and through being an on premises migrated me and myself, my career into the cloud, and now it feels like, uh, almost, almost looking back and saying, now let's take what we learned in the cloud and, and apply those lessons and those services to >>It's. So it's such a great story, you know, I was gonna, you know, you know, the, the, the, the whole, you know, growth mindset pack your own parachute, you know, uh, exactly. You know, the cloud in the early day was pretty much will the shoot open. Yeah. It was pretty much, you had to roll your own cloud at that time. And so, you know, you, you jump on a plane, you gotta make sure that parachute is gonna open. >>And so was Kubernetes by the way, 2015 or so when, um, when that was coming out, it was, I mean, it was, it was still, and I, maybe it does still feel like that to some people. Right. But, uh, it was, it was the same kind of feeling that we had in the early days, AWS, the same feeling we have when we >>It's pretty much now with you guys, it's more like a tandem jump. Yeah. You know, but, but it's a lot of, lot of this cutting edge stuff, like jumping out of an airplane. Yeah. You guys, the right equipment, you gotta do the right things. Exactly. >>Right. >>Matthew, thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate it. Absolutely great conversation. Thanks for having me. Okay. The cubes here live and San Francisco for summit. I'm John Forry host of the cube. Uh, we'll be at a summit in New York coming up in the summer as well. Look up for that. look@thiscalendarforallthecubeactionatthecube.net. We'll be right back with our next segment after this break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone to San Francisco live coverage here, we're at the cube a be summit 2022. We're back in person. I'm John fury host to the cube. We'll be at the eight of his summit in New York city. This summer, check us out then. But right now, two days in San Francisco, getting all the coverage what's going on in the cloud, we got a cube alumni and friend of the cube, my dudes, car CEO, investor, a Sierra, and also an investor and a bunch of startups, angel investor. Gonna do great to see you. Thanks for coming on the cube. Good to see you. Good to see you, sir. Chris. Cool. How are, are you >>Good? How are you? >>So congratulations on all your investments. Uh, you've made a lot of great successes, uh, over the past couple years, uh, and your company raising, uh, some good cash as Sarah. So give us the update. How much cash have you guys raised? What's the status of the company product what's going on? First >>Of all, thank you for having me back to be business with you. Never great to see you. Um, so is a company started around four years back. I invested with a few of the investors and now I'm the CEO there. Um, we have raised close to a hundred million there. Uh, the investors are people like Norwes Menlo, Tru ventures, coast, lo ventures, Ram Sheam and all those people, all well known guys. The Andy Beckel chime, Paul Mo uh, main web. So a whole bunch of operating people and, uh, Silicon valley VCs are involved >>And has it come? >>It's going well. We are doing really well. We are going almost 300% year over year. Uh, for last three years, the space ISR is going after is what I call the applying AI for customer service. It operations, it help desk, uh, the same place I used to work at ServiceNow. We are partners with ServiceNow to take, how can we argument for employees and customers, Salesforce, and ServiceNow to take it to the next stage? >>Well, I love having you on the cube, Dave and I, Dave Valenti as well loves having you on too, because you not only bring the entrepreneurial CEO experience, you're an investor. You're like a GE, you're like a guest analyst. <laugh> >>You know who you >>Get to call this fun to talk. You though, >>You got the commentary, you, your, your finger on the pulse. Um, so I gotta ask you obviously, AI and machine learning, machine learning AI, or you want to phrase it. Isn't every application. Now, AI first, uh, you're seeing a lot of that going on. You're starting to see companies build the modern applications at the top of the stack. So the cloud scale has hit. We're seeing cloud scale. You predicted that we talked about on cube many times. Now you have that past layer with a lot more services and cloud native becoming a standard layer. Containerizations growing DACA just raised a hundred million on a 2 billion valuation back from the dead after they pivoted from an enterprise services. So open source developers are booming. Um, where's the action. I mean, is there data control, plane emerging, AI needs data. There's a lot of challenges around this. There's a lot of discussions and a lot of companies being funded, observability there's 10 million observability companies. Data is the key. What's your angle on this? What's your take. Yeah, >>No, look, I think I'll give you the view that I see right from my side. Obviously data is very clear. So the things that remember system of recorded you and me talked about the next layer is called system of intelligence. That's where the AI will play. Like we talk cloud NA it'll be called AI, NA AI native is a new buzzword and using the AI customer service it operations. You talk about observability. I call it, AIOps applying AOPs for good old it operation management, cloud management. So you'll see the AOPs applied for whole list of, uh, application from observability doing the CMDB, predicting the events insurance. So I see a lot of work clicking for AIOps and service desk. What needs to be helped us with ServiceNow BMC G you see a new ELA emerging as a system of intelligence. Uh, the next would be is applying AI with workflow automation. So that's where you'll see a lot of things called customer workflow, employee workflows. So think of what UI path automation, anywhere ServiceNow are doing, that area will be driven with a AI workflows. So you'll see AI going >>Off is RPA a company is AI, is RPA a feature of something bigger? Or can someone have a company on RPA UI pass? One will be at their event this summer? Um, is it a product company? I mean, I mean, RPA is almost, should be embedded in everything. It's >>A feature. It is very good point. Very, very good thinking. So one is, it's a category for sure. Like, as we thought, it's a category, it's an area where RPA may change the name. I call it much more about automation, workflow automation, but RPA and automation is a category. Um, it's a company, or, but that automation should be embedded in every area. Yeah. Like we call cloud NA and AI NATO it'll become automation. NA yeah. And that's your thinking. >>It's almost interesting me. I think about the, what you're talking about what's coming to mind is I'm kinda having flashbacks to the old software model of middleware. Remember at middleware, it was very easy to understand it. It was middleware. It sat between two things and then the middle, and it was software abstraction. Now you have all, all kinds of workflows, abstractions everywhere. So multiple databases, it's not a monolithic thing. Right? Right. So as you break that down, is this the new modern middleware? Because what you're talking about is data workflows, but they might be siloed or they integrated. I mean, these are the challenges. This is crazy. What's the, >>So don't about the databases become called poly databases. Yeah. I call this one polyglot automation. So you need automation as a layer, as a category, but you also need to put automation in every area like you were talking about. It should be part of service. Now it should be part of ISRA, like every company, every Salesforce. So that's why you see MuleSoft and Salesforce buying RPA companies. So you'll see all the SaaS companies, cloud companies having an automation as a core. So it's like how you have a database and compute and sales and networking. You'll also have an automation as a layer <inaudible> inside every stack. >>All right. So I wanna shift gears a little bit and get your perspective on what's going on behind us. You can see, uh, behind us, you've got the expo hall. We got, um, we're back to vents, but you got, you know, AMD, Clum, Ove, uh, Dynatrace data, dog, innovative, all the companies out here that we know, we interview them all. They're trying to be suppliers to this growing enterprise market. Right. Okay. But now you also got the entrepreneurial equation. Okay. We're gonna have John Sado on from Bel later today. He's a former NEA guy and we always talk to Jerry, Jen. We know all the, the VCs. What does the startups look like? What does the state of the, in your mind, cause you, I know you invest the entrepreneurial founder situation, clouds bigger. Mm-hmm <affirmative> global, right? Data's part of it. You mentioned data's code. Yes. Basically data is everything. What's it like for a first an entrepreneur right now who's starting a company. What's the white space. What's the attack plan. How do they get in the market? How do they engineer everything? >>Very good. So I'll give it to, uh, two things that I'm seeing out there. Remember leaders of Amazon created the startups 15 years back. Everybody built on Amazon now, Azure and GCP. The next layer would be is people don't just build on Amazon. They're going to build it on top of snowflake. Companies are snowflake becomes a data platform, right? People will build on snowflake. Right? So I see my old boss flagman try to build companies on snowflake. So you don't build it just on Amazon. You build it on Amazon and snowflake. Snowflake will become your data store. Snowflake will become your data layer. Right? So I think that's in the of, <inaudible> trying to do that. So if I'm doing observability AI ops, if I'm doing next level of Splunk SIM, I'm gonna build it on snowflake, on Salesforce, on Amazon, on Azure, et cetera. >>It's interesting. You know, Jerry Chan has it put out a thesis a couple months ago called castles in the cloud where your moat is, what you do in the cloud. Not necessarily in the, in the IP. Um, Dave LAN and I had last reinvent, coined the term super cloud, right? He's got a lot of traction and a lot of people throwing, throwing mud at us, but we were, our thesis was, is that what Snowflake's doing? What Goldman S Sachs is doing. You starting to see these clouds on top of clouds. So Amazon's got this huge CapEx advantage. And guys like Charles Fitzgeral out there, who we like was kind of shit on us saying, Hey, you guys terrible, they didn't get it. Like, yeah. I don't think he gets it, but that's a whole, can't wait to debate him publicly on this. <laugh> if he's cool. Um, but snowflake is on Amazon. Yes. Now they say they're on Azure now. Cause they've got a bigger market and they're public, but ultimately without a AWS snowflake doesn't exist. And, and they're reimagining the data warehouse with the cloud, right? That's the billion dollar opportunity. >>It is. It is. They both are very tight. So imagine what Frank has done at snowflake and Amazon. So if I'm a startup today, I want to build everything on Amazon where possible whatever is, I cannot build. I'll make the pass layer. Remember the middle layer pass will be snowflake. So can build it on snowflake. I can use them for data layer. If I really need to size, I'll build it on four.com Salesforce. So I think that's where you'll see. So >>Basically if you're an entrepreneur, the north star in terms of the outcome is be a super cloud. >>It is, >>That's the application on another big CapEx ride, the CapEx of AWS or cloud, >>And that reduce your product development, your go to market and you get use the snowflake marketplace to drive your engagement. >>Yeah. Yeah. How are, how is Amazon and the clouds dealing with these big whales? The snowflakes of the world? I mean, I know they got a great relationship, uh, but snowflake now has to run a company they're public. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll say, I think got Redshift. Amazon has got red, um, but Snowflake's a big customer. They're probably paying AWS think big bills too. >>So John, very good. Cause it's like how Netflix is and Amazon prime, right. Netflix runs on Amazon, but Amazon has Amazon prime that co-option will be there. So Amazon will have Redshift, but Amazon is also partnering with, uh, snowflake to have native snowflake data warehouse as a data layer. So I think depending on the application use case, you have to use each of the above. I think snowflake is here for a long term. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm building an application, I want to use snowflake then writing from stats. >>Well, I think that comes back down to entrepreneurial hustle. Do you have a better product? Right. Product value will ultimately determine it as long as the cloud doesn't, You know, foreclose your value that's right. But some sort of internal hack, but I think, I think the general question that I have is that I think it's okay to have a super cloud like that because the rising tide is still happening at some point. When does the rising tide stop >>And >>Do the people shopping up their knives, it gets more competitive or is it just an infinite growth cycle? I >>Think it's growth. You call it cloud scale. You invented the word cloud scale. So I think look, cloud will continually agree, increase. I think there's, as long as there are more movement from on, uh, OnPrem to the classical data center, I think there's no reason at this point, the rumor, the old lift and shift that's happening in like my business. I see people lift and shifting from the it operations. It helpless, even the customer service service now and, uh, ticket data from BMCs CAS like Microfocus, all those workloads are shifted to the cloud, right? So cloud ticketing system is happening. Cloud system of record is happening. So I think this train has still a long way to go made. >>I wanna get your thoughts for the folks watching that are, uh, enterprise buyers or practitioners, not suppliers to the market, feel free to, to XME or DMing. Next question's really about the buying side, which is if I'm a customer, what's the current, um, appetite for startup products. Cause you know, the big enterprises now and, you know, small, medium, large, and large enterprise are all buying new companies cuz a startup can go from zero to relevant very quickly. So that means now enterprises are engaging heavily with startups. What's it like what's is there a change in order of magnitude of the relationship between the startup selling to, or a growing startup selling to an enterprise? Um, have you seen changes there? I mean I'm seeing some stuff, but why don't we get your thoughts on that? What, no, it is. >>If I remember going back to our 2007 or eight, it, when I used to talk to you back then when Amazon started very small, right? We are an Amazon summit here. So I think enterprises on the average used to spend nothing with startups. It's almost like 0% or 1% today. Most companies are already spending 20, 30% with startups. Like if I look at a CIO line business, it's gone. Yeah. Can it go more? I think it can double in the next four, five years. Yeah. Spending on the startups. >>Yeah. And check out, uh, AWS startups.com. That's a site that we built for the startup community for buyers and startups. And I want to get your reaction because I reference the URL cause it's like, there's like a bunch of companies we've been promoting because the solutions that startups have actually are new stuff. Yes. It's bending, it's shifting left for security or using data differently or um, building tools and platforms for data engineering. Right. Which is a new persona that's emerging. So you know, a lot of good resources there, um, and gives back now to the data question. Now, getting back to your, what you're working on now is what's your thoughts around this new, um, data engineering persona, you mentioned AIOps, we've been seeing AIOps IOPS booming and that's creating a new developer paradigm that's right. Which we call coin data as code data as code is like infrastructure as code, but it's for data, right? It's developing with data, right? Retraining machine learnings, going back to the data lake, getting data to make, to do analysis, to make the machine learning better post event or post action. So this, this data engineers like an SRE for data, it's a new, scalable role we're seeing. Do you see the same thing? Do you agree? Um, do you disagree or can you share >>Yourself? No, I have a lot of thoughts that plus I see AIOP solutions in the future should be not looking back. I need to be like we are in San Francisco bay. That means earthquake prediction. Right? I want AOPs to predict when the outages are gonna happen. When there's a performance issue. I don't think most AOPs vendors have not gone there yet. Like I spend a lot of time with data dog, Cisco app Dyna, right? Dynatrace, all this solution will go future towards to proactive solution with AOPs. But what you bring up a very good point on the data side. I think like we have a Amazon marketplace and Amazon for startup, there should be data exchange where you want to create for AOPs and AI service that customers are give the data, share the data because we thought the data algorithms are useless. I can come the best algorithm, but I gotta train them, modify them, tweak them, make them better, make them better. Yeah. And I think their whole data exchange is the industry has not thought through something you and me talk many times. Yeah. Yeah. I think the whole, that area is very important. >>You've always been on, um, on the Vanguard of data because, uh, it's been really fun. Yeah. >>Going back to our big data days back in 2009, you know, >>Look at, look how much data bricks has grown. >>It is uh, double, the key >>Cloud kinda went private, so good stuff. What are you working on right now? Give a, give a, um, plug for what you're working on. You'll still investing. >>I do still invest, but look, I'm a hundred percent on ISRA right now. I'm the CEO there. Yeah. Okay. So right. ISRA is my number one baby right now. So I'm looking at that growing customers and my customers are some of them, you like it's zoom auto desk, Mac of fee, uh, grandchildren, all the top customers. Um, mainly for it help desk customer service. AIOps those are three product lines and going after enterprise and commercial deals. >>And when should someone buy your product? What's what's their need? What category is it? >>I think they look whenever somebody needs to buy the product is if you need AOP solution to predict, keep your lights on predict S one area. If you want to improve employee experience, you are using a slack teams and you want to automate all your workflows. That's another value problem. Third is customer service. You don't want to hire more people to do it. Some of the areas where you want to scale your company, grow your company, eliminate the cost customer service, >>Great stuff, man. Doing great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the success of your company and your investments. Thanks for coming on the cube. Okay. I'm John fur here at the cube live in San Francisco for day one of two days of coverage of 80 summit, 2022. And we're gonna be at 80 summit in San, uh, in New York and the summer. So look for that on this calendar, of course go to eight of us, startups.com. I mentioned that it's a site for all the hot startups and of course the cube.net and Silicon angle.com. Thanks for watching. We'll be back more coverage after this short break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. This to cubes coverage here in San Francisco, California, a Davis summit, 2022, the beginning of the event season, as it comes back a little bit smaller footprint, a lot of hybrid events going on, but this is actually a physical event, a summit new York's coming in the summer. We'll be there too with the cube on the set. We're getting back in the groove, psyched to be back. We were at reinvent, uh, as well, and we'll see more and more cube, but you're gonna see a lot of virtual cube, a lot of hybrid cube. We wanna get all those conversations, try to get more interviews, more flow going. But right now I'm excited to have Corey Quinn here on the back on the cube chief cloud economists with duck, bill groove, he founder, uh, and chief content person always got great angles, fun comedy, authoritative Corey. Great to see you. Thank you. >>Thanks. Coming on. Sure is a lot of words to describe as shit posting, which is how I describe what I tend to do. Most days, >>Shit posting is an art form now. And if you look at Mark's been doing a lot of shit posting lately, all a billionaires are shit posting, but they don't know how to do it. Like they're not >>Doing it right. Something opportunity there. It's like, here's how to be even more obnoxious and incisive. It's honestly the most terrifying scenario for anyone is if I have that kind of budget to throw at my endeavors, it's like, I get excited with a nonsense I can do with a $20 gift card for an AWS credit compared to, oh well, if I could buy a mid-size island to begin doing this from, oh, then we're having fun. This >>Shit posting trend. Interesting. I was watching a thread go on about, saw someone didn't get a job because of their shit posting and the employer didn't get it. And then someone on the other side, I'll hire the guy cuz I get that's highly intelligent shit posting. So for the audience that doesn't know what shit posting is, what is shit posting? >>It's more or less talking about the world of enterprise tech, which even that sentence is hard to finish without falling asleep and toppling out of my chair in front of everyone on the livestream. But it's doing it in such a way that brings it to life that says the quiet part. A lot of the audience is thinking, but generally doesn't say either because they're polite or not a jackass or more prosaically are worried about getting fired for better or worse. I don't have that particular constraint, >>Which is why people love you. So let's talk about what you, what you think is, uh, worthy and not worthy in the industry right now, obviously, uh, coupons coming up in Spain, which they're having a physical event, you can see the growth of cloud native Amazons, all, all the Adams let see new CEO, Andy move on to be the chief of all. Amazon just saw him. The cover of was it time magazine. Um, he's under a lot of stress. Amazon's changed. Invoice has changed. What's working. What's not, what's rising, what's falling. What's hot. What's not, >>It's easy to sit here and criticize almost anything these folks do. They they're effectively in a fishbowl, but I have trouble imagining the logistics. It takes to wind up handling the catering for a relatively downscale event like this one this year, let alone running a 1.7 million employee company having to balance all the competing challenges and pressures and the rest. I, I just can't fathom what it would be like to look at all of AWS. It's, it's sprawling, immense that dominates our entire industry and say, okay, this is a good start, but I, I wanna focus on something with a broader remit. What is that? How do you even get into that position? And you can't win once you're there. All you can do is hold onto the tiger and hope you don't get mold. Well, >>There's a lot of force for good conversations, seeing a lot of that going on, Amazon's trying to port and he was trying to portray themselves as you know, the Pathfinder, you know, you're the pioneer, um, force for good. And I get that and I think that's a good angle as cloud goes mainstream. There's still the question of, we had a guy on just earlier, who was a skydiving instructor and we were joking about the early days of cloud. Like that was like skydiving, build a parachute open, you know, and now it same kind of thing. As you move to edge, things are like reliable in some areas, but still new, new fringe, new areas. That's crazy. Well, >>Since the last time we've spoken, uh, Steve Schmidt is now the CISO for all of Amazon and his backfill replacement. The AWS CISO is CJ. Moses who as a hobby races, a as a semi-pro race car driver to my understanding, which either, I don't know what direction to take that in either. This is what he does to relax or ultimately, or ultimately it's. Huh? That, that certainly says something about risk assessment. I'm not entirely sure what, but okay. Either way, sounds like more exciting >>Replacement ready <laugh> in case something goes wrong. I, the track highly >>Available >>CSOs. I gotta say one of the things I do like in the recent trend is that the tech companies are getting into the formula one, which I was never a fan of until I watched that Netflix series. But when you look at the formula one, it's pretty cool. Cause it's got some tech angles, I get the whole data instrumentation thing, but the most coolest thing about formula one is they have these new rigs out. Yeah. Where you can actually race in e-sports with other, in pure simulation of the race car. You gotta get the latest and video graphics card, but it's basically a tricked out PC with amazing monitors and you have all the equipment of F1 and you're basically simulating racing. >>Oh, it's great too. And I can see the appeal of these tech companies getting into it because these things are basically rocket shifts. When those cars go, like they're sitting there, we can instrument every last part of what is going on inside that vehicle. And then AWS crops up. And we can bill on every one of those dimensions too. And it's like slow down their hasty pudding one step at a time. But I do see the appeal. >>So I gotta ask you about, uh, what's going in your world. I know you have a lot of great success. We've been following you in the queue for many, many years. Got a great newsletter. Check out Corey Quinn's newsletter, uh, screaming in the cloud program. Uh, you're on the cutting edge and you've got a great balance between really being snarky and, and, and really being delivering content. That's exciting, uh, for people, uh, with a little bit of an edge, um, how's that going? Uh, what's back any blow back late there been uptick. What was, what are some of the things you're hearing from your audience, more Corey, more Corey. And then of course the, the PR team's calling you >>The weird thing about having an audience beyond a certain size is far and away as a landslide. The most common response I get is silence where it's high. I'm emailing an awful lot of people at last week in AWS every week and okay. They must not have heard me it. That is not actually true. People just generally don't respond to email because who responds to email newsletters. That sounds like something, a lunatic might do same story with response to live streams and podcasts. It's like, I'm gonna call into that am radio show and give them a piece of my mind. People generally don't do that. >>We should do that. Actually. I think sure would call in. Oh, I, >>I think >>Chief, we had that right now. People would call in and say, Corey, what do you think about X? >>Yeah. It not, everyone understands the full context of what I do. And in fact, increasingly few people do and that's fine. I, I keep forgetting that sometimes people do not see what I'm doing in the same light that I do. And that's fine. Blowback has been largely minimal. Honestly, I am surprised anything by how little I have gotten over the last five years of doing this, but it would be easier to dismiss me if I weren't generally. Right. When, okay, so you launch this new service and it seems pretty crappy to me cuz when I try and build something, it falls over and begs for help. And people might not like hearing that, but it's what customers are finding too. Yeah. I really am the voice of the customer. >>You know, I always joke with Dave ante about how John Fort's always at, uh, reinvent getting the interview with jazzy now, Andy we're there, you're there. And so we have these rituals at the events. It's all cool. Um, one of the rituals I like about your, um, your content is you like to get on the naming product names. Um, and, and, and, and, and kind of goof on that. Now why I like is because I used to work at ETT Packard where they used to name things as like engineers, HP 1 0 5, or we can't, >>We have a new monitor. How are we gonna name it? Throw the wireless keyboard down the stairs again. And there you go. Yeah. >>It's and the old joke at HP was if they, if they invented sushi, they'd say, yeah, we can't call sushi. It's cold, dead fish. That's what it is. And so the joke was cold. Dead fish is a better name than sushi. So you know is fun. So what's the, what are the, how's the Amazon doing in there? Have they changed their naming, uh, strategy, uh, on some of their, their >>Producting, they're going in different directions. When they named Amazon Aurora, they decided to explore a new theme of Disney princesses as they go down those paths. And some things are more descriptive. Some people are clearly getting bonused on a number of words. They can shove into it. Like the better a service is the longer it's name. Like AWS systems manager, session manager is a great one. I love the service, ridiculous name. They have systems manager, parameter store, which is great. They have secrets manager, which does the same thing. It's two words less, but that one costs money in a way that systems manage your parameter store does not. It's >>Fun. What's your, what's your favorite combination of acronyms >>Combination of you >>Got Ks. You got EMR, you got EC two. You got S three SQS. Well, Redshift the on an acronym, you >>Gots is one of my personal favorites because it's either elastic block store or elastic bean stock, depending entirely on the context of the conversation. >>They still up bean stalk. Or is that still around? Oh, >>They never turn anything off. They're like the anti Google, Google turns things off while they're still building it. Whereas Amazon is like, wow, we built this thing in 2005 and everyone hates it. But while we certainly can't change it, now it has three customers on it. John three <laugh>. >>Okay. >>Simple BV still haunts our dreams. >>I, I actually got an email. I saw one of my, uh, servers, all these C two S were being deprecated and I got an email I'm like, I couldn't figure out. Why can you just like roll it over? Why, why are you telling me just like, give me something else. Right. Okay. So let me talk about, uh, the other things I want to ask you is that like, okay. So as Amazon gets better in some areas, where do they need more work in your opinion? Because obviously they're all interested in new stuff and they tend to like put it out there for their end to end customers. But then they've got ecosystem partners who actually have the same product. Yes. And, and this has been well documented. So it's, it's not controversial. It's just that Amazon's got a database, Snowflake's got a database service. So Redshift, snowflake database is, so you got this co-op petition. Yes. How's that going? And what are you hearing about the reaction to any of that stuff? >>Depends on who you ask. They love to basically trot out a bunch of their partners who will say nice things about them. And it very much has heirs of, let's be honest, a hostage video, but okay. Cuz these companies do partner with Amazon and they cannot afford to rock the boat too far. I'm not partnered with anyone. I can say what I want and they're basically restricted to taking away my birthday at worse so I can live with that. >>All right. So I gotta ask about multi-cloud cause obviously the other cloud shows are coming up. Amazon hated that word. Multi-cloud um, a lot of people are saying, you know, it's not a real good marketing word, like multi sounds like, you know, root canal. Mm-hmm <affirmative> right. So is there a better description for multi-cloud >>Multiple single points? >>Dave loves that term. Yeah. >>Yeah. You're building in multiple single points of failure. Do it for the right reasons or don't do it as a default. I believe not doing it is probably the right answer. However, and if I were, if I were Amazon, I wouldn't want to talk about multi-cloud either as the industry leader, talk about other clouds, bad direction to go in from a market cap perspective, it doesn't end well for you, but regardless of what they want to talk about, or don't want to talk about what they say, what they don't say, I tune all of it out. And I look at what customers are doing and multi-cloud exists in a variety of forms. Some brilliant, some brain dead. It depends a lot on context. But my general response is when someone gets on stage from a company and tells me to do a thing that directly benefits their company. I am skeptical at best. Yeah. When customers get on stage and say, this is what we're doing, because it solves problems. That's when I shut up and listen. Yeah. >>Cool. Awesome. Corey, I gotta ask you a question, cause I know you, we you've been, you know, fellow journeymen and the, and the cloud journey going to all the events and then the pandemic hit where now in the third year, who knows what it's gonna gonna end. Certainly events are gonna look different. They're gonna be either changing footprint with the virtual piece, new group formations. Community's gonna emerge. You got a pretty big community growing and it's throwing like crazy. What's the weirdest or coolest thing, or just big chain angels. You've seen with the pandemic, uh, from your perspective, cuz you've been in the you're in the middle of the whitewater rafting. You've seen the events you circle offline. You saw the online piece, come in, you're commentating. You're calling balls and strikes in the industry. You got a great team developing over there. Duck bill group. What's the big aha moment that you saw with the pandemic. Weird, fun, serious, real in the industry and with customers what's >>Accessibility. Reinvent is a great example. When in the before times it's open to anyone who wants to attend, who can pony up two grand and a week in Las Vegas and get to Las Vegas from wherever they happen to be by moving virtually suddenly it, it embraces the reality that talent is even distributed. Opportunity is not. And that means that suddenly these things are accessible to a wide swath of audience and potential customer base and the rest that hadn't been invited to the table previously, it's imperative that we not lose that. It's nice to go out and talk to people and have people come up and try and smell my hair from time to time, I smell delightful. Let make assure you, but it was, but it's also nice to be. >>I have a product for you if you want, you know. >>Oh, excellent. I look forward to it. What is it putting? Why not? <laugh> >>What else have you seen? So when accessibility for talent, which by the way is totally home run. What weird things have happened that you've seen? Um, that's >>Uh, it's, it's weird, but it's good that an awful lot of people giving presentations have learned to tighten their message and get to the damn point because most people are not gonna get up from a front row seat in a conference hall, midway through your Aing talk and go somewhere else. But they will change a browser tab and you won't get them back. You've gotta be on point. You've gotta be compelling if it's going to be a virtual discussion. >>Yeah. And also turn off your IMEs too. >>Oh yes. It's always fun in the, in the meetings when you're talking to someone and their co is messaging them about, should we tell 'em about this? And I'm sitting there reading it and it's >>This guy is really weird. Like, >>Yes I am and I bring it into the conversation and then everyone's uncomfortable. It goes, wow. >>Why not? I love when my wife yells at me over I message. When I'm on a business call, like, do you wanna take that about no, I'm good. >>No, no. It's better off. I don't. No, the only encourager it's fine. >>My kids. Excellent. Yeah. That's fun again. That's another weird thing. And, and then group behavior is weird. Now people are looking at, um, communities differently. Yes. Very much so, because if you're fatigued on content, people are looking for the personal aspect. You're starting to see much more of like yeah. Another virtual event. They gotta get better. One and two who's there. >>Yeah. >>The person >>That's a big part of it too is the human stories are what are being more and more interesting. Don't get up here and tell me about your product and how brilliant you are and how you built it. That's great. If I'm you, or if I wanna work with you or I want to compete with you, or I wanna put on my engineering hat and build it myself. Cause why would I buy anything? That's more than $8. But instead, tell me about the problem. Tell me about the painful spot that you specialize in. Tell me a story there. >>I, I >>Think that gets a glimpse in a hook and >>Makes more, more, I think you nailed it. Scaling storytelling. Yes. And access to better people because they don't have to be there in person. I just did it thing. I never, we never would've done the queue. We did. Uh, Amazon stepped up in sponsors. Thank you, Amazon for sponsoring international women's day, we did 30 interviews, APAC. We did five regions and I interviewed this, these women in Asia, Pacific eight, PJ, they called for in this world. And they're amazing. I never would've done those interviews cuz I never, would've seen 'em at an event. I never would've been in Japan or Singapore to access them. And now they're in the index. They're in the network. They're collaborating on LinkedIn. So a threads are developing around connections that I've never seen before. Yes. Around the content, >>Absolutely >>Content value plus >>The networking. And that is the next big revelation of this industry is going to realize you have different companies. And in Amazon's case, different service teams, all, all competing with each other, but you have the container group and you have the database group and you have the message cuing group. But customers don't really want to build things from spare parts. They want a solution to a problem. I want to build an app that does Twitter for pets or whatever it is I'm trying to do. I don't wanna basically have to pick and choose and fill my shopping cart with all these different things. I want something that's gonna give me what I'm trying to get as close to turnkey as possible. Moving up the stack. That is the future. And just how it gets here is gonna be >>Well we're here with Corey Quinn, the master of the master of content here in the a ecosystem. Of course we we've been following up in the beginnings. Great guy. Check out his blog, his site, his newsletter screaming podcast. Cory, final question for you. Uh, what do you hear doing what's on your agenda this week in San Francisco and give a plug for the duck build group. What are you guys doing? I know you're hiring some people what's on the table for the company. What's your focus this week and put a plug in for the group. >>I'm here as a customer and basically getting outta my cage cuz I do live here. It's nice to actually get out and talk to folks who are doing interesting things at the duck build group. We solve one problem. We fixed the horrifying AWS bill, both from engineering and architecture, advising as well as negotiating AWS contracts because it turns out those things are big and complicated. And of course my side media projects last week in aws.com, we are, it it's more or less a content operation where I indulge my continual and ongoing law of affair with the sound of my own voice. >><laugh> and you good. It's good content. It's on, on point fun, Starky and relevant. So thanks for coming to the cube and sharing with us. Appreciate it. No, thank you. Fun. You. Okay. This the cube covers here in San Francisco, California, the cube is back at to events. These are the summits, Amazon web services summits. They happen all over the world. We'll be in New York and obviously we're here in San Francisco this week. I'm John furry. Keep, keep it right here. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break. Okay. Welcome back everyone. This's the cubes covers here in San Francisco, California, we're live on the show floor of AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for host of the cube and remember AWS summit in New York city coming up this summer, we'll be there as well. And of course reinvent the end of the year for all the cube coverage on cloud computing and AWS. The two great guests here from the APN global APN se Jenko and Jeff Grimes partner leader, Jeff and se is doing partnerships global APN >>AWS global startup program. Yeah. >>Okay. Say that again. >>AWS global startup program. >>That's the official name. >>I love >>It too long, too long for me. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, of course. Appreciate it. Tell us about what's going on with you guys. What's the, how was you guys organized? You guys we're obviously were in San Francisco bay area, Silicon valley, zillions of startups here, New York. It's got another one we're gonna be at tons of startups. Lot of 'em getting funded, big growth and cloud big growth and data security, hot and sectors. >>Absolutely. >>So maybe, maybe we could just start with the global startup program. Um, it's essentially a white glove service that we provide to startups that are built on AWS. And the intention there is to help identify use cases that are being built on top of AWS. And for these startups, we want to provide white glove support in co building products together. Right. Um, co-marketing and co-selling essentially, um, you know, the use cases that our customers need solved, um, that either they don't want to build themselves or are perhaps more innovative. Um, so the, a AWS global startup program provides white glove support, dedicated headcount for each one of those pillars. Um, and within our program, we've also provided incentives, programs go to market activities like the AWS startup showcase that we've built for these startups. >>Yeah. By the way, start AWS startups.com is the URL, check it out. Okay. So partnerships are key. Jeff, what's your role? >>Yeah. So I'm responsible for leading the overall F for, for the AWS global startup program. Um, so I've got a team of partner managers that are located throughout the us, uh, managing a few hundred startup ISVs right now. <laugh> >>Yeah, I got >>A lot. We've got a lot. >>There's a lot. I gotta, I gotta ask the tough question. Okay. I'm I'm a startup founder. I got a team. I just got my series a we're grown. I'm trying to hire people. I'm super busy. What's in it for me. Yeah. What do you guys bring to the table? I love the white glove service, but translate that what's in it. What do I get out of it? What's >>A good story. Good question. I focus, I think. Yeah, because we get, we get to see a lot of partners building their businesses on AWS. So, you know, from our perspective, helping these partners focus on what, what do we truly need to build by working backwards from customer feedback, right? How do we effectively go to market? Because we've seen startups do various things, um, through trial and error, um, and also just messaging, right? Because oftentimes partners or rather startups, um, try to boil the ocean with many different use cases. So we really help them, um, sort of laser focus on what are you really good at and how can we bring that to the customer as quickly as possible? >>Yeah. I mean, it's truly about helping that founder accelerate the growth of their company. Yeah. Right. And there's a lot that you can do with AWS, but focus is truly the key word there because they're gonna be able to find their little piece of real estate and absolutely deliver incredible outcomes for our customers. And then they can start their growth curve there. >>What are some of the coolest things you've seen with the APN that you can share publicly? I know you got a lot going on there, a lot of confidentiality. Um, but you know, we're here lot of great partners on the floor here. I'm glad we're back at events. Uh, a lot of stuff going on digitally with virtual stuff and, and hybrid. What are some of the cool things you guys have seen in the APN that you can point to? >>Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can point to few, you can take them. Sure. So, um, I think what's been fun over the years for me personally, I came from a startup, ran sales at an early stage startup and, and I went through the whole thing. So I have a deep appreciation for what these guys are going through. And what's been interesting to see for me is taking some of these early stage guys, watching them progress, go public, get acquired, and see that big day mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, and being able to point to very specific items that we help them to get to that point. Uh, and it's just a really fun journey to watch. >>Yeah. I, and part of the reason why I really, um, love working at the AWS, uh, global startup program is working with passionate founders. Um, I just met with a founder today that it's gonna, he's gonna build a very big business one day, um, and watching them grow through these stages and supporting that growth. Um, I like to think of our program as a catalyst for enterprise sort of scale. Yeah. Um, and through that we provide visibility, credibility and growth opportunities. >>Yeah. A lot, a lot of partners too. What I found talking to staff founders is when they have that milestone, they work so hard for it. Whether it's a B round C round Republic or get bought. Yeah. Um, then they take a deep breath and they look back at wow, what a journey it's been. So it's kind of emotional for sure. Yeah. Still it's a grind. Right? You gotta, I mean, when you get funding, it's still day one. You don't stop. It's no celebrate, you got a big round or valuation. You still gotta execute >>And look it's hypercompetitive and it's brutally difficult. And our job is to try to make that a little less difficult and navigate those waters right. Where everyone's going after similar things. >>Yeah. I think as a group element too, I observe that startups that I, I meet through the APN has been interesting because they feel part of AWS. Yeah, totally. As a group of community, as a vibe there. Um, I know they're hustling, they're trying to make things happen. But at the same time, Amazon throws a huge halo effect. I mean, that's a huge factor. I mean, yeah. You guys are the number one cloud in the business, the growth in every sector is booming. Yeah. And if you're a startup, you don't have that luxury yet. And look at companies like snowflake, they're built on top of AWS. Yeah. I mean, people are winning by building on AWS. >>Yeah. And our, our, our program really validates their technology first. So we have, what's called a foundation's technical review that we put all of our startups through before we go to market. So that when enterprise customers are looking at startup technology, they know that it's already been vetted. And, um, to take that a step further and help these partners differentiate, we use programs like the competency programs, the DevOps compet, the, the security competency, which continues to help, um, provide sort of a platform for these startups, help them differentiate. And also there's go to market benefits that are associated with that. >>Okay. So let me ask the, the question that's probably on everyone's mind, who's watching. Certainly I asked this a lot. There's a lot of companies startups out there who makes the, is there a criteria? Oh God, it's not like his sports team or anything, but like sure. Like there's activate program, which is like, there's hundreds of thousands of startups out there. Not everyone is at the APN. Right? Correct. So ISVs again, that's a whole nother, that's a more mature partner that might have, you know, huge market cap or growth. How do you guys focus? How do you guys focus? I mean, you got a good question, you know, a thousand flowers blooming all the time. Is there a new way you guys are looking at it? I know there's been some talk about restructure or, or new focus. What's the focus. >>Yeah. It's definitely not an easy task by any means. Um, but you know, I recently took over this role and we're really trying to establish focus areas, right. So obviously a lot of the fees that we look after our infrastructure ISVs, that's what we do. Uh, and so we have very specific pods that look after different type of partners. So we've got a security pod, we've got a DevOps pod, we've got core infrastructure, et cetera. And really we're trying to find these ISVs that can solve, uh, really interesting AWS customer challenges. >>So you guys have a deliberate, uh, focus on these pillars. So what infrastructure, >>Security, DevOps, and data and analytics, and then line of business >>Line of business line, like web marketing >>Solutions, business apps, >>Business, this owner type thing. Exactly. >>Yeah, exactly. >>So solutions there. Yeah. More solutions and the other ones are like hardcore. So infrastructure as well, like storage, backup, ransomware of stuff, or, >>Uh, storage, networking. >>Okay. Yeah. The classic >>Database, et cetera. Right. >>And so there's teams on each pillar. >>Yep. So I think what's, what's fascinating for the startup that we cover is that they've got, they truly have support from a build market sell perspective. Right. So you've got someone who's technical to really help them get the technology, figured out someone to help them get the marketing message dialed and spread, and then someone to actually do the co-sell, uh, day to day activities to help them get in front of customers. >>Probably the number one request that we always ask for Amazon is can we waste that sock report? Oh, download it, the console, which we use all the time. Exactly. But security's a big deal. I mean, you know, SREs are evolving, that role of DevOps is taking on dev SecOps. Um, I, I could see a lot of customers having that need for a relationship to move things faster. Do you guys provide like escalation or is that a part of a service or not, not part of a, uh, >>Yeah, >>So the partner development manager can be an escalation point. Absolutely. Think of them as an extension of your business inside of AWS. >>Great. And you guys how's that partner managers, uh, measure >>On those three pillars. Right. Got it. Are we billing, building valuable use cases? So product development go to market, so go to market activities, think blog, posts, webinars, case studies, so on and so forth. And then co-sell not only are we helping these partners win their current opportunities that they are sourcing, but can we also help them source net new deals? Yeah. Right. That's >>Very important. I mean, top asked from the partners is get me in front of customers. Right. Um, not an easy task, but that's a huge goal of ours to help them grow their top >>Line. Right. Yeah. In fact, we had some interviews here on the cube earlier talking about that dynamic of how enterprise customers are buying. And it's interesting, a lot more POCs. I have one partner here that you guys work with, um, on observability, they got a huge POC with capital one mm-hmm <affirmative> and the enterprises are engaging the startups and bringing them in. So the combination of open source software enterprises are leaning into that hard and bringing young growing startups in mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yep. So I could see that as a huge service that you guys can bring people in. >>Right. And they're bringing massively differentiated technology to the table. Mm-hmm <affirmative> the challenge is they just might not have the brand recognition that the big guys have. And so that it's our job is how do you get that great tech in front of the right situations? >>Okay. So my next question is about the show here, and then we'll talk globally. So here in San Francisco sure. You know, Silicon valley bay area, San Francisco bay area, a lot of startups, a lot of VCs, a lot of action. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so probably a big market for you guys. Yeah. So what's exciting here in SF and then outside SF, you guys have a global program, you see any trends that are geography based or is it sure areas more mature? There's certain regions that are better. I mean, I just interviewed a company here that's doing, uh, AWS edge really well in these cases. It's interesting that these, the partners are filling a lot of holes and gaps in the opportunities with AWS. So what's exciting here. And then what's the global perspective. >>Yeah, totally. So obviously a ton of partners, I, from the bay area that we support. Um, but we're seeing a lot of really interesting technology coming out of AMEA specifically. Yeah. Uh, and making a lot of noise here in the United States, which is great. Um, and so, you know, we definitely have that global presence and, and starting to see super differentiated technology come out of those regions. >>Yeah. Especially Tel Aviv. Yeah. >>Amy real quick, before you get in the surge. It's interesting. The VC market in, in Europe is hot. Yeah. They've got a lot of unicorns coming in. We've seen a lot of companies coming in. They're kind of rattling their own, you know, cage right now. Hey, look at us. We'll see if they crash, you know, but we don't see that happening. I mean, people have been projecting a crash now in, in the startup ecosystem for at least a year. It's not crashing. In fact, funding's up. >>Yeah. The pandemic was hard on a lot of startups for sure. Yeah. Um, but what we've seen is many of these startups, they, as quickly as they can grow, they can also pivot as, as, as well. Um, and so I've actually seen many of our startups grow through the pandemic because their use cases are helping customers either save money, become more operationally efficient and provide value to leadership teams that need more visibility into their infrastructure during a pandemic. >>It's an interesting point. I talked to Andy jazzy and Adam Leski both say the same thing during the pandemic necessity, the mother of all invention. Yep. And startups can move fast. So with that, you guys are there to assist if I'm a startup and I gotta pivot cuz remember iterate and pivot, iterate and pivot. So you get your economics, that's the playbook of the ventures and the models. >>Exactly. How >>Do you guys help me do that? Give me an example of walk me through, pretend me I'm a startup. Hey, I am on the cloud. Oh my God. Pandemic. They need video conferencing. Hey cube. Yeah. What do I need? Surge? What, what do I do? >>That's a good question. First thing is just listen. Yeah. I think what we have to do is a really good job of listening to the partner. Um, what are their needs? What is their problem statement and where do they want to go at the end of the day? Um, and oftentimes because we've worked with so many successful startups, they have come out of our program. We have, um, either through intuition or a playbook, determined what is gonna be the best path forward and how do we get these partners to stop focusing on things that will eventually, um, just be a waste of time yeah. And, or not provide, or, you know, bring any fruit to the table, which, you know, essentially revenue. >>Well, we love star rights here in the cube because one, um, they have good stories. They're oil and cutting edge, always pushing the envelope and they're kind of disrupting someone else. Yeah. And so they have an opinion. They don't mind sharing on camera. So love talking to startups. We love working with you guys on our startup showcases startups.com. Check out AWS startups.com and you got the showcases, uh, final. We I'll give you guys the last word. What's the bottom line bumper sticker for AP the global APN program. Summarize the opportunity for startups, what you guys bring to the table and we'll close it out. Totally start >>With you. Yeah. I think the AWS global startup program's here to help companies truly accelerate their business full stop. Right. And that's what we're here for. I love it. >>It's a good way to, it's a good way to put it Dito. >>Yeah. All right, sir. Thanks for coming on. Thanks John. Great to see you love working with you guys. Hey, startups need help. And the growing and huge market opportunities, the shift cloud scale data engineering, security infrastructure, all the markets are exploding in growth because of the digital transformation of the realities here. Open source and cloud all making it happen here in the cube in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, your host. Thanks for watching >>John. >>Hello and welcome back to the cubes live coverage here in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for host of the cube. Uh, two days of coverage, AWS summit, 2022 in New York city. Coming up this summer, we'll be there as well at events are back. The cube is back of course, with the cube virtual cube hybrid, the cube.net, check it out a lot of content this year, more than ever, a lot more cloud data cloud native, modern applic is all happening. Got a great guest here. Jeremy Burton, Cub alumni, uh, CEO of observe Inc in the middle of all the cloud scale, big data observability Jeremy. Great to see you. Thanks >>Always great to come and talk to you on the queue, man. It's been been a few years, so, >>Um, well you, you got your hands. You're in the trenches with great startup, uh, good funding, great board, great people involved in the observability hot area, but also you've been a senior executive president of Dell, uh, EMC, uh, 11 years ago you had a, a vision and you actually had an event called cloud meets big data. Um, yeah. And it's here. You predicted it 11 years ago. Um, look around it's cloud meets big data. >>Yeah. I mean the, the cloud thing I think, you know, was, was probably already a thing, but the big data thing I do claim credit for, for, for sort of catching that bus out, um, you know, we, we were on the, the, the bus early and, and I think it was only inevitable. Like, you know, if you could bring the economics and the compute of cloud to big data, you, you could find out things you could never possibly imagine. >>So you're close to a lot of companies that we've been covering deeply. Snowflake obviously are involved, uh, the board level, you know, the founders, you know, the people there cloud, you know, Amazon, you know, what's going on here? Yeah. You're doing a startup as the CEO at the helm, uh, chief of observ, Inc, which is an observability, which is to me in the center of this confluence of data engineering, large scale integrations, um, data as code integrating into applic. I mean, it's a whole nother world developing, like you see with snowflake, it means snowflake is super cloud as we call it. So a whole nother wave is here. What's your, what's this wave we're on what's how would you describe the wave? >>Well, a couple of things, I mean, people are, I think riding more software than, than ever fall. Why? Because they've realized that if, if you don't take your business online and offer a service, then you become largely irrelevant. And so you you've got a whole set of new applications. I think, I think more applications now than any point. Um, not, not just ever, but the mid nineties, I always looked at as the golden age of application development. Now back then people were building for windows. Well, well now they're building for things like AWS is now the platform. Um, so you've got all of that going on. And then at the same time, the, the side effect of these applications is they generate data and lots of data and the, you know, the sort of the transactions, you know, what you bought today or something like that. But then there's what we do, which is all the telemetry data, all the exhaust fumes. And I think people really are realizing that their differentiation is not so much their application. It's their understanding of the data. Can, can I understand who my best customers are, what I sell today. If people came to my website and didn't buy, then I not, where did they drop off all of that they wanna analyze. And, and the answers are all in the data. The question is, can you understand it >>In our last startup showcase, we featured data as code. One of the insights that we got out of that I wanna get your opinion on our reaction to is, is that data used to be put into a data lake and turns into a data swamp or throw into the data warehouse. And then we'll do some query, maybe a report once in a while. And so data, once it was done, unless it was real time, even real time was not good anymore after real time. That was the old way. Now you're seeing more and more, uh, effort to say, let's go look at the data cuz now machine learning is getting better. Not just train once mm-hmm <affirmative> they're iterating. Yeah. This notion of iterating and then pivoting, iterating and pivoting. Yeah, that's a Silicon valley story. That's like how startups work, but now you're seeing data being treated the same way. So now you have another, this data concept that's now yeah. Part of a new way to create more value for the apps. So this whole, this whole new cycle of >>Yeah. >>Data being reused and repurposed and figured out and >>Yeah, yeah. I'm a big fan of, um, years ago. Uh, uh, just an amazing guy, Andy McAfee at the MIT C cell labs I spent time with and he, he had this line, which still sticks to me this day, which is look I'm I'm. He said I'm part of a body, which believes that everything is a matter of data. Like if you, of enough data, you can answer any question. And, and this is going back 10 years when he was saying these kind of things and, and certainly, you know, research is on the forefront. But I, I think, you know, starting to see that mindset of the, the sort of MIT research be mainstream, you know, in enterprises, they they're realizing that yeah, it is about the data. You know, if I can better understand my data better than my competitor than I've got an advantage. And so the question is is, is how, what, what technologies and what skills do I need in my organization to, to allow me to do that. So >>Let's talk about observing you the CEO of, okay. Given you've seen the wave before you're in the front lines of observability, which again is in the center of all this action what's going on with the company. Give a quick minute to explain, observe for the folks who don't know what you guys do. What's the company doing? What's the funding status, what's the product status and what's the customer status. Yeah. >>So, um, we realized, you know, a handful of years ago, let's say five years ago that, um, look, the way people are building applications is different. They they're way more functional. They change every day. Uh, but in some respects they're a lot more complicated. They're distributed. They, you know, microservices architectures and when something goes wrong, um, the old way of troubleshooting and solving problems was not gonna fly because you had SA so much change going into production on a daily basis. It was hard to tell like where the problem was. And so we thought, okay, it's about time. Somebody looks at the exhaust fumes from this application and all the telemetry data and helps people troubleshoot and make sense of the problems that they're seeing. So, I mean, that's observability, it's actually a term that goes back to the 1960s. It was a guy called, uh, Rudolph like, like everything in tech, you know, it's, it's a reinvention of, of something from years gone by. >>But, um, there's a guy called, um, Rudy Coleman in 1960s, kinder term. And, and, and the term was been able to determine the state of a system by looking at its external outputs. And so we've been going on this for, uh, the best part of the all years now. Um, it took us three years just to build the product. I think, I think what people don't appreciate these days often is the barrier to entry in a lot of these markets is quite high. You, you need a lot of functionality to have something that's credible with a customer. Um, so yeah, this last year we, we, we did our first year selling, uh, we've got about 40 customers now. <affirmative> um, we just we've got great investors for the hill ventures. Uh, I mean, Mike SP who was, you know, the, the guy who was the, really, the first guy in it snowflake and the, the initial investor were fortunate enough to, to have Mike on our board. And, um, you know, part of the observed story yeah. Is closely knit with snowflake because all of that time data know we, we still are in there. >>So I want to get, uh, >>Yeah. >>Pivot to that. Mike Pfizer, snowflake, Jeremy Burton, the cube kind of, kind of same thinking this idea of a super cloud or what snowflake became snowflake is massively successful on top of AWS. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and now you're seeing startups and companies build on top of snowflake. Yeah. So that's become an entrepreneurial story that we think that to go big in the cloud, you can have a cloud on a cloud, uh, like as Jerry, Jerry Chan and Greylock calls it castles in the cloud where there are moats in the cloud. So you're close to it. I know you're doing some stuff with snowflake. So a startup, what's your view on building on top of say a snowflake or an AWS, because again, you gotta go where the data is. You need all the data. >>Yeah. So >>What's your take on that? >>I mean, having enough gray hair now, um, you know, again, in tech, I think if you wanna predict the future, look at the past. And, uh, you know, to many years ago, 25 years ago, I was at a, a smaller company called Oracle and an Oracle was the database company. And, uh, their, their ambition was to manage all of the world's transactional data. And they built on a platform or a couple of platforms, one, one windows, and the other main one was Solaris. And so at that time, the operator and system was the platform. And, and then that was the, you know, ecosystem that you would compete on top of. And then there were companies like SAP that built applications on top of Oracle. So then wind the clock forward 25 years gray hairs. <laugh> the platform, isn't the operating system anymore. The platform is AWS, you know, Google cloud. I gotta probably look around if I say that in. Yeah. It's >>Okay. But hyperscale, yeah. CapX built out >>That is the new platform. And then snowflake comes along. Well, their aspiration is to manage all of the, not just human generator data, but machine generated data in the world of cloud. And I think they they've done an amazing job doing for the, I'd say, say the, the big data world, what Oracle did for the relational data world, you know, way back 25 years ago. And then there are folks like us come along and, and of course my ambition would be, look, if, if we can be as successful as an SAP building on top of snow snowflake, uh, as, as they were on top of Oracle, then, then we'd probably be quite happy. >>So you're building on top of snowflake. >>We're building on top of snowflake a hundred percent. And, um, you know, I've had folks say to me, well, aren't you worried about that? Isn't that a risk? It's like, well, that that's a risk. You >>Still on the board. >>Yeah. I'm still on the board. Yeah. That that's a risk I'm prepared to take <laugh> I am long on snowflake you, >>Well, you're in a good spot. Stay on the board, then you'll know what's going on. Okay. No know just doing, but the, this is a real dynamic. It is. It's not a one off it's. >>Well, and I do believe as well that the platform that you see now with AWS, if you look at the revenues of AWS is an order of magnitude more than Microsoft was 25 years ago with windows mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so I believe the opportunity for folks like snowflake and folks like observe it's an order of magnitude more than it was for the Oracle and the SAPs of the old >>World. Yeah. And I think this is really, I think this is something that this next generation of entrepreneurship is the go big scenario is you gotta be on a platform. Yeah. >>It's quite >>Easy or be the platform, but it's hard. There's only like how many seats are at that table left. >>Well, value migrates up over time. So, you know, when the cloud thing got going, there were probably 10, 20, 30, you know, Rackspace and there's 1,000,001 infrastructure, a service platform as a service, my, my old, uh, um, employee EMC, we had pivotal, you know, pivotal was a platform as a service. You don't hear so much about it, these, but initially there's a lot of players and then it consolidates. And then to, to like extract, uh, a real business, you gotta move up, you gotta add value, you gotta build databases, then you gotta build applications. So >>It's interesting. Moving from the data center of the cloud was a dream for starters. Cause then if the provision, the CapEx, now the CapEx is in the cloud. Then you build on top of that, you got snowflake you on top of that, the >>Assumption is almost that compute and storage is free. I know it's not quite free. Yeah. It's >>Almost free, >>But, but you can, you know, as an application vendor, you think, well, what can I do if I assume compute and storage is free, that's the mindset you've gotta get into. >>And I think the platform enablement to value. So if I'm an entrepreneur, I'm gonna get a serious, multiple of value in what I'm paying. Yeah. Most people don't even blanket their Avis pills unless they're like massively huge. Yeah. Then it's a repatriation question or whatever discount question, but for most startups or any growing company, the Amazon bill should be a small factor. >>Yeah. I mean, a lot of people, um, ask me like, look, you're building on snowflake. Um, you, you know, you are, you are, you're gonna be, you're gonna be paying their money. How, how, how, how does that work with your business model? If you're paying them money, you know, do, do you have a viable business? And it's like, well, okay. I, we could build a database as well in observe, but then I've got half the development team working on in that will never be as good as snowflake. And so we made the call early on that. No, no, we, we wanna innovate above the database. Yeah. Right. Snowflake are doing a great job of innovating on the database and, and the same is true of something like Amazon, like, like snowflake could have built their own cloud and their own platform, but they didn't. >>Yeah. And what's interesting is that Dave <inaudible> and I have been pointing this out and he's actually more on snowflake. I I've been looking at data bricks, um, and the same dynamics happening, the proof is the ecosystem. Yeah. I mean, if you look at Snowflake's ecosystem right now and data bricks it's exploding. Right. I mean, the shows are selling out the floor. Space's book. That's the old days at VMware. Yeah. The old days at AWS >>One and for snowflake and, and any platform provider, it's a beautiful thing. You know, we build on snowflake and we pay them money. They don't have to sell to us. Right. And we do a lot of the support. And so the, the economics work out really, really well. If you're a platform provider and you've got a lot of ecosystems. >>Yeah. And then also you get, you get a, um, a trajectory of, uh, economies of scale with the institutional knowledge of snowflake integrations, right. New products. You're scaling that function with the, >>Yeah. I mean, we manage 10 petabytes of data right now. Right. When I, when I, when I arrived at EMC in 2010, we had, we had one petabyte customer. And, and so at observe, we've been only selling the product for a year. We have 10 petabytes of data under management. And so been able to rely on a platform that can manage that is invaluable, >>You know, but Jeremy Greek conversation, thanks for sharing your insights on the industry. Uh, we got a couple minutes left. Um, put a plug in for observe. What do you guys, I know you got some good funding, great partners. I don't know if you can talk about your, your, your POC customers, but you got a lot of high ends folks that are working with you. You getting traction. Yeah. >>Yeah. >>Scales around the corner. Sounds like, are you, is that where you are scale? >>Got, we've got a big announcement coming up in two or weeks. We've got, we've got new funding, um, which is always great. Um, the product is, uh, really, really close. I think, as a startup, you always strive for market fit, you know, which is at which point can you just start hiring salespeople? And the revenue keeps going. We're getting pretty close to that right now. Um, we've got about 40 SaaS companies run on the platform. They're almost all AWS Kubernetes, uh, which is our sweet spot to begin with, but we're starting to get some really interesting, um, enterprise type customers. We're, we're, you know, F five networks we're POC in right now with capital one, we got some interest in news around capital one coming up. I, I can't share too much, uh, but it's gonna be exciting. And, and like I saids hill continued to, to, to stick, >>I think capital one's a big snowflake customer as well. Right. They, >>They were early in one of the things that attracted me to capital one was they were very, very good with snowflake early on. And, and they put snowflake in a position in the bank where they thought that snowflake could be successful. Yeah. And, and today that, that is one of Snowflake's biggest accounts. >>So capital one, very innovative cloud, obviously AIOS customer and very innovative, certainly in the CISO and CIO, um, on another point on where you're at. So you're, Prescale meaning you're about to scale, right? So you got POCs, what's that trick GE look like, can you see around the corner? What's, what's going on? What's on, around the corner. That you're, that you're gonna hit the straight and narrow and, and gas it >>Fast. Yeah. I mean, the, the, the, the key thing for us is we gotta get the product. Right. Um, the nice thing about having a guy like Mike Pfizer on the board is he doesn't obsess about revenue at this stage is questions that the board are always about, like, is the product, right? Is the product right? Is the product right? If you got the product right. And cuz we know when the product's right, we can then scale the sales team and, and the revenue will take care of itself. Yeah. So right now all the attention is on the product. Um, the, this year, the exciting thing is we were, we're adding all the tracing visualizations. So people will be able to the kind of things that back in the day you could do with the new lakes and, and AppDynamics, the last generation of, of APM tools, you're gonna be able to do that within observe. And we've already got the logs and the metrics capability in there. So for us, this year's a big one, cuz we sort of complete the trifecta, you know, the, the logs, >>What's the secret sauce observe. What if you had the, put it into a, a sentence what's the secret sauce? I, >>I, I think, you know, an amazing founding engineering team, uh, number one, I mean, at the end of the day, you have to build an amazing product and you have to solve a problem in a different way. And we've got great long term investors. And, and the biggest thing our investors give is actually it's not just money. It gives us time to get the product, right. Because if we get the product right, then we can get the growth. >>Got it. Final question. Why I got you here? You've been on the enterprise business for a long time. What's the buyer landscape out there. You got people doing POCs on capital one scale. So we know that goes on. What's the appetite at the buyer side for startups and what are their requirements that you're seeing? Uh, obviously we're seeing people go in and dip into the startup pool because new ways to refactor their business restructure. So a lot happening in cloud. What's the criteria. How are enterprises engaging in with startups? >>Yeah. I mean, enterprises, they know they've gotta spend money transforming the business. I mean, this was, I almost feel like my old Dell or EMC self there, but, um, what, what we were saying five years ago is happening. Um, everybody needs to figure out out a way to take their, this to this digital world. Everybody has to do it. So the nice thing from a startup standpoint is they know at times they need to risk or, or take a bet on new technology in order to, to help them do that. So I think you've got buyers that a have money, uh, B prepared to take risks and it's, it's a race against time to, you know, get their, their offerings in this. So a new digital footprint, >>Final, final question. What's the state of AWS. Where do you see them going next? Obviously they're continuing to be successful. How does cloud 3.0, or they always say it's day one, but it's more like day 10. Uh, but what's next for Aw. Where do they go from here? Obviously they're doing well. They're getting bigger and bigger. >>Yeah. They're, they're, it's an amazing story. I mean, you know, we we're, we're on AWS as well. And so I, I think if they keep nurturing the builders in the ecosystem, then that is their superpower. They, they have an early leads. And if you look at where, you know, maybe the likes of Microsoft lost the plot in the, in the late it was, they stopped, uh, really caring about developers and the folks who were building on top of their ecosystem. In fact, they started buying up their ecosystem and competing with people in their ecosystem. And I see with AWS, they, they have an amazing head start and if they did more, you know, if they do more than that, that's, what's gonna keep the jut rolling for many years to come. Yeah, >>They got the silicone and they got the staff act, developing Jeremy Burton inside the cube, great resource for commentary, but also founding with the CEO of a company called observing in the middle of all the action on the board of snowflake as well. Um, great start. Thanks for coming on the cube. >>Always a pleasure. >>Okay. Live from San Francisco to cube. I'm John for your host. Stay with us more coverage from San Francisco, California after the short break. >>Hello. Welcome back to the cubes coverage here live in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, host of the cubes cube coverage of AWS summit 2022 here in San Francisco. We're all the developers of the bay area at Silicon valley. And of course, AWS summit in New York city is coming up in the summer. We'll be there as well. SF and NYC cube coverage. Look for us. Of course, reinforcing Boston and re Mars with the whole robotics AI thing, all coming together. Lots of coverage stay with us today. We've got a great guest from Deibel VC. John Skoda, founding partner, entrepreneurial venture is a venture firm. Your next act, welcome to the cube. Good to see you. >>Good to see you, Matt. I feel like it's been forever since we've been able to do something in person. Well, >>I'm glad you're here because we run into each other all the time. We've known each other for over a decade. Um, >><affirmative>, it's been at least 10 years now, >>At least 10 years more. And we don't wanna actually go back as frees back, uh, the old school web 1.0 days. But anyway, we're in web three now. So we'll get to that in >>Second. We, we are, it's a little bit of a throwback to the path though, in my opinion, >><laugh>, it's all the same. It's all distributed computing and software. We ran each other in cube con you're investing in a lot of tech startup founders. Okay. This next level, next gen entrepreneurs have a new makeup and it's software. It's hardcore tech in some cases, not hardcore tech, but using software is take old something old and make it better, new, faster. <laugh>. So tell us about Deibel what's the firm. I know you're the founder, uh, which is cool. What's going on. Explain >>What you're doing. I mean, you remember I'm a recovering entrepreneur, right? So of course I, I, I, >>No, you're never recovering. You're always entrepreneur >>Always, but we are also always recovering. So I, um, started my first company when I was 24. If you remember, before there was Facebook and friends, there was instant messaging. People were using that product at work every day, they were creating a security vulnerability between their network and the outside world. So I plugged that hole and built an instant messaging firewall. It was my first company. The company was called, I am logic and we were required by Symantec. Uh, then spent 12 years investing in the next generation of our companies, uh, early investor in open source companies and cloud companies and spent a really wonderful 12 years, uh, at a firm called NEA. So I, I feel like my whole life I've been either starting enterprise software companies or helping founders start enterprise software companies. And I'll tell you, there's never been a better time than right now to start enter price software company. >>So, uh, the passion for starting a new firm was really a recognition that founders today that are starting in an enterprise software company, they, they tend to be, as you said, a more technical founder, right? Usually it's a software engineer or a builder mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, they are building products that are serving a slightly different market than what we've traditionally seen in enterprise software. Right? I think traditionally we've seen it buyers or CIOs that have agendas and strategies, which, you know, purchased software that has traditionally bought and sold tops down. But, you know, today I think the most successful enterprise software companies are the ones that are built more bottoms up and have more technical early opts. And generally speaking, they're free to use. They're free to try. They're very commonly community source or open source companies where you have a large technical community that's supporting them. So there's a, there's kind of a new normal now I think in great enterprise software. And it starts with great technical founders with great products and great and emotions. And I think there's no better place to, uh, service those people than in the cloud and uh, in, in your community. >>Well, first of all, congratulations, and by the way, you got a great pedigree and great background, super smart admire of your work and your, and, and your founding, but let's face it. Enterprise is hot because digital transformation is all companies. The is no, I mean, consumer is enterprise. Now everything is what was once a niche. No, I won't say niche category, but you know, not for the faint of heart, you know, investors, >>You know, it's so funny that you say that enterprise is hot because you, and I feel that way now. But remember, like right now, there's also a giant tech in VC conference in Miami <laugh> it's covering cryptocurrencies and FCS and web three. So I think beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder <laugh> but no, I, I will tell you, >>Ts is one big enterprise, cuz you gotta have imutability you got performance issues. You have, I IOPS issues. Well, and, >>And I think all of us here that are, uh, maybe students of history and have been involved in, open in the cloud would say that we're, you know, much of what we're doing is, uh, the predecessors of the web web three movement. And many of us I think are contributors to the web three movement. >>The hype is definitely that three. >>Yeah. But, but >>You know, for >>Sure. Yeah, no, but now you're taking us further east to Miami. So, uh, you know, look, I think, I, I think, um, what is unquestioned with the case now? And maybe it's, it's more obvious the more time you spend in this world is this is the fastest growing part of enterprise software. And if you include cloud infrastructure and cloud infrastructure spend, you know, it is by many men over, uh, 500 billion in growing, you know, 20 to 30% a year. So it it's a, it's a just incredibly fast, >>Let's getting, let's get into some of the cultural and the, the shifts that are happening, cuz again, you, you have the luxury of being in enterprise when it was hard, it's getting easier and more cooler. I get it and more relevant, but it's also the hype of like the web three, for instance. But you know, uh, um, um, the CEO snowflake, okay. Has wrote a book and Dave Valenti and I were talking about it and uh, Frank Luman has says, there's no playbooks. We always ask the CEOs, what's your playbook. And he's like, there's no playbook, situational awareness, always Trump's playbooks. So in the enterprise playbook, oh, higher direct sales force and SAS kind of crushed the, at now SAS is being redefined, right. So what is SAS? Is snowflake a SAS or is that a platform? So again, new unit economics are emerging, whole new situation, you got web three. So to me there's a cultural shift, the young entrepreneurs, the, uh, user experience, they look at Facebook and say, ah, you know, they own all my data. You know, we know that that cliche, um, they, you know, the product. So as this next gen, the gen Z and the millennials come in and our customers and the founders, they're looking at things a little bit differently and the tech better. >>Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think we can, we can see a lot of commonalities across all successful startups and the overall adoption of technology. Uh, and, and I would tell you, this is all one big giant revolution. I call it the user driven revolution. Right. It's the rise of the user. Yeah. And you might say product like growth is currently the hottest trend in enterprise software. It's actually user like growth, right. They're one in the same. So sometimes people think the product, uh, is what is driving. You >>Just pull the >>Product through. Exactly, exactly. And so that's that I, that I think is really this revolution that you see, and, and it does extend into things like cryptocurrencies and web three and, you know, sort of like the control that is taken back by the user. Um, but you know, many would say that, that the origins of this movement maybe started with open source where users were, are contributors, you know, contributors, we're users and looking back decades and seeing how it, how it fast forward to today. I think that's really the trend that we're all writing and it's enabling these end users. And these end users in our world are developers, data engineers, cybersecurity practitioners, right. They're really the users. And they're really the, the beneficiaries and the most, you know, kind of valued people in >>This. I wanna come back to the data engineers in a second, but I wanna make a comment and get your reaction to, I have a, I'm a GenXer technically, so for not a boomer, but I have some boomer friends who are a little bit older than me who have, you know, experienced the sixties. And I've, I've been staying on the cube for probably about eight years now that we are gonna hit a digital hippie revolution, meaning a rebellion against in the sixties was rebellion against the fifties and the man and, you know, summer of love. That was a cultural differentiation from the other one other group, the predecessors. So we're kind of having that digital moment now where it's like, Hey boomers, Hey people, we're not gonna do that anymore. We hate how you organize shit. >>Right. But isn't this just technology. I mean, isn't it, isn't it like there used to be the old adage, like, you know, you would never get fired for buying IBM, but now it's like, you obviously probably would get fired if you bought IBM. And I mean, it's just like the, the, I think, I think >>It's the main for days, those renegades were breaking into Stanford, starting the home brew club. So what I'm trying to get at is that, do you see the young cultural revolution also, culturally, just, this is my identity NFTs to me speak volumes about my, I wanna associate with NFTs, not single sign on. Well, >>Absolutely. And, and I think like, I think you're hitting on something, which is like this convergence of, of, you know, societal trends with technology trends and how that manifests in our world is yes. I think like there is unquestionably almost a religion around the way in which a product is built. Right. And we can use open source, one example of that religion. Some people will say, look, I'll just never try a product in the cloud if it's not open source. Yeah. I think cloud, native's another example of that, right? It's either it's, you know, it either is cloud native or it's not. And I think a lot of people will look at a product and say, look, you know, you were not designed in the cloud era. Therefore I just won't try you. And sometimes, um, like it or not, it's a religious decision, right? It's, it's something that people just believe to be true almost without, uh, necessarily. I mean >>The decision making, let me ask you this next question. As a VC. Now you look at pitch, well, you've made a VC for many years, but you also have the founder, uh, entrepreneurial mindset, but you can get empathize with the founders. You know, hustle is a big part of the, that first founder check, right? You gotta convince someone to part with their ch their money and the first money in which you do a lot of is about believing in the person. So fing, so you make, it is hard. Now you, the data's there, you either have it cloud native, you either have the adaption or traction. So honesty is a big part of that pitch. You can't fake it. Oh, >>AB absolutely. You know, there used to be this concept of like the persona of an entrepreneur, right. And the persona of the entrepreneur would be, you know, somebody who was a great salesperson or somebody who tell a great story. You, I still think that that's important, right? It still is a human need for people to believe in narratives and stories. But having said that you're right, the proof is in the pudding, right? At some point you click download and you try the product and it does what it says it it's gonna do, or it doesn't, or it either stands up to the load test or it doesn't. And so I, I feel like in this new economy that we live in, it's a shift from maybe the storytellers and the creators to, to the builders, right. The people that know how to build great product. And in some ways the people that can build great product yeah. Stand out from the crowd. And they're the ones that can build communities around their products. And, you know, in some ways can, um, you know, kind of own more of the narrative because their products exactly >>The volume back to the user led growth. >>Exactly. And it's the religion of, I just love your product. Right. And I, I, I, um, Doug song was the founder of du security used to say, Hey, like, you know, the, the really like in today's world of like consumption based software, the user is only gonna give you 90 seconds to figure out whether or not you're a company that's easy to do business with. Right. And so you can say, and do all the things that you want about how easy you are to work with. But if the product isn't easy to install, if it's not easy to try, if it's not, if, if the, you know, it's gotta speak to >>The, speak to the user, but let me ask a question now that the people watching who are maybe entrepreneurial entrepreneur, um, masterclass here is in session. So I have to ask you, do you prefer, um, an entrepreneur to come in and say, look at John. Here's where I'm at. Okay. First of all, storytelling's fine. Whether you're an extrovert or introvert, have your style, sell the story in a way that's authentic, but do you, what do you prefer to say? Here's where I'm at? Look, I have an idea. Here's my traction. I think here's my MVP prototype. I need help. Or do you wanna just see more stats? What's the, what's the preferred way that you like to see entrepreneurs come in and engage, engage? >>There's tons of different styles, man. I think the single most important thing that every founder should know is that we, we don't invest in what things are today. We invest in what we think something will become. Right. And I think that's why we all get up in the morning and try to build something different, right? It's that we see the world a different way. We want it to be a different way, and we wanna work every single moment of the day to try to make that vision a reality. So I think the more that you can show people where you want to be, the more likely somebody is gonna align with your vision and, and want to invest in you and wanna be along for the ride. So I, I wholeheartedly believe in showing off what you got today, because eventually we all get down to like, where are we and what are we gonna do together? But, um, no, I >>Show >>The path. I think the single most important thing for any founder and VC relationship is that they have the same vision, uh, have the same vision. You can, you can get through bumps in the road, you can get through short term spills. You can all sorts of things in the middle of the journey can happen. Yeah. But it doesn't matter as much if you share the same long term vision, >>Don't flake out and, and be fashionable with the latest trends because it's over before you can get there. >>Exactly. I think many people that, that do what we do for a living will say, you know, ultimately the future is relatively easy to predict, but it's the timing that's impossible to predict. So you, you know, you sort of have to balance the, you know, we, we know that the world is going this way and therefore we're gonna invest a lot of money to try to make this a reality. Uh, but sometimes it happens in six months. Sometimes it takes six years is sometimes like 16 years. >>Uh, what's the hottest thing in enterprise that you see the biggest wave that people should pay attention to that you're looking at right now with Desel partners, Tebel dot your site. What's the big wave. What's your big >>Wave. There, there's three big trends that we invest in. And they're the, they're the only things we do day in, day out. One is the explosion and open source software. So I think many people think that all software is unquestionably moving to an open source model in some form or another yeah. Tons of reasons to debate whether or not that is gonna happen and on what timeline happening >>Forever. >>But it is, it is accelerating faster than we've ever seen. So I, I think it's, it's one big, massive wave that we continue to ride. Um, second is the rise of data engineering. Uh, I think data engineering is in and of itself now, a category of software. It's not just that we store data. It's now we move data and we develop applications on data. And, uh, I think data is in and of itself as big of a, a market as any of the other markets that we invest in. Uh, and finally, it's the gift that keeps on giving. I've spent my entire career in it. We still feel that security is a market that is under invested. It is, it continues to be the place where people need to continue to invest and spend more money. Yeah. Uh, and those are the three major trends that we run >>And security, you think we all need a dessert do over, right? I mean, do we need a do over in security or is what's the core problem? I, >>I, I keep using this word underinvested because I think it's the right way to think about the problem. I think if you, I think people generally speaking, look at cyber security as an add-on. Yeah. But if you think about it, the whole economy is moving online. And so in, in some ways like security is core to protecting the digital economy. And so it's, it shouldn't be an afterthought, right? It should be core to what everyone is doing. And that's why I think relative to the trillions of dollars that are at stake, uh, I believe the market size for cybersecurity is around 150 billion. And it still is a fraction of what we're, what >>We're and security even boom is booming now. So you get the convergence of national security, geopolitics, internet digital >>That's right. You mean arguably, right? I mean, arguably again, it's the area of the world that people should be spending more time and more money given what to stake. >>I love your thesis. I gotta, I gotta say, you gotta love your firm. Love. You're doing we're big supporters of your mission. Congratulations on your entrepreneurial venture. And, uh, we'll be, we'll be talking and maybe see a Cub gone. Uh, >>Absolutely. >>Certainly EU maybe even north America's in Detroit this year. >>Huge fan of what you guys are doing here. Thank you so much for having me on >>The show. Guess bell VC Johnson here on the cube. Check him out. Founder for founders here on the cube, more coverage from San Francisco, California. After the short break, stay with us. Everyone. Welcome to the queue here. Live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022 we're live we're back with the events. Also we're virtual. We got hybrid all kinds of events. This year, of course, 80% summit in New York city is happening this summer. We'll be there with the cube as well. I'm John. Again, John host of the cube got a great guest here. Justin Coby owner and CEO of innovative solutions. Their booth is right behind us. Justin, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. Thank you for having me. >>So we're just chatting, uh, uh, off camera about some of the work you're doing. You're the owner of and CEO. Yeah. Of innovative. Yeah. So tell us a story. What do you guys do? What's the elevator pitch. >>Yeah. <laugh> so the elevator pitch is we are, uh, a hundred percent focused on small to midsize businesses that are moving into the cloud or have already moved to the cloud and really trying to understand how to best control, cost, security, compliance, all the good stuff, uh, that comes along with it. Um, exclusively focused on AWS and, um, you know, about 110 people, uh, based in Rochester, New York, that's where our headquarters is, but now we have offices down in Austin, Texas up in Toronto, uh, key Canada, as well as Chicago. Um, and obviously in New York, uh, you know, the, the business was never like this, uh, five years ago, um, founded in 1989, made the decision in 2018 to pivot and go all in on the cloud. And, uh, I've been a part of the company for about 18 years, bought the company about five years ago and it's been a great ride. It >>It's interesting. The manages services are interesting with cloud cause a lot of the heavy liftings done by AWS. So we had Matt on your team on earlier talking about some of the edge stuff. Yeah. But you guys are a managed cloud service. You got cloud advisory, you know, the classic service that's needed, but the demands coming from cloud migrations and application modernization and obviously data is a huge part of it. Huge. How is this factoring into what you guys do and your growth cuz you guys are the number one partner on the SMB side for edge. Yeah. For AWS, you got results coming in. Where's the, where's the forcing function. What's the pressure point. What's the demand like? >>Yeah. It's a great question. Every CEO I talk to, that's a small to midsize business. They're trying to understand how to leverage technology. It better to help either drive a revenue target for their own business, uh, help with customer service as so much has gone remote now. And we're all having problems or troubles or issues trying to hire talent. And um, you know, tech ISNT really at the, at the forefront and the center of that. So most customers are coming to us and they're like, listen, we gotta move to the cloud or we move some things to cloud and we want to do that better. And um, there's this big misnomer that when you move to the cloud, you gotta automatically modernize. Yeah. And what we try to help as many customers understand as possible is lifting and shifting, moving the stuff that you maybe currently have OnPrem and a data center to the cloud first is a first step. And then, uh, progressively working through a modernization strateg, always the better approach. And so we spend a lot of time with small to midsize businesses who don't have the technology talent on staff to be able to do >>That. Yeah. They want get set up. But then the dynamic of like latency is huge. We're seeing that edge product is a big part of it. This is not a one-off happening around everywhere. It is. And it's not, it's manufacturing, it's the physical plant or location >>Literally. >>And so, and you're seeing more IOT devices. What's that like right now from a challenge and problem statement standpoint, are the customers, not staff, is the it staff kind of old school? Is it new skills? What's the core problem you guys solve >>In the SMB space? The core issue nine outta 10 times is people get enamored with the latest and greatest. And the reality is not everything that's cloud based. Not all cloud services are the latest and greatest. Some things have been around for quite some time and are hardened solutions. And so, um, what we try to do with technology staff that has traditional on-prem, uh, let's just say skill sets and they're trying to move to a cloud-based workload is we try to help those customers through education and through some practical, let's just call it use case. Um, whether that's a proof of concept that we're doing or whether we're gonna migrate a small workload over, we try to give them the confidence to be able to not, not necessarily go it alone, but to, to, to have the, uh, the Gusto and to really have the, um, the, the opportunity to, to do that in a wise way. Um, and what I find is that most CEOs that I talk to, yeah, they're like, listen, the end of the day, I'm gonna be spending money in one place or another, whether that's OnPrem or in the cloud. I just want to know that I'm doing that in a way that helps me grow as quickly as possible status quo. I think every, every business owner knows that COVID taught us anything that status quo is, uh, is, is no. No. >>Good. How about factoring in the, the agility and speed equation? Does that come up a lot? It >>Does. I think, um, I, there's also this idea that if, uh, if we do a deep dive analysis and we really take a surgical approach to things, um, we're gonna be better off. And the reality is the faster you move with anything cloud based, the better you are. And so there's this assumption that we gotta get it right the first time. Yeah. In the cloud, if you start down your journey in one way and you realize midway that it's not the right, let's just say the right place to go. It's not like buying a piece of iron that you put in the closet and now you own it in the cloud. You can turn those services on and off. It's gives you a much higher density for making decisions and failing >>Forward. Well actually shutting down the abandoning the projects that early and not worrying about it, you got it. I mean, most people don't abandon cause like, oh, I own it. >>Exactly. And >>They get, they get used to it. Like, and then they wait too long. >>That's exactly. Yeah. >>Frog and boiling water as we used to say. So, oh, it's a great analogy. So I mean, this is a dynamic that's interesting. I wanna get more thoughts on it because like I'm a, if I'm a CEO of a company, like, okay, I gotta make my number. Yeah. I gotta keep my people motivated. Yeah. And I gotta move faster. So this is where you, I get the whole thing. And by the way, great service, um, professional services in the cloud right now are so hot because so hot, you can build it and then have option optionality. You got path decisions, you got new services to take advantage of. It's almost too much for customers. It is. I mean, everyone I talked to at reinvent, that's a customer. Well, how many announcements did am jazzy announce or Adam, you know, the 5,000 announcement or whatever. They do huge amounts. Right. Keeping track of it all. Oh, is huge. So what's the, what's the, um, the mission of, of your company. How does, how do you talk to that alignment? Yeah. Not just processes. I can get that like values as companies, cuz they're betting on you and your people. >>They are, they are, >>What's the values. >>Our mission is, is very simple. We want to help every small to midsize business leverage the power of the cloud. Here's the reality. We believe wholeheartedly. This is our vision that every company is going to become a technology company. So we go to market with this idea that every customer's trying to leverage the power of the cloud in some way, shape or form, whether they know it or don't know it. And number two, they're gonna become a tech company in the process of that because everything is so tech-centric. And so when you talk about speed and agility, when you talk about the, the endless options and the endless permutations of solutions that a customer can buy in the cloud, how are you gonna ask a team of one or two people in your, or it department to make all those decisions going it alone or trying to learn it as you go, it only gets you so far working with a partner. >>I'll just give you some perspective. We work with about a thousand small to midsize business customers. More than 50% of those customers are on our managed services. Meaning they know that we have their back Andre or the safety net. So when a customer is saying, all right, I'm gonna spend a couple thousand dollars a month in the cloud. They know that that bill, isn't gonna jump to $10,000 a month going in alone. Who's there to help protect that. Number two, if you have a security posture and let's just say you're high profile and you're gonna potentially be more vulnerable to security attack. If you have a partner, that's all offering you some managed services. Now you, again, you've got that backstop and you've got those services and tooling. We, we offer, um, seven different products, uh, that are part of our managed services that give the customer the tooling, that for them to go out and buy on their own for a customer to go out today and go buy a new Relic solution on their own. It, it would cost 'em a fortune. If >>Training alone would be insane, a factor and the cost. Yes, absolutely. Opportunity cost is huge, >>Huge, absolutely enormous training and development. Something. I think that is often, you know, it's often overlooked technologists. Typically they want to get their skills up. Yeah. They, they love to get the, the stickers and the badges and the pins, um, at innovative in 2018, when, uh, when we made the decision to go all in on the club, I said to the organization, you know, we have this idea that we're gonna pivot and be aligned with AWS in such a way that it's gonna really require us all to get certified. My executive assistant at the time looks at me. She said, even me, I said, yeah, even you, why can't you get certified? Yeah. And so we made, uh, a conscious decision. It wasn't requirement and still isn't today to make sure everybody in the company has the opportunity to become certified. Even the people that are answering the phones at the front desk >>And she could be running the Kubernetes clusters. I love it. It's amazing. >>But I'll tell you what, when that customer calls and they have a real Kubernetes issue, she'll be able to assist and get >>The right people involved. And that's a cultural factor that you guys have. So, so again, this is back to my whole point about SMBs and businesses in general, small en large, it staffs are turning over the gen Z and millennials are in the workforce. They were provisioning top of rack switches. Right. First of all. And so if you're a business, there's also the, I call the build out, um, uh, return factor, ROI piece. At what point in time as an owner or SMB, do I get the ROI? Yeah. I gotta hire a person to manage it. That person's gonna have five zillion job offers. Yep. Uh, maybe who knows? Right. I got cybersecurity issues. Where am I gonna find a cyber person? Yeah. A data compliance. I need a data scientist and a compliance person. Right. Maybe one and the same. Right. Good luck. Trying to find a data scientist. Who's also a compliance person. Yep. And the list goes on. I can just continue. Absolutely. I need an SRE to manage the, the, uh, the sock report and we can pen test. Right. >>Right. >>These are, these are >>Critical issues. This >>Is just like, these are the table stakes. >>Yeah. And, and every, every business owner's thinking about. So that's, >>That's what, at least a million in bloating, if not three or more Just to get that going. Yeah. Then it's like, where's the app. Yeah. So there's no cloud migration. There's no modernization on the app side though. Yeah. No. And nevermind AI and ML. That's >>Right. That's right. So to try to go it alone, to me, it's hard. It it's incredibly difficult. And, and the other thing is, is there's not a lot of partners, so the partner, >>No one's raising their hand boss. I'll >>Do all that >>Exactly. In it department. >>Exactly. >>Like, can we just call up, uh, you know, <laugh> our old vendor. That's >>Right. <laugh> right. Our old vendor. I like it, but that's so true. I mean, when I think about how, if I was a business owner, starting a business to today and I had to build my team, um, and the amount of investment that it would take to get those people skilled up and then the risk factor of those people now having the skills and being so much more in demand and being recruited away, that's a real, that's a real issue. And so how you build your culture around that is, is very important. And it's something that we talk about every, with every one of our small to midsize business. >>So just, I want to get, I want to get your story as CEO. Okay. Take us through your journey. You said you bought the company and your progression to, to being the owner and CEO of innovative award winning guys doing great. Uh, great bet on a good call. Yeah. Things are good. Tell your story. What's your journey? >>It's real simple. I was, uh, was a sophomore at the Rochester Institute of technology in 2003. And, uh, I knew that I, I was going to school for it and I, I knew I wanted to be in tech. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't wanna code or configure routers and switches. So I had this great opportunity with the local it company that was doing managed services. We didn't call it at that time innovative solutions to come in and, uh, jump on the phone and dial for dollars. I was gonna cold call and introduce other, uh, small to midsize businesses locally in Rochester, New York go to Western New York, um, who innovative was now. We were 19 people at the time. And I came in, I did an internship for six months and I loved it. I learned more in those six months that I probably did in my first couple of years at, uh, at R I T long story short. >>Um, for about seven years, I worked, uh, to really help develop, uh, sales process and methodology for the business so that we could grow and scale. And we grew to about 30 people. And, um, I went to the owners at the time in 2010 and I was like, Hey, I'm growing the value of this business. And who knows where you guys are gonna be another five years? What do you think about making me an owner? And they were like, listen, you got long ways before you're gonna be an owner, but if you stick it out in your patient, we'll, um, we'll work through a succession plan with you. And I said, okay, there were four other individuals at the time that we're gonna also buy the business with >>Me. And they were the owners, no outside capital, >>None zero, well, 2014 comes around. And, uh, the other folks that were gonna buy into the business with me that were also working at innovative for different reasons. They all decided that it wasn't for them. One started a family. The other didn't wanna put capital in. Didn't wanna write a check. Um, the other had a real big problem with having to write a check. If we couldn't make payroll, I'm like, well, that's kind of like if we're owners, we're gonna have to like cover that stuff. <laugh> so >>It's called the pucker factor. >>Exactly. So, uh, I sat down with the CEO in early 2015, and, uh, we made the decision that I was gonna buy the three partners out, um, go through an earn out process, uh, coupled with, uh, an interesting financial strategy that wouldn't strap the business, cuz they care very much. The company still had the opportunity to keep going. So in 2016 I bought the business, um, became the sole owner. And, and at that point we, um, we really focused hard on what do we want this company to be? We had built this company to this point. Yeah. And, uh, and by 2018 we knew that pivoting all going all in on the cloud was important for us and we haven't looked back. >>And at that time, the proof points were coming clearer and clearer 2012 through 15 was the early adopters, the builders, the startups and early enterprises. Yes. The capital ones of the world. Exactly the, uh, and those kinds of big enterprises. The game don't, won't say gamblers, but ones that were very savvy. The innovators, the FinTech folks. Yep. The hardcore glass eating enterprises >>Agreed, agreed to find a small to midsize business, to migrate completely to the cloud as, as infrastructure was considered. That just didn't happen as often. Um, what we were seeing were a lot of our small to midsize business customers, they wanted to leverage cloud based backup, or they wanted to leverage a cloud for disaster recovery because it lent itself. Well, early days, our most common cloud customer though, was the customer that wanted to move messaging and collaboration. The, the Microsoft suite to the cloud and a lot of 'em dipped their toe in the water. But by 2017 we knew infrastructure was around the corner. Yeah. And so, uh, we only had two customers on eight at the time. Um, and we, uh, we, we made the decision to go all in >>Justin. Great to have you on the cube. Thank you. Let's wrap up. Uh, tell me the hottest product that you have. Is it migrations? Is the app modernization? Is it data? What's the hot product and then put a plug in for the company. Awesome. >>So, uh, there's no question. Every customer is looking to migrate workloads and try to figure out how to modernize for the future. We have very interesting, sophisticated yet elegant funding solutions to help customers with the cash flow, uh, constraints that come along with those migrations. So any SMB that's thinking about migrating to the cloud, they should be talking innovative solutions. We know how to do it in a way that allows those customers not to be cash strapped and gives them an opportunity to move forward in a controlled, contained way so that they can modernize. >>So like insurance, basically for them not insurance class in the classic sense, but you help them out on the, on the cash exposure. >>Absolutely. We are known for that and we're known for being creative with those customers, empathetic to where they are in their journey. And >>That's the cloud upside is all about doubling down on the variable wind. That's right. Seeing the value and doubling down on it. Absolutely not praying for it. Yeah. <laugh> all right, Justin. Thanks for coming on. You really appreciate it. Thank >>You very much for having >>Me. Okay. This is the cube coverage here live in San Francisco, California for AWS summit, 2022. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching with back with more great coverage for two days after this short break >>Live on the floor in San Francisco for 80 west summit, I'm John ferry, host of the cube here for the next two days, getting all the action we're back in person. We're at AWS reinvent a few months ago. Now we're back events are coming back and we're happy to be here with the cube, bringing all the action. Also virtual, we have a hybrid cube, check out the cube.net, Silicon angle.com for all the coverage. After the event. We've got a great guest ticketing off here. Matthew Park, director of solutions, architecture with innovation solutions. The booth is right here. Matthew, welcome to the cube. >>Thank you very much. I'm glad >>To be here. So we're back in person. You're from Tennessee. We were chatting before you came on camera. Um, it's great to have to be back through events. >>It's amazing. This is the first, uh, summit I've been to and what two, three years. >>It's awesome. We'll be at the, uh, New York as well. A lot of developers and a big story this year is as developers look at cloud going distributed computing, you got on premises, you got public cloud, you got the edge. Essentially the cloud operations is running everything dev sec ops, everyone kind of sees that you got containers, you got Kubernetes, you got cloud native. So the, the game is pretty much laid out. Mm. And the edge is with the actions you guys are number one, premier partner at SMB for edge. >>That's right. >>Tell us about what you guys doing at innovative and, uh, what you do. >>That's right. Uh, so I'm the director of solutions architecture. Uh, me and my team are responsible for building out the solutions that are around, especially the edge public cloud out for us edge is anything outside of an AWS availability zone. Uh, we are deploying that in countries that don't have AWS infrastructure in region. They don't have it. Uh, give >>An example, >>Uh, example would be Panama. We have a customer there that, uh, needs to deploy some financial tech data and compute is legally required to be in Panama, but they love AWS and they want to deploy AWS services in region. Uh, so they've taken E EKS anywhere. We've put storage gateway and, uh, snowball, uh, in region inside the country and they're running their FinTech on top of AWS services inside Panama. >>You know, what's interesting, Matthew is that we've been covering Aw since 2013 with the cube about their events. And we watched the progression and jazzy was, uh, was in charge and then became the CEO. Now Adam Slosky is in charge, but the edge has always been that thing they've been trying to, I don't wanna say, trying to avoid, of course, Amazon would listen to customers. They work backwards from the customers. We all know that. Uh, but the real issue was they were they're bread and butters EC two and S three. And then now they got tons of services and the cloud is obviously successful and seeing that, but the edge brings up a whole nother level. >>It does >>Computing. It >>Does. >>That's not central lies in the public cloud. Now they got regions. So what is the issue with the edge what's driving? The behavior. Outpost came out as a reaction to competitive threats and also customer momentum around OT, uh, operational technologies. And it merging. We see with the data at the edge, you got five GM having. So it's pretty obvious, but there was a slow transition. What was the driver for the <affirmative> what's the driver now for edge action for AWS >>Data is the driver for the edge. Data has gravity, right? And it's pulling compute back to where the customer's generating that data and that's happening over and over again. You said it best outpost was a reaction to a competitive situation. Whereas today we have over fit 15 AWS edge services, and those are all reactions to things that customers need inside their data centers on location or in the field like with media companies. >>Outpost is interesting. We always used to riff on the cube, uh, cuz it's basically Amazon in a box, pushed in the data center, uh, running native, all the stuff, but now cloud native operations are kind of become standard. You're starting to see some standard Deepak sings group is doing some amazing work with open source Rauls team on the AI side, obviously, uh, you got SW who's giving the keynote tomorrow. You got the big AI machine learning big part of that edge. Now you can say, okay, outpost, is it relevant today? In other words, did outpost do its job? Cause EKS anywhere seems to be getting a lot of momentum. You see low the zones, the regions are kicking ass for Amazon. This edge piece is evolving. What's your take on EKS anywhere versus say outpost? >>Yeah, I think outpost did its job. It made customers that were looking at outpost really consider, do I wanna invest in this hardware? Do I, do I wanna have, um, this outpost in my data center, do I wanna manage this over the long term? A lot of those customers just transitioned to the public cloud. They went into AWS proper. Some of those customers stayed on prem because they did have use cases that were, uh, not a good fit for outpost. They weren't a good fit. Uh, in the customer's mind for the public AWS cloud inside an availability zone. Now what's happening is as AWS is pushing these services out and saying, we're gonna meet you where you are with 5g. We're gonna meet you where you are with wavelength. We're gonna meet you where you are with EKS anywhere. Uh, I think it has really reduced the amount of times that we have conversations about outposts and it's really increased. We can deploy fast. We don't have to spin up outpost hardware. We can go deploy EKS anywhere in your VMware environment and it's increasing the speed of adoption >>For sure. So you guys are making a lot of good business decisions around managed cloud service. Innovative does that. You have the cloud advisory, the classic professional services for the specific edge piece and, and doing that outside of the availability zones and regions for AWS, um, customers in, in these new areas that you're helping out are they want cloud, like they want to have modernization a modern applications. Obviously they got data machine learning and AI, all part of that. What's the main product or, or, or gap that you're filling for AWS, uh, outside of their available ability zones or their regions that you guys are delivering. What's the key is it. They don't have a footprint. Is it that it's not big enough for them? What's the real gap. What's why, why are you so successful? >>So what customers want when they look towards the cloud is they want to focus on, what's making them money as a business. They wanna focus on their applications. They want focus on their customers. So they look towards AWS cloud and say, AWS, you take the infrastructure. You take, uh, some of the higher layers and we'll focus on our revenue generating business, but there's a gap there between infrastructure and revenue generating business that innovative slides into, uh, we help manage the AWS environment. We help build out these things in local data centers for 32 plus year old company, we have traditional on-premises people that know about deploying hardware that know about deploying VMware to host EKS anywhere. But we also have most of our company totally focused on the AWS cloud. So we're filling that gap in helping deploy these AWS services, manage them over the long term. So our customers can go to just primarily and totally focusing on their revenue generating business. >>So basically you guys are basically building AWS edges, >>Correct? >>For correct companies, correct? Mainly because the, the needs are there, you got data, you got certain products, whether it's, you know, low latency type requirements, right. And then they still work with the regions, right. It's all tied together, right. Is that how it works? Right. >>And, and our customers, even the ones in the edge, they also want us to build out the AWS environment inside the availability zone, because we're always gonna have a failback scenario. If we're gonna deploy FinTech in the Caribbean, we're gonna talk about hurricanes and gonna talk about failing back into the AWS availability zones. So innovative is filling that gap across the board, whether it be inside the AWS cloud or on the AWS edge. >>All right. So I gotta ask you on the, since you're at the edge in these areas, I won't say underserved, but developing areas where now have data, you have applications that are tapping into that, that requirement. It makes total sense. We're seeing across the board. So it's not like it's, it's an outlier it's actually growing. Yeah. There's also the crypto angle. You got the blockchain. Are you seeing any traction at the edge with blockchain? Because a lot of people are looking at the web three in these areas like Panama, you mentioned FinTech in, in the islands. There are a lot of, lot of, lot of web three happening. What's your, what's your view on the web three world right now, relative >>To we, we have some customers actually deploying crypto, especially, um, especially in the Caribbean. I keep bringing the Caribbean up, but it's, it's top of my mind right now we have customers that are deploying crypto. A lot of, uh, countries are choosing crypto underly parts of their central banks. Yeah. Um, so it's, it's up and coming. Uh, I, I have some, you know, personal views that, that crypto is still searching for a use case. Yeah. And, uh, I think it's searching a lot and, and we're there to help customers search for that use case. Uh, but, but crypto, as a, as a tech technology, um, lives really well on the AWS edge. Yeah. Uh, and, and we're having more and more people talk to us about that. Yeah. And ask for assistance in the infrastructure because they're developing new cryptocurrencies every day. Yeah. It's not like they're deploying Ethereum or anything specific. They're actually developing new currencies and, and putting them out there on it's >>Interesting. And I mean, first of all, we've been doing crypto for many, many years. We have our own little, um, you know, projects going on. But if you look talk to all the crypto people that say, look, we do a smart contract, we use the blockchain. It's kind of over a lot of overhead. It's not really their technical already, but it's a cultural shift, but there's underserved use cases around use of money, but they're all using the blockchain, just for this like smart contracts for instance, or certain transactions. And they go into Amazon for the database. Yeah. <laugh> they all don't tell anyone we're using a centralized service, but what happened to decent centralized. >>Yeah. And that's, and that's the conversation performance. >>Yeah. >>And, and it's a cost issue. Yeah. And it's a development issue. Um, so I think more and more as, as some of these, uh, currencies maybe come up, some of the smart contracts get into, uh, they find their use cases. I think we'll start talking about how does that really live on, on AWS and, and what does it look like to build decentralized applications, but with AWS hardware and services. >>Right. So take me through a, a use case of a customer, um, Matthew around the edge. Okay. So I'm a customer, pretend I'm a customer, Hey, you know, I'm, we're in an underserved area. I want to modernize my business. And I got my developers that are totally peaked up on cloud. Um, but we've identified that it's just a lot of overhead latency issues. I need to have a local edge and serve my a and I also want all the benefits of the cloud. So I want the modernization and I wanna migrate to the cloud for all those cloud benefits and the good this of the cloud. What's the answer. Yeah. >>Uh, big thing is, uh, industrial manufacturing, right? That's, that's one of the best use cases, uh, inside industrial manufacturing, we can pull in many of the AWS edge services we can bring in, uh, private 5g, uh, so that all the, uh, equipment inside that, that manufacturing plant can be hooked up. They don't have to pay huge overheads to deploy 5g it's, uh, better than wifi for the industrial space. Um, when we take computing down to that industrial area, uh, because we wanna do pre-procesing on the data. Yeah. We want to gather some analytics. We deploy that with, uh, regular commercially available hardware running VMware, and we deploy EKS anywhere on that. Uh, inside of that manufacturing plant, uh, we can do pre-processing on things coming out of the, uh, the robotics that depending on what we're manufacturing, right. Uh, and then we can take the, those refined analytics and for very low cost with maybe a little bit longer latency transmit those back, um, to the AWS availability zone, the, the standard >>For data lake or whatever, >>To the data lake. Yeah. Data Lakehouse, whatever it might be. Um, and we can do additional data science on that once it gets to the AWS cloud. Uh, but I'll lot of that, uh, just in time business decisions, just in time, manufacturing decisions can all take place on an AWS service or services inside that manufacturing plant. And that's, that's one of the best use cases that we're >>Seeing. And I think, I mean, we've been seeing this on the queue for many, many years, moving data around is very expensive. Yeah. But also compute going of the data that saves that cost yep. On the data transfer also on the benefits of the latency. So I have to ask you, by the way, that's standard best practice now for the folks watching don't move the data unless you have to. Um, but those new things are developing. So I wanna ask you, what new patterns are you seeing emerging once this new architecture's in place? Love that idea, localize everything right at the edge, manufacture, industrial, whatever the use case, retail, whatever it is. Right. But now what does that change in the, in the core cloud? There's a, there's a system element here. Yeah. What's the new pattern. There's >>Actually an organizational element as well, because once you have to start making the decision, do I put this compute at the point of use or do I put this compute in the cloud? Uh, now you start thinking about where business decisions should be taking place. Uh, so not only are you changing your architecture, you're actually changing your organization because you're thinking, you're thinking about a dichotomy you didn't have before. Uh, so now you say, okay, this can take place here. Uh, and maybe, maybe this decision can wait. Yeah. Uh, and then how do I visualize that? By >>The way, it could be a bot tube doing the work for management. Yeah. <laugh> exactly. You got observability going, right. But you gotta change the database architecture in the back. So there's new things developing. You've got more benefit. There >>Are, there are. And, and we have more and more people that, that want to talk less about databases and want to talk more about data lakes because of this. They want to talk more about out. Customers are starting to talk about throwing away data, uh, you know, for the past maybe decade. Yeah. It's been store everything. And one day we will have a data science team that we hire in our organization to do analytics on this decade of data. And well, >>I mean, that's, that's a great point. We don't have time to drill into, maybe we do another session on this, but the one pattern we're seeing of the past year is that throwing away data's bad, even data lakes that so-called turn into data swamps, actually, it's not the case. You look at data, brick, snowflake, and other successes out there. And even time series data, which may seem irrelevant efforts over actually matters when people start retraining their machine learning algorithms. Yep. So as data becomes code, as we call it in our last showcase, we did a whole whole event on this. The data's good in real time and in the lake. Yeah. Because the iteration of the data feeds the machine learning training. Things are getting better with the old data. So it's not throw it away. It's not just business better. Yeah. There's all kinds of new scale. >>There are. And, and we have, uh, many customers that are running pay Toby level. Um, they're, they're essentially data factories on, on, uh, on premises, right? They're, they're creating so much data and they're starting to say, okay, we could analyze this, uh, in the cloud, we could transition it. We could move Aytes of data to the AWS cloud, or we can run, uh, computational workloads on premises. We can really do some analytics on this data transition, uh, those high level and sort of raw analytics back to AWS run 'em through machine learning. Um, and we don't have to transition 10, 12 petabytes of data into AWS. >>So I gotta end the segment on a, on a kind of a, um, fun note. I was told to ask you about your personal background, OnPrem architect, Aus cloud, and skydiving instructor. <laugh> how does that all work together? What tell, what does this mean? Yeah. >>Uh, you >>Jumped out a plane and got a job. You got a customer to jump out >>Kind of. So I was, you jumped out. I was teaching having, uh, before I, before I started in the cloud space, this was 13, 14 years ago. I was a, I still am a sky. I instructor, uh, I was teaching skydiving and I heard out of the corner of my ear, uh, a guy that owned an MSP that was lamenting about, um, you know, storing data and, and how his customers are working. And he can't find an enough people to operate all these workloads. So I walked over and said, Hey, this is, this is what I went to school for. Like, I'd love to, you know, uh, I was living in a tent in the woods, teaching skydiving. I was like, I'd love to not live in a tent in the woods. So, uh, uh, I started and the first day there, uh, we had a, a discussion, uh, EC two had just come out <laugh> and, uh, like, >>This is amazing. >>Yeah. And so we had this discussion, we should start moving customers here. And, uh, and that totally revolutionized that business, um, that, that led to, uh, that that guy actually still owns a skydiving airport. But, um, but through all of that, and through being in on premises, migrated me and myself, my career into the cloud, and now it feels like, uh, almost, almost looking back and saying, now let's take what we learned in the cloud and, and apply those lessons and those services tore >>It's. So it's such a great story, you know, was gonna, you know, you know, the whole, you know, growth mindset pack your own parachute, you know, uh, exactly. You know, the cloud in the early days was pretty much will the shoot open. Yeah. It was pretty much, you had to roll your own cloud at that time. And so, you know, you, you jump on a plane, you gotta make sure that parachute is gonna open. >>And so was Kubernetes by the way, 2015 or so when, uh, when that was coming out, it was, I mean, it was, it was still, and maybe it does still feel like that to some people. Right. But, uh, it was, it was the same kind of feeling that we had in the early days of AWS, the same feeling we have when we >>It's now with you guys, it's more like a tandem jump. Yeah. You know, but, but it's a lot of, lot of this cutting edge stuff, like jumping out of an airplane. Yeah. You got the right equipment. You gotta do the right things. Exactly. >>Right. >>Yeah. Thanks for coming. You really appreciate it. Absolutely great conversation. Thanks for having me. Okay. The cubes here live in San Francisco for eight of us summit. I'm John for host of the cube. Uh, we'll be at a summit in New York coming up in the summer as well. Look up for that. Look up this calendar for all the cube, actually@thecube.net. We'll right back with our next segment after this break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone to San Francisco live coverage here, we're at the cube a be summit 2022. We're back in person. I'm John fury host of the cube. We'll be at the eighties summit in New York city this summer, check us out then. But right now, two days in San Francisco, getting all the coverage what's going on in the cloud, we got a cube alumni and friend of the cube, my dos car CEO, investor, a Sierra, and also an investor in a bunch of startups, angel investor. Gonna do great to see you. Thanks for coming on the cube. Good to see you. Good to see you. Cool. How are you? Good. >>How hello you. >>So congratulations on all your investments. Uh, you've made a lot of great successes, uh, over the past couple years, uh, and your company raising, uh, some good cash as Sarah. So give us the update. How much cash have you guys raised? What's the status of the company product what's going on? >>First of all, thank you for having me. We're back to be business with you, never after to see you. Uh, so is a company started around four years back. I invested with a few of the investors and now I'm the CEO there. We have raised close to a hundred million there. The investors are people like Norwes Menlo ventures, coastal ventures, Ram Shera, and all those people, all well known guys. And Beckel chime Paul me Mayard web. So whole bunch of operating people and, uh, Silicon valley VCs are involved >>And has it gone? >>It's going well. We are doing really well. We are going almost 300% year over year. Uh, for last three years, the space ISRA is going after is what I call the applying AI for customer service. It operations, it help desk, uh, the same place I used to work at ServiceNow. We are partners with ServiceNow to take, how can we argument for employees and customers, Salesforce, and service now to take you to the next stage? Well, >>I love having you on the cube, Dave and I, Dave LAN as well loves having you on too, because you not only bring the entrepreneurial CEO experience, you're an investor. You're like a, you're like a guest analyst. <laugh> >>You know, who does >>You, >>You >>Get the call fund to talk to you though. You >>Get the commentary, your, your finger in the pulse. Um, so I gotta ask you obviously, AI and machine learning, machine learning AI, or you want to phrase it. Isn't every application. Now, AI first, uh, you're seeing a lot of that going on. You're starting to see companies build the modern applications at the top of the stack. So the cloud scale has hit. We're seeing cloud scale. You predicted that we talked about in the cube many times. Now you have that past layer with a lot more services and cloud native becoming a standard layer. Containerizations growing Docker just raised a hundred million on a $2 billion valuation back from the dead after they pivoted from enterprise services. So open source developers are booming. Um, where's the action. I mean, is there data control plan? Emerging AI needs data. There's a lot of challenges around this. There's a lot of discussions and a lot of companies being funded, observability there's 10 billion observability companies. Data is the key. This is what's your end on this. What's your take. >>Yeah, look, I think I'll give you the few that I see right from my side. Obviously data is very clear. So the things that rumor system of recorded you and me talked about the next layer is called system of intelligence. That's where the AI will play. Like we talk cloud native, it'll be called AI. NA AI enable is a new buzzword and using the AI for customer service. It, you talk about observability. I call it, AIOps applying AOPs for good old it operation management, cloud management. So you'll see the AOPs applied for whole list of, uh, application from observability doing the CMDB, predicting the events insurance. So I see a lot of work clicking for AIOps and AI services. What used to be desk with ServiceNow BMC GLA you see a new ALA emerging as a system of intelligence. Uh, the next would be is applying AI with workflow automation. So that's where you'll see a lot of things called customer workflows, employee workflows. So think of what UI path automation, anywhere ServiceNow are doing, that area will be driven with AI workflows. So you, you see AI going >>Off is RPA. A company is AI, is RPA a feature of something bigger? Or can someone have a company on RPA UI S one will be at their event this summer? Um, is it a product company? I mean, or I mean, RPA is, should be embedded in everything. It's a >>Feature. It is very good point. Very, very good thinking. So one is, it's a category for sure. Like, as we thought, it's a category, it's an area where RPA may change the name. I call it much more about automation, workflow automation, but RPA and automation is a category. Um, it's a company also, but that automation should be embedded in every area. Yeah. Like we call cloud NATO and AI. They it'll become automation data. Yeah. And that's your, thinking's >>Interesting me. I think about the, what you're talking about what's coming to mind is I'm kinda having flashbacks to the old software model of middleware. Remember at middleware, it was very easy to understand it was middleware. It sat between two things and then the middle, and it was software abstraction. Now you have all kinds of workflows, abstractions everywhere. So multiple databases, it's not a monolithic thing. Right? Right. So as you break that down, is this the new modern middleware? Because what you're talking about is data workflows, but they might be siloed. Are they integrated? I mean, these are the challenges. This is crazy. What's the, >>So remember the databases became called polyglot databases. Yeah. I call this one polyglot automation. So you need automation as a layer, as a category, but you also need to put automation in every area like you, you were talking about, it should be part of service. Now it should be part of ISRA. Like every company, every Salesforce. So that's why you see it MuleSoft and sales buying RPA companies. So you'll see all the SaaS companies, cloud companies having an automation as a core. So it's like how you have a database and compute and sales and networking. You'll also have an automation as a layer embedded inside every stack. >>All right. So I wanna shift gears a little bit and get your perspective on what's going on behind us. You can see, uh, behind, as you got the XPO hall got, um, we're back to vis, but you got, you know, AMD, Clum, Dynatrace data, dog, innovative, all the companies out here that we know, we interview them all. They're trying to be suppliers to this growing enterprise market. Right? Okay. But now you also got the entrepreneurial equation. Okay. We're gonna have John Sado on from Deibel later. He's a former NEA guy and we always talk to Jerry, Jen, we know all the, the VCs, what does the startups look like? What does the state of the, in your mind, cause you, I know you invest the entrepreneurial founder situation. Cloud's bigger. Mm-hmm <affirmative> global, right? Data's part of it. You mentioned data's code. Yes. Basically. Data's everything. What's it like for a first an entrepreneur right now who's starting a company. What's the white space. What's the attack plan. How do they get in the market? How do they engineer everything? >>Very good. So I'll give it to, uh, two things that I'm seeing out there. Remember leaders of Amazon created the startups 15 years back. Everybody built on Amazon now, Azure and GCP. The next layer would be people don't just build on Amazon. They're going to build it on top of snow. Flake companies are snowflake becomes a data platform, right? People will build on snowflake, right? So I see my old boss playing ment, try to build companies on snowflake. So you don't build it just on Amazon. You build it on Amazon and snowflake. Snowflake will become your data store. Snowflake will become your data layer, right? So I think that's the next level of companies trying to do that. So if I'm doing observability AI ops, if I'm doing next level of Splunk SIM, I'm gonna build it on snowflake, on Salesforce, on Amazon, on Azure, et cetera. >>It's interesting. You know, Jerry Chan has it put out a thesis a couple months ago called castles in the cloud where your moat is, what you do in the cloud. Not necessarily in the, in the IP. Um, Dave LAN and I had last re invent, coined the term super cloud, right? It's got a lot of traction and a lot of people throwing, throwing mud at us, but we were, our thesis was, is that what Snowflake's doing? What Goldman S Sachs is doing. You're starting to see these clouds on top of clouds. So Amazon's got this huge CapEx advantage. And guys like Charles Fitzgeral out there, who we like was kind of hitting on us saying, Hey, you guys terrible, they didn't get him. Like, yeah, I don't think he gets it, but that's a whole, can't wait to debate him publicly on this. <laugh> cause he's cool. Um, but snowflake is on Amazon. Yes. Now they say they're on Azure now. Cause they've got a bigger market and they're public, but ultimately without a AWS snowflake doesn't exist and, and they're reimagining the data warehouse with the cloud, right? That's the billion dollar opportunity. >>It is. It is. They both are very tight. So imagine what Frank has done at snowflake and Amazon. So if I'm a startup today, I want to build everything on Amazon where possible whatever is, I cannot build. I'll make the pass layer room. The middle layer pass will be snowflake. So I cannot build it on snowflake. I can use them for data layer if I really need to size, I'll build it on force.com Salesforce. Yeah. Right. So I think that's where you'll >>See. So basically the, the, if you're an entrepreneur, the, the north star in terms of the, the outcome is be a super cloud. It >>Is, >>That's the application on another big CapEx ride, the CapEx of AWS or cloud, >>And that reduce your product development, your go to market and you get use the snowflake marketplace to drive your engagement. Yeah. >>Yeah. How are, how is Amazon and the clouds dealing with these big whales, the snowflakes of the world? I mean, I know they got a great relationship, uh, but snowflake now has to run a company they're public. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll say, I think got Redshift. Amazon has got Redshift. Um, but snowflake big customer. The they're probably paying AWS big, >>I >>Think big bills too. >>So John, very good. Cause it's like how Netflix is and Amazon prime, right. Netflix runs on Amazon, but Amazon has Amazon prime that co-option will be there. So Amazon will have Redshift, but Amazon is also partnering with the snowflake to have native snowflake data warehouse as a data layer. So I think depending on the use case you have to use each of the above, I think snowflake is here for a long term. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm building an application, I want to use snowflake then writing from stats. >>Well, I think that comes back down to entrepreneurial hustle. Do you have a better product? Right. Product value will ultimately determine it as long as the cloud doesn't, you know, foreclose your value. That's right. With some sort of internal hack, but I've think, I think the general question that I have is that I think it's okay to have a super cloud like that because the rising tide is still happening at some point, when does the rising tide stop and the people shopping up their knives, it gets more competitive or is it just an infinite growth cycle? I >>Think it's growth. You call it closed skill you the word cloud scale. So I think look, cloud will continually agree, increase. I think there's as long as there more movement from on, uh, on-prem to the classical data center, I think there's no reason at this point, the rumor, the old lift and shift that's happening in like my business. I see people lift and shifting from the it operations, it helpless. Even the customer service service. Now the ticket data from BMCs CAS like Microfocus, all those workloads are shifted to the cloud, right? So cloud ticketing system is happening. Cloud system of record is happening. So I think this train has still a long way to go made. >>I wanna get your thoughts for the folks watching that are, uh, enterprise buyers are practitioners, not suppliers to the market. Feel free to text me or DMing. Next question is really about the buying side, which is if I'm a customer, what's the current, um, appetite for startup products. Cause you know, the big enterprises now and you know, small, medium, large, and large enterprise, they're all buying new companies cuz a startup can go from zero to relevant very quickly. So that means now enterprises are engaging heavily with startups. What's it like what's is there a change in order of magnitude of the relationship between the startup selling to, or growing startup selling to an enterprise? Um, have you seen changes there? I mean seeing some stuff, but why don't we get your thoughts on that? What it >>Is you, if I remember going back to our 2007 or eight, when I used to talk to you back then when Amazon started very small, right? We are an Amazon summit here. So I think enterprises on the average used to spend nothing with startups. It's almost like 0% or one person today. Most companies are already spending 20, 30% with startups. Like if I look at a C I will line our business, it's gone. Yeah. Can it go more? I think it can double in the next four, five years. Yeah. Spending on the startups. Yeah. >>And check out, uh, AWS startups.com. That's a site that we built for the startup community for buyers and startups. And I want to get your reaction because I, I reference the URL causes like there's like a bunch of companies we've been promoting because the solution that startups have actually are new stuff. Yes. It's bending, it's shifting left for security or using data differently or um, building tools and platforms for data engineering. Right. Which is a new persona that's emerging. So you know, a lot of good resources there. Um, and goes back now to the data question. Now, getting back to your, what you're working on now is what's your thoughts around this new, um, data engineering persona, you mentioned AIOps, we've been seeing AIOps IOPS booming and that's creating a new developer paradigm that's right. Which we call coin data as code data as code is like infrastructure as code, but it's for data, right? It's developing with data, right? Retraining machine learnings, going back to the data lake, getting data to make, to do analysis, to make the machine learning better post event or post action. So this, this data engineers like an SRE for data, it's a new, scalable role we're seeing. Do you see the same thing? Do you agree? Um, do you disagree or can you share? >>I, a lot of thoughts that Fu I see the AI op solutions in the futures should be not looking back. I need to be like we are in San Francisco bay. That means earthquake prediction. Right? I want AOPs to predict when the outages are gonna happen. When there's a performance issue. I don't think most AOPs vendors have not gone there yet. Like I spend a lot of time with data dog, Cisco app dynamic, right? Dynatrace, all this solution will go future towards predict to pro so solution with AOPs. But what you bring up a very good point on the data side. I think like we have a Amazon marketplace and Amazon for startup, there should be data exchange where you want to create for AOPs and AI service that customers give the data, share the data because we thought the data algorithms are useless. I can give the best algorithm, but I gotta train them, modify them, make them better, make them better. Yeah. And I think their whole data exchange is the industry has not thought through something you and me talk many times. Yeah. Yeah. I think the whole, that area is very important. >>You've always been on, um, on the Vanguard of data because, uh, it's been really fun. Yeah. >>Going back to big data days back in 2009, you know that >>Look at, look how much data bricks has grown. >>It is doubled. The key cloud >>Air kinda went private, so good stuff. What are you working on right now? Give a, give a, um, plug for what you're working on. You'll still investing. >>I do still invest, but look, I'm a hundred percent on ISRA right now. I'm the CEO there. Yeah. Okay. So right. ISRA is my number one baby right now. So I'm looking year that growing customers and my customers, or some of them, you like it's zoom auto desk, McAfee, uh, grand <inaudible>. So all the top customers, um, mainly for it help desk customer service. AIOps those are three product lines and going after enterprise and commercial deals. >>And when should someone buy your product? What's what's their need? What category is it? >>I think they look whenever somebody needs to buy the product is if you need AOP solution to predict, keep your lights on, predict ours. One area. If you want to improve employee experience, you are using a slack teams and you want to automate all your workflows. That's another value problem. Third is customer service. You don't want to hire more people to do it. Some of the areas where you want to scale your company, grow your company, eliminate the cost customer service, >>Great stuff, man. Doing great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the success of your company and your investments. Thanks for coming on the cube. Okay. I'm John fur here at the cube live in San Francisco for day one of two days of coverage of a us summit 2022. And we're gonna be at Aus summit in San, uh, in New York in the summer. So look for that on the calendar, of course, go to a us startups.com. That's a site for all the hot startups and of course the cube.net and Silicon angle.com. Thanks for watching. We'll be back more coverage after this short break. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. This the cubes coverage here in San Francisco, California, a Davis summit, 2022, the beginning of the event season, as it comes back, little bit smaller footprint, a lot of hybrid events going on, but this is actually a physical event, a summit in new York's coming in the summer. We'll be two with the cube on the set. We're getting back in the Groove's psych to be back. We were at reinvent, uh, as well, and we'll see more and more cube, but you're gonna see a lot of virtual cube outta hybrid cube. We wanna get all those conversations, try to get more interviews, more flow going. But right now I'm excited to have Corey Quinn here on the back on the cube chief cloud economist with duck bill groove, he's the founder, uh, and chief content person always got great angles, fun comedy, authoritative Corey. Great to see you. Thank you. >>Thanks. Coming on. Sure is a lot of words to describe is shit posting, which is how I describe what I tend to do. Most days, >>Shit posting is an art form now. And if you look at mark, Andrew's been doing a lot of shit posting lately. All a billionaires are shit posting, but they don't know how to do it. They're >>Doing it right. There's something opportunity there. It's like, here's how to be even more obnoxious and incisive. It's honestly the most terrifying scenario for anyone is if I have that kind of budget to throw at my endeavors, it's like, I get excited with a nonsense I can do with a $20 gift card for an AWS credit compared to, oh well, if I could buy a mid-size island to begin doing this from, oh, then we're having fun. >>This shit posting trend. Interesting. I was watching a thread go on about, saw someone didn't get a job because of their shit posting and the employer didn't get it. And then someone on this side I'll hire the guy cuz I get that's highly intelligent shit posting. So for the audience that doesn't know what shit posting is, what, what is shitposting >>It's more or less talking about the world of enterprise technology, which even that sentence is hard to finish without falling asleep and toppling out of my chair in front of everyone on the livestream, but it's doing it in such a way that brings it to life that says the quiet part. A lot of the audience is thinking, but generally doesn't say either because they're polite or not a Jack ass or more prosaically are worried about getting fired for better or worse. I don't have that particular constraint, >>Which is why people love you. So let's talk about what you, what you think is, uh, worthy and not worthy in the industry right now, obviously, uh, Cuban coming up in Spain, which they're having a physical event, you see the growth of cloud native Amazon's evolving Atos, especially new CEO. Andy move on to be the chief of all. Amazon just saw him the cover of was it time magazine. Um, he's under a lot of stress. Amazon's changed. Invoice has changed. What's working. What's not, what's rising, what's falling. What's hot. What's not, >>It's easy to sit here and criticize almost anything. These folks do. They're they're effectively in a fishbowl, but I have trouble. Imagine the logistics, it takes to wind up handling the catering for a relatively downscale event like this one this year, let alone running a 1.7 million employee company having to balance all the competing challenges and pressures and the rest. I, I just can't fathom what it would be like to look at all of AWS. And it's, it's sprawling immense, the nominates our entire industry and say, okay, this is a good start, but I, I wanna focus on something with a broader remit. What is that? How do you even get into that position? And you can't win once you're there. All you can do is hold onto the tiger and hope you don't get mold. >>Well, there's a lot of force for good conversations. Seeing a lot of that going on, Amazon's trying to a, is trying to portray themselves, you know, the Pathfinder, you know, you're the pioneer, um, force for good. And I get that and I think that's a good angle as cloud goes mainstream. There's still the question of, we had a guy on just earlier, who was a skydiving instructor and we were joking about the early days of cloud. Like that was like skydiving, build a parachute open, you know, and now it's same kind of thing. As you move to edge, things are like reliable in some areas, but still new, new fringe, new areas. That's crazy. Well, >>Since the last time we've spoken, uh, Steve Schmidt is now the CISO for all of Amazon and his backfill replacement. The AWS CISO is CJ. Moses who as a hobby races, a as a semi-pro race car, our driver to my understanding, which either, I don't know what direction to take that in either. This is what he does to relax or ultimately, or ultimately it's. Huh? That, that certainly says something about risk assessment. I'm not entirely sure what, but okay. Either way, it sounds like more exciting. Like they >>Better have a replacement ready in case something goes wrong on the track, highly >>Available >>CSOs. I gotta say one of the things I do like in the recent trend is that the tech companies are getting into the formula one, which I was never a fan of until I watched that Netflix series. But when you look at the formula one, it's pretty cool. Cause it's got some tech angles, I get the whole data instrumentation thing, but the most coolest thing about formula, the one is they have these new rigs out. Yeah. Where you can actually race in e-sports with other people in pure simulation of the race car. You gotta get the latest and video graphics card, but it's basically a tricked out PC with amazing monitors and you have all the equipment of F1 and you're basically simulating racing. Oh, >>It's great too. And I can see the appeal of these tech companies getting it into it because these things are basically rocket shifts. When those cars go, like they're sitting there, we can instrument every last part of what is going on inside that vehicle. And then AWS crops up. And we can bill on every one of those dimensions too. And it's like slow down their hasty pudding one step at a time. But I do see the appeal. >>So I gotta ask you about, uh, what's going on in your world. I know you have a lot of great SA we've been following you in the queue for many, many years. Got a great newsletter. Check out Corey Quinn's newsletter, uh, screaming in the cloud program. Uh, you're on the cutting edge and you've got a great balance between really being snarky and, and, and really being delivering content. That's exciting, uh, for people, uh, with a little bit of an edge, um, how's that going? Uh, what's the blowback, any blowback late leads there been tick? What was, what are some of the things you're hearing from your audience, more Corey, more Corey. And then of course the, the PR team's calling you >>The weird thing about having an audience beyond a certain size is far and away as a landslide. The most common response I get is silence where it's hi, I'm emailing an awful lot of people at last week in AWS every week and okay. They not have heard me. It. That is not actually true. People just generally don't respond to email because who responds to email newsletters. That sounds like something, a lunatic might do same story with response to live streams and podcasts. It's like, I'm gonna call into that am radio show and give them a piece of my mind. People generally don't do that. >>We should do that. Actually. I think sure would call in. Oh, I, I >>Think >>I guarantee if we had that right now, people would call in and Corey, what do you think about X? >>Yeah. It not, everyone understands the full context of what I do. And in fact, increasingly few people do and that's fine. I, I keep forgetting that sometimes people do not see what I'm doing in the same light that I do. And that's fine. Blowback has been largely minimal. Honestly, I am surprised anything by how little I have gotten over the last five years of doing this, but it would be easier to dismiss me if I weren't generally. Right. When, okay, so you launch this new service and it seems pretty crappy to me cuz when I try and build something, it falls over and begs for help. And people might not like hearing that, but it's what customers are finding too. Yeah. I really am the voice of the customer. >>You know, I always joke with Dave Avante about how John Fort's always at, uh, um, reinvent getting the interview with jazzy now, Andy we're there, you're there. And so we have these rituals at the events. It's all cool. Um, one of the rituals I like about your, um, your content is you like to get on the naming product names. Um, and, and, and, and, and kind of goof on that. Now why I like is because I used to work at ETT Packard where they used to name things as like engineers, HP 1 0, 0 5, or we can't, we >>Have a new monitor. How are we gonna name it? Throw the wireless keyboard down the stairs again. And then there you go. Yeah. >>It's and the old joke at HP was if they, if they invented sushi, they'd say, yeah, we can't call sushi. It's cold, dead fish, but that's what it is. And so the joke was cold. Dead fish is a better name than sushi. So you know is fun. So what's the, what are the, how's the Amazon doing in there? Have they changed their naming, uh, strategy, uh, on some of their, their product >>They're going in different directions. When they named Aurora, they decided to explore a new theme of Disney princesses as they go down those paths. And some things are more descriptive. Some people are clearly getting bonus on number of words, they can shove into it. Like the better a service is the longer it's name. Like AWS systems manager, a session manager is a great one. I love the service ridiculous name. They have a systems manager, parameter store with is great. They have secrets manager, which does the same thing. It's two words less, but that one costs money in a way that systems manage through parameter store does not. It's fun. >>What's your, what's your favorite combination of acronyms >>Combination of you >>Got Ks. You got EMR, you got EC two. You got S three SQS. Well, RedShift's not an acronym. You got >>Gas is one of my personal favorites because it's either elastic block store or elastic bean stock, depending entirely on the context of the conversation, >>They still got bean stock or is that still >>Around? Oh, they never turn anything off. They're like the anti Google, Google turns things off while they're still building it. Whereas Amazon is like, wow, we built this thing in 2005 and everyone hates it. But while we certainly can't change it, now it has three customers on it, John. >>Okay. >>Simple BV still haunts our >>Dreams. I, I actually got an email on, I saw one of my, uh, servers, all these C twos were being deprecated and I got an email I'm like, I couldn't figure out. Why can you just like roll it over? Why, why are you telling me just like, gimme something else. Right. Okay. So let me talk about, uh, the other things I want to ask you is that like, okay, so as Amazon gets better in some areas where do they need more work? And you, your opinion, because obviously they're all interested in new stuff and they tend to like put it out there for their end to end customers. But then they've got ecosystem partners who actually have the same product. Yes. And, and this has been well documented. So it's, it's not controversial. It's just that Amazon's got a database Snowflake's got out database service. So, you know, Redshift, snowflake database is out there. So you've got this optician. Yes. How's that going? And what are you hearing about the reaction to any of that stuff? >>Depends on who you ask. They love to basically trot out a bunch of their partners who will say nice things about them. And it very much has heirs of, let's be honest, a hostage video, but okay. Cuz these companies do partner with Amazon and they cannot afford to rock the boat too far. I'm not partnered with anyone. I can say what I want. And they're basically restricted to taking away my birthday at worse so I can live with that. >>All right. So I gotta ask about multi-cloud cause obviously the other cloud shows are coming up. Amazon hated that word. Multi-cloud um, a lot of people are saying, you know, it's not a real good marketing word. Like multicloud sounds like, you know, root canal. Mm-hmm <affirmative> right. So is there a better description for multicloud? >>Multiple single >>Loves that term. Yeah. >>You're building in multiple single points of failure. Do it for the right reasons or don't do it as a default. I believe not doing it is probably the, the right answer. However, and if I were, if I were Amazon, I wouldn't want to talk about multi-cloud either as the industry leader, let's talk about other clouds, bad direction to go in from a market cap perspective. It doesn't end well for you, but regardless of what they want to talk about, or don't want to talk about what they say, what they don't say, I tune all of it out. And I look at what customers are doing and multi-cloud exists in a variety of some brilliant, some brain dead. It depends a lot on context. But my general response is when someone gets on stage from a company and tells me to do a thing that directly benefits their company. I am skeptical at best. Yeah. When customers get on stage and say, this is what we're doing because it solves problems. That's when I shut up and listen. >>Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Corey, I gotta ask you a question cause I know you we've been, you know, fellow journey mean in the, in the cloud journey, going to all the events and then the pandemic hit where now in the third year, who knows what it's gonna end, certainly events are gonna look different. They're gonna be either changing footprint with the virtual piece, new group formations community's gonna emerge. You've got a pretty big community growing and it's growing like crazy. What's the weirdest or coolest thing, or just big changes you've seen with the pan endemic, uh, from your perspective, cuz you've been in the you're in the middle of the whitewater rafting. You've seen the events you circle offline. You saw the online piece come in, you're commentating, you're calling balls and strikes in the industry. You got a great team developing over there. Duck bill group. What's the big aha moment that you saw with the pandemic. Weird, funny, serious, real in the industry and with customers what's >>Accessibility. Reinvent is a great example. When in the before times it's open to anyone who wants to attend, who >>Can pony. >>Hello and welcome back to the live cube coverage here in San Francisco, California, the cube live coverage. Two days, day two of a summit, 2022 Aish summit, New York city coming up in summer. We'll be there as well. Events are back. I'm the host, John fur, the Cub got great guest here. Johnny Dallas with Ze. Um, here is on the queue. We're gonna talk about his background. Uh, little trivia here. He was the youngest engineer ever worked at Amazon at the age. 17 had to get escorted into reinvent in Vegas cause he was underage <laugh> with security, all good stories. Now the CEO of company called Z know DevOps kind of focus, managed service, a lot of cool stuff, Johnny, welcome to the cube. >>Thanks John. Great. >>So tell a story. You were the youngest engineer at AWS. >>I was, yes. So I used to work at a company called Bebo. I got started very young. I started working when I was about 14, um, kind of as a software engineer. And when I, uh, it was about 16. I graduated out of high school early, um, working at this company Bebo, still running all of the DevOps at that company. Um, I went to reinvent in about 2018 to give a talk about some of the DevOps software I wrote at that company. Um, but you know, as many of those things were probably familiar with reinvent happens in a casino and I was 16. So was not able to actually go into the, a casino on my own. Um, so I'd have <inaudible> security as well as casino security escort me in to give my talk. >>Did Andy jazzy, was he aware of >>This? Um, you know, that's a great question. I don't know. <laugh> >>I'll ask him great story. So obviously you started a young age. I mean, it's so cool to see you jump right in. I mean, I mean you never grew up with the old school that I used to grew up in and loading package software, loading it onto the server, deploying it, plugging the cables in, I mean you just rocking and rolling with DevOps as you look back now what's the big generational shift because now you got the Z generation coming in, millennials on the workforce. It's changing like no one's putting and software on servers. Yeah, >>No. I mean the tools keep getting better, right? We, we keep creating more abstractions that make it easier and easier. When I, when I started doing DevOps, I could go straight into E two APIs. I had APIs from the get go and you know, my background was, I was a software engineer. I never went through like the CIS admin stack. I, I never had to, like you said, rack servers, myself. I was immediately able to scale. I was managing, I think 2,500 concurrent servers across every Ables region through software. It was a fundamental shift. >>Did you know what an SRE was at that time? >>Uh, >>You were kind of an SRE on >>Yeah, I was basically our first SRE, um, was familiar with the, with the phrasing, but really thought of myself as a software engineer who knows cloud APIs, not a SRE. All >>Right. So let's talk about what's what's going on now as you look at the landscape today, what's the coolest thing that's going on in your mind in cloud? >>Yeah, I think the, I think the coolest thing is, you know, we're seeing the next layer of those abstraction tools exist and that's what we're doing with Z is we've basically gone and we've, we're building an app platform that deploys onto your cloud. So if you're familiar with something like Carku, um, where you just click a GitHub repo, uh, we actually make it that easy. You click a GI hub repo and it will deploy on ALS using a AWS tools. So, >>Right. So this is Z. This is the company. Yes. How old's the company about >>A year and a half old now. >>All right. So explain what it does. >>Yeah. So we make it really easy for any software engineer to deploy on a AWS. It's not SREs. These are the actual application engineers doing the business logic. They don't really want to think about Yamo. They don't really want to configure everything super deeply. They want to say, run this API on S in the best way possible. We've encoded all the best practices into software and we set it up for you. Yeah. >>So I think the problem you're solving is that there's a lot of want be DevOps engineers. And then they realize, oh shit, I don't wanna do this. Yeah. And some people want to do it. They loved under the hood. Right. People love to have infrastructure, but the average developer needs to actually be as agile on scale. So that seems to be the problem you solve. Right? >>Yeah. We, we, we give way more productivity to each individual engineer, you know? >>All right. So let me ask you a question. So let me just say, I'm a developer. Cool. I build this new app. It's a streaming app or whatever. I'm making it up cube here, but let's just say I deploy it. I need your service. But what happens about when my customers say, Hey, what's your SLA? The CDN went down from this it's flaky. Does Amazon have, so how do you handle all that SLA reporting that Amazon provides? Cuz they do a good job with sock reports all through the console. But as you start getting into DevOps <affirmative> and sell your app, mm-hmm <affirmative> you have customer issues. How do you, how do you view that? Yeah, >>Well, I, I think you make a great point of AWS has all this stuff already. AWS has SLAs. AWS has contract. Aw has a lot of the tools that are expected. Um, so we don't have to reinvent the wheel here. What we do is we help people get to those SLAs more easily. So Hey, this is AWS SLA as a default. Um, Hey, we'll fix you your services. This is what you can expect here. Um, but we can really leverage S's reliability of you. Don't have to trust us. You have to trust ALS and trust that the setup is good there. >>Do you handle all the recovery or mitigation between, uh, identification say downtime for instance? Oh, the server's not 99% downtime. Uh, went down for an hour, say something's going on? And is there a service dashboard? How does it get what's the remedy? Do you have a, how does all that work? >>Yeah, so we have some built in remediation. You know, we, we basically say we're gonna do as much as we can to keep your endpoint up 24 7 mm-hmm <affirmative>. If it's something in our control, we'll do it. If it's a disc failure, that's on us. If you push bad code, we won't put out that new version until it's working. Um, so we do a lot to make sure that your endpoint stay is up, um, and then alert you if there's a problem that we can't fix. So cool. Hey S has some downtime, this thing's going on. You need to do this action. Um, we'll let you know. >>All right. So what do you do for fun? >>Yeah, so, uh, for, for fun, um, a lot of side projects. <laugh> uh, >>What's your side hustle right now. You got going on >>The, uh, it's >>A lot of tools playing tools, serverless. >>Yeah, painless. A lot of serverless stuff. Um, I think there's a lot of really cool WAM stuff as well. Going on right now. Um, I love tools is, is the truest answer is I love building something that I can give to somebody else. And they're suddenly twice as productive because of it. Um, >>It's a good feeling, isn't it? >>Oh yeah. There's >>Nothing like tools were platforms. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, the expression, too many tools in the tool. She becomes, you know, tools for all. And then ultimately tools become platforms. What's your view on that? Because if a good tool works and starts to get traction, you need to either add more tools or start building a platform platform versus tool. What's your, what's your view on a reaction to that kind of concept debate? >>Yeah, it's a good question. Uh, we we've basically started as like a, a platform. First of we've really focused on these, uh, developers who don't wanna get deep into the DevOps. And so we've done all of the pieces of the stacks. We do C I C D management. Uh, we do container orchestration, we do monitoring. Um, and now we're, spliting those up into individual tools so they can be used. Awesome in conjunction more. >>All right. So what are some of the use cases that you see for your service? It's DevOps basically nano service DevOps. So people who want a DevOps team, do clients have a DevOps person and then one person, two people what's the requirements to run >>Z. Yeah. So we we've got teams, um, from no DevOps is kind of when they start and then we've had teams grow up to about, uh, five, 10 men DevOps teams. Um, so, you know, as is more infrastructure people come in because we're in your cloud, you're able to go in and configure it on top you're we can't block you. Uh, you wanna use some new AWS service. You're welcome to use that alongside the stack that we deploy >>For you. How many customers do you have now? >>So we've got about 40 companies that are using us for all of their infrastructure, um, kind of across the board, um, as well as >>What's the pricing model. >>Uh, so our pricing model is we, we charge basically similar to an engineering salary. So we charge a monthly rate. We have plans at 300 bucks a month, a thousand bucks a month, and then enterprise plan for >>The requirement scale. Yeah. So back into the people cost, you must have her discounts, not a fully loaded thing, is it? >>Yeah, there's a discounts kind of asking >>Then you pass the Amazon bill. >>Yeah. So our customers actually pay for the Amazon bill themselves. So >>Have their own >>Account. There's no margin on top. You're linking your, a analyst account in, um, got it. Which is huge because we can, we are now able to help our customers get better deals with Amazon. Um, got it. We're incentivized on their team to drive your costs down. >>And what's your unit main unit of economics software scale. >>Yeah. Um, yeah, so we, we think of things as projects. How many services do you have to deploy as that scales up? Um, awesome. >>All right. You're 20 years old now you not even can't even drink legally. <laugh> what are you gonna do when you're 30? We're gonna be there. >>Well, we're, uh, we're making it better, better, >>Better the old guy on the queue here. <laugh> >>I think, uh, I think we're seeing a big shift of, um, you know, we've got these major clouds. ALS is obviously the biggest cloud and it's constantly coming out with new services, but we're starting to see other clouds have built many of the common services. So Kubernetes is a great example. It exists across all the clouds and we're starting to see new platforms come up on top that allow you to leverage tools for multiple times. At the same time. Many of our customers actually have AWS as their primary cloud and they'll have secondary clouds or they'll pull features from other clouds into AWS, um, through our software. I think that's, I'm very excited by that. And I, uh, expect to be working on that when I'm 30. <laugh> awesome. >>Well, you gonna have a good future. I gotta ask you this question cuz uh, you know, I always, I was a computer science undergrad in the, in the, and um, computer science back then was hardcore, mostly systems OS stuff, uh, database compiler. Um, now there's so much compi, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> how do you look at the high school college curriculum experience slash folks who are nerding out on computer science? It's not one or two things. You've got a lot of, lot of things. I mean, look at Python, data engineering and emerging as a huge skill. What's it, what's it like for college kids now and high school kids? What, what do you think they should be doing if you had to give advice to your 16 year old self back a few years ago now in college? Um, I mean Python's not a great language, but it's super effective for coding and the datas were really relevant, but it's, you've got other language opportunities you've got tools to build. So you got a whole culture of young builders out there. What should, what should people gravitate to in your opinion and stay away from or >>Stay away from? That's a good question. I, I think that first of all, you're very right of the, the amount of developers is increasing so quickly. Um, and so we see more specialization. That's why we also see, you know, these SREs that are different than typical application engineering. You know, you get more specialization in job roles. Um, I think if, what I'd say to my 16 year old self is do projects, um, the, I learned most of my, what I've learned just on the job or online trying things, playing with different technologies, actually getting stuff out into the world, um, way more useful than what you'll learn in kind of a college classroom. I think classroom's great to, uh, get a basis, but you need to go out and experiment actually try things. >>You know? I think that's great advice. In fact, I would just say from my experience of doing all the hard stuff and cloud is so great for just saying, okay, I'm done, I'm banning the project. Move on. Yeah. Cause you know, it's not gonna work in the old days. You have to build this data center. I bought all this, you know, people hang on to the old, you know, project and try to force it out there. Now you >>Can launch a project now, >>Instant gratification, it ain't working <laugh> or this is shut it down and then move on to something new. >>Yeah, exactly. Instantly you should be able to do that much more quickly. Right. So >>You're saying get those projects and don't be afraid to shut it down. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that? Do you agree with that? >>Yeah. I think it's ex experiment. Uh, you're probably not gonna hit it rich on the first one. It's probably not gonna be that idea is the genius idea. So don't be afraid to get rid of things and just try over and over again. It's it's number of reps >>That'll win. I was commenting online. Elon Musk was gonna buy Twitter, that whole Twitter thing. And someone said, Hey, you know, what's the, I go look at the product group at Twitter's been so messed up because they actually did get it right on the first time. And we can just a great product. They could never change it because people would freak out and the utility of Twitter. I mean, they gotta add some things, the added button and we all know what they need to add, but the product, it was just like this internal dysfunction, the product team, what are we gonna work on? Don't change the product so that you kind of have there's opportunities out there where you might get the lucky strike right outta the gate. Yeah. Right. You don't know. >>It's almost a curse too. It's you're not gonna hit curse Twitter. You're not gonna hit a rich the second time too. So yeah. >><laugh> Johnny Dallas. Thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate it. Give a plug for your company. Um, take a minute to explain what you're working on. What you're look looking for. You hiring funding. Customers. Just give a plug, uh, last minute and kind the last word. >>Yeah. So, um, John Dallas from Ze, if you, uh, need any help with your DevOps, if you're a early startup, you don't have DevOps team, um, or you're trying to deploy across clouds, check us out z.com. Um, we are actively hiring. So if you are a software engineer excited about tools and cloud, or you're interested in helping getting this message out there, hit me up. Um, find us on z.co. >>Yeah. LinkedIn Twitter handle GitHub handle. >>Yeah. I'm the only Johnny on a LinkedIn and GitHub and underscore Johnny Dallas underscore on Twitter. All right. Um, >>Johnny Dallas, the youngest engineer working at Amazon, um, now 20 we're on great new project here in the cube. Builders are all young. They're growing into the business. They got cloud at their, at their back it's tailwind. I wish I was 20. Again, this is a I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching. Thanks. >>Welcome >>Back to the cubes. Live coverage of a AWS summit in San Francisco, California events are back, uh, ADAS summit in New York cities. This summer, the cube will be there as well. Check us out there lot. I'm glad we have events back. It's great to have everyone here. I'm John furry host of the cube. Dr. Matt wood is with me cube alumni now VP of business analytics division of AWS. Matt. Great to see you. Thank >>You, John. Great to be here. >>Appreciate it. I always call you Dr. Matt wood, because Andy jazzy always says Dr. Matt, we >>Would introduce you on the he's the one and only the one and >>Only Dr. Matt wood >>In joke. I love it. >>Andy style. And I think you had walkup music too on, you know, >>Too. Yes. We all have our own personalized walk. >>So talk about your new role. I not new role, but you're running up, um, analytics, business or AWS. What does that consist of right now? >>Sure. So I work, I've got what I consider to be the one of the best jobs in the world. Uh, I get to work with our customers and, uh, the teams at AWS, uh, to build the analytics services that millions of our customers use to, um, uh, slice dice, pivot, uh, better understand their day data, um, look at how they can use that data for, um, reporting, looking backwards and also look at how they can use that data looking forward. So predictive analytics and machine learning. So whether it is, you know, slicing and dicing in the lower level of, uh Hado and the big data engines, or whether you're doing ETR with glue or whether you're visualizing the data in quick side or building models in SageMaker. I got my, uh, fingers in a lot of pies. >>You know, one of the benefits of, uh, having cube coverage with AWS since 2013 is watching the progression. You were on the cube that first year we were at reinvent 2013 and look at how machine learning just exploded onto the scene. You were involved in that from day one is still day one, as you guys say mm-hmm <affirmative>, what's the big thing now. I mean, look at, look at just what happened. Machine learning comes in and then a slew of services come in and got SageMaker became a hot seller, right outta the gate. Mm-hmm <affirmative> the database stuff was kicking butt. So all this is now booming. Mm-hmm <affirmative> that was the real generational changeover for <inaudible> what's the perspective. What's your perspective on, yeah, >>I think how that's evolved. No, I think it's a really good point. I, I totally agree. I think for machine machine learning, um, there was sort of a Renaissance in machine learning and the application of machine learning machine learning as a technology has been around for 50 years, let's say, but, uh, to do machine learning, right? You need like a lot of data, the data needs to be high quality. You need a lot of compute to be able to train those models and you have to be able to evaluate what those mean as you apply them to real world problems. And so the cloud really removed a lot of the constraints. Finally, customers had all of the data that they needed. We gave them services to be able to label that data in a high quality way. There's all the compute. You need to be able to train the models <laugh> and so where you go. >>And so the cloud really enabled this Renaissance with machine learning, and we're seeing honestly, a similar Renaissance with, uh, with data, uh, and analytics. You know, if you look back, you know, five, 10 years, um, analytics was something you did in batch, like your data warehouse ran a analysis to do, uh, reconciliation at the end of the month. And then was it? Yeah. And so that's when you needed it, but today, if your Redshift cluster isn't available, uh, Uber drivers don't turn up door dash deliveries, don't get made. It's analytics is now central to virtually every business and it is central to every virtually every business is digital transformation. Yeah. And be able to take that data from a variety of sources here, or to query it with high performance mm-hmm <affirmative> to be able to actually then start to augment that data with real information, which usually comes from technical experts and domain experts to form, you know, wisdom and information from raw data. That's kind of, uh, what most organizations are trying to do when they kind of go through this analytics journey. It's >>Interesting, you know, Dave LAN and I always talk on the cube, but out, you know, the future and, and you look back, the things we were talking about six years ago are actually happening now. Yeah. And it's not a, a, a, you know, hyped up statement to say digital transformation. It actually's happening now. And there's also times where we bang our fist on the table, say, I really think this is so important. And Dave says, John, you're gonna die on that hill <laugh>. >>And >>So I I'm excited that this year, for the first time I didn't die on that hill. I've been saying data you're right. Data as code is the next infrastructure as code mm-hmm <affirmative>. And Dave's like, what do you mean by that? We're talking about like how data gets and it's happening. So we just had an event on our 80 bus startups.com site mm-hmm <affirmative>, um, a showcase with startups and the theme was data as code and interesting new trends emerging really clearly the role of a data engineer, right? Like an SRE, what an SRE did for cloud. You have a new data engineering role because of the developer on, uh, onboarding is massively increasing exponentially, new developers, data science, scientists are growing mm-hmm <affirmative> and the, but the pipelining and managing and engineering as a system. Yeah. Almost like an operating system >>And as a discipline. >>So what's your reaction to that about this data engineer data as code, because if you have horizontally scalable data, you've gotta be open that's hard. <laugh> mm-hmm <affirmative> and you gotta silo the data that needs to be siloed for compliance and reasons. So that's got a very policy around that. So what's your reaction to data as code and data engineering and >>Phenomenon? Yeah, I think it's, it's a really good point. I think, you know, like with any, with any technology, uh, project inside an organization, you know, success with analytics or machine learning is it's kind of 50% technology and then 50% cultural. And, uh, you have often domain experts. Those are, could be physicians or drug experts, or they could be financial experts or whoever they might be got deep domain expertise. And then you've got technical implementation teams and it's kind of a natural often repulsive force. I don't mean that rudely, but they, they just, they don't talk the same language. And so the more complex the domain and the more complex the technology, the stronger that repulsive force, and it can become very difficult for, um, domain experts to work closely with the technical experts, to be able to actually get business decisions made. And so what data engineering does and data engineering is in some cases team, or it can be a role that you play. >>Uh, it's really allowing those two disciplines to speak the same language it provides. You can think of it as plumbing, but I think of it as like a bridge, it's a bridge between like the technical implementation and the domain experts. And that requires like a very disparate range of skills. You've gotta understand about statistics. You've gotta understand about the implementation. You've gotta understand about the, it, you've gotta understand and understand about the domain. And if you could pull all of that together, that data engineering discipline can be incredibly transformative for an organization, cuz it builds the bridge between those two >>Groups. You know, I was advising some, uh, young computer science students at the sophomore junior level, uh, just a couple weeks ago. And I told 'em, I would ask someone at Amazon, this questions I'll ask you since you're, you've been in the middle of of it for years, they were asking me and I was trying to mentor them on. What, how do you become a data engineer from a practical standpoint, uh, courseware projects to work on how to think, um, not just coding Python cause everyone's coding in Python mm-hmm <affirmative> but what else can they do? So I was trying to help them and I didn't really know the answer myself. I was just trying to like kind of help figure it out with them. So what is the answer in your opinion or the thoughts around advice to young students who want to be data engineers? Cuz data scientists is pretty clear in what that is. Yeah. You use tools, you make visualizations, you manage data, you get answers and insights and apply that to the business. That's an application mm-hmm <affirmative>, that's not the, you know, sta standing up a stack or managing the infrastructure. What, so what does that coding look like? What would your advice be to >>Yeah, I think >>Folks getting into a data engineering role. >>Yeah. I think if you, if you believe this, what I said earlier about like 50% technology, 50% culture, like the, the number one technology to learn as a data engineer is the tools in the cloud, which allow you to aggregate data from virtually any source into something which is incrementally more valuable for the organization. That's really what data engineering is all about. It's about taking from multiple sources. Some people call them silos, but silos indicates that the, the storage is kind of fungible or UND differentiated. That that's really not the case. Success requires you to really purpose built well crafted high performance, low cost engines for all of your data. So understanding those tools and understanding how to use 'em, that's probably the most important technical piece. Um, and yeah, Python and programming and statistics goes along with that, I think. And then the most important cultural part, I think is it's just curiosity. >>Like you want to be able to, as a data engineer, you want to have a natural curiosity that drives you to seek the truth inside an organization, seek the truth of a particular problem and to be able to engage, cuz you're probably, you're gonna have some choice as you go through your career about which domain you end up in, like maybe you're really passionate about healthcare. Maybe you're really just passionate about your transportation or media, whatever it might be. And you can allow that to drive a certain amount of curiosity, but within those roles, like the domains are so broad, you kind of gotta allow your curiosity to develop and lead, to ask the right questions and engage in the right way with your teams. So because you can have all the technical skills in the world, but if you're not able to help the team's truths seek through that curiosity, you simply won't be successful. >>We just had a guest on 20 year old, um, engineer, founder, Johnny Dallas, who was 16 when he worked at Amazon youngest engineer at >>Johnny Dallas is a great name by the that's fantastic. It's his real name? >>It sounds like a football player. Rockstar. I should call Johnny. I have Johnny Johnny cube. Uh it's me. Um, so, but he's young and, and he, he was saying, you know, his advice was just do projects. >>Yeah. That's get hands on. >>Yeah. And I was saying, Hey, I came from the old days though, you get to stand stuff up and you hugged onto the assets. Cause you didn't wanna kill the cause you spent all this money and, and he's like, yeah, with cloud, you can shut it down. If you do a project that's not working and you get bad data, no one's adopting it or you don't want like it anymore. You shut it down. Just something >>Else. Totally >>Instantly abandoned it. Move onto something new. >>Yeah. With progression. Totally. And it, the, the blast radius of, um, decisions is just way reduced, gone. Like we talk a lot about like trying to, you know, in the old world trying to find the resources and get the funding. And it's like, right. I wanna try out this kind of random idea that could be a big deal for the organization. I need 50 million in a new data center. Like you're not gonna get anywhere. You, >>You do a proposal working backwards, document >>Kinds, all that, that sort of stuff got hoops. So, so all of that is gone, but we sometimes forget that a big part of that is just the, the prototyping and the experimentation and the limited blast radius in terms of cost. And honestly, the most important thing is time just being able to jump in there, get fingers on keyboards, just try this stuff out. And that's why at AWS, we have part of the reason we have so many services because we want, when you get into AWS, we want the whole toolbox to be available to every developer. And so, as your ideas developed, you may want to jump from, you know, data that you have, that's already in a database to doing realtime data. Yeah. And then you can just, you have the tools there. And when you want to get into real time data, you don't just have kineses, but you have real time analytics and you can run SQL again, that data is like the, the capabilities and the breadth, like really matter when it comes to prototyping and, and >>That's culture too. That's the culture piece, because what was once a dysfunctional behavior, I'm gonna go off the reservation and try something behind my boss's back or cause now as a side hustle or fun project. Yeah. So for fun, you can just code something. Yeah, >>Totally. I remember my first Haddo project, I found almost literally a decommissioned set of servers in the data center that no one was using. They were super old. They're about to be literally turned off. And I managed to convince the team to leave them on for me for like another month. And I installed her DUP on them and like, got them going. It's like, that just seems crazy to me now that I, I had to go and convince anybody not to turn these service off, but what >>It was like for that, when you came up with elastic map produce, because you said this is too hard, we gotta make it >>Easier. Basically. Yes. <laugh> I was installing Haddo version, you know, beta nor 0.9 or whatever it was. It's like, this is really hard. This is really hard. >>We simpler. All right. Good stuff. I love the, the walk down memory lane and also your advice. Great stuff. I think culture's huge. I think. And that's why I like Adam's keynote to reinvent Adam. Lesky talk about path minds and trail blazers because that's a blast radius impact. Mm-hmm <affirmative> when you can actually have innovation organically just come from anywhere. Yeah, that's totally cool. Totally. Let's get into the products. Serverless has been hot mm-hmm <affirmative> uh, we hear a lot about EKS is hot. Uh, containers are booming. Kubernetes is getting adopted. There's still a lot of work to do there. Lambda cloud native developers are booming, serverless Lambda. How does that impact the analytics piece? Can you share the hot, um, products around how that translates? Sure, absolutely. Yeah, the SageMaker >>Yeah, I think it's a, if you look at kind of the evolution and what customers are asking for, they're not, you know, they don't just want low cost. They don't just want this broad set of services. They don't just want, you know, those services to have deep capabilities. They want those services to have as lower operating cost over time as possible. So we kind of really got it down. We got built a lot of muscle, lot of services about getting up and running and experimenting and prototyping and turning things off and turn turning them on and turning them off. And like, that's all great. But actually the, you really only most projects start something once and then stop something once. And maybe there's an hour in between, or maybe there's a year, but the real expense in terms of time and, and complexity is sometimes in that running cost. Yeah. And so, um, we've heard very loudly and clearly from customers that they want, that, that running cost is just undifferentiated to them and they wanna spend more time on their work and in analytics that is, you know, slicing the data, pivoting the data, combining the data, labeling the data, training their models, uh, you know, running inference against their models, uh, and less time doing the operational pieces. >>So is that why the servers focus is there? >>Yeah, absolutely. It, it dramatically reduces the skill required to run these, uh, workloads of any scale. And it dramatically reduces the UND differentiated, heavy lifting, cuz you get to focus more of the time that you would've spent on the operation on the actual work that you wanna get done. And so if you look at something just like Redshift serverless that we launched a reinvent, you know, there's a kind of a, we have a lot of customers that want to run like a, uh, the cluster and they want to get into the, the weeds where there is benefit. We have a lot of customers that say, you know, I there's no benefit for me though. I just wanna do the analytics. So you run the operational piece, you're the experts we've run. You know, we run 60 million instant startups every single day. Like we do this a lot. Exactly. We understand the operation. I >>Want the answers come on. So >>Just give the answers or just let, give me the notebook or just give the inference prediction. So today for example, we announced, um, you know, serverless inference. So now once you've trained your machine learning model, just, uh, run a few, uh, lines of code or you just click a few buttons and then yeah, you got an inference endpoint that you do not have to manage. And whether you're doing one query against that endpoint, you know, per hour or you're doing, you know, 10 million, but we'll just scale it on the back end. You >>Know, I know we got not a lot of time left, but I want, wanna get your reaction to this. One of the things about the data lakes, not being data swamps has been from what I've been reporting and hearing from customers is that they want to retrain their machine learning algorithm. They want, they need that data. They need the, the, the realtime data and they need the time series data, even though the time has passed, they gotta store in the data lake mm-hmm <affirmative>. So now the data lakes main function is being reusing the data to actually retrain. Yeah, >>That's >>Right. It worked properly. So a lot of, lot of postmortems turn into actually business improvements to make the machine learning smarter, faster. You see that same way. Do you see it the same way? Yeah, >>I think it's, I think it's really interesting. No, I think it's really interesting because you know, we talk it's, it's convenient to kind of think of analytics as a very clear progression from like point a point B, but really it's, you are navigating terrain for which you do not have a map and you need a lot of help to navigate that terrain. Yeah. And so, you know, being, having these services in place, not having to run the operations of those services, being able to have those services be secure and well governed, and we added PII detection today, you know, something you can do automatically, uh, to be able to use their, uh, any unstructured data run queries against that unstructured data. So today we added, you know, um, text extract queries. So you can just say, well, uh, you can scan a badge for example, and say, well, what's the name on this badge? And you don't have to identify where it is. We'll do all of that work for you. So there's a often a, it's more like a branch than it is just a, a normal, uh, a to B path, a linear path. Uh, and that includes loops backwards. And sometimes you gotta get the results and use those to make improvements further upstream. And sometimes you've gotta use those. And when you're downstream, you'll be like, ah, I remember that. And you come back and bring it all together. So awesome. It's um, it's, uh, uh, it's a wonderful >>Work for sure. Dr. Matt wood here in the queue. Got just take the last word and give the update. Why you're here. What's the big news happening that you're announcing here at summit in San Francisco, California, and update on the, the business analytics >>Group? Yeah, I think, you know, one of the, we did a lot of announcements in the keynote, uh, encouraged everyone to take a look at that. Uh, this morning was Swami. Uh, one of the ones I'm most excited about, uh, is the opportunity to be able to take, uh, dashboards, visualizations. We're all used to using these things. We see them in our business intelligence tools, uh, all over the place. However, what we've heard from customers is like, yes, I want those analytics. I want their visualization. I want it to be up to date, but you know, I don't actually want to have to go my tools where I'm actually doing my work to another separate tool to be able to look at that information. And so today we announced, uh, one click public embedding for quick side dashboards. So today you can literally, as easily as embedding a YouTube video, you can take a dashboard that you've built inside, quick site cut and paste the HTML, paste it into your application and that's it. That's all you have to do. It takes seconds and >>It gets updated in real time. >>Updated in real time, it's interactive. You can do everything that you would normally do. You can brand it like this is there's no power by quick site button or anything like that. You can change the colors, make it fit in perfectly with your, with your applications. So that's sitting incredibly powerful way of being able to take a, uh, an analytics capability that today sits inside its own little fiefdom and put it just everywhere. It's, uh, very transformative. >>Awesome. And the, the business is going well. You got the serverless and your tailwind for you there. Good stuff, Dr. Matt with thank you. Coming on the cube >>Anytime. Thank >>You. Okay. This is the cubes cover of eight summit, 2022 in San Francisco, California. I'm John host cube. Stay with us with more coverage of day two after this short break.

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE! Covering HPE Discover Virtual Experience. Brought to you by HPE. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBE's coverage of HPE Discover 2020 the Virtual Experience, really happy to welcome to the program, we have a returning guest. Tarkan Maner is the Chief Commercial Officer at Nutanix, in a new role since the last time we had him on the program, and joining him, we have Herman Brown, who's the CIO for the City of San Francisco's District Attorney. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having me. >> So, Tarkan, help set the stage for us. As I mentioned, we know you, our network knows you, but, new to Nutanix in the last year, and talk to us a little bit about this HPE Nutanix partnership. >> Yeah, if you noticed, first of all, thank you for hosting us, great to be here. This is probably, who knows, my fiftieth CUBE I guess, over the past two decades, especially the last twenty years have been crazy for us, obviously in the industry, lots of movement, lots of change. So let me go into the context, that led to Nutanix joining the company, about six months ago in the capacity of Chief Commercial Officer, a hybrid role with some product aspects, business development global market, our cloud infrastructure digitalizes and some of the Corp Dev we're working on. In that context, obviously, HPE is a very, very important strategic partner to us. As you know, the companies, the two companies have been working together for a long time, but especially the last, I would say, six to twelve months, we have this phenomenal relationship around what I call "three focused areas" of our business. Around our digital infrastructure, upward converge infrastructure, a business on top of that, our solutions from data center to DevOps and to this stuff, services, it's three specific segments, we built this really interesting really strong relationship with HPE with some of our philosophies and HPE's platform, now obviously, working through a multicloud channel, who are our own Nutanix cloud, our own hosted cloud, in addition to it, our Telco and SSP partners using their cloud infrastructure as well as some of the hyperscaling work we're doing, with Azure, AWS in addition to our direct SalesForce and private cloud approach, HPE and Nutanix are working hand in hand in this multicloud so to speak operating model. So it's a new relationship in some ways, from a multicloud perspective, but if it has to grow in segments, we had a phenomenal quarter in the last three months, we just released our results, and HPE is growing for us. And we're given definitely a great suite of solutions to our customers with the typical usual, simple to deploy, simple to use mechanics customer delight on the HPE platform. So I'm sure we've got a whole lot more, but glad to be here also with Herman Brown, from the DA's office in San Francisco, my favorite city in the world, so glad to be here. Thank you, Stu, again, for hosting us. >> Great, thanks so much, Tarkan. You know, Herman, we're going to get into a lot of the technology pieces, you with your CIO hat on, you know, want to understand how cloud, how modern infrastructure, your applications are changing, but, give us a little bit about your personal background and really the purview that you cover in the city of San Francisco District Attorney's office. >> Yes, well, you know, I've been with the DA's office for just over 3 years, it'll be 4 years I guess in August of this year, and I come from twenty plus years of private sector experience, some government experience. And, you know, the city and county, the government is really no different than any other organization other than we're known to be a little bit slower to adopt the technologies, which is why I'm here. I want to help government become more efficient, more productive through the use of technology, and so I'm excited to be here and thank you, first and foremost, for having me on the show. I appreciate it. >> I love that you brought that up, because we've been doing theCUBE for just over a decade now, and in the early parts of that, it's like, right, okay, I'm talking to a local government, we understand, your budgets are tight, you're using older technology, you've got duct tape and baling wire to keep things going. The last few years, some of my favorite conversations have been in the public sector, because you talk about some of the tools that are out there, and don't need a huge capital investment to get started, I can modernize, so Herman, digital transformation, is that a term that you've brought from the private sector over to the public sector, or what kind of transformations are you going through and what is it that's I guess driving the need for transformation in your world? >> So yeah, I've been with the city and county of San Francisco for nine years, so I'd love to say that I brought digital transformation or at least the term with me, but I was actually here in the DA's office or in the city and county's employment when that terminology came out. Being the CIO for the San Francisco District Attorney's office, I mean, we're essentially a law firm. And law firms are historically just paper intensive organizations, right, you have court filings and rap sheets, all these physical documents that have to be physically ink signed and transferred from one attorney to another to the courts, and between police departments and sheriffs and so forth and so on. And we just looked at, what are we doing, how can we work more efficient, you know? As a lot of organizations, we're always finding ourselves to be understaffed for the amount of work that we have going on, the city and county of San Francisco, the DA's office, we see roughly 26,000 cases a year, we try about half of those cases per year. And we're a staff of 320 people. That includes everyone, the attorneys, the paralegals, finance folks, IT, investigators. And so it was like, we need to really embrace technology and be able to help transform this paper intensive processes into automated, digital forms and documents that can minimize the physical transferring of data, especially now, during Covid-19. >> Yeah, Herman, that transformation process is often multi-step, there's a lot of people, there's technology, and then there's the applications. It was at a Nutanix show that the comment I made is, well, let's modernize the platform, then you can modernize the applications on top of it. Tarkan, maybe, I'd love to hear just a little commentary from you, you've got a great perspective on this. That modernization effort, where your customers are, some of the levers that Nutanix is helping them along that journey. >> Yeah, so everything Herman said is very interesting, and obviously, a delight to my ears, because as a technologist in the industry for the past three decades, we're dealing with this, what I call, transformational waves, and you know, in the last ten years, the cloud transformation from the server to transition transformation now, increasingly, we're seeing this very fast migrations from the old school legacy data centers with legacy infrastructure and apps, basically are lifting and shifting these applications to a new cloud, so to speak, opened the model. The cloud to us, in a sense, it's not a destination, it's an open model, so if we see the customer's needs at the end of the day, just like Herman outlined, Herman is not trying to do cloud or digitization for the digital cloud's sake, he's trying to lead his team and the DA's office, with the most DAs by the way, in the nation, making sure that they can process data faster. They can achieve their goals, working especially in this post-pandemic world, and the entire change that are happening in our country, in a big way over the past few weeks, the events, and how our country is going to change for the future. So there's going to be a lot of work going to be happening in the government, this transformation or digitization, migration to the cloud, is going to be a big deal, so as a company, it very quickly we've seen this as a huge opportunity for our customers, as we're partnering with them in a multi cloud way. We still believe our server partners are super important in this context with HPE, but the cloud services around HPE Greenlake, the things we are doing with them, at the same time, working with HPE and some of our partners delivering our own Nutanix cloud services as well as some of the things we have been doing with some of Telco's and service providers, to give choice to our customers to consume the services we provide on-prem, through our old cloud services through a third party telephone service provider, or the choice of hyper scale into the U.S. As your Google, unlimited oracle. So in this context this partnership is hugely important, so there's a lot going on with HPE with Antonio, with our CEO, with Tarak, our CFO, with Tom Black, it's Sonali. The entire executive team are working very closely with them, and with Hyko in the fuel organization, our fuel organization, and we really cherish customers like the DA's office who are doing the transformation, who are leading the transformation, during this pandemic and during this massive change in our country and hopefully it's going to make a transformative change to our world in terms of obviously not only technology, but social change, so you see this as a transformative time frame for companies like us and HPE and partners like Herman and DA's office. >> Herman, please! >> Yeah, I was just going to say, and absolutely I agree with Tarkan, and the way that we're able to react so quickly to this pandemic is the fact that we've already have started this digital transformation, that we've already been looking at these cloud services, we've already started down this path, and so it's made the transition with this surging overnight change of the office nine to five, five days a week to you know, everyone is remote every day now, we couldn't do that without having these cloud services such as Nutanix and HPE partnership, to make that possible. >> Yeah, is there something specific you talk, the work from home initiative, did you have to scale something out, did you have to, you know, bring us inside that change that helped enable your workforce that you wouldn't have been able to do without this technology. >> Yeah, we absolutely had to scale out the workforce. I would say that before the beginning of this pandemic, we had roughly 15 people that probably had VPN access from outside the office, now you have to also understand that the DA's office is very unique in the form of the types of data that we handle and deal with, so I have HIPPA data, I have CJIS, which is criminal justice information, that's managed by DOJ, so there are certain systems that we normally would not be able to access from outside the office that we had to be able to access now remotely. And so it's taken some time to get us there to that point, but you know, having this environment that allowed us to scale up easily, start looking at digitizing this process and being able to have the storage and compute and processing power to be able to support that initiative is really what we're talking about, and that's what we've been doing. We've been quickly scaling, adding in additional storage but popping in drives and making this all possible in a very quickly and seamlessly process. >> Excellent. Maybe we've talked a little bit about the results and how you can move faster, you know, digital information all about leveraging your data and be able to react more quickly, so you know, the pandemic definitely has put services to the test and it sounds like they're doing well. Maybe step us back a little bit as to what led you to HPE and Nutanix, how you made that decision. >> Well, you know, we went through a trial, a period, proof of concept, we looked at Dell, we looked at HPE and Nutanix, we looked at a few different solutions, and it really boiled down to cost, and what we were getting, bang for the dollar. I think there are some other great solutions out there or good solutions out there but none of them came to the value that the partnership with HPE and Nutanix actually have to offer to us. You know, one of the things is that with this partnership is when there's a support issue, I call Nutanix, I'm not calling HPE, I'm not calling this, the other third party vendor, I'm not getting the runaround of "oh, that's not our problem, that's someone else's problem, you need to call the software team, you need to call the hardware team," no. It's one person that you know, we call, as I like to say, "one throat to choke." And fortunately, we haven't had to go that route, Nutanix has been an excellent partner for ours and they have been great to work with, and on the ball, and that's what I always talk about, success is not just the success of the organization, but the success of the individuals and the success of the partnership between organizations. And that's what I looked for is a business partner that wants to help me at my role at my organization be successful. >> Great. Herman, we talked about modernizing the environment, bring us inside the applications, if you would, what applications you're using, you know, are there new initiatives that you're doing from an application standpoint? >> Yeah, so we're running the same standard applications that most organizations are running, with DHCPISS, you know, I have some other systems that we run just because of the CIO, CICA hat that I also wear within the organization, I'm very security conscious about talking about those applications. But we run pretty much the same basic applications as most organizations do. Those specialized applications that we also operate on, we do see an improvement in performance, we do see the speediness of the access, the more stability and reliability of the solutions, and so we're very pleased with the performance that we're getting. >> Excellent. You also, you talked about the efficiency of what you're doing. I mentioned earlier that, public sector, you can get started, you know, for smaller chunks using things like Nutanix, but budget, obviously, still a concern, I'm sure, anything you're doing with the verbalization in the infrastructure that is helping you keep budget under control? >> Absolutely, I mean, the Nutanix environment is scalable, it allows us to be able to look at other solutions such as CDI, which we're talking about and looking at, potentially doing for staff members that don't have laptops that may need laptops or need remote access into the system. We also have that ability to scale up with just another leg, more storage, it makes it very easy to go with where you're looking at cost-saving measures, currently running BMWare on the back end, but looking to convert that over AHV, yes, in the future, that can also help us reduce those costs in the future as well. Especially at this point in time, where city and county is looking for department budget savings. >> Excellent. Tarkan, I guess this would be a good point for you to chime in on, you know, generally, AHV and any other commentary you've got regarding-- >> I was just trying to hold my words back, because the things that Herman is doing are so exciting in a way, you know, techies like myself still get really excited. Like Herman talked about we're not doing infrastructure for infrastructure's sake. At the end of the day, Herman and his office like many government offices both in the fed as in state or local, have to do more with less. Obviously in this post-pandemic world, you get even more efficient, more innovative, and get most output from our input. In that context, bringing storage, compute, networking, all integrated in a converged way, it's smart, it's not just adding them up, one plus one plus one equals three, but one plus one plus one equals less than one, in terms of cost, making it make sure it's infrastructures are simplified, easy to deploy, easy to use, that's why we keep an NPS score of 90, by the way, part of the reason, a little bit of shameless plug there for you. I don't know many companies who have an NPS 90 because we make infrastructure simple. So if you settle this, to Herman's point, all those applications he's managing and building and then obviously digitizing, and in some way, lifting a shifting and creating a new cloud digitized model, he want to make sure Herman and companies and organizations like the DA's office under leadership, with innovative CIOs like Herman, making sure they have choice. They can choose the prem model they want, on-prem, off-prem, hybrid, or multicloud, or in a government cloud fashion, and deliver these services. To give you an example, we talked about home as the extended enterprise. Our home office is now part of the office. I have to secure my home the way I secure my Nutanix headquarters because I'm now running my business from home. So in the past, there was a delineation between home and office. Now home is part of the extended office. The way I manage my trash, the way I manage my peer flows, applications, the network, latency, everything has to be dealt with in a very smart way. But even our paper trash in our office, we manage it carefully because of the IP, you know, people steal IP. Guess what, now at home, I have to have the same vigor. Guess what, you know, DA's office, the things that Herman is dealing with, they have to be so careful, not only in the office, but at home. So in that sense, that's the better service, your two desktops, all these new technologies I'm going to deal with in this simple way. Our new solution, all requires a browser, that's it, and no deliver a browser-based application, integration, to home, in a secure way, the things that we've been praying for for a long, long time. So this post-pandemic world is going to make us more agile, is going to make us more efficient, and hopefully we're going to do much more with less. >> Excellent, well, Herman, I have one more question for you, if you can, give us a little bit of a look forward. We always love to hear from a CIO just, number one, what's on your plate, and as you look at this solution, what you'll be using it for and going, and secondly, if you've got anything, if you could have something more that the ecosystem, maybe HPE and Nutanix, or maybe just in general from the ecosystem out there, that would make your life and your staff's easier. >> Well, you know, that's a great question. We have over 30 projects on our project list right now that are active projects that's going on. I have a staff of 9 IT professionals with three open positions, so I should say, 9, I have six, actual staff members with three open positions, currently, and we're on a hiring freeze. So one of the great things about the Nutanix HP solution has been that I've been able to downsize from the two systems engineer to the one system engineer without necessarily losing any bandwidth or knowledge or experience because the environment is so easy to manage, which has been great. We will continue to move forward with the digitization of our records and utilizing the cloud services that are available, through the various channels, and it's just an unprecedented time. I see that this is going to be the new norm. >> Excellent, so Tarkan, we'll let you put the exclamation point on it, give us the final takeaway for HPE and Nutanix. >> So, look, at the end of the day, we are in this new software defined growth and multicloud fashion having a partnership within two companies which covers data center services, DevOps services, as well as end user services, end to end, both in private clouds, also in a multicloud fashion, through telco as well as hyperscalers and Azure, deliver the service, with the open end model the customer chooses. Again, end to end, from data center, to DevOps, to end user, is the perfect marriage that HPE and Nutanix's relationship delivers. So we are really looking forward to working with customers like Herman, to deliver on that dream, on that journey, making sure that cloud migration and cloud consolidation happens efficiently end to end. Again, from the data center, to DevOps, to end user, all the way in a fashion that we do more with less in this post-pandemic world, and we're looking forward to that partnership as we move forward, and thank you Stu and thank you, Herman, for the time today. >> Excellent, well, Tarkan Maner, always a pleasure to catch up with you, really great to get all the update from you and really appreciate HPE and Nutanix bringing us Herman Brown, CIO, Herman, thank you so much for joining us, really appreciate you sharing your story, hopefully, you'll be able to open up and hire those three people that you're looking to hire in your future. Thank you both so much for joining us. >> Thank you, thank you very much for having me, Tarkan, it's always a pleasure, thanks Nutanix and HPE for just making a solid, great solution that can help in the success of the DA's office. Really do appreciate it. >> Thank you so much, Herman, again, I really appreciate it. >> We'll be back with more coverage from HPE Discover 2020, the Virtual Experience. I'm Stu Miniman, thank you, as always, for watching theCUBE. (gentle music)

>> From Sand Hill Road in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE. Presenting, the People First Network, insights from entrepreneurs and tech leaders. >> Hello everyone I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, we are here in Sand Hill Road up at Mayfield Venture Capital Firm for their 50th anniversary, their People First Network series, produced with theCUBE and Mayfield, I'm John Furrier, with Bill Schlough, the Chief Information Officer of the San Francisco Giants, CUBE alumni, great to see you thanks for joining me today for this People First Series we're doing with Mayfield's 50th anniversary, thanks for coming in. >> Good to be here, John. >> So, been a while since we chatted, it's been a year, A lot's happening in tech, you can't go a year, that's like seven dog years in tech, lot happening, you're managing, as the CIO for the Giants, a lot of things going on in baseball, what's the priorities for you these days, obviously, you guys, great social, great fan experience, what's new for you, what's the priority? >> Man, there's always something new. It's what I love about it, this'll be my 20th season with the Giants comin' up. And, it never gets old, there's always new challenges. On the field, in the seats, off the field, you name it. As we look toward next year, really excited about bringin' in a new video board, which we haven't publicly announced, maybe I just did publicly announce, we're breaking news on theCUBE today. So we're puttin' in a new video board, it'll be over three times the size of the one we have today. That's big news, we're doing a lot of exciting things in the ticketing world. The ticketing world is really transforming right before our eyes in terms of the way fans buy tickets. It's changed a lot. Once up on a time you could call a game a sellout, and we sold out 530 straight games at AT&T Park, but really there's no such thing as a sellout anymore I mean, at any point you can get a great ticket, so we have to adapt to that and change the product that we're delivering to fans, so making some changes on the ticketing front, the fan experience, the ballpark with the video board, and another thing that's changing a lot is the way fans consume our game when they're not at the ballpark. It's rare that you're going to see somebody sit on a couch for three plus hours and watch a game continuously anymore. Fans are consuming through mobile devices, streaming, catching clips here and there, all different methods, and it's fun to be a part of that, because, fans still love the game, but they're just consuming it in different ways. >> Yeah, I love having chats with you on theCUBE because one of the things that have always been the same from nine years doing theCUBE is, the buzzword of consumerization of IT has been out there, overused, but you're living it, you have a consumer product, the ultimate consumer product, in Major League Baseball, and the Giants, great franchise, in a great city, in a great stadium, with a rabid fanbase, and they know tech, so you have all the elements of tech, but the expectation of consumers, and the experiences are changing all the time, you got to deliver on the expectations and introduce new experiences that become expectations, and this is the flywheel of innovation, and it's really hard, but I really respect what you guys are doing over there, and that's why I'm always curious, but, always, the question comes back to, is, can I get faster wifi in the stadium? (laughs) It's always the number one question >> It's funny that you ask that because it is AT&T Park, you know, so, honestly, we got to check that box, and we've had to for years, all the way back to when we first rolled it out, way back in 2004 when we first rolled out wifi in the park, people weren't asking for it then, people were coming to the ballpark with a laptop and plugging a card into it, and there were about a hundred of them that were accessing it, but today, what's interesting is, who knows what next, but we're not talkin' about wifi as much, wifi is just kind of, expected, you got to have it, like water. You're talkin' about 5G networks, and new ways to connect. Honestly, this past season, our wifi usage in terms of the number of fans that use wifi, what we call the take rate, the percentage of fans, was actually down 30% from the previous year. Not because we had less fans in the stadium, because this is the take rate, a percentage of fans in the stadium, went down, because AT&T made some massive investments in their cellular infrastructure at the ballpark, and if you're just connecting, and you got great bandwidth, you don't feel the need to switch over to wifi, so who knows what the future will hold? That's a great point, and you see the LTE networks have so much more power, it used to be you needed wifi to upload your photos, so you'd go in, log in, and if they auto login that's cool, but people don't need to. >> Not with photos, what they need it now for is when we see it really maxing out is events, like our Eagles concert, or Journey concert, or a really big game, like opening day, or honestly, Warriors playoffs game, 49ers football games, that's when folks are streamin' to video. For streamin' to video, they're still goin' to that wifi. Yeah, that's the proven method, plus they don't want to jack up their charges on the AT&T site, but I won't go there, Let's talk about innovat-- Most say unlimited, I will go there, most say unlimited these days. >> Really, I got to find that plan, my daughter's killin' me with her watchin' Netflix on LTE, I tell her. Innovation is changing, I want to get your thoughts on this, 'cause I know you're on the front end of a lot of innovations, you do a lot of advising here at Mayfield. The VC's always trying to read the tea leaves, you're living it, what's the innovation formula look like now for you 'cause as you're sittin' in your staff meetings, as you look at the team of people around you, you guys want to foster, you do foster, innovation culture. What's the formula, what do you guys do when you have those meetings, when everyone's sitting around the table sayin', what do we do next? "How do we create a better experience? "How can we get better fans, and better product "in their hands as fast as possible?" What's your strategy? >> You know, it's funny, people talk about the secret sauce for innovation, what's the formula? I would say, for us, it's really a symbiotic relationship with a lot of things, first of all, where we are, geographically, we've got folks like Mayfield, down the street, and many others, that we can talk to, that are, when innovation is happening, when the startups are incubating, they're being funded by these guys, a lot of times they are here, and our phones are ringing off the hook with a lot of folks so my formula for innovation is answer the phone and take the meetings, but, to be honest, that creates its own problems, because there's so many great ideas out there, if you try to do all of them, you're going to fail at all of them. You got to pick a very small few to try to experiment with, give it a shot, we just don't have the bandwidth, we only have 250 full-time staff on the business side. For us, geographically, you have to really be laser-focused and say okay, there are so many great ideas out here, which are the three or four that we're going to focus on this year, and really give it a try, that's really going to drive, propel our business forward, enhance our product on the field, whatever it might be, but I'll tell you where it really truly starts. It's from the top with our CEO. And, I've had a few different bosses over the years, but with the Giants, our CEO is singularly focused on all of us doing things folks have never done before regardless of what business unit you're in. Whether you're in ticketing, finance, marketing, sales, what drives him, and drives all of us, is innovation. And his eyes glaze over when I talk to him about cost-cutting, and his eyes can glaze over really fast. But when I talk to him about doing something no one's ever done before, that's when he sits forward in his chair, he gets engaged, and I just have a great boss, Larry Baer, he's been with us for 25 years wit the Giants, and he is the driver for it, he creates the culture from the top, where all of us, we want to impress him, and to impress him, you got to do sometin' nobody's ever done before, and what's even more interesting is there are some challenges and some changes talking place across our industry, as I said before, ticketing and other areas, and I've sat in meetings with him where somebody might raise their hand and say, "But this is happening across the industry, "so it's just a macro trend," and he'll get upset, be like, "I don't care about macro trends. "We are here in the Bay Area, "we're the San Francisco Giants, "we're going to do it our way." >> And so when you do it your way, he promotes risk-taking, so that's a great culture. What are some of the things you have tried that were risky, and/or risque, or maybe an experiment, that went well, and maybe ones that didn't go well, can you share some color commentary around that? >> Sure, over 20 years we've had some of all of those. I would say, I've had some real scary moments, our culture is collaborative, but I wouldn't call it combative, but we all have strong opinions, a lot of us have been there a long time, and we have strong opinions and so we'll battle, internally, a lot, but then once the battle is over, we'll all align behind the victory. Thinking back, one of the most stressful times for me at the ballpark was related to wifi, when we decided to take our antennas and put 'em under people's seats. No one had ever done that before, and there were two major concerns with that. One is, honestly are people going to get cancer from these antennas under their seats, it's never been done before, what's going to happen, and whether it's going to happen or not, what's the perception of our fans going to be, because, these are, the bread and butter is, the golden goose here, all the fans, so, yeah it's great that they're going to be, have faster connection here at AT&T Park, but if they think they're going to get cancer, they're going to cancel their season ticket plans, we got to problem. Number two is, we're taking away a little storage space also, under the seats, so it was very controversial internally, we did all of our research, we proved that having a wifi antennae under your seat is the equivalent to having a cell phone in your pocket, most people do that, so we're pretty safe there, and from the storage space perspective, honestly, it actually elevates your stuff, if somebody spills a Coke behind ya, it'll fall all around your purse, which is sitting on top of that wifi antenna so we came up with a good solution, but that was an example of something that was really controversial >> So beer goes on the antennae not your bag. (laughs) >> Exactly, your bag stays dry, we found a way to spin that but, there have been so many, I can go way back in time, back to the days when it was the PalmPilot that ruled the day instead of the apple >> Well you guys also did a good job on social media, I got to give you guys props, because, you're one of the first early adopters on making the fan experience very interactive. That was, at that time, not viewed as standard. Yeah, built the @Cafe at our ballpark, which is still there really to try to bring social media to the fans. >> I think you're the first ballpark to have a kale garden, too, I think. >> That's a little off topic, but yes, driven by one of our players, who's a big kale fan, yeah, the garden out in center field. >> So sustainibility's certainly important, okay, I got to ask the question around your role in the industry, because one of the things that's happening more and more in Major League Baseball and certainly as it crosses over to tech her at Mayfield Venture Capital, there's a lot of collaboration going on, and it's a very people-centric culture where, it used to be people would meet at conferences, or you'd do conference calls, now people are in touch in real time, so these networks are forming. It takes a village to create innovative products, whether you're inside the Giants, or outside in the ecosystem, how have you personally navigated that, and can you share some experiences to the folks watching, how you became successful working in an environment where it's collaborative inside the walls of the San Francisco Giants, but also outside? >> %100, the topic is near and dear to my heart, and from when I started with the Giants, that's what I love about our industry We compete on the field, and only on the field. When you look at who the Giants competitors are, from a business perspective, honestly the Dodgers are not a competitor from a business perspective. The A's are barely a competitor from a business perspective. We got a lot of competitors and very few of them are in our actual industry, so we collaborate all day, and it's been amazing, I can count on one hand, across all of sports, folks who have not been collaborative. There's a very small group of teams, your favorite team, the Boston Red Sox, are not on that list, they are very collaborative, but their arch rival, well there's a few others out there that may be less collaborative, but most of them are highly collaborative, from top down, and so, what I did from when I first started the first trip I made, was to Cleveland. And this was many years ago, Cleveland Indians had a reputation of being very progressive so I called up my counterpart there, I said, "I'm new to the industry, can I come out, "can I learn from you?" And that's where it started, and ever since, every year, we travel to two cities, I take at least four of my staff, to two cities each year and we meet with all the sports teams in those cities. This year, we went to Milwaukee and we met with the Brewers, and we did the Packers as well. Every year, over the 20 years we've visited pretty much every professional sports city, and we just go through it again, and always, red carpet, open door, and you build those face-to-face relationships, that you can pick up the phone and make the call, in a few weeks we're all going to get together in Denver at our MLB IT Summit, my job at the IT Summit every year is I host the golf classic, so I bring all the golfers, the hackers, the duffers out, and we have a great time on the golf course and build those relationships and again, the only thing that we don't really talk about that much is the technology we use to enhance the product on the field. Everything else is fair game. >> So share the business side, but the competitive advantage, where the battle's really having Dodger and Giants obviously on the field, highly competitive-- >> But what's cool about that is then I can meet with the other sports teams to talk about that, so I'll leave the teams nameless, but we've had some awesome collaborative discussions with NBA teams especially to talk about what they're doing to assess talent, and there's no competition there. >> So there's kind of rules of the road, kind of like baseball, unwritten rules. >> Right. >> So talk about the coolest thing that you guys have done this year, share something that you personally feel proud of, or fans love, what were some of the cool things this year that pops out for you? >> Sure, the technology that we invested in this year that I thought was a game-changer, we saw, we experimented with last season, but this year, we've been experimenting with VR and AR a little bit. But, a technology that we thought was really cool is called 4DReplay, it's a company out of Korea. And we saw them, we did an experiment with them, and then we implemented them for the full season this year and we've seen them at some other venues as well, the Warriors tried them at the Playoffs, but we had 'em full year and what we did was they put in about 120 cameras, spaced approximately five feet apart, between the bases. 120 of 'em, and they focus on the pitcher and the batter, so when you have a play, you can 3D, or 4D, 4D rotate around that play and watch the ball as it's moving off the bat, and get it from that full perspective, it's awesome for the fan experience, it gives them a perspective they never have, I love watching the picture, because you can see that hand, in full 4D glory pronating as it comes through on every pitch, if you can watch that hand carefully you can predict what kind of pitch it is, it's something that a fan has never had access to before, we did that for the first time this year. >> I had a new experience, obviously you see Statcast on TV now, a lot of this overlayed stuff happening, kind of creates like an esports vibe to the table. Esports is just coming. >> And it's just the beginning >> Your thoughts on esports, competitor, natural evolution, baseball's going to be involved in it, obviously, thing in the emerging technology's looking interesting, and the younger generation wants the hot, young... Sure, we feel like our game has been around a long time, and it still is, the rules haven't changed that much, but fans still enjoy it, but they just consume it differently and our game can be incredibly exciting in moments, but, there's also some gaps in there when you can build relationships. Some of the younger generation may fill those gaps with watching somethin' else, or two other things on their devices, but that's okay, we embrace that at the ballpark, but in terms of the emergence of esports, and the changing demographic of our fanbase, what we're trying to do is just package our game differently. One thing I'm really excited about, and startin' to see, we're in the early days, I consider with virtual reality, we experiment with it, maybe two or three years ago we've been doing some stuff with it, but I'd say it feels like we're in the second or third inning with virtual reality, where we're really going, and I've seen Intel doin' some of this stuff, I was out working with Intel in Pyeongchang, at the Olympics this past year, working with their PR team, and where it's going I can already visualize what this is going to be like, this concept of volumetric video. Where, it's not about having that courtside seat, in basketball, or that seat right behind home plate, it's about being wherever you want to be, anywhere in the action. And to me it's not about doin' it live, because in baseball, you don't know where the ball's going to go, it's about doin' it, replay, right after, okay, that ball was shot to Brandon Crawford, he made the most amazing diving play, picked it up, gunned it to first, where do you want to watch that from? Everybody's different, some people might want to watch it from right behind first base, some people might want to watch it right Brandon Crawford, behind the batter, with volumetric video and the future of VR, you'll be able to do that, and this esports generation, this fan's instant gratification want, unique experiences, that's what's going to deliver it. >> This is such an immersive environment, we're looking at this kind of volumetric things from Intel, and you got VR and AR, immersion, is a new definition, and it's not, I won't say putting pressure, it's evolving the business model, who would've thought that DraftKings and these companies would be around and be successful, that's gambling, okay, you now you got that, your VR so the business model's changing, I've been hearing even token and cryptocurrency, maybe baseball cards will be tokenized. So these are kind of new, crazy ideas that might be new fan experience and a business model for you guys. Your thoughts on those kind of wacky trends. >> That's why I love working with companies like Mayfield 'cause they're seeing the future before we see it, and I love being where we are, so we can talk to them, and learn about these companies. Another example, along those lines is, how are fans going to get to the ballpark five years from now, and how do we adapt to that because we're doing a major development right adjacent to the ballpark, we've got 4,000 parking spaces. Are we going to need those five years from now? Well we're going to build out that whole parking lot, we're going to put a structure in there. But five, ten years from now, we're building that structure so it can be adaptable, because, is anyone going to need to park? Is parking going to be like typing, you know on a typewriter, 10, 15 years now because everybody is in either self-driving cars, or ride shares, and the cars just, poof, go away, and they come back when you need 'em. >> Like I said, everything that's been invented's been on Star Trek except for the transporter room, but maybe they could transport to the game. >> We could use that in San Francisco. >> Bill, got to ask you about your role with Mayfield, because one of the things I've always been impressed with you is that you always have a taste for innovation, you're not afraid to put the toe in the water or jump in the deep end where the technology is, these guys are lookin' for some trends, too. How do you advise some of these guys, how do you work with Mayfield, what's the relationship, how are they to work with, what's the intersection between Mayfield and you? >> Well the one thing that Mayfield does is they put together a conference, each Summer, that I love comin' down to, and I get to meet a lot of my counterparts and we talked about meeting with my counterparts in sports, but I love meetin' with my counterparts across all industries, and Mayfield makes that possible, they bring us all together with some really interesting speakers on a variety of topics not all directly tech related, so it's a great opportunity for me to just get outside of the daily routine, get outside the box, open my mind, and I just have to drop down the road to do it. So that's an example, another thing is, Mayfield, and other firms will come to me, and just say, "Hey, here's a technology we're evaluating, "they think it would be a great fit in sports, "what do you think?" And so, I can give them some valuable feedback, on company's they're evaluating, companies will come to us, and I might throw them their way, so it's really a two way street >> Great relationship, so you're a sounding board for some ideas, you get to peek into the future, I mean, we've interviewed entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs here, it's a seven, eight year build out, so it's almost like an eight year peek into the future. >> Yeah, and it's super valuable, especially given where we are geographically and our inclination toward being on the leading edge. >> I want to just end the segment by sayin', thanks for comin' in, and I want you to show the ring there, 'cause I always, can't stop starin' at the hardware, you got the ring there, the world champion. >> It's a few years old at the moment, we're going to have to get a new one sometime soon. >> We got to work on that, so is there any cutting edge technology to help you evaluate the best player, who you lookin' at next year, what's goin' on? What's the trades goin' on, share us-- >> Are we off the record now, 'cause I have a feeling you're asking this for personal reasons, for your squad, so. >> I'm a Red Sox fan of the AL, obviously, moved here 20 years ago, big fan of the Giants, I love comin' to the games, you guys do a great job, fan experience is great, you guys do great job and I'm looking forward to seeing a great season. >> Thanks, yeah, hope springs eternal this time of year, we always block off October and expect to be busy, but when we have it back, it just gives us an opportunity to get a head start on everybody. >> Well Bill, thanks for coming in, Bill Schlough, CIO for the San Francisco Giants, here on Sand Hill Road talkin' about the 50th anniversary of Mayfield, and this is the People First Network, getting ideas from entrepreneurs, industry executives, and leaders. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, thanks for watching. (electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live, from the Moscone Center it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Summit San Francisco, 2018. Brought to you by, Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back I'm Stu Miniman and this theCUBE's live coverage from AWS Summit San Francisco. Happy to have two industry analysts here. Also, they are founding partners of Kaleido Insights Jeremiah Owyang and Jessica Groopman. Join me and help me extract the signal from the noise that is our industry today. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Great to be here. >> Jessica it's actually the first time I've met you. Why don't you give our audience a little bit about your background and what led to the finding of Kaleido Insights. >> Of course, so I have been covering Internet of things, IOT for many years, and also in the last couple of years have gone very deep in both AI and blockchain. So, have this sort of umbrella category, which we call automation at Kaleido, that I cover and basically we formed the firm because what we saw was companies pursuing single technologies. What's your AI strategy, what's your IOG strategy what's your AR strategy? When in reality, all of these things are impacting each other. so we take a kaleidoscopic sort of converged lens. >> I love that, so Jeremiah, I can't believe it's your first time on our program, John Furrier's taking photos. You're one of the first people I followed on Twitter when I got on, I've known you for many years, so thanks. You've watched so many of these waves. Give us your take as to how you fit into the Kaleidoscope of what's happening. >> Yeah thanks a lot, so I've been in Silicon Valley for over 20 years, and I've seen threewaves.com, social media, collaborative, and now autonomous is the fourth wave that we're seeing right now. And, it's just amazing to see. I see the frequency of technologies is happening at a faster pace, and the impacts they're having to business models and what companies have to do to keep up, so it is a really exciting time. A few years ago, Uber and Airbnb were really hot and I was focused in on that topic. And now, it seems like that is a lifetime ago. We're focused on autonomous technologies; blockchain, IOT. And the things that Amazon announced today on stage like machine learning and drones and self-driving cars. It's a dizzying pace on what's going on it's like it explodes. >> Just in the last couple of weeks, look what happened to Facebook and Amazon with some of the internal and external pressures on those companies. I like what you say, we get excited by the new shiny. It was like, oh everything that was big data is now kind of AI well, IOT and ML. At WikiBound, on our research side, we say it's data at the center of it, data data data. And we've been talking about this for years. Jeremiah and I worked in the boring old storage industry. Which was never about storing the information, it was, how do I allow it to be shared and leverage it. So it's like it's maturation, you know, what's your take what's at the center over here, what are some of the biggest challenges, what's real what's not, and you know, doing it in under a minute. >> It continues to be the central focus, I mean it's been very interesting watching in the IOT space for the past couple of years where we've been fixated on things, right, the objects. But in reality it's about extracting data either between or about or in aggregate or about individuals sensor data, around those things. So the same is true, now we're seeing this shift into cognitive IOT, where devices themselves can analyze and process at the edge, or send learnings across a whole fleet of vehicles or a whole ray of devices about a given environment. Same story, different technologies continuing the cycle. >> Jeremiah, you know, that pace of change you talked about is so challenging, how do you go from I've got an idea to I'm going to start rolling it out by the time I use it, aren't I out of date? What do you see, how do you help customers look at this holistically and not constantly be tripping over themselves? >> And for the bigger the company the harder it is for them to keep up. The technology paces are coming faster, so one trend that we're seeing is corporations are launching innovation programs. It's an actual team, they have a dotted line to the CEO or the Chief Product Officer, and they're responsible for testing all of these new technologies. Maybe in a secluded area or tying it back to a business unit but their job is to experiment like a startup in the big company. So that's what we're seeing right now, these innovation programs that are merging. >> Why don't you tell us, we're here at the Amazon show. How are they doing, what's good? Where are some of the competitors leading them, you know? What are customers asking for? >> It's fascinating to see how Amazon is effectively taking different strategies at every single part of the stack. I believe this morning Verner said, offering egalitarian access to data storage, to data compute to machine learning algorithms. Effectively, it makes the company's only job to have a great idea and then sort of bringing in Amazon to do the rest. What I also see is that it's shifting the Venn diagrams or the complex diagrams of who's competitive and where. Competitive landscapes are shifting all the time at each of these new announcements. >> It's like the only thing you need from IT is bandwidth, the pipe. And Amazon is promising to do just about all the rest of that. >> Yeah, but the challenges. Remember when cloud computing was supposed to be simple and now it's like, oh okay. I'm going to build a database on Amazon. Well which one of the 15 do you want? All the languages, all the choices. >> 125 products, they listed on stage. >> Yeah, there are over 1,000 releases every year. They have two to three new products almost every day. When they do this Summit and they did a bunch of announcements most of those weren't planned for this it just happened to be what's coming out of the CIDC pipeline, if you will from them. >> Imagine being a salesperson for Amazon just to sell the products. >> Or imagine being a customer trying to figure out just what to use in the architecture. >> Unfortunately we don't have a lot more time to talk. Give us some of the things your firm is looking at what we look to see in this year from you. >> Yeah, so broadly speaking, we're really focused on these different technology convergences. Just published new research on where IOT and blockchain are coming together, that's a space we're following very closely. The next report working on right now is around AI readiness. There's much ado about data pipelines and data preparedness as there should be, but there's a whole realm of people process, governance, leadership preparedness. So we're really focused on how companies can prepare for this new technology. >> I'm also looking at how the new business models from automation will impact different enterprise business units. And our other partners are looking at content and automation in the marketing side, and we just had a report released from Jaime Szymanski on how virtual reality and mixed reality is going to impact enterprise. And there's six used cases for the business and Rebecca is working on the marketing report. >> Jeremiah and Jess, hope we can get back with you soon to discuss all this, you hit a whole bunch of things. You mentioned blockchain, so we'll get 10X of the views of what we would have had otherwise. We'll be back with lots more coverage. Thanks to Kaleido Insights for joining us on this segment. We'll be back with lots more. I'm Stu Miniman, you're watching theCUBE. >> Man: Thank you. (digital music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Women in Data Science 2023 live from Stanford University. This is Lisa Martin. My co-host is Tracy Yuan. We're excited to be having great conversations all day but you know, 'cause you've been watching. We've been interviewing some very inspiring women and some men as well, talking about all of the amazing applications of data science. You're not going to want to miss this next conversation. Our guest is Gabriela de Queiroz, Principal Cloud Advocate Manager of Microsoft. Welcome, Gabriela. We're excited to have you. >> Thank you very much. I'm so excited to be talking to you. >> Yeah, you're on theCUBE. >> Yeah, finally. (Lisa laughing) Like a dream come true. (laughs) >> I know and we love that. We're so thrilled to have you. So you have a ton of experience in the data space. I was doing some research on you. You've worked in software, financial advertisement, health. Talk to us a little bit about you. What's your background in? >> So I was trained in statistics. So I'm a statistician and then I worked in epidemiology. I worked with air pollution and public health. So I was a researcher before moving into the industry. So as I was talking today, the weekly paths, it's exactly who I am. I went back and forth and back and forth and stopped and tried something else until I figured out that I want to do data science and that I want to do different things because with data science we can... The beauty of data science is that you can move across domains. So I worked in healthcare, financial, and then different technology companies. >> Well the nice thing, one of the exciting things that data science, that I geek out about and Tracy knows 'cause we've been talking about this all day, it's just all the different, to your point, diverse, pun intended, applications of data science. You know, this morning we were talking about, we had the VP of data science from Meta as a keynote. She came to theCUBE talking and really kind of explaining from a content perspective, from a monetization perspective, and of course so many people in the world are users of Facebook. It makes it tangible. But we also heard today conversations about the applications of data science in police violence, in climate change. We're in California, we're expecting a massive rainstorm and we don't know what to do when it rains or snows. But climate change is real. Everyone's talking about it, and there's data science at its foundation. That's one of the things that I love. But you also have a lot of experience building diverse teams. Talk a little bit about that. You've created some very sophisticated data science solutions. Talk about your recommendation to others to build diverse teams. What's in it for them? And maybe share some data science project or two that you really found inspirational. >> Yeah, absolutely. So I do love building teams. Every time I'm given the task of building teams, I feel the luckiest person in the world because you have the option to pick like different backgrounds and all the diverse set of like people that you can find. I don't think it's easy, like people say, yeah, it's very hard. You have to be intentional. You have to go from the very first part when you are writing the job description through the interview process. So you have to be very intentional in every step. And you have to think through when you are doing that. And I love, like my last team, we had like 10 people and we were so diverse. Like just talking about languages. We had like 15 languages inside a team. So how beautiful it is. Like all different backgrounds, like myself as a statistician, but we had people from engineering background, biology, languages, and so on. So it's, yeah, like every time thinking about building a team, if you wanted your team to be diverse, you need to be intentional. >> I'm so glad you brought up that intention point because that is the fundamental requirement really is to build it with intention. >> Exactly, and I love to hear like how there's different languages. So like I'm assuming, or like different backgrounds, I'm assuming everybody just zig zags their way into the team and now you're all women in data science and I think that's so precious. >> Exactly. And not only woman, right. >> Tracy: Not only woman, you're right. >> The team was diverse not only in terms of like gender, but like background, ethnicity, and spoken languages, and language that they use to program and backgrounds. Like as I mentioned, not everybody did the statistics in school or computer science. And it was like one of my best teams was when we had this combination also like things that I'm good at the other person is not as good and we have this knowledge sharing all the time. Every day I would feel like I'm learning something. In a small talk or if I was reviewing something, there was always something new because of like the richness of the diverse set of people that were in your team. >> Well what you've done is so impressive, because not only have you been intentional with it, but you sound like the hallmark of a great leader of someone who hires and builds teams to fill gaps. They don't have to know less than I do for me to be the leader. They have to have different skills, different areas of expertise. That is really, honestly Gabriela, that's the hallmark of a great leader. And that's not easy to come by. So tell me, who were some of your mentors and sponsors along the way that maybe influenced you in that direction? Or is that just who you are? >> That's a great question. And I joke that I want to be the role model that I never had, right. So growing up, I didn't have anyone that I could see other than my mom probably or my sister. But there was no one that I could see, I want to become that person one day. And once I was tracing my path, I started to see people looking at me and like, you inspire me so much, and I'm like, oh wow, this is amazing and I want to do do this over and over and over again. So I want to be that person to inspire others. And no matter, like I'll be like a VP, CEO, whoever, you know, I want to be, I want to keep inspiring people because that's so valuable. >> Lisa: Oh, that's huge. >> And I feel like when we grow professionally and then go to the next level, we sometimes we lose that, you know, thing that's essential. And I think also like, it's part of who I am as I was building and all my experiences as I was going through, I became what I mentioned is unique person that I think we all are unique somehow. >> You're a rockstar. Isn't she a rockstar? >> You dropping quotes out. >> I'm loving this. I'm like, I've inspired Gabriela. (Gabriela laughing) >> Oh my God. But yeah, 'cause we were asking our other guests about the same question, like, who are your role models? And then we're talking about how like it's very important for women to see that there is a representation, that there is someone they look up to and they want to be. And so that like, it motivates them to stay in this field and to start in this field to begin with. So yeah, I think like you are definitely filling a void and for all these women who dream to be in data science. And I think that's just amazing. >> And you're a founder too. In 2012, you founded R Ladies. Talk a little bit about that. This is present in more than 200 cities in 55 plus countries. Talk about R Ladies and maybe the catalyst to launch it. >> Yes, so you always start, so I'm from Brazil, I always talk about this because it's such, again, I grew up over there. So I was there my whole life and then I moved to here, Silicon Valley. And when I moved to San Francisco, like the doors opened. So many things happening in the city. That was back in 2012. Data science was exploding. And I found out something about Meetup.com, it's a website that you can join and go in all these events. And I was going to this event and I joke that it was kind of like going to the Disneyland, where you don't know if I should go that direction or the other direction. >> Yeah, yeah. >> And I was like, should I go and learn about data visualization? Should I go and learn about SQL or should I go and learn about Hadoop, right? So I would go every day to those meetups. And I was a student back then, so you know, the budget was very restricted as a student. So we don't have much to spend. And then they would serve dinner and you would learn for free. And then I got to a point where I was like, hey, they are doing all of this as a volunteer. Like they are running this meetup and events for free. And I felt like it's a cycle. I need to do something, right. I'm taking all this in. I'm having this huge opportunity to be here. I want to give back. So that's what how everything started. I was like, no, I have to think about something. I need to think about something that I can give back. And I was using R back then and I'm like how about I do something with R. I love R, I'm so passionate about R, what about if I create a community around R but not a regular community, because by going to this events, I felt that as a Latina and as a woman, I was always in the corner and I was not being able to participate and to, you know, be myself and to network and ask questions. I would be in the corner. So I said to myself, what about if I do something where everybody feel included, where everybody can participate, can share, can ask questions without judgment? So that's how R ladies all came together. >> That's awesome. >> Talk about intentions, like you have to, you had that go in mind, but yeah, I wanted to dive a little bit into R. So could you please talk more about where did the passion for R come from, and like how did the special connection between you and R the language, like born, how did that come from? >> It was not a love at first sight. >> No. >> Not at all. Not at all. Because that was back in Brazil. So all the documentation were in English, all the tutorials, only two. We had like very few tutorials. It was not like nowadays that we have so many tutorials and courses. There were like two tutorials, other documentation in English. So it's was hard for me like as someone that didn't know much English to go through the language and then to learn to program was not easy task. But then as I was going through the language and learning and reading books and finding the people behind the language, I don't know how I felt in love. And then when I came to to San Francisco, I saw some of like the main contributors who are speaking in person and I'm like, wow, they are like humans. I don't know, it was like, I have no idea why I had this love. But I think the the people and then the community was the thing that kept me with the R language. >> Yeah, the community factors is so important. And it's so, at WIDS it's so palpable. I mean I literally walk in the door, every WIDS I've done, I think I've been doing them for theCUBE since 2017. theCUBE has been here since the beginning in 2015 with our co-founders. But you walk in, you get this sense of belonging. And this sense of I can do anything, why not? Why not me? Look at her up there, and now look at you speaking in the technical talk today on theCUBE. So inspiring. One of the things that I always think is you can't be what you can't see. We need to be able to see more people that look like you and sound like you and like me and like you as well. And WIDS gives us that opportunity, which is fantastic, but it's also helping to move the needle, really. And I was looking at some of the Anitab.org stats just yesterday about 2022. And they're showing, you know, the percentage of females in technical roles has been hovering around 25% for a while. It's a little higher now. I think it's 27.6 according to any to Anitab. We're seeing more women hired in roles. But what are the challenges, and I would love to get your advice on this, for those that might be in this situation is attrition, women who are leaving roles. What would your advice be to a woman who might be trying to navigate family and work and career ladder to stay in that role and keep pushing forward? >> I'll go back to the community. If you don't have a community around you, it's so hard to navigate. >> That's a great point. >> You are lonely. There is no one that you can bounce ideas off, that you can share what you are feeling or like that you can learn as well. So sometimes you feel like you are the only person that is going through that problem or like, you maybe have a family or you are planning to have a family and you have to make a decision. But you've never seen anyone going through this. So when you have a community, you see people like you, right. So that's where we were saying about having different people and people like you so they can share as well. And you feel like, oh yeah, so they went through this, they succeed. I can also go through this and succeed. So I think the attrition problem is still big problem. And I'm sure will be worse now with everything that is happening in Tech with layoffs. >> Yes and the great resignation. >> Yeah. >> We are going back, you know, a few steps, like a lot of like advancements that we did. I feel like we are going back unfortunately, but I always tell this, make sure that you have a community. Make sure that you have a mentor. Make sure that you have someone or some people, not only one mentor, different mentors, that can support you through this trajectory. Because it's not easy. But there are a lot of us out there. >> There really are. And that's a great point. I love everything about the community. It's all about that network effect and feeling like you belong- >> That's all WIDS is about. >> Yeah. >> Yes. Absolutely. >> Like coming over here, it's like seeing the old friends again. It's like I'm so glad that I'm coming because I'm all my old friends that I only see like maybe once a year. >> Tracy: Reunion. >> Yeah, exactly. And I feel like that our tank get, you know- >> Lisa: Replenished. >> Exactly. For the rest of the year. >> Yes. >> Oh, that's precious. >> I love that. >> I agree with that. I think one of the things that when I say, you know, you can't see, I think, well, how many females in technology would I be able to recognize? And of course you can be female technology working in the healthcare sector or working in finance or manufacturing, but, you know, we need to be able to have more that we can see and identify. And one of the things that I recently found out, I was telling Tracy this earlier that I geeked out about was finding out that the CTO of Open AI, ChatGPT, is a female. I'm like, (gasps) why aren't we talking about this more? She was profiled on Fast Company. I've seen a few pieces on her, Mira Murati. But we're hearing so much about ChatJTP being... ChatGPT, I always get that wrong, about being like, likening it to the launch of the iPhone, which revolutionized mobile and connectivity. And here we have a female in the technical role. Let's put her on a pedestal because that is hugely inspiring. >> Exactly, like let's bring everybody to the front. >> Yes. >> Right. >> And let's have them talk to us because like, you didn't know. I didn't know probably about this, right. You didn't know. Like, we don't know about this. It's kind of like we are hidden. We need to give them the spotlight. Every woman to give the spotlight, so they can keep aspiring the new generation. >> Or Susan Wojcicki who ran, how long does she run YouTube? All the YouTube influencers that probably have no idea who are influential for whatever they're doing on YouTube in different social platforms that don't realize, do you realize there was a female behind the helm that for a long time that turned it into what it is today? That's outstanding. Why aren't we talking about this more? >> How about Megan Smith, was the first CTO on the Obama administration. >> That's right. I knew it had to do with Obama. Couldn't remember. Yes. Let's let's find more pedestals. But organizations like WIDS, your involvement as a speaker, showing more people you can be this because you can see it, >> Yeah, exactly. is the right direction that will help hopefully bring us back to some of the pre-pandemic levels, and keep moving forward because there's so much potential with data science that can impact everyone's lives. I always think, you know, we have this expectation that we have our mobile phone and we can get whatever we want wherever we are in the world and whatever time of day it is. And that's all data driven. The regular average person that's not in tech thinks about data as a, well I'm paying for it. What's all these data charges? But it's powering the world. It's powering those experiences that we all want as consumers or in our business lives or we expect to be able to do a transaction, whether it's something in a CRM system or an Uber transaction like that, and have the app respond, maybe even know me a little bit better than I know myself. And that's all data. So I think we're just at the precipice of the massive impact that data science will make in our lives. And luckily we have leaders like you who can help navigate us along this path. >> Thank you. >> What advice for, last question for you is advice for those in the audience who might be nervous or maybe lack a little bit of confidence to go I really like data science, or I really like engineering, but I don't see a lot of me out there. What would you say to them? >> Especially for people who are from like a non-linear track where like going onto that track. >> Yeah, I would say keep going. Keep going. I don't think it's easy. It's not easy. But keep going because the more you go the more, again, you advance and there are opportunities out there. Sometimes it takes a little bit, but just keep going. Keep going and following your dreams, that you get there, right. So again, data science, such a broad field that doesn't require you to come from a specific background. And I think the beauty of data science exactly is this is like the combination, the most successful data science teams are the teams that have all these different backgrounds. So if you think that we as data scientists, we started programming when we were nine, that's not true, right. You can be 30, 40, shifting careers, starting to program right now. It doesn't matter. Like you get there no matter how old you are. And no matter what's your background. >> There's no limit. >> There was no limits. >> I love that, Gabriela, >> Thank so much. for inspiring. I know you inspired me. I'm pretty sure you probably inspired Tracy with your story. And sometimes like what you just said, you have to be your own mentor and that's okay. Because eventually you're going to turn into a mentor for many, many others and sounds like you're already paving that path and we so appreciate it. You are now officially a CUBE alumni. >> Yes. Thank you. >> Yay. We've loved having you. Thank you so much for your time. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> For our guest and for Tracy's Yuan, this is Lisa Martin. We are live at WIDS 23, the eighth annual Women in Data Science Conference at Stanford. Stick around. Our next guest joins us in just a few minutes. (upbeat music)

(upbeat electronic music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to this CUBE conversation here from the studios in the CUBE in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, your host. We're featuring a startup, Astronomer. Astronomer.io is the URL, check it out. And we're going to have a great conversation around one of the most important topics hitting the industry, and that is the future of machine learning and AI, and the data that powers it underneath it. There's a lot of things that need to get done, and we're excited to have some of the co-founders of Astronomer here. Viraj Parekh, who is co-founder of Astronomer, and Paola Peraza Calderon, another co-founder, both with Astronomer. Thanks for coming on. First of all, how many co-founders do you guys have? >> You know, I think the answer's around six or seven. I forget the exact, but there's really been a lot of people around the table who've worked very hard to get this company to the point that it's at. We have long ways to go, right? But there's been a lot of people involved that have been absolutely necessary for the path we've been on so far. >> Thanks for that, Viraj, appreciate that. The first question I want to get out on the table, and then we'll get into some of the details, is take a minute to explain what you guys are doing. How did you guys get here? Obviously, multiple co-founders, sounds like a great project. The timing couldn't have been better. ChatGPT has essentially done so much public relations for the AI industry to kind of highlight this shift that's happening. It's real, we've been chronicalizing, take a minute to explain what you guys do. >> Yeah, sure, we can get started. So, yeah, when Viraj and I joined Astronomer in 2017, we really wanted to build a business around data, and we were using an open source project called Apache Airflow that we were just using sort of as customers ourselves. And over time, we realized that there was actually a market for companies who use Apache Airflow, which is a data pipeline management tool, which we'll get into, and that running Airflow is actually quite challenging, and that there's a big opportunity for us to create a set of commercial products and an opportunity to grow that open source community and actually build a company around that. So the crux of what we do is help companies run data pipelines with Apache Airflow. And certainly we've grown in our ambitions beyond that, but that's sort of the crux of what we do for folks. >> You know, data orchestration, data management has always been a big item in the old classic data infrastructure. But with AI, you're seeing a lot more emphasis on scale, tuning, training. Data orchestration is the center of the value proposition, when you're looking at coordinating resources, it's one of the most important things. Can you guys explain what data orchestration entails? What does it mean? Take us through the definition of what data orchestration entails. >> Yeah, for sure. I can take this one, and Viraj, feel free to jump in. So if you google data orchestration, here's what you're going to get. You're going to get something that says, "Data orchestration is the automated process" "for organizing silo data from numerous" "data storage points, standardizing it," "and making it accessible and prepared for data analysis." And you say, "Okay, but what does that actually mean," right, and so let's give sort of an an example. So let's say you're a business and you have sort of the following basic asks of your data team, right? Okay, give me a dashboard in Sigma, for example, for the number of customers or monthly active users, and then make sure that that gets updated on an hourly basis. And then number two, a consistent list of active customers that I have in HubSpot so that I can send them a monthly product newsletter, right? Two very basic asks for all sorts of companies and organizations. And when that data team, which has data engineers, data scientists, ML engineers, data analysts get that request, they're looking at an ecosystem of data sources that can help them get there, right? And that includes application databases, for example, that actually have in product user behavior and third party APIs from tools that the company uses that also has different attributes and qualities of those customers or users. And that data team needs to use tools like Fivetran to ingest data, a data warehouse, like Snowflake or Databricks to actually store that data and do analysis on top of it, a tool like DBT to do transformations and make sure that data is standardized in the way that it needs to be, a tool like Hightouch for reverse ETL. I mean, we could go on and on. There's so many partners of ours in this industry that are doing really, really exciting and critical things for those data movements. And the whole point here is that data teams have this plethora of tooling that they use to both ingest the right data and come up with the right interfaces to transform and interact with that data. And data orchestration, in our view, is really the heartbeat of all of those processes, right? And tangibly the unit of data orchestration is a data pipeline, a set of tasks or jobs that each do something with data over time and eventually run that on a schedule to make sure that those things are happening continuously as time moves on and the company advances. And so, for us, we're building a business around Apache Airflow, which is a workflow management tool that allows you to author, run, and monitor data pipelines. And so when we talk about data orchestration, we talk about sort of two things. One is that crux of data pipelines that, like I said, connect that large ecosystem of data tooling in your company. But number two, it's not just that data pipeline that needs to run every day, right? And Viraj will probably touch on this as we talk more about Astronomer and our value prop on top of Airflow. But then it's all the things that you need to actually run data and production and make sure that it's trustworthy, right? So it's actually not just that you're running things on a schedule, but it's also things like CICD tooling, secure secrets management, user permissions, monitoring, data lineage, documentation, things that enable other personas in your data team to actually use those tools. So long-winded way of saying that it's the heartbeat, we think, of of the data ecosystem, and certainly goes beyond scheduling, but again, data pipelines are really at the center of it. >> One of the things that jumped out, Viraj, if you can get into this, I'd like to hear more about how you guys look at all those little tools that are out. You mentioned a variety of things. You look at the data infrastructure, it's not just one stack. You've got an analytic stack, you've got a realtime stack, you've got a data lake stack, you got an AI stack potentially. I mean you have these stacks now emerging in the data world that are fundamental, that were once served by either a full package, old school software, and then a bunch of point solution. You mentioned Fivetran there, I would say in the analytics stack. Then you got S3, they're on the data lake stack. So all these things are kind of munged together. >> Yeah. >> How do you guys fit into that world? You make it easier, or like, what's the deal? >> Great question, right? And you know, I think that one of the biggest things we've found in working with customers over the last however many years is that if a data team is using a bunch of tools to get what they need done, and the number of tools they're using is growing exponentially and they're kind of roping things together here and there, that's actually a sign of a productive team, not a bad thing, right? It's because that team is moving fast. They have needs that are very specific to them, and they're trying to make something that's exactly tailored to their business. So a lot of times what we find is that customers have some sort of base layer, right? That's kind of like, it might be they're running most of the things in AWS, right? And then on top of that, they'll be using some of the things AWS offers, things like SageMaker, Redshift, whatever, but they also might need things that their cloud can't provide. Something like Fivetran, or Hightouch, those are other tools. And where data orchestration really shines, and something that we've had the pleasure of helping our customers build, is how do you take all those requirements, all those different tools and whip them together into something that fulfills a business need? So that somebody can read a dashboard and trust the number that it says, or somebody can make sure that the right emails go out to their customers. And Airflow serves as this amazing kind of glue between that data stack, right? It's to make it so that for any use case, be it ELT pipelines, or machine learning, or whatever, you need different things to do them, and Airflow helps tie them together in a way that's really specific for a individual business' needs. >> Take a step back and share the journey of what you guys went through as a company startup. So you mentioned Apache, open source. I was just having an interview with a VC, we were talking about foundational models. You got a lot of proprietary and open source development going on. It's almost the iPhone/Android moment in this whole generative space and foundational side. This is kind of important, the open source piece of it. Can you share how you guys started? And I can imagine your customers probably have their hair on fire and are probably building stuff on their own. Are you guys helping them? Take us through, 'cause you guys are on the front end of a big, big wave, and that is to make sense of the chaos, rain it in. Take us through your journey and why this is important. >> Yeah, Paola, I can take a crack at this, then I'll kind of hand it over to you to fill in whatever I miss in details. But you know, like Paola is saying, the heart of our company is open source, because we started using Airflow as an end user and started to say like, "Hey wait a second," "more and more people need this." Airflow, for background, started at Airbnb, and they were actually using that as a foundation for their whole data stack. Kind of how they made it so that they could give you recommendations, and predictions, and all of the processes that needed orchestrated. Airbnb created Airflow, gave it away to the public, and then fast forward a couple years and we're building a company around it, and we're really excited about that. >> That's a beautiful thing. That's exactly why open source is so great. >> Yeah, yeah. And for us, it's really been about watching the community and our customers take these problems, find a solution to those problems, standardize those solutions, and then building on top of that, right? So we're reaching to a point where a lot of our earlier customers who started to just using Airflow to get the base of their BI stack down and their reporting in their ELP infrastructure, they've solved that problem and now they're moving on to things like doing machine learning with their data, because now that they've built that foundation, all the connective tissue for their data arriving on time and being orchestrated correctly is happening, they can build a layer on top of that. And it's just been really, really exciting kind of watching what customers do once they're empowered to pick all the tools that they need, tie them together in the way they need to, and really deliver real value to their business. >> Can you share some of the use cases of these customers? Because I think that's where you're starting to see the innovation. What are some of the companies that you're working with, what are they doing? >> Viraj, I'll let you take that one too. (group laughs) >> So you know, a lot of it is... It goes across the gamut, right? Because it doesn't matter what you are, what you're doing with data, it needs to be orchestrated. So there's a lot of customers using us for their ETL and ELT reporting, right? Just getting data from other disparate sources into one place and then building on top of that. Be it building dashboards, answering questions for the business, building other data products and so on and so forth. From there, these use cases evolve a lot. You do see folks doing things like fraud detection, because Airflow's orchestrating how transactions go, transactions get analyzed. They do things like analyzing marketing spend to see where your highest ROI is. And then you kind of can't not talk about all of the machine learning that goes on, right? Where customers are taking data about their own customers, kind of analyze and aggregating that at scale, and trying to automate decision making processes. So it goes from your most basic, what we call data plumbing, right? Just to make sure data's moving as needed, all the ways to your more exciting expansive use cases around automated decision making and machine learning. >> And I'd say, I mean, I'd say that's one of the things that I think gets me most excited about our future, is how critical Airflow is to all of those processes, and I think when you know a tool is valuable is when something goes wrong and one of those critical processes doesn't work. And we know that our system is so mission critical to answering basic questions about your business and the growth of your company for so many organizations that we work with. So it's, I think, one of the things that gets Viraj and I and the rest of our company up every single morning is knowing how important the work that we do for all of those use cases across industries, across company sizes, and it's really quite energizing. >> It was such a big focus this year at AWS re:Invent, the role of data. And I think one of the things that's exciting about the open AI and all the movement towards large language models is that you can integrate data into these models from outside. So you're starting to see the integration easier to deal with. Still a lot of plumbing issues. So a lot of things happening. So I have to ask you guys, what is the state of the data orchestration area? Is it ready for disruption? Has it already been disrupted? Would you categorize it as a new first inning kind of opportunity, or what's the state of the data orchestration area right now? Both technically and from a business model standpoint. How would you guys describe that state of the market? >> Yeah, I mean, I think in a lot of ways, in some ways I think we're category creating. Schedulers have been around for a long time. I released a data presentation sort of on the evolution of going from something like Kron, which I think was built in like the 1970s out of Carnegie Mellon. And that's a long time ago, that's 50 years ago. So sort of like the basic need to schedule and do something with your data on a schedule is not a new concept. But to our point earlier, I think everything that you need around your ecosystem, first of all, the number of data tools and developer tooling that has come out industry has 5X'd over the last 10 years. And so obviously as that ecosystem grows, and grows, and grows, and grows, the need for orchestration only increases. And I think, as Astronomer, I think we... And we work with so many different types of companies, companies that have been around for 50 years, and companies that got started not even 12 months ago. And so I think for us it's trying to, in a ways, category create and adjust sort of what we sell and the value that we can provide for companies all across that journey. There are folks who are just getting started with orchestration, and then there's folks who have such advanced use case, 'cause they're hitting sort of a ceiling and only want to go up from there. And so I think we, as a company, care about both ends of that spectrum, and certainly want to build and continue building products for companies of all sorts, regardless of where they are on the maturity curve of data orchestration. >> That's a really good point, Paola. And I think the other thing to really take into account is it's the companies themselves, but also individuals who have to do their jobs. If you rewind the clock like 5 or 10 years ago, data engineers would be the ones responsible for orchestrating data through their org. But when we look at our customers today, it's not just data engineers anymore. There's data analysts who sit a lot closer to the business, and the data scientists who want to automate things around their models. So this idea that orchestration is this new category is right on the money. And what we're finding is the need for it is spreading to all parts of the data team, naturally where Airflow's emerged as an open source standard and we're hoping to take things to the next level. >> That's awesome. We've been up saying that the data market's kind of like the SRE with servers, right? You're going to need one person to deal with a lot of data, and that's data engineering, and then you're got to have the practitioners, the democratization. Clearly that's coming in what you're seeing. So I have to ask, how do you guys fit in from a value proposition standpoint? What's the pitch that you have to customers, or is it more inbound coming into you guys? Are you guys doing a lot of outreach, customer engagements? I'm sure they're getting a lot of great requirements from customers. What's the current value proposition? How do you guys engage? >> Yeah, I mean, there's so many... Sorry, Viraj, you can jump in. So there's so many companies using Airflow, right? So the baseline is that the open source project that is Airflow that came out of Airbnb, over five years ago at this point, has grown exponentially in users and continues to grow. And so the folks that we sell to primarily are folks who are already committed to using Apache Airflow, need data orchestration in their organization, and just want to do it better, want to do it more efficiently, want to do it without managing that infrastructure. And so our baseline proposition is for those organizations. Now to Viraj's point, obviously I think our ambitions go beyond that, both in terms of the personas that we addressed and going beyond that data engineer, but really it's to start at the baseline, as we continue to grow our our company, it's really making sure that we're adding value to folks using Airflow and help them do so in a better way, in a larger way, in a more efficient way, and that's really the crux of who we sell to. And so to answer your question on, we get a lot of inbound because they're... >> You have a built in audience. (laughs) >> The world that use it. Those are the folks who we talk to and come to our website and chat with us and get value from our content. I mean, the power of the opensource community is really just so, so big, and I think that's also one of the things that makes this job fun. >> And you guys are in a great position. Viraj, you can comment a little, get your reaction. There's been a big successful business model to starting a company around these big projects for a lot of reasons. One is open source is continuing to be great, but there's also supply chain challenges in there. There's also we want to continue more innovation and more code and keeping it free and and flowing. And then there's the commercialization of productizing it, operationalizing it. This is a huge new dynamic, I mean, in the past 5 or so years, 10 years, it's been happening all on CNCF from other areas like Apache, Linux Foundation, they're all implementing this. This is a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs to do this. >> Yeah, yeah. Open source is always going to be core to what we do, because we wouldn't exist without the open source community around us. They are huge in numbers. Oftentimes they're nameless people who are working on making something better in a way that everybody benefits from it. But open source is really hard, especially if you're a company whose core competency is running a business, right? Maybe you're running an e-commerce business, or maybe you're running, I don't know, some sort of like, any sort of business, especially if you're a company running a business, you don't really want to spend your time figuring out how to run open source software. You just want to use it, you want to use the best of it, you want to use the community around it, you want to be able to google something and get answers for it, you want the benefits of open source. You don't have the time or the resources to invest in becoming an expert in open source, right? And I think that dynamic is really what's given companies like us an ability to kind of form businesses around that in the sense that we'll make it so people get the best of both worlds. You'll get this vast open ecosystem that you can build on top of, that you can benefit from, that you can learn from. But you won't have to spend your time doing undifferentiated heavy lifting. You can do things that are just specific to your business. >> It's always been great to see that business model evolve. We used a debate 10 years ago, can there be another Red Hat? And we said, not really the same, but there'll be a lot of little ones that'll grow up to be big soon. Great stuff. Final question, can you guys share the history of the company? The milestones of Astromer's journey in data orchestration? >> Yeah, we could. So yeah, I mean, I think, so Viraj and I have obviously been at Astronomer along with our other founding team and leadership folks for over five years now. And it's been such an incredible journey of learning, of hiring really amazing people, solving, again, mission critical problems for so many types of organizations. We've had some funding that has allowed us to invest in the team that we have and in the software that we have, and that's been really phenomenal. And so that investment, I think, keeps us confident, even despite these sort of macroeconomic conditions that we're finding ourselves in. And so honestly, the milestones for us are focusing on our product, focusing on our customers over the next year, focusing on that market for us that we know can get valuable out of what we do, and making developers' lives better, and growing the open source community and making sure that everything that we're doing makes it easier for folks to get started, to contribute to the project and to feel a part of the community that we're cultivating here. >> You guys raised a little bit of money. How much have you guys raised? >> Don't know what the total is, but it's in the ballpark over $200 million. It feels good to... >> A little bit of capital. Got a little bit of cap to work with there. Great success. I know as a Series C Financing, you guys have been down. So you're up and running, what's next? What are you guys looking to do? What's the big horizon look like for you from a vision standpoint, more hiring, more product, what is some of the key things you're looking at doing? >> Yeah, it's really a little of all of the above, right? Kind of one of the best and worst things about working at earlier stage startups is there's always so much to do and you often have to just kind of figure out a way to get everything done. But really investing our product over the next, at least over the course of our company lifetime. And there's a lot of ways we want to make it more accessible to users, easier to get started with, easier to use, kind of on all areas there. And really, we really want to do more for the community, right, like I was saying, we wouldn't be anything without the large open source community around us. And we want to figure out ways to give back more in more creative ways, in more code driven ways, in more kind of events and everything else that we can keep those folks galvanized and just keep them happy using Airflow. >> Paola, any final words as we close out? >> No, I mean, I'm super excited. I think we'll keep growing the team this year. We've got a couple of offices in the the US, which we're excited about, and a fully global team that will only continue to grow. So Viraj and I are both here in New York, and we're excited to be engaging with our coworkers in person finally, after years of not doing so. We've got a bustling office in San Francisco as well. So growing those teams and continuing to hire all over the world, and really focusing on our product and the open source community is where our heads are at this year. So, excited. >> Congratulations. 200 million in funding, plus. Good runway, put that money in the bank, squirrel it away. It's a good time to kind of get some good interest on it, but still grow. Congratulations on all the work you guys do. We appreciate you and the open source community does, and good luck with the venture, continue to be successful, and we'll see you at the Startup Showcase. >> Thank you. >> Yeah, thanks so much, John. Appreciate it. >> Okay, that's the CUBE Conversation featuring astronomer.io, that's the website. Astronomer is doing well. Multiple rounds of funding, over 200 million in funding. Open source continues to lead the way in innovation. Great business model, good solution for the next gen cloud scale data operations, data stacks that are emerging. I'm John Furrier, your host, thanks for watching. (soft upbeat music)

(soft music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to this Cube conversation here from the studios of theCube in Palo Alto, California. John Furrier, your host. We're featuring a startup, Astronomer, astronomer.io is the url. Check it out. And we're going to have a great conversation around one of the most important topics hitting the industry, and that is the future of machine learning and AI and the data that powers it underneath it. There's a lot of things that need to get done, and we're excited to have some of the co-founders of Astronomer here. Viraj Parekh, who is co-founder and Paola Peraza Calderon, another co-founder, both with Astronomer. Thanks for coming on. First of all, how many co-founders do you guys have? >> You know, I think the answer's around six or seven. I forget the exact, but there's really been a lot of people around the table, who've worked very hard to get this company to the point that it's at. And we have long ways to go, right? But there's been a lot of people involved that are, have been absolutely necessary for the path we've been on so far. >> Thanks for that, Viraj, appreciate that. The first question I want to get out on the table, and then we'll get into some of the details, is take a minute to explain what you guys are doing. How did you guys get here? Obviously, multiple co-founders sounds like a great project. The timing couldn't have been better. ChatGPT has essentially done so much public relations for the AI industry. Kind of highlight this shift that's happening. It's real. We've been chronologicalizing, take a minute to explain what you guys do. >> Yeah, sure. We can get started. So yeah, when Astronomer, when Viraj and I joined Astronomer in 2017, we really wanted to build a business around data and we were using an open source project called Apache Airflow, that we were just using sort of as customers ourselves. And over time, we realized that there was actually a market for companies who use Apache Airflow, which is a data pipeline management tool, which we'll get into. And that running Airflow is actually quite challenging and that there's a lot of, a big opportunity for us to create a set of commercial products and opportunity to grow that open source community and actually build a company around that. So the crux of what we do is help companies run data pipelines with Apache Airflow. And certainly we've grown in our ambitions beyond that, but that's sort of the crux of what we do for folks. >> You know, data orchestration, data management has always been a big item, you know, in the old classic data infrastructure. But with AI you're seeing a lot more emphasis on scale, tuning, training. You know, data orchestration is the center of the value proposition when you're looking at coordinating resources, it's one of the most important things. Could you guys explain what data orchestration entails? What does it mean? Take us through the definition of what data orchestration entails. >> Yeah, for sure. I can take this one and Viraj feel free to jump in. So if you google data orchestration, you know, here's what you're going to get. You're going to get something that says, data orchestration is the automated process for organizing silo data from numerous data storage points to organizing it and making it accessible and prepared for data analysis. And you say, okay, but what does that actually mean, right? And so let's give sort of an example. So let's say you're a business and you have sort of the following basic asks of your data team, right? Hey, give me a dashboard in Sigma, for example, for the number of customers or monthly active users and then make sure that that gets updated on an hourly basis. And then number two, a consistent list of active customers that I have in HubSpot so that I can send them a monthly product newsletter, right? Two very basic asks for all sorts of companies and organizations. And when that data team, which has data engineers, data scientists, ML engineers, data analysts get that request, they're looking at an ecosystem of data sources that can help them get there, right? And that includes application databases, for example, that actually have end product user behavior and third party APIs from tools that the company uses that also has different attributes and qualities of those customers or users. And that data team needs to use tools like Fivetran, to ingest data, a data warehouse like Snowflake or Databricks to actually store that data and do analysis on top of it, a tool like DBT to do transformations and make sure that that data is standardized in the way that it needs to be, a tool like Hightouch for reverse ETL. I mean, we could go on and on. There's so many partners of ours in this industry that are doing really, really exciting and critical things for those data movements. And the whole point here is that, you know, data teams have this plethora of tooling that they use to both ingest the right data and come up with the right interfaces to transform and interact with that data. And data orchestration in our view is really the heartbeat of all of those processes, right? And tangibly the unit of data orchestration, you know, is a data pipeline, a set of tasks or jobs that each do something with data over time and eventually run that on a schedule to make sure that those things are happening continuously as time moves on. And, you know, the company advances. And so, you know, for us, we're building a business around Apache Airflow, which is a workflow management tool that allows you to author, run and monitor data pipelines. And so when we talk about data orchestration, we talk about sort of two things. One is that crux of data pipelines that, like I said, connect that large ecosystem of data tooling in your company. But number two, it's not just that data pipeline that needs to run every day, right? And Viraj will probably touch on this as we talk more about Astronomer and our value prop on top of Airflow. But then it's all the things that you need to actually run data and production and make sure that it's trustworthy, right? So it's actually not just that you're running things on a schedule, but it's also things like CI/CD tooling, right? Secure secrets management, user permissions, monitoring, data lineage, documentation, things that enable other personas in your data team to actually use those tools. So long-winded way of saying that, it's the heartbeat that we think of the data ecosystem and certainly goes beyond scheduling, but again, data pipelines are really at the center of it. >> You know, one of the things that jumped out Viraj, if you can get into this, I'd like to hear more about how you guys look at all those little tools that are out there. You mentioned a variety of things. You know, if you look at the data infrastructure, it's not just one stack. You've got an analytic stack, you've got a realtime stack, you've got a data lake stack, you got an AI stack potentially. I mean you have these stacks now emerging in the data world that are >> Yeah. - >> fundamental, but we're once served by either a full package, old school software, and then a bunch of point solution. You mentioned Fivetran there, I would say in the analytics stack. Then you got, you know, S3, they're on the data lake stack. So all these things are kind of munged together. >> Yeah. >> How do you guys fit into that world? You make it easier or like, what's the deal? >> Great question, right? And you know, I think that one of the biggest things we've found in working with customers over, you know, the last however many years, is that like if a data team is using a bunch of tools to get what they need done and the number of tools they're using is growing exponentially and they're kind of roping things together here and there, that's actually a sign of a productive team, not a bad thing, right? It's because that team is moving fast. They have needs that are very specific to them and they're trying to make something that's exactly tailored to their business. So a lot of times what we find is that customers have like some sort of base layer, right? That's kind of like, you know, it might be they're running most of the things in AWS, right? And then on top of that, they'll be using some of the things AWS offers, you know, things like SageMaker, Redshift, whatever. But they also might need things that their Cloud can't provide, you know, something like Fivetran or Hightouch or anything of those other tools and where data orchestration really shines, right? And something that we've had the pleasure of helping our customers build, is how do you take all those requirements, all those different tools and whip them together into something that fulfills a business need, right? Something that makes it so that somebody can read a dashboard and trust the number that it says or somebody can make sure that the right emails go out to their customers. And Airflow serves as this amazing kind of glue between that data stack, right? It's to make it so that for any use case, be it ELT pipelines or machine learning or whatever, you need different things to do them and Airflow helps tie them together in a way that's really specific for a individual business's needs. >> Take a step back and share the journey of what your guys went through as a company startup. So you mentioned Apache open source, you know, we were just, I was just having an interview with the VC, we were talking about foundational models. You got a lot of proprietary and open source development going on. It's almost the iPhone, Android moment in this whole generative space and foundational side. This is kind of important, the open source piece of it. Can you share how you guys started? And I can imagine your customers probably have their hair on fire and are probably building stuff on their own. How do you guys, are you guys helping them? Take us through, 'cuz you guys are on the front end of a big, big wave and that is to make sense of the chaos, reigning it in. Take us through your journey and why this is important. >> Yeah Paola, I can take a crack at this and then I'll kind of hand it over to you to fill in whatever I miss in details. But you know, like Paola is saying, the heart of our company is open source because we started using Airflow as an end user and started to say like, "Hey wait a second". Like more and more people need this. Airflow, for background, started at Airbnb and they were actually using that as the foundation for their whole data stack. Kind of how they made it so that they could give you recommendations and predictions and all of the processes that need to be or needed to be orchestrated. Airbnb created Airflow, gave it away to the public and then, you know, fast forward a couple years and you know, we're building a company around it and we're really excited about that. >> That's a beautiful thing. That's exactly why open source is so great. >> Yeah, yeah. And for us it's really been about like watching the community and our customers take these problems, find solution to those problems, build standardized solutions, and then building on top of that, right? So we're reaching to a point where a lot of our earlier customers who started to just using Airflow to get the base of their BI stack down and their reporting and their ELP infrastructure, you know, they've solved that problem and now they're moving onto things like doing machine learning with their data, right? Because now that they've built that foundation, all the connective tissue for their data arriving on time and being orchestrated correctly is happening, they can build the layer on top of that. And it's just been really, really exciting kind of watching what customers do once they're empowered to pick all the tools that they need, tie them together in the way they need to, and really deliver real value to their business. >> Can you share some of the use cases of these customers? Because I think that's where you're starting to see the innovation. What are some of the companies that you're working with, what are they doing? >> Raj, I'll let you take that one too. (all laughing) >> Yeah. (all laughing) So you know, a lot of it is, it goes across the gamut, right? Because all doesn't matter what you are, what you're doing with data, it needs to be orchestrated. So there's a lot of customers using us for their ETL and ELT reporting, right? Just getting data from all the disparate sources into one place and then building on top of that, be it building dashboards, answering questions for the business, building other data products and so on and so forth. From there, these use cases evolve a lot. You do see folks doing things like fraud detection because Airflow's orchestrating how transactions go. Transactions get analyzed, they do things like analyzing marketing spend to see where your highest ROI is. And then, you know, you kind of can't not talk about all of the machine learning that goes on, right? Where customers are taking data about their own customers kind of analyze and aggregating that at scale and trying to automate decision making processes. So it goes from your most basic, what we call like data plumbing, right? Just to make sure data's moving as needed. All the ways to your more exciting and sexy use cases around like automated decision making and machine learning. >> And I'd say, I mean, I'd say that's one of the things that I think gets me most excited about our future is how critical Airflow is to all of those processes, you know? And I think when, you know, you know a tool is valuable is when something goes wrong and one of those critical processes doesn't work. And we know that our system is so mission critical to answering basic, you know, questions about your business and the growth of your company for so many organizations that we work with. So it's, I think one of the things that gets Viraj and I, and the rest of our company up every single morning, is knowing how important the work that we do for all of those use cases across industries, across company sizes. And it's really quite energizing. >> It was such a big focus this year at AWS re:Invent, the role of data. And I think one of the things that's exciting about the open AI and all the movement towards large language models, is that you can integrate data into these models, right? From outside, right? So you're starting to see the integration easier to deal with, still a lot of plumbing issues. So a lot of things happening. So I have to ask you guys, what is the state of the data orchestration area? Is it ready for disruption? Is it already been disrupted? Would you categorize it as a new first inning kind of opportunity or what's the state of the data orchestration area right now? Both, you know, technically and from a business model standpoint, how would you guys describe that state of the market? >> Yeah, I mean I think, I think in a lot of ways we're, in some ways I think we're categoric rating, you know, schedulers have been around for a long time. I recently did a presentation sort of on the evolution of going from, you know, something like KRON, which I think was built in like the 1970s out of Carnegie Mellon. And you know, that's a long time ago. That's 50 years ago. So it's sort of like the basic need to schedule and do something with your data on a schedule is not a new concept. But to our point earlier, I think everything that you need around your ecosystem, first of all, the number of data tools and developer tooling that has come out the industry has, you know, has some 5X over the last 10 years. And so obviously as that ecosystem grows and grows and grows and grows, the need for orchestration only increases. And I think, you know, as Astronomer, I think we, and there's, we work with so many different types of companies, companies that have been around for 50 years and companies that got started, you know, not even 12 months ago. And so I think for us, it's trying to always category create and adjust sort of what we sell and the value that we can provide for companies all across that journey. There are folks who are just getting started with orchestration and then there's folks who have such advanced use case 'cuz they're hitting sort of a ceiling and only want to go up from there. And so I think we as a company, care about both ends of that spectrum and certainly have want to build and continue building products for companies of all sorts, regardless of where they are on the maturity curve of data orchestration. >> That's a really good point Paola. And I think the other thing to really take into account is it's the companies themselves, but also individuals who have to do their jobs. You know, if you rewind the clock like five or 10 years ago, data engineers would be the ones responsible for orchestrating data through their org. But when we look at our customers today, it's not just data engineers anymore. There's data analysts who sit a lot closer to the business and the data scientists who want to automate things around their models. So this idea that orchestration is this new category is spot on, is right on the money. And what we're finding is it's spreading, the need for it, is spreading to all parts of the data team naturally where Airflows have emerged as an open source standard and we're hoping to take things to the next level. >> That's awesome. You know, we've been up saying that the data market's kind of like the SRE with servers, right? You're going to need one person to deal with a lot of data and that's data engineering and then you're going to have the practitioners, the democratization. Clearly that's coming in what you're seeing. So I got to ask, how do you guys fit in from a value proposition standpoint? What's the pitch that you have to customers or is it more inbound coming into you guys? Are you guys doing a lot of outreach, customer engagements? I'm sure they're getting a lot of great requirements from customers. What's the current value proposition? How do you guys engage? >> Yeah, I mean we've, there's so many, there's so many. Sorry Raj, you can jump in. - >> It's okay. So there's so many companies using Airflow, right? So our, the baseline is that the open source project that is Airflow that was, that came out of Airbnb, you know, over five years ago at this point, has grown exponentially in users and continues to grow. And so the folks that we sell to primarily are folks who are already committed to using Apache Airflow, need data orchestration in the organization and just want to do it better, want to do it more efficiently, want to do it without managing that infrastructure. And so our baseline proposition is for those organizations. Now to Raj's point, obviously I think our ambitions go beyond that, both in terms of the personas that we addressed and going beyond that data engineer, but really it's for, to start at the baseline. You know, as we continue to grow our company, it's really making sure that we're adding value to folks using Airflow and help them do so in a better way, in a larger way and a more efficient way. And that's really the crux of who we sell to. And so to answer your question on, we actually, we get a lot of inbound because they're are so many - >> A built-in audience. >> In the world that use it, that those are the folks who we talk to and come to our website and chat with us and get value from our content. I mean the power of the open source community is really just so, so big. And I think that's also one of the things that makes this job fun, so. >> And you guys are in a great position, Viraj, you can comment, to get your reaction. There's been a big successful business model to starting a company around these big projects for a lot of reasons. One is open source is continuing to be great, but there's also supply chain challenges in there. There's also, you know, we want to continue more innovation and more code and keeping it free and and flowing. And then there's the commercialization of product-izing it, operationalizing it. This is a huge new dynamic. I mean, in the past, you know, five or so years, 10 years, it's been happening all on CNCF from other areas like Apache, Linux Foundation, they're all implementing this. This is a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs to do this. >> Yeah, yeah. Open source is always going to be core to what we do because, you know, we wouldn't exist without the open source community around us. They are huge in numbers. Oftentimes they're nameless people who are working on making something better in a way that everybody benefits from it. But open source is really hard, especially if you're a company whose core competency is running a business, right? Maybe you're running e-commerce business or maybe you're running, I don't know, some sort of like any sort of business, especially if you're a company running a business, you don't really want to spend your time figuring out how to run open source software. You just want to use it, you want to use the best of it, you want to use the community around it. You want to take, you want to be able to google something and get answers for it. You want the benefits of open source. You don't want to have, you don't have the time or the resources to invest in becoming an expert in open source, right? And I think that dynamic is really what's given companies like us an ability to kind of form businesses around that, in the sense that we'll make it so people get the best of both worlds. You'll get this vast open ecosystem that you can build on top of, you can benefit from, that you can learn from, but you won't have to spend your time doing undifferentiated heavy lifting. You can do things that are just specific to your business. >> It's always been great to see that business model evolved. We used to debate 10 years ago, can there be another red hat? And we said, not really the same, but there'll be a lot of little ones that'll grow up to be big soon. Great stuff. Final question, can you guys share the history of the company, the milestones of the Astronomer's journey in data orchestration? >> Yeah, we could. So yeah, I mean, I think, so Raj and I have obviously been at astronomer along with our other founding team and leadership folks, for over five years now. And it's been such an incredible journey of learning, of hiring really amazing people. Solving again, mission critical problems for so many types of organizations. You know, we've had some funding that has allowed us to invest in the team that we have and in the software that we have. And that's been really phenomenal. And so that investment, I think, keeps us confident even despite these sort of macroeconomic conditions that we're finding ourselves in. And so honestly, the milestones for us are focusing on our product, focusing on our customers over the next year, focusing on that market for us, that we know can get value out of what we do. And making developers' lives better and growing the open source community, you know, and making sure that everything that we're doing makes it easier for folks to get started to contribute to the project and to feel a part of the community that we're cultivating here. >> You guys raised a little bit of money. How much have you guys raised? >> I forget what the total is, but it's in the ballpark of 200, over $200 million. So it feels good - >> A little bit of capital. Got a little bit of cash to work with there. Great success. I know it's a Series C financing, you guys been down, so you're up and running. What's next? What are you guys looking to do? What's the big horizon look like for you? And from a vision standpoint, more hiring, more product, what is some of the key things you're looking at doing? >> Yeah, it's really a little of all of the above, right? Like, kind of one of the best and worst things about working at earlier stage startups is there's always so much to do and you often have to just kind of figure out a way to get everything done, but really invest in our product over the next, at least the next, over the course of our company lifetime. And there's a lot of ways we wanting to just make it more accessible to users, easier to get started with, easier to use all kind of on all areas there. And really, we really want to do more for the community, right? Like I was saying, we wouldn't be anything without the large open source community around us. And we want to figure out ways to give back more in more creative ways, in more code driven ways and more kind of events and everything else that we can do to keep those folks galvanized and just keeping them happy using Airflow. >> Paola, any final words as we close out? >> No, I mean, I'm super excited. You know, I think we'll keep growing the team this year. We've got a couple of offices in the US which we're excited about, and a fully global team that will only continue to grow. So Viraj and I are both here in New York and we're excited to be engaging with our coworkers in person. Finally, after years of not doing so, we've got a bustling office in San Francisco as well. So growing those teams and continuing to hire all over the world and really focusing on our product and the open source community is where our heads are at this year, so. >> Congratulations. - >> Excited. 200 million in funding plus good runway. Put that money in the bank, squirrel it away. You know, it's good to kind of get some good interest on it, but still grow. Congratulations on all the work you guys do. We appreciate you and the open sourced community does and good luck with the venture. Continue to be successful and we'll see you at the Startup Showcase. >> Thank you. - >> Yeah, thanks so much, John. Appreciate it. - >> It's theCube conversation, featuring astronomer.io, that's the website. Astronomer is doing well. Multiple rounds of funding, over 200 million in funding. Open source continues to lead the way in innovation. Great business model. Good solution for the next gen, Cloud, scale, data operations, data stacks that are emerging. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (soft music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Cloud Native SecurityCon North America 2023. Its first inaugural event. It's theCUBE's coverage. We were there at the first event for a KubeCon before CNCF kind of took it over. It was in Seattle. And so in Seattle this week is Cloud Native SecurityCon. Of course, theCUBE is there covering via our Palo Alto Studios and our experts around the world who are bringing in Bassam Tabbara who's the CEO and founder of upbound.io. That's the URL, but Upbound is the company. The creators of Crossplane. Really kind of looking at the Crossplane, across the abstraction layer, across clouds. A big part of, as we call supercloud trend. Bassam, great to see you. You've been legend in the open source community. Great to have you on. >> Thanks, John. Always good to be on theCUBE. >> I really wanted to bring you in 'cause I want to get your perspective. You've seen the movie, you've seen open source software grow, it continues to grow. Now you're starting to see the Linux Foundation, which has CNCF really expanding their realm. They got the CloudNativeCon, KubeCon, which is Kubernetes event. That's gotten so massive and so successful. We've been to every single one as you know. I've seen you there and all of them as well. So that's going great. Now they got this new event that's spins out dedicated to security. Everybody wants to know why the new event? What's the focus? Is it needed? What will they do? What's different from KubeCon? Where do I play? And so there's a little bit of a question mark in the ecosystem around this event. And so we've been reporting on it. Looking good so far. People are buzzing, again, they're keeping it small. So that kind of managing expectations like any good event would do. But I think it's been successful, which I wanted like to get your take on how you see it. Is this good? Are you indifferent? Are you excited by this? What's your take? >> I mean, look, it's super exciting to see all the momentum around cloud native. Obviously there are different dimensions of cloud native securities, an important piece. Networking, storage, compute, like all those things I think tie back together and in some ways you can look at this event as a focused event on the security aspect as it relates to cloud native. And there are lots of vendors in this space. There's lots of interesting projects in the space, but the unifying theme is that they come together and probably around the Kubernetes API and the momentum around cloud native and with Kubernetes at the center of it. >> On the focus on Kubernetes, it seems this event is kind of classic security where you want to have deep dives. Again, I call it the event operating system 'cause you decouple, make things highly cohesive, and you link them together. I don't see a problem with it. I kind of like this. I gave it good reviews if they stay focused because security is super critical. There was references to bind and DNS. There's a lot of things in the infrastructure plumbing that need to be looked at or managed or figured out or just refactored for modernization needs. And I know you've done a lot with storage, for instance, storage, networking, kernel. There's a lot of things in the old tech or tech in the cloud that needs to be kind, I won't say rebooted, but maybe reset or jump. Do you see it that way? Are there things that need to get done or is it just that there's so much complexity in the different cloud cluster code thing going on? >> It's obviously security is a very, very big space and there are so many different aspects of it that people you can go into. I think the thing that's interesting around the cloud native community is that there is a unifying theme. Like forget the word cloud native for a second, but the unifying theme is that people are building around what looks like a standardized play around Kubernetes and the Kubernetes API. And as a result you can recast a lot of the technologies that we are used to in the past in a traditional security sense. You can recast them on top of this new standardized approach or on Kubernetes, whether it's policy or protecting a supply chain or scanning, or like a lot of the access control authorization, et cetera. All of those things can be either revived to apply to this cloud native play and the Kubernetes play or creating new opportunities for companies to actually build new and interesting projects and companies around a standardized play. >> Do you think this also will help the KubeCon be more focused around the developer areas there and just touching on security versus figuring out how to take something so important in KubeCon, which the stakeholders in KubeCon have have grown so big, I can see security sucking a lot of oxygen out of the room there. So here you move it over, you keep it over here. Will anything change on the KubeCon site? We'll be there in in Amsterdam in April. What do you think the impact will be? Good? Is it good for the community? Just good swim lanes? What's your take? >> Yeah, I still think KubeCon will be an umbrella event for the whole cloud native community. I suspect that you'll see some of the same vendors and projects and everything else represented in KubeCon. The way I think about all the branched cloud native events are essentially a way to have a more focused discussion, get people together to talk about security topics or networking topics or things that are more focused way. But I don't think it changes the the effect of KubeCon being the umbrella around all of it. So I think you'll see the same presence and maybe larger presence going forward at Amsterdam. We're planning to be there obviously and I'm excited to be there and I think it'll be a big event and having a smaller event is not going to diminish the effect of KubeCon. >> And if you look at the developer community they've all been online for a long time, from IRC chat to now Slack and now new technologies and stuff like Discord out there. The event world has changed post-pandemic. So it makes sense. And we're seeing this with all vendors, by the way, and projects. The digital community angle is huge because if you have a big tent event like KubeCon you can make that a rallying moment in the industry and then have similar smaller events that are highly focused that build off that that are just connective tissue or subnets, if you will, or communities targeted for really deeper conversations. And they could be smaller events. They don't have to be monster events, but they're connected and traverse into the main event. This might be the event format for the future for all companies, whether it's AWS or a company that has a community where you create this network effect, if you will, around the people. >> That's right. And if you look at things like AWS re:Invent, et cetera, I mean, that's a massive events. And in some ways it, if it was a set of smaller sub events, maybe it actually will flourish more. I don't know, I'm not sure. >> They just killed the San Francisco event. >> That's right. >> But they have re:Inforce, all right, so they just established that their big events are re:Invent and re:Inforce as their big. >> Oh, I didn't hear about re:Inforce. That's news to me. >> re:Inforce is their third event. So they're doing something similar as CloudNativeCon, which is you have to have an event and then they're going to create a lot of sub events underneath. So I think they are trying to do that. Very interesting. >> Very interesting for sure. >> So let's talk about what you guys are up to. I know from your standpoint, you had a lot of security conversations. How is Crossplane doing? Obviously, you saw our Supercloud coverage. You guys fit right into that model where clients, customers, enterprises are going to want to have multiple cloud operating environments for whatever the use case, whether you're using ChatGPT, you got to get an Azure instance up and running for that. Now with APIs, we're hearing a lot of developers doing that. So you're going to start to see this cross cloud as VMware calls, what we call it supercloud. There's more need for Crossplane like thinking. What's the update? >> For sure, and we see this very clearly as well. So the fact that there is a standardization layer, there is a layer that lets you converge the different vendors that you have, the different clouds that you have, the different hype models that you have, whether it's hybrid or private, public, et cetera. The unifying theme is that you're literally bringing all those things under one control plane that enables you to actually centralize and standardize on security, access control, helps you standardize on cost control, quota policy, as well as create a self-service experience for your developers. And so from a security standpoint, the beauty of this is like, you could use really popular projects like open policy agent or Kyverno or others if you want to do policy and do so uniformly across your entire stack, your entire footprint of tooling, vendors, services and across deployment models. Those things are possible because you're standardizing and consolidating on a control plane on top of all. And that's the thing that gets our customers excited. That we're seeing in the community that they could actually now normalize standardize on small number of projects and tools to manage everything. >> We were talking about that in our summary of the keynote yesterday. Dave Vellante and I were talking about the idea of clients want to have a redo of their security. They've been, just the tooling has been building up. They got zero trust in place, maybe with some big vendor, but now got the cloud native opportunity to refactor and reset and reinvent their security paradigm. And so that's the positive thing we're hearing. Now we're seeing enterprises want this cross cloud capabilities or Crossplane like thinking that you guys are talking about. What are your customers telling you? Can you share from an enterprise perspective where they're at in this journey? Because part of the security problems that we've been reporting on has been because clients are moving from IT to cloud native and not everyone's moved over yet. So they're highly vulnerable to ransomware and all kinds of other crap. So another attacks, so they're wide open, But people who are moving into cloud native, are they stepping up their game on this Crossplane opportunity? Where are they at? Can you share data on that? >> Yeah, we're grateful to be talking to a lot of customers these days. And the interesting thing is even if you talked about large financial institutions, banks, et cetera, the common theme that we hear is that they bought tools for each of the different departments and however they're organized. Sometimes you see the folks that are running databases, networking, being separated from say, the computer app developers or they're all these different departments within an organization. And for each one of those, they've made localized decisions for tooling and services that they bought. What we're seeing now consistently is that they're all together, getting together, and trying to figure out how to standardize on a smaller one set of tooling and services that goes across all the different departments and all different aspects of the business that they're running. And this is where this discussion gets a lot very interesting. If instead of buying a different policy tool for each department, or once that fits it you could actually standardize on policy or the entire footprint of services that they're managing. And you get that by standardizing on a control plane or standardizing on effectively one point of control for everything that they're doing. And that theme is like literally, it gets all our customers excited. This is why they're engaging in all of this. It's almost the holy grail. The thing that I've been trying to do for a long time. >> I know. >> And it's finally happening. >> I know you and I have talked about this many times, but I got to ask you the one thing that jumps into everybody's head when you hear control plane is lock-in. So how do you discuss that lock-in, perception from the reality of the situation? How do you unpack that for the customer? 'Cause they want choice at the end of the day. There's the preferred vendors for sure on the hyperscale side and app side and open source, but what's the lock-in? What does the lock-in conversation look like? Or do they even have that conversation? >> Yeah. To be honest, I mean, so their lock-in could be a two dimensions here. Most of our customers and people are using Crossplane or using app on product around it. Most of our do, concentrated in, say a one cloud vendor and have others. So I don't think this is necessarily about multicloud per se or being locked into one vendor. But they do manage many different services and they have legacy tooling and they have different systems that they bought at different stages and they want to bring them all together. And by bringing them all together that helps them make choices about consulting or even replacing some of them. But right now everything is siloed, everything is separate, both organizationally as well as the code bases or investments and tooling or contracts. Everything is just completely separated and it requires humans to put them together. And organizations actually try to gather around and put them together. I don't know if lock-in is the driving goal for this, but it is standardization consolidation. That's the driving initiative. >> And so unification and building is the big driver. They're building out >> Correct, and you can ask why are they doing that? What does standardization help with? It helps them to become more productive. They can move faster, they can innovate faster. Not as a ton of, like literally revenue written all over. So it's super important to them that they achieved this, increase their pace of innovation around this and they do that by standardizing. >> The great point in all this and your success at Upbound and now CNCF success with KubeCon + CloudNativeCon and now with the inaugural event of Cloud Native SecurityCon is that the customers are involved, a lot of end users are involved. There's a big driver not only from the industry and the developers and getting architecture right and having choice. The customers want this to happen. They're leaning in, they're part of it. So that's a big driver. Where does this go? If you had to throw a dart at the board five years from now Cloud Native SecurityCon, what does it look like if you had to predict the trajectory of this event and community? >> Yeah, I mean, look, I think the trajectory one is that we have what looks like a standardization layer emerging that is all encompassing. And as a result, there is a ton of opportunity for vendors, projects, communities to build around within on top of this layer. And essentially create, I think you talked about an operating system earlier and decentralized aspect of this, but it's an opportunity to actually, what it looks like for the first time we have a convergence happening industry-wide and through open source and open source foundations. And I think that means that there'll be new opportunity and lots of new projects and things that are created in the space. And it also means that if you don't attach this space, you'll likely be left out. >> Awesome. Bassam, great to have you on, great expert commentary, obviously multi CUBE alumni and supporter of theCUBE and as you become successful we really appreciate your support for helping us get the content out there. And best of luck to your team and thanks for weighing in on Cloud Native SecurityCon. >> Awesome. It's always good talking to you, John. Thank you. >> Great stuff. This is more CUBE coverage from Palo Alto, getting folks on the ground on location, getting us the stories in Seattle. Of course, Cloud Native SecurityCon, the inaugural event, which looks like will be the beginning of a series of multi-year journey for the CNCF, focusing on security. Of course, theCUBE's here to cover it, every angle of it, and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome back to theCUBE. We're here in Palo Alto, California. I'm your host, John Furrier with a special guest here in the studio. As part of our Cloud Native SecurityCon Coverage we had an opportunity to bring in Jon Turow who is the partner at Madrona Venture Partners formerly with AWS and to talk about machine learning, foundational models, and how the future of AI is going to be impacted by some of the innovation around what's going on in the industry. ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. A million downloads, fastest to the million downloads there. Before some were saying it's just a gimmick. Others saying it's a game changer. Jon's here to break it down, and great to have you on. Thanks for coming in. >> Thanks John. Glad to be here. >> Thanks for coming on. So first of all, I'm glad you're here. First of all, because two things. One, you were formerly with AWS, got a lot of experience running projects at AWS. Now a partner at Madrona, a great firm doing great deals, and they had this future at modern application kind of thesis. Now you are putting out some content recently around foundational models. You're deep into computer vision. You were the IoT general manager at AWS among other things, Greengrass. So you know a lot about data. You know a lot about some of this automation, some of the edge stuff. You've been in the middle of all these kind of areas that now seem to be the next wave coming. So I wanted to ask you what your thoughts are of how the machine learning and this new automation wave is coming in, this AI tools are coming out. Is it a platform? Is it going to be smarter? What feeds AI? What's your take on this whole foundational big movement into AI? What's your general reaction to all this? >> So, thanks, Jon, again for having me here. Really excited to talk about these things. AI has been coming for a long time. It's been kind of the next big thing. Always just over the horizon for quite some time. And we've seen really compelling applications in generations before and until now. Amazon and AWS have introduced a lot of them. My firm, Madrona Venture Group has invested in some of those early players as well. But what we're seeing now is something categorically different. That's really exciting and feels like a durable change. And I can try and explain what that is. We have these really large models that are useful in a general way. They can be applied to a lot of different tasks beyond the specific task that the designers envisioned. That makes them more flexible, that makes them more useful for building applications than what we've seen before. And so that, we can talk about the depths of it, but in a nutshell, that's why I think people are really excited. >> And I think one of the things that you wrote about that jumped out at me is that this seems to be this moment where there's been a multiple decades of nerds and computer scientists and programmers and data thinkers around waiting for AI to blossom. And it's like they're scratching that itch. Every year is going to be, and it's like the bottleneck's always been compute power. And we've seen other areas, genome sequencing, all kinds of high computation things where required high forms computing. But now there's no real bottleneck to compute. You got cloud. And so you're starting to see the emergence of a massive acceleration of where AI's been and where it needs to be going. Now, it's almost like it's got a reboot. It's almost a renaissance in the AI community with a whole nother macro environmental things happening. Cloud, younger generation, applications proliferate from mobile to cloud native. It's the perfect storm for this kind of moment to switch over. Am I overreading that? Is that right? >> You're right. And it's been cooking for a cycle or two. And let me try and explain why that is. We have cloud and AWS launch in whatever it was, 2006, and offered more compute to more people than really was possible before. Initially that was about taking existing applications and running them more easily in a bigger scale. But in that period of time what's also become possible is new kinds of computation that really weren't practical or even possible without that vast amount of compute. And so one result that came of that is something called the transformer AI model architecture. And Google came out with that, published a paper in 2017. And what that says is, with a transformer model you can actually train an arbitrarily large amount of data into a model, and see what happens. That's what Google demonstrated in 2017. The what happens is the really exciting part because when you do that, what you start to see, when models exceed a certain size that we had never really seen before all of a sudden they get what we call emerging capabilities of complex reasoning and reasoning outside a domain and reasoning with data. The kinds of things that people describe as spooky when they play with something like ChatGPT. That's the underlying term. We don't as an industry quite know why it happens or how it happens, but we can measure that it does. So cloud enables new kinds of math and science. New kinds of math and science allow new kinds of experimentation. And that experimentation has led to this new generation of models. >> So one of the debates we had on theCUBE at our Supercloud event last month was, what's the barriers to entry for say OpenAI, for instance? Obviously, I weighed in aggressively and said, "The barriers for getting into cloud are high because all the CapEx." And Howie Xu formerly VMware, now at ZScaler, he's an AI machine learning guy. He was like, "Well, you can spend $100 million and replicate it." I saw a quote that set up for 180,000 I can get this other package. What's the barriers to entry? Is ChatGPT or OpenAI, does it have sustainability? Is it easy to get into? What is the market like for AI? I mean, because a lot of entrepreneurs are jumping in. I mean, I just read a story today. San Francisco's got more inbound migration because of the AI action happening, Seattle's booming, Boston with MIT's been working on neural networks for generations. That's what we've found the answer. Get off the neural network, Boston jump on the AI bus. So there's total excitement for this. People are enthusiastic around this area. >> You can think of an iPhone versus Android tension that's happening today. In the iPhone world, there are proprietary models from OpenAI who you might consider as the leader. There's Cohere, there's AI21, there's Anthropic, Google's going to have their own, and a few others. These are proprietary models that developers can build on top of, get started really quickly. They're measured to have the highest accuracy and the highest performance today. That's the proprietary side. On the other side, there is an open source part of the world. These are a proliferation of model architectures that developers and practitioners can take off the shelf and train themselves. Typically found in Hugging face. What people seem to think is that the accuracy and performance of the open source models is something like 18 to 20 months behind the accuracy and performance of the proprietary models. But on the other hand, there's infinite flexibility for teams that are capable enough. So you're going to see teams choose sides based on whether they want speed or flexibility. >> That's interesting. And that brings up a point I was talking to a startup and the debate was, do you abstract away from the hardware and be software-defined or software-led on the AI side and let the hardware side just extremely accelerate on its own, 'cause it's flywheel? So again, back to proprietary, that's with hardware kind of bundled in, bolted on. Is it accelerator or is it bolted on or is it part of it? So to me, I think that the big struggle in understanding this is that which one will end up being right. I mean, is it a beta max versus VHS kind of thing going on? Or iPhone, Android, I mean iPhone makes a lot of sense, but if you're Apple, but is there an Apple moment in the machine learning? >> In proprietary models, here does seem to be a jump ball. That there's going to be a virtuous flywheel that emerges that, for example, all these excitement about ChatGPT. What's really exciting about it is it's really easy to use. The technology isn't so different from what we've seen before even from OpenAI. You mentioned a million users in a short period of time, all providing training data for OpenAI that makes their underlying models, their next generation even better. So it's not unreasonable to guess that there's going to be power laws that emerge on the proprietary side. What I think history has shown is that iPhone, Android, Windows, Linux, there seems to be gravity towards this yin and yang. And my guess, and what other people seem to think is going to be the case is that we're going to continue to see these two poles of AI. >> So let's get into the relationship with data because I've been emerging myself with ChatGPT, fascinated by the ease of use, yes, but also the fidelity of how you query it. And I felt like when I was doing writing SQL back in the eighties and nineties where SQL was emerging. You had to be really a guru at the SQL to get the answers you wanted. It seems like the querying into ChatGPT is a good thing if you know how to talk to it. Labeling whether your input is and it does a great job if you feed it right. If you ask a generic questions like Google. It's like a Google search. It gives you great format, sounds credible, but the facts are kind of wrong. >> That's right. >> That's where general consensus is coming on. So what does that mean? That means people are on one hand saying, "Ah, it's bullshit 'cause it's wrong." But I look at, I'm like, "Wow, that's that's compelling." 'Cause if you feed it the right data, so now we're in the data modeling here, so the role of data's going to be critical. Is there a data operating system emerging? Because if this thing continues to go the way it's going you can almost imagine as you would look at companies to invest in. Who's going to be right on this? What's going to scale? What's sustainable? What could build a durable company? It might not look what like what people think it is. I mean, I remember when Google started everyone thought it was the worst search engine because it wasn't a portal. But it was the best organic search on the planet became successful. So I'm trying to figure out like, okay, how do you read this? How do you read the tea leaves? >> Yeah. There are a few different ways that companies can differentiate themselves. Teams with galactic capabilities to take an open source model and then change the architecture and retrain and go down to the silicon. They can do things that might not have been possible for other teams to do. There's a company that that we're proud to be investors in called RunwayML that provides video accelerated, sorry, AI accelerated video editing capabilities. They were used in everything, everywhere all at once and some others. In order to build RunwayML, they needed a vision of what the future was going to look like and they needed to make deep contributions to the science that was going to enable all that. But not every team has those capabilities, maybe nor should they. So as far as how other teams are going to differentiate there's a couple of things that they can do. One is called prompt engineering where they shape on behalf of their own users exactly how the prompt to get fed to the underlying model. It's not clear whether that's going to be a durable problem or whether like Google, we consumers are going to start to get more intuitive about this. That's one. The second is what's called information retrieval. How can I get information about the world outside, information from a database or a data store or whatever service into these models so they can reason about them. And the third is, this is going to sound funny, but attribution. Just like you would do in a news report or an academic paper. If you can state where your facts are coming from, the downstream consumer or the human being who has to use that information actually is going to be able to make better sense of it and rely better on it. So that's prompt engineering, that's retrieval, and that's attribution. >> So that brings me to my next point I want to dig in on is the foundational model stack that you published. And I'll start by saying that with ChatGPT, if you take out the naysayers who are like throwing cold water on it about being a gimmick or whatever, and then you got the other side, I would call the alpha nerds who are like they can see, "Wow, this is amazing." This is truly NextGen. This isn't yesterday's chatbot nonsense. They're like, they're all over it. It's that everybody's using it right now in every vertical. I heard someone using it for security logs. I heard a data center, hardware vendor using it for pushing out appsec review updates. I mean, I've heard corner cases. We're using it for theCUBE to put our metadata in. So there's a horizontal use case of value. So to me that tells me it's a market there. So when you have horizontal scalability in the use case you're going to have a stack. So you publish this stack and it has an application at the top, applications like Jasper out there. You're seeing ChatGPT. But you go after the bottom, you got silicon, cloud, foundational model operations, the foundational models themselves, tooling, sources, actions. Where'd you get this from? How'd you put this together? Did you just work backwards from the startups or was there a thesis behind this? Could you share your thoughts behind this foundational model stack? >> Sure. Well, I'm a recovering product manager and my job that I think about as a product manager is who is my customer and what problem he wants to solve. And so to put myself in the mindset of an application developer and a founder who is actually my customer as a partner at Madrona, I think about what technology and resources does she need to be really powerful, to be able to take a brilliant idea, and actually bring that to life. And if you spend time with that community, which I do and I've met with hundreds of founders now who are trying to do exactly this, you can see that the stack is emerging. In fact, we first drew it in, not in January 2023, but October 2022. And if you look at the difference between the October '22 and January '23 stacks you're going to see that holes in the stack that we identified in October around tooling and around foundation model ops and the rest are organically starting to get filled because of how much demand from the developers at the top of the stack. >> If you look at the young generation coming out and even some of the analysts, I was just reading an analyst report on who's following the whole data stacks area, Databricks, Snowflake, there's variety of analytics, realtime AI, data's hot. There's a lot of engineers coming out that were either data scientists or I would call data platform engineering folks are becoming very key resources in this area. What's the skillset emerging and what's the mindset of that entrepreneur that sees the opportunity? How does these startups come together? Is there a pattern in the formation? Is there a pattern in the competency or proficiency around the talent behind these ventures? >> Yes. I would say there's two groups. The first is a very distinct pattern, John. For the past 10 years or a little more we've seen a pattern of democratization of ML where more and more people had access to this powerful science and technology. And since about 2017, with the rise of the transformer architecture in these foundation models, that pattern has reversed. All of a sudden what has become broader access is now shrinking to a pretty small group of scientists who can actually train and manipulate the architectures of these models themselves. So that's one. And what that means is the teams who can do that have huge ability to make the future happen in ways that other people don't have access to yet. That's one. The second is there is a broader population of people who by definition has even more collective imagination 'cause there's even more people who sees what should be possible and can use things like the proprietary models, like the OpenAI models that are available off the shelf and try to create something that maybe nobody has seen before. And when they do that, Jasper AI is a great example of that. Jasper AI is a company that creates marketing copy automatically with generative models such as GPT-3. They do that and it's really useful and it's almost fun for a marketer to use that. But there are going to be questions of how they can defend that against someone else who has access to the same technology. It's a different population of founders who has to find other sources of differentiation without being able to go all the way down to the the silicon and the science. >> Yeah, and it's going to be also opportunity recognition is one thing. Building a viable venture product market fit. You got competition. And so when things get crowded you got to have some differentiation. I think that's going to be the key. And that's where I was trying to figure out and I think data with scale I think are big ones. Where's the vulnerability in the stack in terms of gaps? Where's the white space? I shouldn't say vulnerability. I should say where's the opportunity, where's the white space in the stack that you see opportunities for entrepreneurs to attack? >> I would say there's two. At the application level, there is almost infinite opportunity, John, because almost every kind of application is about to be reimagined or disrupted with a new generation that takes advantage of this really powerful new technology. And so if there is a kind of application in almost any vertical, it's hard to rule something out. Almost any vertical that a founder wishes she had created the original app in, well, now it's her time. So that's one. The second is, if you look at the tooling layer that we discussed, tooling is a really powerful way that you can provide more flexibility to app developers to get more differentiation for themselves. And the tooling layer is still forming. This is the interface between the models themselves and the applications. Tools that help bring in data, as you mentioned, connect to external actions, bring context across multiple calls, chain together multiple models. These kinds of things, there's huge opportunity there. >> Well, Jon, I really appreciate you coming in. I had a couple more questions, but I will take a minute to read some of your bios for the audience and we'll get into, I won't embarrass you, but I want to set the context. You said you were recovering product manager, 10 plus years at AWS. Obviously, recovering from AWS, which is a whole nother dimension of recovering. In all seriousness, I talked to Andy Jassy around that time and Dr. Matt Wood and it was about that time when AI was just getting on the radar when they started. So you guys started seeing the wave coming in early on. So I remember at that time as Amazon was starting to grow significantly and even just stock price and overall growth. From a tech perspective, it was pretty clear what was coming, so you were there when this tsunami hit. >> Jon: That's right. >> And you had a front row seat building tech, you were led the product teams for Computer Vision AI, Textract, AI intelligence for document processing, recognition for image and video analysis. You wrote the business product plan for AWS IoT and Greengrass, which we've covered a lot in theCUBE, which extends out to the whole edge thing. So you know a lot about AI/ML, edge computing, IOT, messaging, which I call the law of small numbers that scale become big. This is a big new thing. So as a former AWS leader who's been there and at Madrona, what's your investment thesis as you start to peruse the landscape and talk to entrepreneurs as you got the stack? What's the big picture? What are you looking for? What's the thesis? How do you see this next five years emerging? >> Five years is a really long time given some of this science is only six months out. I'll start with some, no pun intended, some foundational things. And we can talk about some implications of the technology. The basics are the same as they've always been. We want, what I like to call customers with their hair on fire. So they have problems, so urgent they'll buy half a product. The joke is if your hair is on fire you might want a bucket of cold water, but you'll take a tennis racket and you'll beat yourself over the head to put the fire out. You want those customers 'cause they'll meet you more than halfway. And when you find them, you can obsess about them and you can get better every day. So we want customers with their hair on fire. We want founders who have empathy for those customers, understand what is going to be required to serve them really well, and have what I like to call founder-market fit to be able to build the products that those customers are going to need. >> And because that's a good strategy from an emerging, not yet fully baked out requirements definition. >> Jon: That's right. >> Enough where directionally they're leaning in, more than in, they're part of the product development process. >> That's right. And when you're doing early stage development, which is where I personally spend a lot of my time at the seed and A and a little bit beyond that stage often that's going to be what you have to go on because the future is going to be so complex that you can't see the curves beyond it. But if you have customers with their hair on fire and talented founders who have the capability to serve those customers, that's got me interested. >> So if I'm an entrepreneur, I walk in and say, "I have customers that have their hair on fire." What kind of checks do you write? What's the kind of the average you're seeing for seed and series? Probably seed, seed rounds and series As. >> It can depend. I have seen seed rounds of double digit million dollars. I have seen seed rounds much smaller than that. It really depends on what is going to be the right thing for these founders to prove out the hypothesis that they're testing that says, "Look, we have this customer with her hair on fire. We think we can build at least a tennis racket that she can use to start beating herself over the head and put the fire out. And then we're going to have something really interesting that we can scale up from there and we can make the future happen. >> So it sounds like your advice to founders is go out and find some customers, show them a product, don't obsess over full completion, get some sort of vibe on fit and go from there. >> Yeah, and I think by the time founders come to me they may not have a product, they may not have a deck, but if they have a customer with her hair on fire, then I'm really interested. >> Well, I always love the professional services angle on these markets. You go in and you get some business and you understand it. Walk away if you don't like it, but you see the hair on fire, then you go in product mode. >> That's right. >> All Right, Jon, thank you for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate you stopping by the studio and good luck on your investments. Great to see you. >> You too. >> Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, Jon. >> CUBE coverage here at Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier, your host. More coverage with CUBE Conversations after this break. (upbeat music)

>>Hey everyone, welcome to the Cube's coverage of AWS Reinvent 2022. Lisa Martin here with you with Subaru ier, one of our alumni who's now the CEO of Aerospike. Sabu. Great to have you on the program. Thank you for joining us. >>Great as always, to be on the cube. Luisa, good to meet you. >>So, you know, every company these days has got to be a data company, whether it's a retailer, a manufacturer, a grocer, a automotive company. But for a lot of companies, data is underutilized, yet a huge asset that is value added. Why do you think companies are struggling so much to make data a value added asset? >>Well, you know, we, we see this across the board when I talk to customers and prospects. There's a desire from the business and from it actually to leverage data to really fuel newer applications, newer services, newer business lines, if you will, for companies. I think the struggle is one, I think one the, you know, the plethora of data that is created, you know, surveys say that over the next three years data is gonna be, you know, by 2025, around 175 zetabytes, right? A hundred and zetabytes of data is gonna be created. And that's really a, a, a growth of north of 30% year over year. But the more important, and the interesting thing is the real time component of that data is actually growing at, you know, 35% cagr. And what enterprises desire is decisions that are made in real time or near real time. >>And a lot of the challenges that do exist today is that either the infrastructure that enterprises have in place was never built to actually manipulate data in real time. The second is really the ability to actually put something in place which can handle spikes yet be cost efficient if you'll, so you can build for really peak loads, but then it's very expensive to operate that particular service at normal loads. So how do you build something which actually works for you, for both you, both users, so to speak? And the last point that we see out there is even if you're able to, you know, bring all that data, you don't have the processing capability to run through that data. So as a result, most enterprises struggle with one, capturing the data, you know, making decisions from it in real time and really operating it at the cost point that they need to operate it at. >>You know, you bring up a great point with respect to real time data access. And I think one of the things that we've learned the last couple of years is that access to real time data, it's not a nice to have anymore. It's business critical for organizations in any industry. Talk about that as one of the challenges that organizations are facing. >>Yeah. When, when, when we started Aerospike, right when the company started, it started with the premise that data is gonna grow, number one, exponentially. Two, when applications open up to the internet, there's gonna be a flood of users and demands on those applications. And that was true primarily when we started the company in the ad tech vertical. So ad tech was the first vertical where there was a lot of data both on the supply side and the demand side from an inventory of ads that were available. And on the other hand, they had like microseconds or milliseconds in which they could make a decision on which ad to put in front of you and I so that we would click or engage with that particular ad. But over the last three to five years, what we've seen is as digitization has actually permeated every industry out there, the need to harness data in real time is pretty much present in every industry. >>Whether that's retail, whether that's financial services, telecommunications, e-commerce, gaming and entertainment. Every industry has a desire. One, the innovative companies, the small companies rather, are innovating at a pace and standing up new businesses to compete with the larger companies in each of these verticals. And the larger companies don't wanna be left behind. So they're standing up their own competing services or getting into new lines of business that really harness and are driven by real time data. So this compelling pressures, one, the customer exp you know, customer experience is paramount and we as customers expect answers in, you know, an instant in real time. And on the other hand, the way they make decisions is based on a large data set because you know, larger data sets actually propel better decisions. So there's competing pressures here, which essentially drive the need. One from a business perspective, two from a customer perspective to harness all of this data in real time. So that's what's driving an inces need to actually make decisions in real or near real time. >>You know, I think one of the things that's been in short supply over the last couple of years is patients we do expect as consumers, whether we're in our business lives, our personal lives that we're going to be getting, be given information and data that's relevant, it's personal to help us make those real time decisions. So having access to real time data is really business critical for organizations across any industries. Talk about some of the main capabilities that modern data applications and data platforms need to have. What are some of the key capabilities of a modern data platform that need to be delivered to meet demanding customer expectations? >>So, you know, going back to your initial question Lisa, around why is data really a high value but underutilized or underleveraged asset? One of the reasons we see is a lot of the data platforms that, you know, some of these applications were built on have been then around for a decade plus and they were never built for the needs of today, which is really driving a lot of data and driving insight in real time from a lot of data. So there are four major capabilities that we see that are essential ingredients of any modern data platform. One is really the ability to, you know, operate at unlimited scale. So what we mean by that is really the ability to scale from gigabytes to even petabytes without any degradation in performance or latency or throughput. The second is really, you know, predictable performance. So can you actually deliver predictable performance as your data size grows or your throughput grows or your concurrent user on that application of service grows? >>It's really easy to build an application that operates at low scale or low throughput or low concurrency, but performance usually starts degrading as you start scaling one of these attributes. The third thing is the ability to operate and always on globally resilient application. And that requires a, a really robust data platform that can be up on a five, nine basis globally, can support global distribution because a lot of these applications have global users. And the last point is, goes back to my first answer, which is, can you operate all of this at a cost point? Which is not prohibitive, but it makes sense from a TCO perspective. Cuz a lot of times what we see is people make choices of data platforms and as ironically their service or applications become more successful and more users join their journey, the revenue starts going up, the user base starts going up, but the cost basis starts crossing over the revenue and they're losing money on the service, ironically, as the service becomes more popular. So really unlimited scale, predictable performance always on, on a globally resilient basis and low tco. These are the four essential capabilities of any modern data platform. >>So then talk to me with those as the four main core functionalities of a modern data platform. How does aerospace deliver that? >>So we were built, as I said, from the from day one to operate at unlimited scale and deliver predictable performance. And then over the years as we work with customers, we build this incredible high availability capability which helps us deliver the always on, you know, operations. So we have customers who are, who have been on the platform 10 years with no downtime for example, right? So we are talking about an amazing continuum of high availability that we provide for customers who operate these, you know, globally resilient services. The key to our innovation here is what we call the hybrid memory architecture. So, you know, going a little bit technically deep here, essentially what we built out in our architecture is the ability on each node or each server to treat a bank of SSDs or solid state devices as essentially extended memory. So you're getting memory performance, but you're accessing these SSDs, you're not paying memory prices, but you're getting memory performance as a result of that. >>You can attach a lot more data to each node or each server in your distributed cluster. And when you kind of scale that across basically a distributed cluster you can do with aerospike, the same things at 60 to 80% lower server count and as a result 60 to 80% lower TCO compared to some of the other options that are available in the market. Then basically, as I said, that's the key kind of starting point to the innovation. We layer around capabilities like, you know, replication change, data notification, you know, synchronous and asynchronous replication. The ability to actually stretch a single cluster across multiple regions. So for example, if you're operating a global service, you can have a single aerospace cluster with one node in San Francisco, one northern New York, another one in London. And this would be basically seamlessly operating. So that, you know, this is strongly consistent. >>Very few no SQL data platforms are strongly consistent or if they are strongly consistent, they will actually suffer performance degradation. And what strongly consistent means is, you know, all your data is always available, it's guaranteed to be available, there is no data lost anytime. So in this configuration that I talked about, if the node in London goes down, your application still continues to operate, right? Your users see no kind of downtime and you know, when London comes up, it rejoins the cluster and everything is back to kind of the way it was before, you know, London left the cluster so to speak. So the op, the ability to do this globally resilient, highly available kind of model is really, really powerful. A lot of our customers actually use that kind of a scenario and we offer other deployment scenarios from a higher availability perspective. So everything starts with HMA or hybrid memory architecture and then we start building out a lot of these other capabilities around the platform. >>And then over the years, what our customers have guided us to do is as they're putting together a modern kind of data infrastructure, we don't live in a silo. So aerospace gets deployed with other technologies like streaming technologies or analytics technologies. So we built connectors into Kafka, pulsar, so that as you're ingesting data from a variety of data sources, you can ingest them at very high ingest speeds and store them persistently into Aerospike. Once the data is in Aerospike, you can actually run spark jobs across that data in a, in a multithreaded parallel fashion to get really insight from that data at really high, high throughput and high speed, >>High throughput, high speed, incredibly important, especially as today's landscape is increasingly distributed. Data centers, multiple public clouds, edge IOT devices, the workforce embracing more and more hybrid these days. How are you ex helping customers to extract more value from data while also lowering costs? Go into some customer examples cause I know you have some great ones. >>Yeah, you know, I think we have, we have built an amazing set of customers and customers actually use us for some really mission critical applications. So, you know, before I get into specific customer examples, let me talk to you about some of kind of the use cases which we see out there. We see a lot of aerospace being used in fraud detection. We see us being used in recommendations and since we use get used in customer data profiles or customer profiles, customer 360 stores, you know, multiplayer gaming and entertainment, these are kind of the repeated use case digital payments. We power most of the digital payment systems across the globe. Specific example from a, from a specific example perspective, the first one I would love to talk about is PayPal. So if you use PayPal today, then you know when you actually paying somebody your transaction is, you know, being sent through aero spike to really decide whether this is a fraudulent transaction or not. >>And when you do that, you know, you and I as a customer not gonna wait around for 10 seconds for PayPal to say yay or me, we expect, you know, the decision to be made in an instant. So we are powering that fraud detection engine at PayPal for every transaction that goes through PayPal before us, you know, PayPal was missing out on about 2% of their SLAs, which was essentially millions of dollars, which they were losing because, you know, they were letting transactions go through and taking the risk that it, it's not a fraudulent transaction with the aerospace. They can now actually get a much better sla and the data set on which they compute the fraud score has gone up by, you know, several factors. So by 30 x if you will. So not only has the data size that is powering the fraud engine actually grown up 30 x with Aerospike. Yeah. But they're actually making decisions in an instant for, you know, 99.95% of their transactions. So that's, >>And that's what we expect as consumers, right? We want to know that there's fraud detection on the swipe regardless of who we're interacting with. >>Yes. And so that's a, that's a really powerful use case and you know, it's, it's a great customer, great customer success story. The other one I would talk about is really Wayfair, right? From retail and you know, from e-commerce. So everybody knows Wayfair global leader in really, you know, online home furnishings and they use us to power their recommendations engine and you know, it's basically if you're purchasing this, people who bought this but also bought these five other things, so on and so forth, they have actually seen the card size at checkout go by up to 30% as a result of actually powering their recommendations in G by through Aerospike. And they, they were able to do this by reducing the server count by nine x. So on one ninth of the servers that were there before aerospace, they're now powering their recommendation engine and seeing card size checkout go up by 30%. Really, really powerful in terms of the business outcome and what we are able to, you know, drive at Wayfair >>Hugely powerful as a business outcome. And that's also what the consumer wants. The consumer is expecting these days to have a very personalized, relevant experience that's gonna show me if I bought this, show me something else that's related to that. We have this expectation that needs to be really fueled by technology. >>Exactly. And you know, another great example you asked about, you know, customer stories, Adobe, who doesn't know Adobe, you know, they, they're on a, they're on a mission to deliver the best customer experience that they can and they're talking about, you know, great customer 360 experience at scale and they're modernizing their entire edge compute infrastructure to support this. With Aerospike going to Aerospike, basically what they have seen is their throughput go up by 70%, their cost has been reduced by three x. So essentially doing it at one third of the cost while their annual data growth continues at, you know, about north of 30%. So not only is their data growing, they're able to actually reduce their cost to actually deliver this great customer experience by one third to one third and continue to deliver great customer 360 experience at scale. Really, really powerful example of how you deliver Customer 360 in a world which is dynamic and you know, on a dataset which is constantly growing at north, north of 30% in this case. >>Those are three great examples, PayPal, Wayfair, Adobe talking about, especially with Wayfair when you talk about increasing their cart checkout sizes, but also with Adobe increasing throughput by over 70%. I'm looking at my notes here. While data is growing at 32%, that's something that every organization has to contend with data growth is continuing to scale and scale and scale. >>Yep. I, I'll give you a fun one here. So, you know, you may not have heard about this company, it's called Dream 11 and it's a company based out of India, but it's a very, you know, it's a fun story because it's the world's largest fantasy sports platform and you know, India is a nation which is cricket crazy. So you know, when, when they have their premier league going on, you know, there's millions of users logged onto the dream alone platform building their fantasy lead teams and you know, playing on that particular platform, it has a hundred million users, a hundred million plus users on the platform, 5.5 million concurrent users and they have been growing at 30%. So they are considered a, an amazing success story in, in terms of what they have accomplished and the way they have architected their platform to operate at scale. And all of that is really powered by aerospace where think about that they are able to deliver all of this and support a hundred million users, 5.5 million concurrent users all with you know, 99 plus percent of their transactions completing in less than one millisecond. Just incredible success story. Not a brand that is you know, world renowned but at least you know from a what we see out there, it's an amazing success story of operating at scale. >>Amazing success story, huge business outcomes. Last question for you as we're almost out of time is talk a little bit about Aerospike aws, the partnership GRAVITON two better together. What are you guys doing together there? >>Great partnership. AWS has multiple layers in terms of partnerships. So you know, we engage with AWS at the executive level. They plan out, really roll out of new instances in partnership with us, making sure that, you know, those instance types work well for us. And then we just released support for Aerospike on the graviton platform and we just announced a benchmark of Aerospike running on graviton on aws. And what we see out there is with the benchmark, a 1.6 x improvement in price performance and you know, about 18% increase in throughput while maintaining a 27% reduction in cost, you know, on graviton. So this is an amazing story from a price performance perspective, performance per wat for greater energy efficiencies, which basically a lot of our customers are starting to kind of talk to us about leveraging this to further meet their sustainability target. So great story from Aero Aerospike and aws, not just from a partnership perspective on a technology and an executive level, but also in terms of what joint outcomes we are able to deliver for our customers. >>And it sounds like a great sustainability story. I wish we had more time so we would talk about this, but thank you so much for talking about the main capabilities of a modern data platform, what's needed, why, and how you guys are delivering that. We appreciate your insights and appreciate your time. >>Thank you very much. I mean, if, if folks are at reinvent next week or this week, come on and see us at our booth. We are in the data analytics pavilion. You can find us pretty easily. Would love to talk to you. >>Perfect. We'll send them there. So Ira, thank you so much for joining me on the program today. We appreciate your insights. >>Thank you Lisa. >>I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching The Cubes coverage of AWS Reinvent 2022. Thanks for watching.

(lively music) >> Good afternoon and welcome back to beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, where we're here live from the show floor, all four days of AWS re:Invent. I'm Savannah Peterson, joined with my co-host Dave Vellante. Dave, how you doing? >> Good. Beautiful and chilly Las Vegas. Can't wait to get back to New England where it's warm. >> Balmy, New England this time of year in December. Wow, Dave, that's a bold statement. I am super excited about the conversation that we're going to be having next. And, you know, I'm not even going to tee it up. I just want to bring Dilip on. Dilip, thank you so much for being here. How you doing? >> Savannah, Dave, thank you so much. >> Hey, Dilip. >> Excited to be here. >> It's joy to have you. So, you have been working at Amazon for about 20 years. >> Almost. Almost. >> Yes. >> Feels like 20, 19 1/2. >> Which is very exciting. You've had a lot of roles. I'm going to touch on some of them, but you just came over to AWS from the physical retail side. Talk to me about that. >> Yup, so I've been to Amazon for 19 1/2 years. Done pricing, supply chain. I was Jeff Bezos technical advisor for a couple years. >> Casual name drop. >> Casual name drop. >> Savannah: But a couple people here for that name before. >> Humble brag, hashtag. And then I, for the last several years, I was leading our physical retail initiatives. We just walk out Amazon One, bringing convenience to physical spaces. And then in August, with like as those things were getting a lot of traction and we were selling to third parties, we felt that it would be better suited in AWS. And, but along with that, there was also another trend that's been brewing, which is, you know, companies have loved building on AWS. They love the infrastructure services, but increasingly, they're also asking us to build applications that are higher up in the stack. Solving key, turnkey business problems. Just walk out Amazon One or examples of that, Amazon Connect. We just recently announced supply chain, so now there's a bevy interesting services all coming together, higher up in the stack for customers. So it's an exciting time. >> It was interesting that you're able to, you know, transfer from that retail. I mean, normally, in historically, if you're within an industry, retail, manufacturing, automotive whatever. You were kind as locked in a little bit. >> Dilip: Siloed a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Because they had their own, your own value chain. And I guess, data has changed that maybe, that you can traverse now. >> Yeah, if you think about the things that we did, even when we were in retail, the tenants was less about the industries and more about how can we bring convenience to physical spaces? The fact that you don't like to wait in line is no more like likely, you know, five years from now than it is today. So, it's a very durable tenant, but it's equally applicable whether you're in a grocery store, a convenience store, a stadium, an airport. So it actually transcends any, and like supply chain, think of supply chain. Supply chain isn't, you know, targeted to any one particular industry. It has broad applicability. So these things are very, you know, horizontally applicable. >> Anything that makes my life easier, I'm down. >> Savannah: We're all here for the easy button. We've been talking about it a bit this week. I'm in. And the retail store, I mean, I'm in San Francisco. I've had the experience of going through. Very interesting and seamless journey, honestly. It's very exciting. So tell us a little bit more about the applications group at AWS. >> Yup. So as I said, you know, we are, the applications group is a combination of several services. You know, we have communication developer services, which is the ability to add simple email service or video and embed video, voice chat using a chime SDK. In a higher up in the stack, we are taking care of things that IT administrators have to deal with where you can provision an entire desktop with the workspaces or provide a femoral access to it. And then as you go up even higher up in the stack, you have productivity applications like AWS Wicker, which we just did GA, you know, last week in AWS Clean Rooms which we announced as a service in preview. And then you have, you know, Connect, which is our cloud contact center, AWS supply chain. Just walk out Amazon One, it just feels like we're getting started. >> Just a couple things going on. >> So, clean rooms. Part of the governance play, part of data sharing. Can you explain, you know, we were talking offline, but I remember back in the disk drive days. We were in a clean room, they'd show you the clean room, you couldn't go near it unless you had a hazmat suit on. So now you're applying that to data. Explain that concept. >> Yeah, so the companies across, you know, financial services or healthcare, advertising, they all want to be able to combine and pull together data`sets with their partners in order to get these collaborative insights. The problem is either the data's fragmented, it's siloed or you have, you know, data governance issues that's preventing them from sharing. And the key requirement is that they want to be able to share this data without exposing any of the underlying data. Clean rooms are always emerged as a solution to that, but the problem with that is that they're hard to maintain. They're expensive. You have to write complex privacy queries. And if you make a mistake, you risk exposing the same data that you've been, you know, studiously trying to protect. >> Trying to protect. >> You know, take advertising as an industry, as an example. You know, advertisers care about, is my ad effective? But it turns out that if you're an advertiser and let's say you're a Nike or some other advertiser and your pop, you know, you place an ad on the website. Well, you want to stop showing the ad to people who have already purchased the product. However, people who purchased the product,- >> Savannah: It happens all the time. >> that purchasing data is not accessible to them easily. But if you could combine those insights, you know, the publishers benefit, advertisers benefits. So AWS Clean Rooms is that service that allows you very easily to be able to collaborate with a group of folks and then be able to gain these collaborative insights. >> And the consumers benefit. I mean, how many times you bought, you search it. >> It happens all the time. >> They know. And like, I just bought that guys, you know? >> Yeah, no, exactly. >> Four weeks. >> And I'm like, you don't need to serve me that, you know? And we understand the marketing backend. And it's just a waste of money and energy and resources. I mean, we're talking about sustainability as well. I don't think supply chain has ever had a hotter moment than it's had the last two and a half years. Tell me more about the announcement. >> Yup, so super excited about this. As you know, as you said, supply chains have always been very critical and very core for companies. The pandemic exacerbated it. So, ours way of sort of thinking about supply chains is to say that, you know, companies have taken, over the years many, like dozens, like millions and millions of dollars of investment in building their own supply chains. But the problem with supply chains is that the reason that they're not as functional as they could be is because of the lack of visibility. Because they're strung together very many disparate systems, that lack of visibility affects agility. And so, our approach in it was to say that, well, if we could have folks use their existing supply chain what can we do to improve the investment on the ROI of what they're getting? By creating a layer on top of it, that provides them that insights, connects all of these disparate data and then provides them insights to say, well, you know, here's where you overstock, here's where you under stock. You know, this is the, you know, the carbon emission impact of being able to transfer something. So like rather without requiring people to re-platform, what's the way that we can add value in it? And then also build upon Amazon's, you know, years of supply chain experience, to be able to build these predictive analytics for customers. >> So, that's a good, I like that you started with the why. >> Yes. >> Right now, what is it? It's an abstraction layer and then you're connecting into different data points. >> Yes, that's correct. >> Injecting ML. >> Feel like you can pick in, like if you think about supply chain, you can have warehouse management systems, order management systems. It could be in disparate things. We use ML to be able to bring all of this disparate data in and create our unified data lake. Once you have that unified data lake, you can then run an insights layer on top of it to be able to say, so that as the data changes, supply chain is not a static thing. Data's constantly changing. As the data's changing, the data lake now reflects the most up-to-date information. You can have alerts and insights set up on it to say that, what are the kinds of things that you're interested in? And then more importantly, supply chain and agility is about communication. In order to be able to make certain things happen, you need to be able to communicate, you need to make sure that everyone's on the same page. And we allow for a lot of the communication and collaboration tools to be built within this platform so that you're not necessarily leaving to go and toggle from one place to the other to solve your problems. >> And in the pie chart of how people spend their time, they're spending a lot less time communicating and being proactive. >> That's correct. >> And getting ahead of the curve. They're spending more time trying to figure out actually what's going on. >> Yes. >> And that's the problem that you're going to solve. >> Well, and it ensures that the customer at the other end of that supply chain experience is going to have their expectations managed in terms of when their good might get there or whatever's going to happen. >> Exactly. >> I feel like that expectation management has been such a big part of it. Okay, I just have to ask because I'm very curious. What was it like advising Jeff? >> Quite possibly the best job that I've ever had. You know, he's a fascinating individual. >> Did he pay you to say that? >> Nope. But I would've, like, I would've done it for like, it's remarkable seeing how he thinks and his approach to problem solving. It is, you know, you could be really tactical and go very deep. You could be extremely strategic. And to be able to sort of move effortlessly between those two is a unique skill. I learned a lot. >> Yeah, absolutely. So what made you want to evolve your career at Amazon after that? 'Cause I see on your LinkedIn, you say, it was the best job you ever had. With curiosity? >> Yeah, so one of the things, so the role is designed for you to be able to transition to something new. >> Savannah: Oh, cool. >> So after I finished that role, we were just getting into our foray with physical stores. And the idea between physical stores is that, you and I as consumers, we all have a lot of choices for physical stores. You know, there's a lot of options, there's a lot of formats. And so the last thing we wanted to do is come up with another me too offering. So, our approach was that what can we do to improve convenience in physical stores? That's what resulted in just walk out to Amazon Go. That's what resulted in Amazon One, which is another in a fast, convenient, contactless way to pay using the power of your palm. And now, what started in Amazon retail is now expanded to several third parties in, you know, stadiums, convention centers, airports. >> Airport, I just had, was in the Houston airport and got to do a humanless checkout. >> Dilip: Exactly. >> And actually in Honolulu a couple weeks ago as well too. Yeah, so we're going to see more and more of this. >> Yes. >> So what Amazon, I think has over a million employees. A lot of those are warehouse employees. But what advice would you give to somebody who's somewhere inside of Amazon, maybe they're on AWS, maybe they're Amazon. What advice would you give somebody inside that's maybe, you know, hey, I've been at this job for five, six years, three, four years, whatever it is. I want to do something else. And there's so much opportunity inside Amazon, right? What would you advise them? >> My single advice, which is actually transferable and I use it for myself is choose something that makes you a little uncomfortable. >> Dave: Get out of your comfort zone. >> It's like, you got to do that. It's like, it's not the easiest thing to hear, but it's also the most satisfying. Because almost every single time that I've done it for myself, it's resulted in like, you don't really know what the answer is. You don't really know exactly where you're going to end up, but the process and the journey through it, if you experience a little bit of discomfort constantly, it makes you non complacent. It makes you sort of not take the job, sort of in a stride. You have to be on it to do it. So that's the advice that I would give anyone. >> Yeah, that's good. So something that's maybe adjacent and maybe not completely foreign to you, but also something that, you know, you got to go dig a little bit and learn. >> You're planning a career change over here, Dave? >> No, I know a lot of people in Amazon are like, hey, I'm trying to figure out what I want to do next. I mean, I love it here. I live by the LPS, you know, but, and there's so much to choose from. >> It is, you know, when I joined in 2003, there were so many things that we were sort of doing today. None of those existed. It's a fascinating company. And the evolution, you could be in 20 different places and the breadth of the kinds of things that, you know, the Amazon experience provides is timeless. It's fascinating. >> And, you know, you look at a company like Amazon, and, you know, it's so amazing. You look at this ecosystem. I've been around- >> Even a show floor. >> I've been around a lot of time. And the show floor says it all. But I've seen a lot of, you know, waves. And each subsequent wave, you know, we always talk about how many companies were in the Fortune 1000 and aren't anymore. And, but the leaders, you know, survive and they thrive. And I think it's fascinating to try to better understand the culture that enables that. You know, you look at a company like Microsoft that was irrelevant and then came back. You know, even IBM was on death store for a while and they come back and so they. And so, but Amazon just feels, you know, at the moment you feel like, "Oh wow, nothing can stop this machine." 'Cause everybody's trying to disrupt Amazon and then, you know, only the paranoid survive, all that stuff. But it's not like, past is not prologue, all right? So that's why I asked these questions. And you just said that a lot of the services today that although the ideas didn't even exist, I mean, walkout. I mean, that's just amazing. >> I think one of the things that Amazon does really well culturally is that they create the single threaded leadership. They give people focus. If you have to get something done, you have to give people focus. You can't distract them with like seven different things and then say that, oh, by the way, your eighth job is to innovate. It just doesn't work that way. It's like it's hard. Like it can be- >> And where were the energy come from that? >> Exactly. And so giving people that single threaded focus is super important. >> Frank Slootman, the CEO of Snowflake, has a great quote. He wrote on his book. He said, "If you got 14 priorities, you got none." And he asks,- >> Well said. >> he challenges people. If you had to give up everything and do only one thing for the next 365 days, what would that be? It's a really hard question to answer. >> I feel like as we're around New Year's resolution times. I mean when we thinking about that, maybe we can all share our one thing. So, Dilip, you've been with the the applications team for five months. What's coming up next? >> Well, as I said, you know, it feels like it's still day one for applications. If you think about the things, the news that we introduced and the several services that we introduced, it has applicability across a variety of horizontal industries. But then we're also feeling that there's considerable vertical applications that can be built for specific things. Like, it could be in advertising, it could be in financial services, it could be in manufacturing. The opportunities are endless. I think the notion of people wanting applications higher up in the stack and a little more turnkey solutions is also, it's not new for us, but it's also new and creative too. You know, AWS has traditionally been doing. >> So again, this relates to what we were sort of talking about before. And maybe, this came from Jazzy or maybe it came from Bezos. But you hear a lot, it's okay to be misunderstood or if we were misunderstood for a long time. So when people hear up the stack, they think, when you think about apps, you know, in the last 10 years it was taking on-prem and bringing it into the cloud. Okay, you saw that with CREM, email, CRM, service management, you know, data warehouses, et cetera. Amazon is thinking about this in a different way. It's like you're looking at the world saying, okay, how can we improve whatever? Workflows, people's lives, doing something that's not been done before? And that seems to be the kind of applications that you guys are thinking about building. >> Yeah. >> And that's unique. It's not just, okay, we're going to take something on-prem put it in the cloud. Been there, done that. That S-curve is sort of flattening now. But there's a new S-curve which is completely new workflows and innovations and processes that we really haven't thought about yet. Or you're thinking about, I presume. >> Yeah. Having said that, I'd also like to sort of remind folks that when you consider the, you know, the entire spend, the portion of workloads that are running in the cloud is a teeny tiny fraction. It's like less than 5%, like 4% or something like that. So it's a very, there's still plenty of things that can sort of move to the cloud. But you're right that there is another trend of where in the stack and the types of applications that you can provide as well. >> Yeah, new innovation that haven't well thought of yet. >> So, Dilip, we have a new tradition here on theCUBE at re:Invent. Where we're looking for your 30 minute Instagram reel, your hot take, biggest key theme, either for you, your team, or just general vibe from the show. >> General vibe from the show. Well, 19 1/2 years at Amazon, this is actually my first re:Invent, believe it or not. This is my, as a AWS employee now, as re:Invent with like launching services. So that's the first. I've been to re:Invent before, but as an attendee rather than as a person who's, you know, a contributing number of the workforce. >> Working actually? >> If you will. >> Actually doing your job. >> And so I'm just amazed at the energy and the breadth. And the, you know, from the partners to the customers to the diversity of people who are coming here from everywhere. I had meetings from people in New Zealand. Like, you know, the UK, like customers are coming at us from like very many different places. And it's fascinating for me to see. It's new for me as well given, you know, some of my past experience. But this is a, it's been a blast. >> People are pumped. >> People are pumped. >> They can't believe the booth traffic. Not only that quality. >> Right. All of our guests have talked about that. >> Like, yeah, you know, we're going to throw half of these leads away, but they're saying no, I'm having like really substantive conversations with business people. This is, I think, my 10th re:Invent. And the first one was mostly developers. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And, you know, so. Now it's a lot more business people, a lot of developers too. >> Yeah. >> It's just. >> The community really makes it. Dilip, thank you so much for joining us today on theCube. >> Thank you for having me. >> You're fantastic. I could ask you a million questions. Be sure and tell Jeff that we said hi. >> Will do. >> Savannah: Next time you guys are hanging out. And thank all of you. >> You want to go into space? >> Yeah. Yes, yes, absolutely. I'm perhaps the most space obsessed on the show. And with that, we will continue our out of this world coverage shortly from fabulous Las Vegas where we are at AWS re:Invent. It is day four with Dave Vellante. I'm Savannah Peterson and you're watching theCUBE, the leader in high tech coverage. (lively music)

(corporate electronic xylophone jingle intro) >> Good afternoon and welcome back to our very last segment of Tuesday's live broadcast here on theCUBE from AWS re:Invent in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. My name is Savannah Peterson and I am joined here by the brilliant Paul Gillin. Paul, end of our first day. You holding up, are you still feeling overwhelmed with fire hose... >> Savannah, yet my feet are killing me. (savannah laughs) >> Yeah, we've done so much walking in these chairs. >> 14,000 steps already today. It's not even dinner time. >> Hey, well, at least you've earned your dinner, Paul. I love that. I love that. I'm very excited about our next guests. We have Krishna and Sowmya joining us from Tata Consultancy Services. Now, I was impressed when I was doing my background research on you all. The Tata Group has locations in 150 different spots, 46 different countries. You have over 600,000 employees on the team. We are talking about absolutely massive scale here but, today we're going to be focused specifically on the Tata Consultancy Services. Sowmya, can you tell me what you all do? What is that team specifically in charge of? >> Yeah, TCS, first of all, thank you very much for inviting us. >> Savannah: Our pleasure. >> Maybe the last session but, we'll make it very lively. >> Savannah: It's going to be the best session. That's the best part of the day. >> Yes, that's the attitude. From a company standpoint, we are a 50 plus year old company. Part of the Tata group. We focus on IT services. We are categorized as industry verticals and we have horizontal services where AWS is one of the horizontal services that we have. And, when I talk about TCS, we focus a lot more on growth and transformation of our customers. That is one of the key objectives of the current company's growth, I would say. So, that is TCS in a nutshell. >> Extraordinarily important topic to be focused on right now. Growth, transformation, pretty much the core topics of the show. I know you're on the hospitality and transportation side of the business, which is very exciting. And, we're going to dig into that a little bit more. Krishna, you're overseeing the world. Tell us a little bit more about your role within the whole ecosystem. >> Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. Great meeting all of you. It's been awesome experience here. re:Invent is coming back, catching up, right? 50,000 people compared to 25,000 last year. So, great to see and meet all of you. Coming to my role, I am responsible for AWS Business Unit within TCS. That means I am responsible for anything that happens on cloud, on AWS. It's a Full Stack unit. I have the global responsibility. That's whether it's a applications, data, infrastructure, transformation that happens, as well as OT at the edge. So, that's my responsibility. >> Savannah: Well, I love talking about the edge. One of my favorite. >> Transformation is a theme of what you do. We heard that the pandemic accelerated digital transformation initiatives at many companies. How did you see the pandemic affecting your business, affecting the customers you were working with? >> Pandemic definitely kind of accelerated a lot of cloud adoption, right? A lot of companies initially focused on resiliency, coming back to handling the pandemic, the situation. But, it also drove a lot of innovation in the business models. They had to think on their feet, re-look at their business models, change the channels and that continued. Pandemic is thankfully gone by but, the transformation actually continued. The way that we actually see on cloud, especially transformation, it has evolved. What we call as Cloud 2.0. Now, cloud is actually more focused on future-proofing the businesses. And, the initial days it was more about future-proofing the technology and technology architecture. But, it has evolved to future-proofing businesses. That means implementing new business models, bringing in agility, measuring the business value. And, that's where we see a significant traction. >> So, it's not about technology then. It's not about infrastructure. >> It is about technology but, really delivering business value. It's about, how can I improve the customer experience? >> Well, can you give us a couple of examples of companies you work with that embody this idea? >> I can imagine in the travel and hospitality zone. Probably few communities more sensitive than when someone's having a disruption or frustration within that process. And, perhaps few time periods less chaotic than the last few years. Tell us about your experience and what you've seen. >> Absolutely. To answer your question, first of all, coming out of pandemic, right? Many customers in the travel and hospitality industry where legacy, did not modernize for the last decade or so because, there have been many ups and downs in the industry. So, during pandemic, post-pandemic, one of the the way they wanted to rebound was, can we do the transformation? First of all, cloud as a technology adoption, but, beyond that, how do customers derive value, business value? That is one of the key aspects of the old transformation. And, if you take, I can give a couple of examples. Avis Car Rental, they had monolith mainframe applications and, that was there for almost couple of decades, right? But, over a period of time, they were not able to have the availability of those applications. There were many outages. As a result, businesses could not do the bookings. Like OTAs, customers could not do the bookings, the application was not available most of the time. And, it's all legacy, right? So, that is where we all came in, TCS. How do we first of all, simplify the complexity of the landscape? That is one. Then, second is, modernize the legacy application. That's the second thing. Third is, how do you scale it? Because, everyone wants to go faster, right? How do you scale it? That is where we partnered with AWS as well, to bring in some specific solutions. One example for Avis', their Rent Shop. Because, of the lack of availability, because, it's monolith application and legacy application. It was not available. So, as a result, we partnered and we brought in our contextual knowledge of the car rental industry to kind of transform, move it to cloud. And, today, as a result of it, Avis was able to save millions of dollars from a MIB standpoint. Second, in terms of availability, that was 99.9% availability. As a result, they had a pick in their business revenue as well. So, this is one of the ways that its helped. The second example I want to quote is, United Airlines. Here again, we've been present for a long time. We have a deep industry knowledge of the airline industry. So, we brought in our airline contextual knowledge and the United landscape to bring in a TCS's solution that we developed. It's called the Aviana. It's an intelligent operations solution for the airline industry, which we have developed. It's on AWS as well, that is being implemented in United. As a result, the ground staff, they have to take decisions on the moment when there is a irregular operation. That could be flight delays, as a result, customers connections will be lost. >> Savannah: Baggage. >> Baggage, right? Baggage delays. >> So many variables. The complexity... >> exactly >> in this matrix is wild. >> So, leveraging the Aviana solution, the ground staff were able to take decisions based on exceptions. They were able to take decisions quickly so that, they improved the customer experience. I think that was one of the key successes for United in the recent times. So, those two are the examples that I would call where customers have the right business value. So, cloud was not just for technology. They all are deriving a lot of business value as well. I would say. >> How important do you think it is for companies facing these unique challenges and scaling to work with partners like TCS? And, I'm sure you would say very important, but, tell me a little bit more why it's so important and those core benefits that they're going to get. Krishna, let's start off with you. Yeah, let me take again the AWS cloud transformation, right? TCS has formed AWS Business Unit two years back. So, we are a covid baby in a way. We have been working with the AWS for more than a decade but, we formed a dedicated Full-Stack Unit to drive cloud transformation on AWS. In these last two years, we've grown three X and customers we have added 400 new customers we have added. >> Nicely done. Just want to see you there. That's huge. Especially during these times. Congratulations. >> So, it's basically about the scale that we bring in. What we have done as a differentiation is, if you look at the entire cloud journey, right from taking a decision which cloud is, right, all the way to the cloud migration modernization and running operations. So, we have built complete platform. AML based platforms, where we have taken our delivery wisdom and codified it onto these platforms. So, we support around thousand plus customers on AWS in varying capacity. All of that knowledge is codified and, that is what we bring to the table, to the customers. And, so, customers obviously appreciate that value that best practices that are coming. And, coupled with that, the industry knowledge that we have on banking, life sciences, healthcare, automotive. So, it's partly the IT, it is the industry transformation as well. Because, we are working on connected cars, for example, in automotive. We are working on accelerated drug development platforms. We're working on complete banks as a platform that we have. TCS has built on AWS. So, 400 customers are there. It's the complete banking and insurance platform. So, this is the combination of the technical expertize that is digitized using platforms, as well as the industry knowledge, is the reason why customers work with us on the cloud transformation. >> So, we're seeing you talk about the vertical industry knowledge. AWS also has its own vertical industry plays. How do you, I guess, coordinate with them or, do you compete with them or, do you stay out of each other's way? >> No, we actually collaborate aggressively. >> Savannah: I like that (laughs) >> Right, so, it's not.. >> Savannah: With vigor. >> With vigor. TCS supports approximately 14 verticals. With AWS, we went with the focused industry play. We said we look at financial services, travel, transportation, hospitality, healthcare, life sciences and automotive, to start with. And, we have Go Big plans with AWS. very focused. The collaboration is actually at the industry solutions because, AWS is a great platform, ever evolving, keeps you on on your toes to really adapt it. But, that is always going on, the collaboration. But, the industry, I'm actually glad AWS last year took a pivot on focusing on industries. Now, we talk the same language when we go in front of a board or a CEO or COO. Present it. We are talking about the future of the industry not just the future of the technology. So, it's a win-win. >> You are also developing products on top of AWS that are not industry verticals, that build on the platform. What kinds of products are those? >> For cloud transformation, for example, consulting. We have a product called Cloud Counsell. We have a decision engine on the data side. We have something called Cloud Foundation, Mason. CloudMason. It's just the foundation, right? And, entire migration and modernization factory. And, the last one on cloud operations is actually Cloud Exponence. So, these are time tested. You have Fortune 500 customers using this regularly actively leveraging that. And, these are all AWS in a well architecture framework certified. So, they work well and they're designed to work on cloud, not only in the native environment, but, also legacy environment. Because, enterprises is not just only native, cloud-native. There is a lot of legacy. Sowmya spoke about the mainframe model... >> So much legacy, we were talking about it. >> So, you have to have a combination of solutions. So, the platforms that we're building, the products we're building, work in both the environments. >> Yeah, and that agility and ability to help customers navigate that prioritization. I mean, there's so many options. We talk about how many new companies there are every year. New solutions. Our adoption of technology is accelerating. As, McKinsey said, we went through 10 years of technological evolution and workplace evolution over the first six months of the pandemic. So, really everything's moving at unprecedented velocity unlike ever before. We have a new game here on theCUBE specifically for this show. And, we are challenging our guests, prompting our guests, to give us a 30 second sizzly sound bite with your hot take on the most important themes of this year's show. Think of it as a thought leadership moment. Opportunity to plug if you really want it. Krishna, you've just given me the nod. I'm going to start with you first and then we'll then we'll pass it along, yeah >> Sure. I think on thought leadership, the way that on cloud, business value is the focus, not the technology. Technology is important, but business value is the focus. And, the way that I see it evolving is with quantum computing coming out more and more, becoming relevant, and Edge is actually becoming quite active as well. All this while on cloud, we focused on business value at the centralized place at the corporate. But, I think the real value of cloud is when you deliver the results, business results, where the customers consume it, that is at the edge. I think that's basically the combination of centralized and the edge is where the real value of cloud is, right. And, I also loud, I know you said 30 seconds but, give me 30 more seconds. >> I like your answer right now. So, I'm going to give you a little more time. Yeah, thank you. >> You've earned more time. (laughs) >> So, I like the way Adam said in the keynote, if you look at it broadly, I categorizes two things. There are a lot of offerings that are becoming comprehensive, like AWS Connect, bringing in workforce management into it, making it a complete end to end product. Similarly, Security Lake, all bringing in the entire security and compliance under one, similarly data. So, there are lot of things that he announced where it is an end to end comprehensiveness of the thing. But, what I love about is, what Amazon is known for, supply chain. So, they rolled out AWS Supply Chain offering. Walk Out technology. So, the Amazon proposition is actually being brought to AWS as a core proposition. I think that's very futuristic and I think we can see more and more customers, enterprise customers, adopting AWS more to drive transformation >> Badly needed right now. Supply chain resiliency. >> Supply chain really having its moment the last two years. File under two words. No one knew, many of us did who worked in it before this. And, here we are, soon as we lost our toilet paper, everyone's freaked out. I love that you talked about business value and also that the end customer is on the edge and, everyone kind of forgets we are essentially the edge device. This is the edge device, it's all around us. And, all the technology that we're all using that you're even talking about is built right inside here from my airlines app to my car rentals to all of it. All right Sowmya, give us your 30 second hot take, roughly. >> Taking the cue from Krishna, right? Today, things are available on AWS Marketplace. So, tomorrow, somebody wants to start an airline, they just have to come and plug and play the apps that are available in the marketplace. Especially your supply chain. The Amazon is known for that. And, a small and medium business they want to start something, right, a .com. It's very easy. So, that's something that we are all looking for. The future is going to be very, very bright and great for the businesses, is what I would say because, most of it could be plug and play with all the solutions. >> Paul: It's already been built. >> On the cloud, so, we are looking forward to it. The second thing I would talk about is, we have to take it to scale. How more and more people can leverage AWS, right? The talent is very important and, that is where partners like us focus on re-scaling our talent. We have 600,000 people, right? We are not just... >> 600,000 people! That's basically as many people live in the San Francisco Bay area for contexts for our listeners. It's how many people work for Walmart? >> It's 1.2 million in Walmart? >> Is it really? >> It is, yes, yes. That's work for Walmart, sidebar. >> So from that standpoint, as the company, we are focusing on re-skilling, up-skilling our talent in order to work AWS cloud and so on, so, that they can go and support our customers. That is something that is very important and that's going to be the future as well. Bring it to scale, go faster. >> I love that you just touched on the fact that you essentially have to practice what you preach because, you've got to think about those 600,000 people in a 100 locations across 40 plus different countries. I love it. Sowmya, I'm going to close on that note. The future is bright, just like your fabulous blazer. >> Thank you so much. Krishna, Sowmya, thank you so much for being here with us. We can't wait to see what happens next, who you help next, and how Tata continues to transform. Thank all of you for tuning in today. A full jam packed day of coverage live here from Las Vegas, Nevada. We are at AWS re:Invent with Paul Gillin. I'm Savannah Peterson. We're theCUBE, the leader in High-Tech Coverage. (corporate electronic xylophone jingle outro)

>> And it'll be the fastest 15 minutes of your day from there. >> In three- >> We go Lisa. >> Wait. >> Yes >> Wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry I didn't pin the right speed. >> Yap, no, no rush. >> There we go. >> The beauty of not being live. >> I think, in the background. >> Fantastic, you all ready to go there, Lisa? >> Yeah. >> We are speeding around the horn and we are coming to you in five, four, three, two. >> Hey everyone, welcome to theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Invent 2022. Lisa Martin here with you with Subbu Iyer one of our alumni who's now the CEO of Aerospike. Subbu, great to have you on the program. Thank you for joining us. >> Great as always to be on theCUBE Lisa, good to meet you. >> So, you know, every company these days has got to be a data company, whether it's a retailer, a manufacturer, a grocer, a automotive company. But for a lot of companies, data is underutilized yet a huge asset that is value added. Why do you think companies are struggling so much to make data a value added asset? >> Well, you know, we see this across the board. When I talk to customers and prospects there is a desire from the business and from IT actually to leverage data to really fuel newer applications, newer services newer business lines if you will, for companies. I think the struggle is one, I think one the, the plethora of data that is created. Surveys say that over the next three years data is going to be you know by 2025 around 175 zettabytes, right? A hundred and zettabytes of data is going to be created. And that's really a growth of north of 30% year over year. But the more important and the interesting thing is the real time component of that data is actually growing at, you know 35% CAGR. And what enterprises desire is decisions that are made in real time or near real time. And a lot of the challenges that do exist today is that either the infrastructure that enterprises have in place was never built to actually manipulate data in real time. The second is really the ability to actually put something in place which can handle spikes yet be cost efficient to fuel. So you can build for really peak loads, but then it's very expensive to operate that particular service at normal loads. So how do you build something which actually works for you for both users, so to speak. And the last point that we see out there is even if you're able to, you know bring all that data you don't have the processing capability to run through that data. So as a result, most enterprises struggle with one capturing the data, making decisions from it in real time and really operating it at the cost point that they need to operate it at. >> You know, you bring up a great point with respect to real time data access. And I think one of the things that we've learned the last couple of years is that access to real time data it's not a nice to have anymore. It's business critical for organizations in any industry. Talk about that as one of the challenges that organizations are facing. >> Yeah, when we started Aerospike, right? When the company started, it started with the premise that data is going to grow, number one exponentially. Two, when applications open up to the internet there's going to be a flood of users and demands on those applications. And that was true primarily when we started the company in the ad tech vertical. So ad tech was the first vertical where there was a lot of data both on the supply set and the demand side from an inventory of ads that were available. And on the other hand, they had like microseconds or milliseconds in which they could make a decision on which ad to put in front of you and I so that we would click or engage with that particular ad. But over the last three to five years what we've seen is as digitization has actually permeated every industry out there the need to harness data in real time is pretty much present in every industry. Whether that's retail, whether that's financial services telecommunications, e-commerce, gaming and entertainment. Every industry has a desire. One, the innovative companies, the small companies rather are innovating at a pace and standing up new businesses to compete with the larger companies in each of these verticals. And the larger companies don't want to be left behind. So they're standing up their own competing services or getting into new lines of business that really harness and are driven by real time data. So this compelling pressures, one, you know customer experience is paramount and we as customers expect answers in you know an instant, in real time. And on the other hand, the way they make decisions is based on a large data set because you know larger data sets actually propel better decisions. So there's competing pressures here which essentially drive the need one from a business perspective, two from a customer perspective to harness all of this data in real time. So that's what's driving an incessant need to actually make decisions in real or near real time. >> You know, I think one of the things that's been in short supply over the last couple of years is patience. We do expect as consumers whether we're in our business lives our personal lives that we're going to be getting be given information and data that's relevant it's personal to help us make those real time decisions. So having access to real time data is really business critical for organizations across any industries. Talk about some of the main capabilities that modern data applications and data platforms need to have. What are some of the key capabilities of a modern data platform that need to be delivered to meet demanding customer expectations? >> So, you know, going back to your initial question Lisa around why is data really a high value but underutilized or under-leveraged asset? One of the reasons we see is a lot of the data platforms that, you know, some of these applications were built on have been then around for a decade plus. And they were never built for the needs of today, which is really driving a lot of data and driving insight in real time from a lot of data. So there are four major capabilities that we see that are essential ingredients of any modern data platform. One is really the ability to, you know, operate at unlimited scale. So what we mean by that is really the ability to scale from gigabytes to even petabytes without any degradation in performance or latency or throughput. The second is really, you know, predictable performance. So can you actually deliver predictable performance as your data size grows or your throughput grows or your concurrent user on that application of service grows? It's really easy to build an application that operates at low scale or low throughput or low concurrency but performance usually starts degrading as you start scaling one of these attributes. The third thing is the ability to operate and always on globally resilient application. And that requires a really robust data platform that can be up on a five nine basis globally, can support global distribution because a lot of these applications have global users. And the last point is, goes back to my first answer which is, can you operate all of this at a cost point which is not prohibitive but it makes sense from a TCO perspective. 'Cause a lot of times what we see is people make choices of data platforms and as ironically their service or applications become more successful and more users join their journey the revenue starts going up, the user base starts going up but the cost basis starts crossing over the revenue and they're losing money on the service, ironically as the service becomes more popular. So really unlimited scale predictable performance always on a globally resilient basis and low TCO. These are the four essential capabilities of any modern data platform. >> So then talk to me with those as the four main core functionalities of a modern data platform, how does Aerospike deliver that? >> So we were built, as I said from day one to operate at unlimited scale and deliver predictable performance. And then over the years as we work with customers we build this incredible high availability capability which helps us deliver the always on, you know, operations. So we have customers who are who have been on the platform 10 years with no downtime for example, right? So we are talking about an amazing continuum of high availability that we provide for customers who operate these, you know globally resilient services. The key to our innovation here is what we call the hybrid memory architecture. So, you know, going a little bit technically deep here essentially what we built out in our architecture is the ability on each node or each server to treat a bank of SSDs or solid-state devices as essentially extended memory. So you're getting memory performance but you're accessing these SSDs. You're not paying memory prices but you're getting memory performance. As a result of that you can attach a lot more data to each node or each server in a distributed cluster. And when you kind of scale that across basically a distributed cluster you can do with Aerospike the same things at 60 to 80% lower server count. And as a result 60 to 80% lower TCO compared to some of the other options that are available in the market. Then basically, as I said that's the key kind of starting point to the innovation. We lay around capabilities like, you know replication, change data notification, you know synchronous and asynchronous replication. The ability to actually stretch a single cluster across multiple regions. So for example, if you're operating a global service you can have a single Aerospike cluster with one node in San Francisco one node in New York, another one in London and this would be basically seamlessly operating. So that, you know, this is strongly consistent, very few no SQL data platforms are strongly consistent or if they are strongly consistent they will actually suffer performance degradation. And what strongly consistent means is, you know all your data is always available it's guaranteed to be available there is no data lost any time. So in this configuration that I talked about if the node in London goes down your application still continues to operate, right? Your users see no kind of downtime and you know, when London comes up it rejoins the cluster and everything is back to kind of the way it was before, you know London left the cluster so to speak. So the ability to do this globally resilient highly available kind of model is really, really powerful. A lot of our customers actually use that kind of a scenario and we offer other deployment scenarios from a higher availability perspective. So everything starts with HMA or Hybrid Memory Architecture and then we start building a lot of these other capabilities around the platform. And then over the years what our customers have guided us to do is as they're putting together a modern kind of data infrastructure, we don't live in the silo. So Aerospike gets deployed with other technologies like streaming technologies or analytics technologies. So we built connectors into Kafka, Pulsar, so that as you're ingesting data from a variety of data sources you can ingest them at very high ingest speeds and store them persistently into Aerospike. Once the data is in Aerospike you can actually run Spark jobs across that data in a multi-threaded parallel fashion to get really insight from that data at really high throughput and high speed. >> High throughput, high speed, incredibly important especially as today's landscape is increasingly distributed. Data centers, multiple public clouds, Edge, IoT devices, the workforce embracing more and more hybrid these days. How are you helping customers to extract more value from data while also lowering costs? Go into some customer examples 'cause I know you have some great ones. >> Yeah, you know, I think, we have built an amazing set of customers and customers actually use us for some really mission critical applications. So, you know, before I get into specific customer examples let me talk to you about some of kind of the use cases which we see out there. We see a lot of Aerospike being used in fraud detection. We see us being used in recommendations engines we get used in customer data profiles, or customer profiles, Customer 360 stores, you know multiplayer gaming and entertainment. These are kind of the repeated use case, digital payments. We power most of the digital payment systems across the globe. Specific example from a specific example perspective the first one I would love to talk about is PayPal. So if you use PayPal today, then you know when you're actually paying somebody your transaction is, you know being sent through Aerospike to really decide whether this is a fraudulent transaction or not. And when you do that, you know, you and I as a customer are not going to wait around for 10 seconds for PayPal to say yay or nay. We expect, you know, the decision to be made in an instant. So we are powering that fraud detection engine at PayPal. For every transaction that goes through PayPal. Before us, you know, PayPal was missing out on about 2% of their SLAs which was essentially millions of dollars which they were losing because, you know, they were letting transactions go through and taking the risk that it's not a fraudulent transaction. With Aerospike they can now actually get a much better SLA and the data set on which they compute the fraud score has gone up by you know, several factors. So by 30X if you will. So not only has the data size that is powering the fraud engine actually gone up 30X with Aerospike but they're actually making decisions in an instant for, you know, 99.95% of their transactions. So that's- >> And that's what we expect as consumers, right? We want to know that there's fraud detection on the swipe regardless of who we're interacting with. >> Yes, and so that's a really powerful use case and you know, it's a great customer success story. The other one I would talk about is really Wayfair, right, from retail and you know from e-commerce. So everybody knows Wayfair global leader in really in online home furnishings and they use us to power their recommendations engine. And you know it's basically if you're purchasing this, people who bought this also bought these five other things, so on and so forth. They have actually seen their cart size at checkout go up by up to 30%, as a result of actually powering their recommendations engine through Aerospike. And they were able to do this by reducing the server count by 9X. So on one ninth of the servers that were there before Aerospike, they're now powering their recommendations engine and seeing cart size checkout go up by 30%. Really, really powerful in terms of the business outcome and what we are able to, you know, drive at Wayfair. >> Hugely powerful as a business outcome. And that's also what the consumer wants. The consumer is expecting these days to have a very personalized relevant experience that's going to show me if I bought this show me something else that's related to that. We have this expectation that needs to be really fueled by technology. >> Exactly, and you know, another great example you asked about you know, customer stories, Adobe. Who doesn't know Adobe, you know. They're on a mission to deliver the best customer experience that they can. And they're talking about, you know great Customer 360 experience at scale and they're modernizing their entire edge compute infrastructure to support this with Aerospike. Going to Aerospike basically what they have seen is their throughput go up by 70%, their cost has been reduced by 3X. So essentially doing it at one third of the cost while their annual data growth continues at, you know about north of 30%. So not only is their data growing they're able to actually reduce their cost to actually deliver this great customer experience by one third to one third and continue to deliver great Customer 360 experience at scale. Really, really powerful example of how you deliver Customer 360 in a world which is dynamic and you know on a data set which is constantly growing at north of 30% in this case. >> Those are three great examples, PayPal, Wayfair, Adobe, talking about, especially with Wayfair when you talk about increasing their cart checkout sizes but also with Adobe increasing throughput by over 70%. I'm looking at my notes here. While data is growing at 32%, that's something that every organization has to contend with data growth is continuing to scale and scale and scale. >> Yap, I'll give you a fun one here. So, you know, you may not have heard about this company it's called Dream11 and it's a company based out of India but it's a very, you know, it's a fun story because it's the world's largest fantasy sports platform. And you know, India is a nation which is cricket crazy. So you know, when they have their premier league going on and there's millions of users logged onto the Dream11 platform building their fantasy league teams and you know, playing on that particular platform, it has a hundred million users a hundred million plus users on the platform, 5.5 million concurrent users and they have been growing at 30%. So they are considered an amazing success story in terms of what they have accomplished and the way they have architected their platform to operate at scale. And all of that is really powered by Aerospike. Think about that they're able to deliver all of this and support a hundred million users 5.5 million concurrent users all with, you know 99 plus percent of their transactions completing in less than one millisecond. Just incredible success story. Not a brand that is, you know, world renowned but at least you know from what we see out there it's an amazing success story of operating at scale. >> Amazing success story, huge business outcomes. Last question for you as we're almost out of time is talk a little bit about Aerospike AWS the partnership Graviton2 better together. What are you guys doing together there? >> Great partnership. AWS has multiple layers in terms of partnerships. So, you know, we engage with AWS at the executive level. They plan out, really roll out of new instances in partnership with us, making sure that, you know those instance types work well for us. And then we just released support for Aerospike on the Graviton platform and we just announced a benchmark of Aerospike running on Graviton on AWS. And what we see out there is with the benchmark a 1.6X improvement in price performance. And you know about 18% increase in throughput while maintaining a 27% reduction in cost, you know, on Graviton. So this is an amazing story from a price performance perspective, performance per watt for greater energy efficiencies, which basically a lot of our customers are starting to kind of talk to us about leveraging this to further meet their sustainability target. So great story from Aerospike and AWS not just from a partnership perspective on a technology and an executive level, but also in terms of what joint outcomes we are able to deliver for our customers. >> And it sounds like a great sustainability story. I wish we had more time so we would talk about this but thank you so much for talking about the main capabilities of a modern data platform, what's needed, why, and how you guys are delivering that. We appreciate your insights and appreciate your time. >> Thank you very much. I mean, if folks are at re:Invent next week or this week come on and see us at our booth and we are in the data analytics pavilion and you can find us pretty easily. Would love to talk to you. >> Perfect, we'll send them there. Subbu Iyer, thank you so much for joining me on the program today. We appreciate your insights. >> Thank you Lisa. >> I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Invent 2022. Thanks for watching. >> Clear- >> Clear cutting. >> Nice job, very nice job.

(upbeat music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to this CUBE Showcase, accelerating business transformation with VMware Cloud on AWS. It's a solution innovation conversation with two great guests, Fred Wurden, VP of Commercial Services at AWS and Narayan Bharadwaj, who's the VP and General Manager of Cloud Solutions at VMware. Gentlemen, thanks for joining me on the showcase. >> Great to be here. >> Great. Thanks for having us on. It's a great topic. >> We've been covering this VMware cloud on AWS since the launch going back and it's been amazing to watch the evolution from people saying, Oh, it's the worst thing I've ever seen. What's this mean? And the press were not really on board with the vision, but as it played out as you guys had announced together, it did work out great for VMware. It did work out great for AWS and it continues two years later and I want to just get an update from you guys on where you guys see this has been going. I'll see multiple years. Where is the evolution of the solution as we are right now coming off VMware explorer just recently and going in to re:Invent, which is only a couple weeks away Feels like tomorrow. But as we prepare, a lot going on. Where are we with the evolution of the solution? >> I mean, first thing I want to say is October 2016 was a seminal moment in the history of IT. When Pat Gelsinger and Andy Jassy came together to announce this. And I think John, you were there at the time I was there. It was a great, great moment. We launched the solution in 2017 year after that at VMworld, back when we called it VMworld. I think we have gone from strength to strength. One of the things that has really mattered to us is we've learned from AWS also in the processes, this notion of working backwards. So we really, really focused on customer feedback as we built a service offering now five years old. Pretty remarkable journey. In the first years we tried to get across all the regions, that was a big focus because there was so much demand for it. In the second year, we started going really on enterprise great features. We invented this pretty awesome feature called Stretched Clusters, where you could stretch a vSphere cluster using vSAN and NSX-T across to AZs in the same region. Pretty phenomenal four nines of availability that applications started to get with that particular feature. And we kept moving forward, all kinds of integration with AWS Direct Connect, Transit Gateways with our own advanced networking capabilities. Along the way, Disaster Recovery, we punched out two new services just focused on that. And then more recently we launched our Outposts partnership. We were up on stage at re:Invent, again, with Pat and Andy announcing AWS Outposts and the VMware flavor of that, VMware Cloud and AWS Outposts. I think it's been significant growth in our federal sector as well with our federal and high certification more recently. So all in all, we are super excited. We're five years old. The customer momentum is really, really strong and we are scaling the service massively across all geos and industries. >> That's great, great update. And I think one of the things that you mentioned was how the advantages you guys got from that relationship. And this has been the theme for AWS, man, since I can remember from day one, Fred. You guys do the heavy lifting as you always say for the customers. Here, VMware comes on board. Takes advantage of the AWS and just doesn't miss a beat. Continues to move their workloads that everyone's using, vSphere, and these are big workloads on AWS. What's the AWS perspective on this? How do you see it? >> Yeah, it's pretty fascinating to watch how fast customers can actually transform and move when you take the skill set that they're familiar with and the advanced capabilities that they've been using on-prem and then overlay it on top of the AWS infrastructure that's evolving quickly and building out new hardware and new instances we'll talk about. But that combined experience between both of us on a jointly engineered solution to bring the best security and the best features that really matter for those workloads drive a lot of efficiency and speed for the customers. So it's been well received and the partnership is stronger than ever from an engineering standpoint, from a business standpoint. And obviously it's been very interesting to look at just how we stay day one in terms of looking at new features and work and responding to what customers want. So pretty excited about just seeing the transformation and the speed that which customers can move to while at VMC. >> That's a great value proposition. We've been talking about that in context to anyone building on top of the cloud. They can have their own supercloud, as we call it, if you take advantage of all the CapEx and investment Amazon's made and AWS has made and continues to make in performance IaaS and PaaS, all great stuff. I have to ask you guys both as you guys see this going to the next level, what are some of the differentiations you see around the service compared to other options in the market? What makes it different? What's the combination? You mentioned jointly engineered. What are some of the key differentiators of the service compared to others? >> Yeah. I think one of the key things Fred talked about is this jointly engineered notion. Right from day one we were the early adopters of the AWS Nitro platform. The reinvention of EC2 back five years ago. And so we have been having a very, very strong engineering partnership at that level. I think from a VMware customer standpoint, you get the full software-defined data center, compute storage networking on EC2, bare metal across all regions. You can scale that elastically up and down. It's pretty phenomenal just having that consistency globally on AWS EC2 global regions. Now the other thing that's a real differentiator for us, what customers tell us about is this whole notion of a managed service. And this was somewhat new to VMware. But we took away the pain of this undifferentiated heavy lifting where customers had to provision rack stack hardware, configure the software on top, and then upgrade the software and the security patches on top. So we took away all of that pain as customers transitioned to VMware cloud in AWS. In fact, my favorite story from last year when we were all going through the Log4j debacle. Industry was just going through that. Favorite proof point from customers was before they could even race this issue to us, we sent them a notification saying, we already patched all of your systems, no action from you. The customers were super thrilled. I mean, these are large banks. Many other customers around the world were super thrilled they had to take no action, but a pretty incredible industry challenge that we were all facing. >> Narayan, that's a great point. The whole managed service piece brings up the security. You kind of teasing at it, but there's always vulnerabilities that emerge when you are doing complex logic. And as you grow your solutions, there's more bits. Fred, we were commenting before we came on camera more bits than ever before and at the physics layer too, as well as the software. So you never know when there's going to be a zero-day vulnerability out there. It happens. We saw one with Fortinet this week. This came out of the woodwork. But moving fast on those patches, it's huge. This brings up the whole support angle. I wanted to ask you about how you guys are doing that as well, because to me, we see the value when we talk to customers on theCUBE about this. It was a real easy understanding of what the cloud means to them with VMware now with the AWS. But the question that comes up that we want to get more clarity on is how do you guys handle support together? >> Well, what's interesting about this is that it's done mutually. We have dedicated support teams on both sides that work together pretty seamlessly to make sure that whether there's a issue at any layer, including all the way up into the app layer, as you think about some of the other workloads like SAP, we'll go end-to-end and make sure that we support the customer regardless of where the particular issue might be for them. And on top of that, we look at where we're improving reliability in as a first order of principle between both companies. So from availability and reliability standpoint, it's top of mind and no matter where the particular item might land, we're going to go help the customer resolve that. It works really well. >> On the VMware side, what's been the feedback there? What are some of the updates? >> Yeah, I think, look, I mean, VMware owns and operates the service, but we work phenomenal backend relationship with AWS. Customers call VMware for the service or any issues. And then we have a awesome relationship with AWS on the backend for support issues or any hardware issues. The key management that we jointly do. All of the hard problems that customers don't have to worry about. I think on the front end, we also have a really good group of solution architects across the companies that help to really explain the solution, do complex things like cloud migration, which is much, much easier with the VMware Cloud in AWS. We're presenting that easy button to the public cloud in many ways. And so we have a whole technical audience across the two companies that are working with customers every single day. >> You had mentioned, I've got list here of some of the innovations. You mentioned the stretch clustering, getting the geos working, advanced network, Disaster Recovery, FedRAMP, public sector certifications, Outposts. All good, you guys are checking the boxes every year. You got a good accomplishments list there on the VMware AWS side here in this relationship. The question that I'm interested in is what's next? What recent innovations are you doing? Are you making investments in? What's on the list this year? What items will be next year? How do you see the new things, the list of accomplishments? People want to know what's next. They don't want to see stagnant growth here. They want to see more action as cloud continues to scale and modern applications cloud native. You're seeing more and more containers, more and more CI/CD pipelining with modern apps, put more pressure on the system. What's new? What's the new innovations? >> Absolutely. And I think as a five year old service offering, innovation is top of mind for us every single day. So just to call out a few recent innovations that we announced in San Francisco at VMware Explore. First of all, our new platform i4i.metal. It's isolate based. It's pretty awesome. It's the latest and greatest, all the speeds and feeds that we would expect from VMware and AWS at this point in our relationship. We announced two different storage options. This notion of working from customer feedback, allowing customers even more price reductions, really take off that storage and park it externally and separate that from compute. So two different storage offerings there. One is with AWS FSx with NetApp ONTAP, which brings in our NetApp partnership as well into the equation and really get that NetApp based really excited about this offering as well. And the second storage offering called VMware Cloud Flex Storage. VMware's own managed storage offering. Beyond that, we have done a lot of other innovations as well. I really wanted to talk about VMware Cloud Flex Compute where previously customers could only scale by hosts and a host is 36 to 48 cores, give or take. But with VMware Cloud Flex Compute, we are now allowing this notion of a resource defined compute model where customers can just get exactly the vCPU memory and storage that maps to the applications, however small they might be. So this notion of granularity is really a big innovation that we are launching in the market this year. And then last but not least, top of ransomware. Of course it's a hot topic in the industry. We are seeing many, many customers ask for this. We are happy to announce a new ransomware recovery with our VMware Cloud DR solution. A lot of innovation there and the way we are able to do machine learning and make sure the workloads that are covered from snapshots and backups are actually safe to use. So there's a lot of differentiation on that front as well. A lot of networking innovations with Project Northstar. Our ability to have layer four through layer seven, new SaaS services in that area as well. Keep in mind that the service already supports managed Kubernetes for containers. It's built in to the same clusters that have virtual machines. And so this notion of a single service with a great TCO for VMs and containers is sort at the heart of our (faintly speaking). >> The networking side certainly is a hot area to keep innovating on. Every year it's the same, same conversation, get better faster, networking more options there. The Flex Compute is interesting. If you don't mind me getting a quick clarification, could you explain the resource-defined versus hardware-defined? Because this is what we had saw at Explore coming out, that notion of resource-defined versus hardware-defined. What does that mean? >> Yeah, I mean I think we have been super successful in this hardware-defined notion. We we're scaling by the hardware unit that we present as software-defined data centers. And so that's been super successful. But customers wanted more, especially customers in different parts of the world wanted to start even smaller and grow even more incrementally. Lower the cost even more. And so this is the part where resource-defined starts to be very, very interesting as a way to think about, here's my bag of resources exactly based on what the customers request before fiber machines, five containers. It's size exactly for that. And then as utilization grows, we elastically behind the scenes, we're able to grow it through policies. So that's a whole different dimension. That's a whole different service offering that adds value and customers are comfortable. They can go from one to the other. They can go back to that host based model if they so choose to. And there's a jump off point across these two different economic models. >> It's cloud flexibility right there. I like the name. Fred, let's get into some of the examples of customers, if you don't mind, let's get into some of the, we have some time. I want to unpack a little bit of what's going on with the customer deployments. One of the things we've heard again on theCUBE is from customers is they like the clarity of the relationship, they love the cloud positioning of it. And then what happens is they lift and shift the workloads and it's like feels great. It's just like we're running VMware on AWS and then they start consuming higher level services. That adoption next level happens and because it's in the cloud. So can you guys take us through some recent examples of customer wins or deployments where they're using VMware cloud on AWS on getting started and then how do they progress once they're there? How does it evolve? Can you just walk us through a couple use cases? >> Sure. Well, there's a couple. One, it's pretty interesting that like you said, as there's more and more bits, you need better and better hardware and networking. And we're super excited about the i4 and the capabilities there in terms of doubling and or tripling what we're doing around lower variability on latency and just improving all the speeds. But what customers are doing with it, like the college in New Jersey, they're accelerating their deployment on onboarding over like 7,400 students over a six to eight month period. And they've really realized a ton of savings. But what's interesting is where and how they can actually grow onto additional native services too. So connectivity to any other services is available as they start to move and migrate into this. The options there obviously are tied to all the innovation that we have across any services, whether it's containerized and with what they're doing with Tanzu or with any other container and or services within AWS. So there's some pretty interesting scenarios where that data and or the processing, which is moved quickly with full compliance, whether it's in like healthcare or regulatory business is allowed to then consume and use things, for example, with Textract or any other really cool service that has monthly and quarterly innovations. So there's things that you just could not do before that are coming out and saving customers money and building innovative applications on top of their current app base in a rapid fashion. So pretty excited about it. There's a lot of examples. I think I probably don't have time to go into too many here. But that's actually the best part is listening to customers and seeing how many net new services and new applications are they actually building on top of this platform. >> Narayan, what's your perspective from the VMware side? 'Cause you guys have now a lot of headroom to offer customers with Amazon's higher level services and or whatever's homegrown where it's being rolled out 'cause you now have a lot of hybrid too. So what's your take on what's happening in with customers? >> I mean, it's been phenomenal. The customer adoption of this and banks and many other highly sensitive verticals are running production-grade applications, tier one applications on the service over the last five years. And so I have a couple of really good examples. S&P Global is one of my favorite examples. Large bank, they merge with IHS Markit, big conglomeration now. Both customers were using VMware Cloud and AWS in different ways. And with the use case, one of their use cases was how do I just respond to these global opportunities without having to invest in physical data centers? And then how do I migrate and consolidate all my data centers across the global, which there were many. And so one specific example for this company was how they migrated 1000 workloads to VMware Cloud and AWS in just six weeks. Pretty phenomenal if you think about everything that goes into a cloud migration process, people process technology. And the beauty of the technology going from VMware point A to VMware point B. The lowest cost, lowest risk approach to adopting VMware Cloud and AWS. So that's one of my favorite examples. There are many other examples across other verticals that we continue to see. The good thing is we are seeing rapid expansion across the globe, but constantly entering new markets with a limited number of regions and progressing our roadmap. >> It's great to see. I mean, the data center migrations go from months, many, many months to weeks. It's interesting to see some of those success stories. Congratulations. >> One of the other interesting fascinating benefits is the sustainability improvement in terms of being green. So the efficiency gains that we have both in current generation and new generation processors and everything that we're doing to make sure that when a customer can be elastic, they're also saving power, which is really critical in a lot of regions worldwide at this point in time. They're seeing those benefits. If you're running really inefficiently in your own data center, that is not a great use of power. So the actual calculators and the benefits to these workloads are pretty phenomenal just in being more green, which I like. We just all need to do our part there and this is a big part of it here. >> It's a huge point about the sustainability. Fred, I'm glad you called that out. The other one I would say is supply chain issue is another one. You see that constraints. I can't buy hardware. And the third one is really obvious, but no one really talks about it. It's security. I mean, I remember interviewing Steven Schmidt with that AWS and many years ago, this is like 2013 and at that time people were saying, the cloud's not secure. And he's like, listen, it's more secure in the cloud on-premise. And if you look at the security breaches, it's all about the on-premise data center vulnerabilities, not so much hardware. So there's a lot, the stay current on the isolation there is hard. So I think the security and supply chain, Fred, is another one. Do you agree? >> I absolutely agree. It's hard to manage supply chain nowadays. We put a lot of effort into that and I think we have a great ability to forecast and make sure that we can lean in and have the resources that are available and run them more efficiently. And then like you said on the security point, security is job one. It is the only P1. And if you think of how we build our infrastructure from Nitro all the way up and how we respond and work with our partners and our customers, there's nothing more important. >> And Narayan, your point earlier about the managed service patching and being on top of things is really going to get better. All right, final question. I really want to thank you for your time on this showcase. It's really been a great conversation. Fred, you had made a comment earlier. I want to end with a curve ball and put you eyes on the spot. We're talking about a new modern shift. We're seeing another inflection point. We've been documenting it. It's almost like cloud hitting another inflection point with application and open source growth significantly at the app layer. Continue to put a lot of pressure and innovation in the infrastructure side. So the question is for you guys each to answer is, what's the same and what's different in today's market? So it's like we want more of the same here, but also things have changed radically and better here. What's changed for the better and what's still the same thing hanging around that people are focused on? Can you share your perspective? >> I'll tackle it. Businesses are complex and they're often unique, that's the same. What's changed is how fast you can innovate. The ability to combine managed services and new innovative services and build new applications is so much faster today. Leveraging world class hardware that you don't have to worry about, that's elastic. You could not do that even five, 10 years ago to the degree you can today, especially with innovation. So innovation is accelerating at a rate that most people can't even comprehend and understand the set of services that are available to them. It's really fascinating to see what a one pizza team of engineers can go actually develop in a week. It is phenomenal. So super excited about this space and it's only going to continue to accelerate that. That's my take, Narayan. >> You got a lot of platform to compete on. With Amazon, you got a lot to build on. Narayan, your side. What's your answer to that question? >> I think we are seeing a lot of innovation with new applications that customers are constantly (faintly speaking). I think what we see is this whole notion of how do you go from desktop to production to the secure supply chain and how can we truly build on the agility that developers desire and build all the security and the pipelines to energize that production quickly and efficiently. I think we are seeing, we are at the very start of that sort of journey. Of course, we have invested in Kubernetes, the means to an end, but we're so much more beyond that's happening in industry and I think we're at the very, very beginning of this transformations, enterprise transformation that many of our customers are going through and we are inherently part of it. >> Well, gentlemen, I really appreciate that we're seeing the same thing. It's more the same here on solving these complexities with distractions, whether it's higher level services with large scale infrastructure. At your fingertips, infrastructure as code, infrastructure to be provisioned, serverless, all the good stuff happen and Fred with AWS on your side. And we're seeing customers resonate with this idea of being an operator again, being a cloud operator and developer. So the developer ops is kind of, DevOps is changing too. So all for the better. Thank you for spending the time and we're seeing again that traction with the VMware customer base and AWS getting along great together. So thanks for sharing your perspectives. >> We appreciate it. Thank you so much. >> Thank you John. >> This is theCUBE and AWS VMware showcase accelerating business transformation, VMware Cloud on AWS. Jointly engineered solution bringing innovation to the VMware customer base, going to the cloud and beyond. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (gentle music)

>>Hi everyone. Welcome to the Cube special presentation here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Foer, host of the Cube. We've got two great guests, one for calling in from Germany, our videoing in from Germany, one from Maryland. We've got VMware and aws. This is the customer successes with VMware cloud on AWS showcase, accelerating business transformation here in the showcase with Samir Candu Worldwide. VMware strategic alliance solution, architect leader with AWS Samir. Great to have you and Daniel Re Myer, principal architect global AWS synergy at VMware. Guys, you guys are, are working together. You're the key players in the re relationship as it rolls out and continues to grow. So welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. Greatly appreciate it. >>Great to have you guys both on, As you know, we've been covering this since 2016 when Pat Geling, then CEO and then then CEO AWS at Andy Chasy did this. It kind of got people by surprise, but it really kind of cleaned out the positioning in the enterprise for the success. OFM workloads in the cloud. VMware's had great success with it since, and you guys have the great partnerships. So this has been like a really strategic, successful partnership. Where are we right now? You know, years later we got this whole inflection point coming. You're starting to see, you know, this idea of higher level services, more performance are coming in at the infrastructure side. More automation, more serverless, I mean, and a, I mean it's just getting better and better every year in the cloud. Kinda a whole nother level. Where are we, Samir? Let's start with you on, on the relationship. >>Yeah, totally. So I mean, there's several things to keep in mind, right? So in 2016, right, that's when the partnership between AWS and VMware was announced, and then less than a year later, that's when we officially launched VMware cloud on aws. Years later, we've been driving innovation, working with our customers, jointly engineering this between AWS and VMware day in, day out. As far as advancing VMware cloud on aws. You know, even if you look at the innovation that takes place with a solution, things have modernized, things have changed, there's been advancements, you know, whether it's security focus, whether it's platform focus, whether it's networking focus, there's been modifications along the way, even storage, right? More recently, one of the things to keep in mind is we're looking to deliver value to our customers together. These are our joint customers. So there's hundreds of VMware and AWS engineers working together on this solution. >>And then factor in even our sales teams, right? We have VMware and AWS sales teams interacting with each other on a constant daily basis. We're working together with our customers at the end of the day too. Then we're looking to even offer and develop jointly engineered solutions specific to VMware cloud on aws, and even with VMware's, other platforms as well. Then the other thing comes down to is where we have dedicated teams around this at both AWS and VMware. So even from solutions architects, even to our sales specialists, even to our account teams, even to specific engineering teams within the organizations, they all come together to drive this innovation forward with VMware cloud on AWS and the jointly engineered solution partnership as well. And then I think one of the key things to keep in mind comes down to we have nearly 600 channel partners that have achieved VMware cloud on AWS service competency. So think about it from the standpoint there's 300 certified or validated technology solutions, they're now available to our customers. So that's even innovation right off the top as well. >>Great stuff. Daniel, I wanna get to you in a second. Upon this principal architect position you have in your title, you're the global a synergy person. Synergy means bringing things together, making it work. Take us through the architecture, because we heard a lot of folks at VMware explore this year, formerly world, talking about how the, the workloads on it has been completely transforming into cloud and hybrid, right? This is where the action is. Where are you? Is your customers taking advantage of that new shift? You got AI ops, you got it. Ops changing a lot, you got a lot more automation edges right around the corner. This is like a complete transformation from where we were just five years ago. What's your thoughts on the >>Relationship? So at at, at first, I would like to emphasize that our collaboration is not just that we have dedicated teams to help our customers get the most and the best benefits out of VMware cloud on aws. We are also enabling US mutually. So AWS learns from us about the VMware technology, where VMware people learn about the AWS technology. We are also enabling our channel partners and we are working together on customer projects. So we have regular assembled globally and also virtually on Slack and the usual suspect tools working together and listening to customers, that's, that's very important. Asking our customers where are their needs? And we are driving the solution into the direction that our customers get the, the best benefits out of VMware cloud on aws. And over the time we, we really have involved the solution. As Samia mentioned, we just added additional storage solutions to VMware cloud on aws. We now have three different instance types that cover a broad range of, of workload. So for example, we just added the I four I host, which is ideally for workloads that require a lot of CPU power, such as you mentioned it, AI workloads. >>Yeah. So I wanna guess just specifically on the customer journey and their transformation. You know, we've been reporting on Silicon angle in the queue in the past couple weeks in a big way that the OPS teams are now the new devs, right? I mean that sounds OP a little bit weird, but operation IT operations is now part of the, a lot more data ops, security writing code composing, you know, with open source, a lot of great things are changing. Can you share specifically what customers are looking for when you say, as you guys come in and assess their needs, what are they doing? What are some of the things that they're doing with VMware on AWS specifically that's a little bit different? Can you share some of and highlights there? >>That, that's a great point because originally VMware and AWS came from very different directions when it comes to speaking people at customers. So for example, aws very developer focused, whereas VMware has a very great footprint in the IT ops area. And usually these are very different, very different teams, groups, different cultures, but it's, it's getting together. However, we always try to address the customers, right? There are customers that want to build up a new application from the scratch and build resiliency, availability, recoverability, scalability into the application. But there are still a lot of customers that say, well we don't have all of the skills to redevelop everything to refactor an application to make it highly available. So we want to have all of that as a service, recoverability as a service, scalability as a service. We want to have this from the infrastructure. That was one of the unique selling points for VMware on premise and now we are bringing this into the cloud. >>Samir, talk about your perspective. I wanna get your thoughts, and not to take a tangent, but we had covered the AWS remar of, actually it was Amazon res machine learning automation, robotics and space. It was really kinda the confluence of industrial IOT software physical. And so when you look at like the IT operations piece becoming more software, you're seeing things about automation, but the skill gap is huge. So you're seeing low code, no code automation, you know, Hey Alexa, deploy a Kubernetes cluster. Yeah, I mean, I mean that's coming, right? So we're seeing this kind of operating automation meets higher level services meets workloads. Can you unpack that and share your opinion on, on what you see there from an Amazon perspective and how it relates to this? >>Yeah, totally. Right. And you know, look at it from the point of view where we said this is a jointly engineered solution, but it's not migrating to one option or the other option, right? It's more or less together. So even with VMware cloud on aws, yes it is utilizing AWS infrastructure, but your environment is connected to that AWS VPC in your AWS account. So if you wanna leverage any of the native AWS services, so any of the 200 plus AWS services, you have that option to do so. So that's gonna give you that power to do certain things, such as, for example, like how you mentioned with iot, even with utilizing Alexa or if there's any other service that you wanna utilize, that's the joining point between both of the offerings. Right off the top though, with digital transformation, right? You, you have to think about where it's not just about the technology, right? There's also where you want to drive growth in the underlying technology. Even in your business leaders are looking to reinvent their business. They're looking to take different steps as far as pursuing a new strategy. Maybe it's a process, maybe it's with the people, the culture, like how you said before, where people are coming in from a different background, right? They may not be used to the cloud, they may not be used to AWS services, but now you have that capability to mesh them together. Okay. Then also, Oh, >>Go ahead, finish >>Your thought. No, no, I was gonna say, what it also comes down to is you need to think about the operating model too, where it is a shift, right? Especially for that VS four admin that's used to their on-premises at environment. Now with VMware cloud on aws, you have that ability to leverage a cloud, but the investment that you made and certain things as far as automation, even with monitoring, even with logging, yeah. You still have that methodology where you can utilize that in VMware cloud on AWS two. >>Danielle, I wanna get your thoughts on this because at at explore and, and, and after the event, now as we prep for Cuban and reinvent coming up the big AWS show, I had a couple conversations with a lot of the VMware customers and operators and it's like hundreds of thousands of, of, of, of users and millions of people talking about and and peaked on VM we're interested in v VMware. The common thread was one's one, one person said, I'm trying to figure out where I'm gonna put my career in the next 10 to 15 years. And they've been very comfortable with VMware in the past, very loyal, and they're kind of talking about, I'm gonna be the next cloud, but there's no like role yet architects, is it Solution architect sre. So you're starting to see the psychology of the operators who now are gonna try to make these career decisions, like how, what am I gonna work on? And it's, and that was kind of fuzzy, but I wanna get your thoughts. How would you talk to that persona about the future of VMware on, say, cloud for instance? What should they be thinking about? What's the opportunity and what's gonna happen? >>So digital transformation definitely is a huge change for many organizations and leaders are perfectly aware of what that means. And that also means in, in to to some extent, concerns with your existing employees. Concerns about do I have to relearn everything? Do I have to acquire new skills? And, and trainings is everything worthless I learned over the last 15 years of my career? And the, the answer is to make digital transformation a success. We need not just to talk about technology, but also about process people and culture. And this is where VMware really can help because if you are applying VMware cloud on a, on AWS to your infrastructure, to your existing on-premise infrastructure, you do not need to change many things. You can use the same tools and skills, you can manage your virtual machines as you did in your on-premise environment. You can use the same managing and monitoring tools. If you have written, and many customers did this, if you have developed hundreds of, of scripts that automate tasks and if you know how to troubleshoot things, then you can use all of that in VMware cloud on aws. And that gives not just leaders, but but also the architects at customers, the operators at customers, the confidence in, in such a complex project, >>The consistency, very key point, gives them the confidence to go and, and then now that once they're confident they can start committing themselves to new things. Samir, you're reacting to this because you know, on your side you've got higher level services, you got more performance at the hardware level. I mean, lot improvement. So, okay, nothing's changed. I can still run my job now I got goodness on the other side. What's the upside? What's in it for the, for the, for the customer there? >>Yeah, so I think what it comes down to is they've already been so used to or entrenched with that VMware admin mentality, right? But now extending that to the cloud, that's where now you have that bridge between VMware cloud on AWS to bridge that VMware knowledge with that AWS knowledge. So I will look at it from the point of view where now one has that capability and that ability to just learn about the cloud, but if they're comfortable with certain aspects, no one's saying you have to change anything. You can still leverage that, right? But now if you wanna utilize any other AWS service in conjunction with that VM that resides maybe on premises or even in VMware cloud on aws, you have that option to do so. So think about it where you have that ability to be someone who's curious and wants to learn. And then if you wanna expand on the skills, you certainly have that capability to do so. >>Great stuff. I love, love that. Now that we're peeking behind the curtain here, I'd love to have you guys explain, cuz people wanna know what's goes on in behind the scenes. How does innovation get happen? How does it happen with the relationship? Can you take us through a day in the life of kind of what goes on to make innovation happen with the joint partnership? You guys just have a zoom meeting, Do you guys fly out, you write go do you ship thing? I mean I'm making it up, but you get the idea, what's the, what's, how does it work? What's going on behind the scenes? >>So we hope to get more frequently together in person, but of course we had some difficulties over the last two to three years. So we are very used to zoom conferences and and Slack meetings. You always have to have the time difference in mind if we are working globally together. But what we try, for example, we have reg regular assembled now also in person geo based. So for emia, for the Americas, for aj. And we are bringing up interesting customer situations, architectural bits and pieces together. We are discussing it always to share and to contribute to our community. >>What's interesting, you know, as, as events are coming back to here, before you get, you weigh in, I'll comment, as the cube's been going back out to events, we are hearing comments like what, what pandemic we were more productive in the pandemic. I mean, developers know how to work remotely and they've been on all the tools there, but then they get in person, they're happy to see people, but there's no one's, no one's really missed the beat. I mean it seems to be very productive, you know, workflow, not a lot of disruption. More if anything, productivity gains. >>Agreed, right? I think one of the key things to keep in mind is, you know, even if you look at AWS's and even Amazon's leadership principles, right? Customer obsession, that's key. VMware is carrying that forward as well. Where we are working with our customers, like how Daniel said met earlier, right? We might have meetings at different time zones, maybe it's in person, maybe it's virtual, but together we're working to listen to our customers. You know, we're taking and capturing that feedback to drive innovation and VMware cloud on AWS as well. But one of the key things to keep in mind is yes, there have been, there has been the pandemic, we might have been disconnected to a certain extent, but together through technology we've been able to still communicate work with our customers. Even with VMware in between, with AWS and whatnot. We had that flexibility to innovate and continue that innovation. So even if you look at it from the point of view, right? VMware cloud on AWS outposts, that was something that customers have been asking for. We've been been able to leverage the feedback and then continue to drive innovation even around VMware cloud on AWS outposts. So even with the on premises environment, if you're looking to handle maybe data sovereignty or compliance needs, maybe you have low latency requirements, that's where certain advancements come into play, right? So the key thing is always to maintain that communication track. >>And our last segment we did here on the, on this showcase, we listed the accomplishments and they were pretty significant. I mean go, you got the global rollouts of the relationship. It's just really been interesting and, and people can reference that. We won't get into it here, but I will ask you guys to comment on, as you guys continue to evolve the relationship, what's in it for the customer? What can they expect next? Cuz again, I think right now we're in at a, an inflection point more than ever. What can people expect from the relationship and what's coming up with reinvent? Can you share a little bit of kind of what's coming down the pike? >>So one of the most important things we have announced this year, and we will continue to evolve into that direction, is independent scale of storage. That absolutely was one of the most important items customer asked us for over the last years. Whenever, whenever you are requiring additional storage to host your virtual machines, you usually in VMware cloud on aws, you have to add additional notes. Now we have three different note types with different ratios of compute, storage and memory. But if you only require additional storage, you always have to get also additional compute and memory and you have to pay. And now with two solutions which offer choice for the customers, like FS six one, NetApp onap, and VMware cloud Flex Storage, you now have two cost effective opportunities to add storage to your virtual machines. And that offers opportunities for other instance types maybe that don't have local storage. We are also very, very keen looking forward to announcements, exciting announcements at the upcoming events. >>Samir, what's your, what's your reaction take on the, on what's coming down on your side? >>Yeah, I think one of the key things to keep in mind is, you know, we're looking to help our customers be agile and even scale with their needs, right? So with VMware cloud on aws, that's one of the key things that comes to mind, right? There are gonna be announcements, innovations and whatnot with outcoming events. But together we're able to leverage that to advance VMware cloud on AWS to Daniel's point storage, for example, even with host offerings. And then even with decoupling storage from compute and memory, right now you have the flexibility where you can do all of that. So to look at it from the standpoint where now with 21 regions where we have VMware cloud on AWS available as well, where customers can utilize that as needed when needed, right? So it comes down to, you know, transformation will be there. Yes, there's gonna be maybe where workloads have to be adapted where they're utilizing certain AWS services, but you have that flexibility and option to do so. And I think with the continuing events that's gonna give us the options to even advance our own services together. >>Well you guys are in the middle of it, you're in the trenches, you're making things happen, you've got a team of people working together. My final question is really more of a kind of a current situation, kind of future evolutionary thing that you haven't seen this before. I wanna get both of your reaction to it. And we've been bringing this up in, in the open conversations on the cube is in the old days it was going back this generation, you had ecosystems, you had VMware had an ecosystem they did best, had an ecosystem. You know, we have a product, you have a product, biz dev deals happen, people sign relationships and they do business together and they, they sell to each other's products or do some stuff. Now it's more about architecture cuz we're now in a distributed large scale environment where the role of ecosystems are intertwining. >>And this, you guys are in the middle of two big ecosystems. You mentioned channel partners, you both have a lot of partners on both sides. They come together. So you have this now almost a three dimensional or multidimensional ecosystem, you know, interplay. What's your thoughts on this? And, and, and because it's about the architecture, integration is a value, not so much. Innovation is only, you gotta do innovation, but when you do innovation, you gotta integrate it, you gotta connect it. So what is, how do you guys see this as a, as an architectural thing, start to see more technical business deals? >>So we are, we are removing dependencies from individual ecosystems and from individual vendors. So a customer no longer has to decide for one vendor and then it is a very expensive and high effort project to move away from that vendor, which ties customers even, even closer to specific vendors. We are removing these obstacles. So with VMware cloud on aws moving to the cloud, firstly it's, it's not a dead end. If you decide at one point in time because of latency requirements or maybe it's some compliance requirements, you need to move back into on-premise. You can do this if you decide you want to stay with some of your services on premise and just run a couple of dedicated services in the cloud, you can do this and you can mana manage it through a single pane of glass. That's quite important. So cloud is no longer a dead and it's no longer a binary decision, whether it's on premise or the cloud. It it is the cloud. And the second thing is you can choose the best of both works, right? If you are migrating virtual machines that have been running in your on-premise environment to VMware cloud on aws, by the way, in a very, very fast cost effective and safe way, then you can enrich later on enrich these virtual machines with services that are offered by aws. More than 200 different services ranging from object based storage, load balancing and so on. So it's an endless, endless possibility. >>We, we call that super cloud in, in a, in a way that we be generically defining it where everyone's innovating, but yet there's some common services. But the differentiation comes from innovation where the lock in is the value, not some spec, right? Samir, this is gonna where cloud is right now, you guys are, are not commodity. Amazon's completely differentiating, but there's some commodity things. Having got storage, you got compute, but then you got now advances in all areas. But partners innovate with you on their terms. Absolutely. And everybody wins. >>Yeah. And a hundred percent agree with you. I think one of the key things, you know, as Daniel mentioned before, is where it it, it's a cross education where there might be someone who's more proficient on the cloud side with aws, maybe more proficient with the viewers technology, but then for partners, right? They bridge that gap as well where they come in and they might have a specific niche or expertise where their background, where they can help our customers go through that transformation. So then that comes down to, hey, maybe I don't know how to connect to the cloud. Maybe I don't know what the networking constructs are. Maybe I can leverage that partner. That's one aspect to go about it. Now maybe you migrated that workload to VMware cloud on aws. Maybe you wanna leverage any of the native AWS services or even just off the top 200 plus AWS services, right? But it comes down to that skill, right? So again, solutions architecture at the back of, back of the day, end of the day, what it comes down to is being able to utilize the best of both worlds. That's what we're giving our customers at the end of the >>Day. I mean, I just think it's, it's a, it's a refactoring and innovation opportunity at all levels. I think now more than ever, you can take advantage of each other's ecosystems and partners and technologies and change how things get done with keeping the consistency. I mean, Daniel, you nailed that, right? I mean, you don't have to do anything. You still run the fear, the way you working on it and now do new things. This is kind of a cultural shift. >>Yeah, absolutely. And if, if you look, not every, not every customer, not every organization has the resources to refactor and re-platform everything. And we gave, we give them a very simple and easy way to move workloads to the cloud. Simply run them and at the same time they can free up resources to develop new innovations and, and grow their business. >>Awesome. Samir, thank you for coming on. Danielle, thank you for coming to Germany, Octoberfest, I know it's evening over there, your weekend's here. And thank you for spending the time. Samir final give you the final word, AWS reinvents coming up. Preparing. We're gonna have an exclusive with Adam, but Fry, we do a curtain raise, a dual preview. What's coming down on your side with the relationship and what can we expect to hear about what you got going on at reinvent this year? The big show? >>Yeah, so I think, you know, Daniel hit upon some of the key points, but what I will say is we do have, for example, specific sessions, both that VMware's driving and then also that AWS is driving. We do have even where we have what I call a chalk talks. So I would say, and then even with workshops, right? So even with the customers, the attendees who are there, whatnot, if they're looking for to sit and listen to a session, yes that's there. But if they wanna be hands on, that is also there too. So personally for me as an IT background, you know, been in CIS admin world and whatnot, being hands on, that's one of the key things that I personally am looking forward. But I think that's one of the key ways just to learn and get familiar with the technology. Yeah, >>Reinvents an amazing show for the in person. You guys nail it every year. We'll have three sets this year at the cube. It's becoming popular. We more and more content. You guys got live streams going on, a lot of content, a lot of media, so thanks, thanks for sharing that. Samir Daniel, thank you for coming on on this part of the showcase episode of really the customer successes with VMware Cloud Ons, really accelerating business transformation withs and VMware. I'm John Fur with the cube, thanks for watching. Hello everyone. Welcome to this cube showcase, accelerating business transformation with VMware cloud on it's a solution innovation conversation with two great guests, Fred and VP of commercial services at aws and NA Ryan Bard, who's the VP and general manager of cloud solutions at VMware. Gentlemen, thanks for joining me on this showcase. >>Great to be here. >>Hey, thanks for having us on. It's a great topic. You know, we, we've been covering this VMware cloud on abus since, since the launch going back and it's been amazing to watch the evolution from people saying, Oh, it's the worst thing I've ever seen. It's what's this mean? And depress work were, we're kind of not really on board with kind of the vision, but as it played out as you guys had announced together, it did work out great for VMware. It did work out great for a D and it continues two years later and I want just get an update from you guys on where you guys see this has been going. I'll see multiple years. Where is the evolution of the solution as we are right now coming off VMware explorer just recently and going in to reinvent, which is only a couple weeks away, feels like tomorrow. But you know, as we prepare a lot going on, where are we with the evolution of the solution? >>I mean, first thing I wanna say is, you know, PBO 2016 was a someon moment and the history of it, right? When Pat Gelsinger and Andy Jessey came together to announce this and I think John, you were there at the time I was there, it was a great, great moment. We launched the solution in 2017, the year after that at VM Word back when we called it Word, I think we have gone from strength to strength. One of the things that has really mattered to us is we have learned froms also in the processes, this notion of working backwards. So we really, really focused on customer feedback as we build a service offering now five years old, pretty remarkable journey. You know, in the first years we tried to get across all the regions, you know, that was a big focus because there was so much demand for it. >>In the second year we started going really on enterprise grade features. We invented this pretty awesome feature called Stretch clusters, where you could stretch a vSphere cluster using VSA and NSX across two AZs in the same region. Pretty phenomenal four nine s availability that applications start started to get with that particular feature. And we kept moving forward all kinds of integration with AWS direct connect transit gateways with our own advanced networking capabilities. You know, along the way, disaster recovery, we punched out two, two new services just focused on that. And then more recently we launched our outposts partnership. We were up on stage at Reinvent, again with Pat Andy announcing AWS outposts and the VMware flavor of that VMware cloud and AWS outposts. I think it's been significant growth in our federal sector as well with our federal and high certification more recently. So all in all, we are super excited. We're five years old. The customer momentum is really, really strong and we are scaling the service massively across all geos and industries. >>That's great, great update. And I think one of the things that you mentioned was how the advantages you guys got from that relationship. And, and this has kind of been the theme for AWS since I can remember from day one. Fred, you guys do the heavy lifting as as, as you always say for the customers here, VMware comes on board, takes advantage of the AWS and kind of just doesn't miss a beat, continues to move their workloads that everyone's using, you know, vSphere and these are, these are big workloads on aws. What's the AWS perspective on this? How do you see it? >>Yeah, it's pretty fascinating to watch how fast customers can actually transform and move when you take the, the skill set that they're familiar with and the advanced capabilities that they've been using on Preem and then overlay it on top of the AWS infrastructure that's, that's evolving quickly and, and building out new hardware and new instances we'll talk about. But that combined experience between both of us on a jointly engineered solution to bring the best security and the best features that really matter for those workloads drive a lot of efficiency and speed for the, for the customer. So it's been well received and the partnership is stronger than ever from an engineering standpoint, from a business standpoint. And obviously it's been very interesting to look at just how we stay day one in terms of looking at new features and work and, and responding to what customers want. So pretty, pretty excited about just seeing the transformation and the speed that which customers can move to bmc. Yeah, >>That's what great value publish. We've been talking about that in context too. Anyone building on top of the cloud, they can have their own supercloud as we call it. If you take advantage of all the CapEx and and investment Amazon's made and AWS has made and, and and continues to make in performance IAS and pass all great stuff. I have to ask you guys both as you guys see this going to the next level, what are some of the differentiations you see around the service compared to other options on the market? What makes it different? What's the combination? You mentioned jointly engineered, what are some of the key differentiators of the service compared to others? >>Yeah, I think one of the key things Fred talked about is this jointly engineered notion right from day one. We were the earlier doctors of AWS Nitro platform, right? The reinvention of E two back five years ago. And so we have been, you know, having a very, very strong engineering partnership at that level. I think from a VMware customer standpoint, you get the full software defined data center or compute storage networking on EC two, bare metal across all regions. You can scale that elastically up and down. It's pretty phenomenal just having that consistency globally, right on aws EC two global regions. Now the other thing that's a real differentiator for us that customers tell us about is this whole notion of a managed service, right? And this was somewhat new to VMware, but we took away the pain of this undifferentiated heavy lifting where customers had to provision rack, stack hardware, configure the software on top, and then upgrade the software and the security batches on top. >>So we took, took away all of that pain as customers transitioned to VMware cloud and aws. In fact, my favorite story from last year when we were all going through the lock for j debacle industry was just going through that, right? Favorite proof point from customers was before they put even race this issue to us, we sent them a notification saying we already patched all of your systems, no action from you. The customers were super thrilled. I mean these are large banks, many other customers around the world, super thrilled they had to take no action, but a pretty incredible industry challenge that we were all facing. >>Nora, that's a great, so that's a great point. You know, the whole managed service piece brings up the security, you kind of teasing at it, but you know, there's always vulnerabilities that emerge when you are doing complex logic. And as you grow your solutions, there's more bits. You know, Fred, we were commenting before we came on camera, there's more bits than ever before and, and at at the physics layer too, as well as the software. So you never know when there's gonna be a zero day vulnerability out there. Just, it happens. We saw one with fornet this week, this came outta the woodwork. But moving fast on those patches, it's huge. This brings up the whole support angle. I wanted to ask you about how you guys are doing that as well, because to me we see the value when we, when we talk to customers on the cube about this, you know, it was a real, real easy understanding of how, what the cloud means to them with VMware now with the aws. But the question that comes up that we wanna get more clarity on is how do you guys handle support together? >>Well, what's interesting about this is that it's, it's done mutually. We have dedicated support teams on both sides that work together pretty seamlessly to make sure that whether there's a issue at any layer, including all the way up into the app layer, as you think about some of the other workloads like sap, we'll go end to end and make sure that we support the customer regardless of where the particular issue might be for them. And on top of that, we look at where, where we're improving reliability in, in as a first order of, of principle between both companies. So from an availability and reliability standpoint, it's, it's top of mind and no matter where the particular item might land, we're gonna go help the customer resolve. That works really well >>On the VMware side. What's been the feedback there? What's the, what are some of the updates? >>Yeah, I think, look, I mean, VMware owns and operates the service, but we have a phenomenal backend relationship with aws. Customers call VMware for the service for any issues and, and then we have a awesome relationship with AWS on the backend for support issues or any hardware issues. The BASKE management that we jointly do, right? All of the hard problems that customers don't have to worry about. I think on the front end, we also have a really good group of solution architects across the companies that help to really explain the solution. Do complex things like cloud migration, which is much, much easier with VMware cloud aws, you know, we are presenting that easy button to the public cloud in many ways. And so we have a whole technical audience across the two companies that are working with customers every single day. >>You know, you had mentioned, I've got a list here, some of the innovations the, you mentioned the stretch clustering, you know, getting the GOs working, Advanced network, disaster recovery, you know, fed, Fed ramp, public sector certifications, outposts, all good. You guys are checking the boxes every year. You got a good, good accomplishments list there on the VMware AWS side here in this relationship. The question that I'm interested in is what's next? What recent innovations are you doing? Are you making investments in what's on the lists this year? What items will be next year? How do you see the, the new things, the list of accomplishments, people wanna know what's next. They don't wanna see stagnant growth here, they wanna see more action, you know, as as cloud kind of continues to scale and modern applications cloud native, you're seeing more and more containers, more and more, you know, more CF C I C D pipe pipelining with with modern apps, put more pressure on the system. What's new, what's the new innovations? >>Absolutely. And I think as a five yearold service offering innovation is top of mind for us every single day. So just to call out a few recent innovations that we announced in San Francisco at VMware Explorer. First of all, our new platform i four I dot metal, it's isolate based, it's pretty awesome. It's the latest and greatest, all the speeds and feeds that we would expect from VMware and aws. At this point in our relationship. We announced two different storage options. This notion of working from customer feedback, allowing customers even more price reductions, really take off that storage and park it externally, right? And you know, separate that from compute. So two different storage offerings there. One is with AWS Fsx, with NetApp on tap, which brings in our NetApp partnership as well into the equation and really get that NetApp based, really excited about this offering as well. >>And the second storage offering for VMware cloud Flex Storage, VMware's own managed storage offering. Beyond that, we have done a lot of other innovations as well. I really wanted to talk about VMware cloud Flex Compute, where previously customers could only scale by hosts and a host is 36 to 48 cores, give or take. But with VMware cloud Flex Compute, we are now allowing this notion of a resource defined compute model where customers can just get exactly the V C P memory and storage that maps to the applications, however small they might be. So this notion of granularity is really a big innovation that that we are launching in the market this year. And then last but not least, talk about ransomware. Of course it's a hot topic in industry. We are seeing many, many customers ask for this. We are happy to announce a new ransomware recovery with our VMware cloud DR solution. >>A lot of innovation there and the way we are able to do machine learning and make sure the workloads that are covered from snapshots and backups are actually safe to use. So there's a lot of differentiation on that front as well. A lot of networking innovations with Project Knot star for ability to have layer flow through layer seven, you know, new SaaS services in that area as well. Keep in mind that the service already supports managed Kubernetes for containers. It's built in to the same clusters that have virtual machines. And so this notion of a single service with a great TCO for VMs and containers and sort of at the heart of our office, >>The networking side certainly is a hot area to keep innovating on. Every year it's the same, same conversation, get better, faster networking, more, more options there. The flex computes. Interesting. If you don't mind me getting a quick clarification, could you explain the Drew screen resource defined versus hardware defined? Because this is kind of what we had saw at Explore coming out, that notion of resource defined versus hardware defined. What's the, what does that mean? >>Yeah, I mean I think we have been super successful in this hardware defined notion. We we're scaling by the hardware unit that we present as software defined data centers, right? And so that's been super successful. But we, you know, customers wanted more, especially customers in different parts of the world wanted to start even smaller and grow even more incrementally, right? Lower their costs even more. And so this is the part where resource defined starts to be very, very interesting as a way to think about, you know, here's my bag of resources exactly based on what the customers request for fiber machines, five containers, its size exactly for that. And then as utilization grows, we elastically behind the scenes, we're able to grow it through policies. So that's a whole different dimension. It's a whole different service offering that adds value and customers are comfortable. They can go from one to the other, they can go back to that post based model if they so choose to. And there's a jump off point across these two different economic models. >>It's kind of cloud of flexibility right there. I like the name Fred. Let's get into some of the examples of customers, if you don't mind. Let's get into some of the ex, we have some time. I wanna unpack a little bit of what's going on with the customer deployments. One of the things we've heard again on the cube is from customers is they like the clarity of the relationship, they love the cloud positioning of it. And then what happens is they lift and shift the workloads and it's like, feels great. It's just like we're running VMware on AWS and then they would start consuming higher level services, kind of that adoption next level happens and because it it's in the cloud, so, So can you guys take us through some recent examples of customer wins or deployments where they're using VMware cloud on AWS on getting started, and then how do they progress once they're there? How does it evolve? Can you just walk us through a couple of use cases? >>Sure. There's a, well there's a couple. One, it's pretty interesting that, you know, like you said, as there's more and more bits you need better and better hardware and networking. And we're super excited about the I four and the capabilities there in terms of doubling and or tripling what we're doing around a lower variability on latency and just improving all the speeds. But what customers are doing with it, like the college in New Jersey, they're accelerating their deployment on a, on onboarding over like 7,400 students over a six to eight month period. And they've really realized a ton of savings. But what's interesting is where and how they can actually grow onto additional native services too. So connectivity to any other services is available as they start to move and migrate into this. The, the options there obviously are tied to all the innovation that we have across any services, whether it's containerized and with what they're doing with Tanu or with any other container and or services within aws. >>So there's, there's some pretty interesting scenarios where that data and or the processing, which is moved quickly with full compliance, whether it's in like healthcare or regulatory business is, is allowed to then consume and use things, for example, with tech extract or any other really cool service that has, you know, monthly and quarterly innovations. So there's things that you just can't, could not do before that are coming out and saving customers money and building innovative applications on top of their, their current app base in, in a rapid fashion. So pretty excited about it. There's a lot of examples. I think I probably don't have time to go into too, too many here. Yeah. But that's actually the best part is listening to customers and seeing how many net new services and new applications are they actually building on top of this platform. >>Nora, what's your perspective from the VMware sy? So, you know, you guys have now a lot of headroom to offer customers with Amazon's, you know, higher level services and or whatever's homegrown where's being rolled out? Cuz you now have a lot of hybrid too, so, so what's your, what's your take on what, what's happening in with customers? >>I mean, it's been phenomenal, the, the customer adoption of this and you know, banks and many other highly sensitive verticals are running production grade applications, tier one applications on the service over the last five years. And so, you know, I have a couple of really good examples. S and p Global is one of my favorite examples. Large bank, they merge with IHS market, big sort of conglomeration. Now both customers were using VMware cloud and AWS in different ways. And with the, with the use case, one of their use cases was how do I just respond to these global opportunities without having to invest in physical data centers? And then how do I migrate and consolidate all my data centers across the global, which there were many. And so one specific example for this company was how they migrated thousand 1000 workloads to VMware cloud AWS in just six weeks. Pretty phenomenal. If you think about everything that goes into a cloud migration process, people process technology and the beauty of the technology going from VMware point A to VMware point B, the the lowest cost, lowest risk approach to adopting VMware, VMware cloud, and aws. So that's, you know, one of my favorite examples. There are many other examples across other verticals that we continue to see. The good thing is we are seeing rapid expansion across the globe that constantly entering new markets with the limited number of regions and progressing our roadmap there. >>Yeah, it's great to see, I mean the data center migrations go from months, many, many months to weeks. It's interesting to see some of those success stories. So congratulations. One >>Of other, one of the other interesting fascinating benefits is the sustainability improvement in terms of being green. So the efficiency gains that we have both in current generation and new generation processors and everything that we're doing to make sure that when a customer can be elastic, they're also saving power, which is really critical in a lot of regions worldwide at this point in time. They're, they're seeing those benefits. If you're running really inefficiently in your own data center, that is just a, not a great use of power. So the actual calculators and the benefits to these workloads is, are pretty phenomenal just in being more green, which I like. We just all need to do our part there. And, and this is a big part of it here. >>It's a huge, it's a huge point about the sustainability. Fred, I'm glad you called that out. The other one I would say is supply chain issues. Another one you see that constrains, I can't buy hardware. And the third one is really obvious, but no one really talks about it. It's security, right? I mean, I remember interviewing Stephen Schmidt with that AWS and many years ago, this is like 2013, and you know, at that time people were saying the cloud's not secure. And he's like, listen, it's more secure in the cloud on premise. And if you look at the security breaches, it's all about the on-premise data center vulnerabilities, not so much hardware. So there's a lot you gotta to stay current on, on the isolation there is is hard. So I think, I think the security and supply chain, Fred is, is another one. Do you agree? >>I I absolutely agree. It's, it's hard to manage supply chain nowadays. We put a lot of effort into that and I think we have a great ability to forecast and make sure that we can lean in and, and have the resources that are available and run them, run them more efficiently. Yeah, and then like you said on the security point, security is job one. It is, it is the only P one. And if you think of how we build our infrastructure from Nitro all the way up and how we respond and work with our partners and our customers, there's nothing more important. >>And naron your point earlier about the managed service patching and being on top of things, it's really gonna get better. All right, final question. I really wanna thank you for your time on this showcase. It's really been a great conversation. Fred, you had made a comment earlier. I wanna kind of end with kind of a curve ball and put you eyes on the spot. We're talking about a modern, a new modern shift. It's another, we're seeing another inflection point, we've been documenting it, it's almost like cloud hitting another inflection point with application and open source growth significantly at the app layer. Continue to put a lot of pressure and, and innovation in the infrastructure side. So the question is for you guys each to answer is what's the same and what's different in today's market? So it's kind of like we want more of the same here, but also things have changed radically and better here. What are the, what's, what's changed for the better and where, what's still the same kind of thing hanging around that people are focused on? Can you share your perspective? >>I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll tackle it. You know, businesses are complex and they're often unique that that's the same. What's changed is how fast you can innovate. The ability to combine manage services and new innovative services and build new applications is so much faster today. Leveraging world class hardware that you don't have to worry about that's elastic. You, you could not do that even five, 10 years ago to the degree you can today, especially with innovation. So innovation is accelerating at a, at a rate that most people can't even comprehend and understand the, the set of services that are available to them. It's really fascinating to see what a one pizza team of of engineers can go actually develop in a week. It is phenomenal. So super excited about this space and it's only gonna continue to accelerate that. That's my take. All right. >>You got a lot of platform to compete on with, got a lot to build on then you're Ryan, your side, What's your, what's your answer to that question? >>I think we are seeing a lot of innovation with new applications that customers are constant. I think what we see is this whole notion of how do you go from desktop to production to the secure supply chain and how can we truly, you know, build on the agility that developers desire and build all the security and the pipelines to energize that motor production quickly and efficiently. I think we, we are seeing, you know, we are at the very start of that sort of of journey. Of course we have invested in Kubernetes the means to an end, but there's so much more beyond that's happening in industry. And I think we're at the very, very beginning of this transformations, enterprise transformation that many of our customers are going through and we are inherently part of it. >>Yeah. Well gentlemen, I really appreciate that we're seeing the same thing. It's more the same here on, you know, solving these complexities with distractions. Whether it's, you know, higher level services with large scale infrastructure at, at your fingertips. Infrastructures, code, infrastructure to be provisioned, serverless, all the good stuff happen in Fred with AWS on your side. And we're seeing customers resonate with this idea of being an operator, again, being a cloud operator and developer. So the developer ops is kind of, DevOps is kind of changing too. So all for the better. Thank you for spending the time and we're seeing again, that traction with the VMware customer base and of us getting, getting along great together. So thanks for sharing your perspectives, >>I appreciate it. Thank you so >>Much. Okay, thank you John. Okay, this is the Cube and AWS VMware showcase, accelerating business transformation. VMware cloud on aws, jointly engineered solution, bringing innovation to the VMware customer base, going to the cloud and beyond. I'm John Fur, your host. Thanks for watching. Hello everyone. Welcome to the special cube presentation of accelerating business transformation on vmc on aws. I'm John Furrier, host of the Cube. We have dawan director of global sales and go to market for VMware cloud on adb. This is a great showcase and should be a lot of fun. Ashish, thanks for coming on. >>Hi John. Thank you so much. >>So VMware cloud on AWS has been well documented as this big success for VMware and aws. As customers move their workloads into the cloud, IT operations of VMware customers has signaling a lot of change. This is changing the landscape globally is on cloud migration and beyond. What's your take on this? Can you open this up with the most important story around VMC on aws? >>Yes, John. The most important thing for our customers today is the how they can safely and swiftly move their ID infrastructure and applications through cloud. Now, VMware cloud AWS is a service that allows all vSphere based workloads to move to cloud safely, swiftly and reliably. Banks can move their core, core banking platforms, insurance companies move their core insurance platforms, telcos move their goss, bss, PLA platforms, government organizations are moving their citizen engagement platforms using VMC on aws because this is one platform that allows you to move it, move their VMware based platforms very fast. Migrations can happen in a matter of days instead of months. Extremely securely. It's a VMware manage service. It's very secure and highly reliably. It gets the, the reliability of the underlyings infrastructure along with it. So win-win from our customers perspective. >>You know, we reported on this big news in 2016 with Andy Chas, the, and Pat Geling at the time, a lot of people said it was a bad deal. It turned out to be a great deal because not only could VMware customers actually have a cloud migrate to the cloud, do it safely, which was their number one concern. They didn't want to have disruption to their operations, but also position themselves for what's beyond just shifting to the cloud. So I have to ask you, since you got the finger on the pulse here, what are we seeing in the market when it comes to migrating and modern modernizing in the cloud? Because that's the next step. They go to the cloud, you guys have done that, doing it, then they go, I gotta modernize, which means kind of upgrading or refactoring. What's your take on that? >>Yeah, absolutely. Look, the first step is to help our customers assess their infrastructure and licensing and entire ID operations. Once we've done the assessment, we then create their migration plans. A lot of our customers are at that inflection point. They're, they're looking at their real estate, ex data center, real estate. They're looking at their contracts with colocation vendors. They really want to exit their data centers, right? And VMware cloud and AWS is a perfect solution for customers who wanna exit their data centers, migrate these applications onto the AWS platform using VMC on aws, get rid of additional real estate overheads, power overheads, be socially and environmentally conscious by doing that as well, right? So that's the migration story, but to your point, it doesn't end there, right? Modernization is a critical aspect of the entire customer journey as as well customers, once they've migrated their ID applications and infrastructure on cloud get access to all the modernization services that AWS has. They can correct easily to our data lake services, to our AIML services, to custom databases, right? They can decide which applications they want to keep and which applications they want to refactor. They want to take decisions on containerization, make decisions on service computing once they've come to the cloud. But the most important thing is to take that first step. You know, exit data centers, come to AWS using vmc or aws, and then a whole host of modernization options available to them. >>Yeah, I gotta say, we had this right on this, on this story, because you just pointed out a big thing, which was first order of business is to make sure to leverage the on-prem investments that those customers made and then migrate to the cloud where they can maintain their applications, their data, their infrastructure operations that they're used to, and then be in position to start getting modern. So I have to ask you, how are you guys specifically, or how is VMware cloud on s addressing these needs of the customers? Because what happens next is something that needs to happen faster. And sometimes the skills might not be there because if they're running old school, IT ops now they gotta come in and jump in. They're gonna use a data cloud, they're gonna want to use all kinds of machine learning, and there's a lot of great goodness going on above the stack there. So as you move with the higher level services, you know, it's a no brainer, obviously, but they're not, it's not yesterday's higher level services in the cloud. So how are, how is this being addressed? >>Absolutely. I think you hit up on a very important point, and that is skills, right? When our customers are operating, some of the most critical applications I just mentioned, core banking, core insurance, et cetera, they're most of the core applications that our customers have across industries, like even, even large scale ERP systems, they're actually sitting on VMware's vSphere platform right now. When the customer wants to migrate these to cloud, one of the key bottlenecks they face is skill sets. They have the trained manpower for these core applications, but for these high level services, they may not, right? So the first order of business is to help them ease this migration pain as much as possible by not wanting them to, to upscale immediately. And we VMware cloud and AWS exactly does that. I mean, you don't have to do anything. You don't have to create new skill set for doing this, right? Their existing skill sets suffice, but at the same time, it gives them that, that leeway to build that skills roadmap for their team. DNS is invested in that, right? Yes. We want to help them build those skills in the high level services, be it aml, be it, be it i t be it data lake and analytics. We want to invest in them, and we help our customers through that. So that ultimately the ultimate goal of making them drop data is, is, is a front and center. >>I wanna get into some of the use cases and success stories, but I want to just reiterate, hit back your point on the skill thing. Because if you look at what you guys have done at aws, you've essentially, and Andy Chassey used to talk about this all the time when I would interview him, and now last year Adam was saying the same thing. You guys do all the heavy lifting, but if you're a VMware customer user or operator, you are used to things. You don't have to be relearn to be a cloud architect. Now you're already in the game. So this is like almost like a instant path to cloud skills for the VMware. There's hundreds of thousands of, of VMware architects and operators that now instantly become cloud architects, literally overnight. Can you respond to that? Do you agree with that? And then give an example. >>Yes, absolutely. You know, if you have skills on the VMware platform, you know, know, migrating to AWS using via by cloud and AWS is absolutely possible. You don't have to really change the skills. The operations are exactly the same. The management systems are exactly the same. So you don't really have to change anything but the advantages that you get access to all the other AWS services. So you are instantly able to integrate with other AWS services and you become a cloud architect immediately, right? You are able to solve some of the critical problems that your underlying IT infrastructure has immediately using this. And I think that's a great value proposition for our customers to use this service. >>And just one more point, I want just get into something that's really kind of inside baseball or nuanced VMC or VMware cloud on AWS means something. Could you take a minute to explain what on AWS means? Just because you're like hosting and using Amazon as a, as a work workload? Being on AWS means something specific in your world, being VMC on AWS mean? >>Yes. This is a great question, by the way, You know, on AWS means that, you know, VMware's vse platform is, is a, is an iconic enterprise virtualization software, you know, a disproportionately high market share across industries. So when we wanted to create a cloud product along with them, obviously our aim was for them, for the, for this platform to have the goodness of the AWS underlying infrastructure, right? And, and therefore, when we created this VMware cloud solution, it it literally use the AWS platform under the eighth, right? And that's why it's called a VMs VMware cloud on AWS using, using the, the, the wide portfolio of our regions across the world and the strength of the underlying infrastructure, the reliability and, and, and sustainability that it offers. And therefore this product is called VMC on aws. >>It's a distinction I think is worth noting, and it does reflect engineering and some levels of integration that go well beyond just having a SaaS app and, and basically platform as a service or past services. So I just wanna make sure that now super cloud, we'll talk about that a little bit in another interview, but I gotta get one more question in before we get into the use cases and customer success stories is in, in most of the VM world, VMware world, in that IT world, it used to, when you heard migration, people would go, Oh my God, that's gonna take months. And when I hear about moving stuff around and doing cloud native, the first reaction people might have is complexity. So two questions for you before we move on to the next talk. Track complexity. How are you addressing the complexity issue and how long these migrations take? Is it easy? Is it it hard? I mean, you know, the knee jerk reaction is month, You're very used to that. If they're dealing with Oracle or other old school vendors, like, they're, like the old guard would be like, takes a year to move stuff around. So can you comment on complexity and speed? >>Yeah. So the first, first thing is complexity. And you know, what makes what makes anything complex is if you're, if you're required to acquire new skill sets or you've gotta, if you're required to manage something differently, and as far as VMware cloud and AWS on both these aspects, you don't have to do anything, right? You don't have to acquire new skill sets. Your existing idea operation skill sets on, on VMware's platforms are absolutely fine and you don't have to manage it any differently like, than what you're managing your, your ID infrastructure today. So in both these aspects, it's exactly the same and therefore it is absolutely not complex as far as, as far as, as far as we cloud and AWS is concerned. And the other thing is speed. This is where the huge differentiation is. You have seen that, you know, large banks and large telcos have now moved their workloads, you know, literally in days instead of months. >>Because because of VMware cloud and aws, a lot of time customers come to us with specific deadlines because they want to exit their data centers on a particular date. And what happens, VMware cloud and AWS is called upon to do that migration, right? So speed is absolutely critical. The reason is also exactly the same because you are using the exactly the same platform, the same management systems, people are available to you, you're able to migrate quickly, right? I would just reference recently we got an award from President Zelensky of Ukraine for, you know, migrating their entire ID digital infrastructure and, and that that happened because they were using VMware cloud database and happened very swiftly. >>That's been a great example. I mean, that's one political, but the economic advantage of getting outta the data center could be national security. You mentioned Ukraine, I mean Oscar see bombing and death over there. So clearly that's a critical crown jewel for their running their operations, which is, you know, you know, world mission critical. So great stuff. I love the speed thing. I think that's a huge one. Let's get into some of the use cases. One of them is, the first one I wanted to talk about was we just hit on data, data center migration. It could be financial reasons on a downturn or our, or market growth. People can make money by shifting to the cloud, either saving money or making money. You win on both sides. It's a, it's a, it's almost a recession proof, if you will. Cloud is so use case for number one data center migration. Take us through what that looks like. Give an example of a success. Take us through a day, day in the life of a data center migration in, in a couple minutes. >>Yeah. You know, I can give you an example of a, of a, of a large bank who decided to migrate, you know, their, all their data centers outside their existing infrastructure. And they had, they had a set timeline, right? They had a set timeline to migrate the, the, they were coming up on a renewal and they wanted to make sure that this set timeline is met. We did a, a complete assessment of their infrastructure. We did a complete assessment of their IT applications, more than 80% of their IT applications, underlying v vSphere platform. And we, we thought that the right solution for them in the timeline that they wanted, right, is VMware cloud ands. And obviously it was a large bank, it wanted to do it safely and securely. It wanted to have it completely managed, and therefore VMware cloud and aws, you know, ticked all the boxes as far as that is concerned. >>I'll be happy to report that the large bank has moved to most of their applications on AWS exiting three of their data centers, and they'll be exiting 12 more very soon. So that's a great example of, of, of the large bank exiting data centers. There's another Corolla to that. Not only did they manage to manage to exit their data centers and of course use and be more agile, but they also met their sustainability goals. Their board of directors had given them goals to be carbon neutral by 2025. They found out that 35% of all their carbon foot footprint was in their data centers. And if they moved their, their ID infrastructure to cloud, they would severely reduce the, the carbon footprint, which is 35% down to 17 to 18%. Right? And that meant their, their, their, their sustainability targets and their commitment to the go to being carbon neutral as well. >>And that they, and they shift that to you guys. Would you guys take that burden? A heavy lifting there and you guys have a sustainability story, which is a whole nother showcase in and of itself. We >>Can Exactly. And, and cause of the scale of our, of our operations, we are able to, we are able to work on that really well as >>Well. All right. So love the data migration. I think that's got real proof points. You got, I can save money, I can, I can then move and position my applications into the cloud for that reason and other reasons as a lot of other reasons to do that. But now it gets into what you mentioned earlier was, okay, data migration, clearly a use case and you laid out some successes. I'm sure there's a zillion others. But then the next step comes, now you got cloud architects becoming minted every, and you got managed services and higher level services. What happens next? Can you give us an example of the use case of the modernization around the NextGen workloads, NextGen applications? We're starting to see, you know, things like data clouds, not data warehouses. We're not gonna data clouds, it's gonna be all kinds of clouds. These NextGen apps are pure digital transformation in action. Take us through a use case of how you guys make that happen with a success story. >>Yes, absolutely. And this is, this is an amazing success story and the customer here is s and p global ratings. As you know, s and p global ratings is, is the world leader as far as global ratings, global credit ratings is concerned. And for them, you know, the last couple of years have been tough as far as hardware procurement is concerned, right? The pandemic has really upended the, the supply chain. And it was taking a lot of time to procure hardware, you know, configure it in time, make sure that that's reliable and then, you know, distribute it in the wide variety of, of, of offices and locations that they have. And they came to us. We, we did, again, a, a, a alar, a fairly large comprehensive assessment of their ID infrastructure and their licensing contracts. And we also found out that VMware cloud and AWS is the right solution for them. >>So we worked there, migrated all their applications, and as soon as we migrated all their applications, they got, they got access to, you know, our high level services be our analytics services, our machine learning services, our, our, our, our artificial intelligence services that have been critical for them, for their growth. And, and that really is helping them, you know, get towards their next level of modern applications. Right Now, obviously going forward, they will have, they will have the choice to, you know, really think about which applications they want to, you know, refactor or which applications they want to go ahead with. That is really a choice in front of them. And, but you know, the, we VMware cloud and AWS really gave them the opportunity to first migrate and then, you know, move towards modernization with speed. >>You know, the speed of a startup is always the kind of the Silicon Valley story where you're, you know, people can make massive changes in 18 months, whether that's a pivot or a new product. You see that in startup world. Now, in the enterprise, you can see the same thing. I noticed behind you on your whiteboard, you got a slogan that says, are you thinking big? I know Amazon likes to think big, but also you work back from the customers and, and I think this modern application thing's a big deal because I think the mindset has always been constrained because back before they moved to the cloud, most IT, and, and, and on-premise data center shops, it's slow. You gotta get the hardware, you gotta configure it, you gotta, you gotta stand it up, make sure all the software is validated on it, and loading a database and loading oss, I mean, mean, yeah, it got easier and with scripting and whatnot, but when you move to the cloud, you have more scale, which means more speed, which means it opens up their capability to think differently and build product. What are you seeing there? Can you share your opinion on that epiphany of, wow, things are going fast, I got more time to actually think about maybe doing a cloud native app or transforming this or that. What's your, what's your reaction to that? Can you share your opinion? >>Well, ultimately we, we want our customers to utilize, you know, most of our modern services, you know, applications should be microservices based. When desired, they should use serverless applic. So list technology, they should not have monolithic, you know, relational database contracts. They should use custom databases, they should use containers when needed, right? So ultimately, we want our customers to use these modern technologies to make sure that their IT infrastructure, their licensing, their, their entire IT spend is completely native to cloud technologies. They work with the speed of a startup, but it's important for them to, to, to get to the first step, right? So that's why we create this journey for our customers, where you help them migrate, give them time to build the skills, they'll help them mo modernize, take our partners along with their, along with us to, to make sure that they can address the need for our customers. That's, that's what our customers need today, and that's what we are working backwards from. >>Yeah, and I think that opens up some big ideas. I'll just say that the, you know, we're joking, I was joking the other night with someone here in, in Palo Alto around serverless, and I said, you know, soon you're gonna hear words like architectural list. And that's a criticism on one hand, but you might say, Hey, you know, if you don't really need an architecture, you know, storage lists, I mean, at the end of the day, infrastructure is code means developers can do all the it in the coding cycles and then make the operations cloud based. And I think this is kind of where I see the dots connecting. Final thought here, take us through what you're thinking around how this new world is evolving. I mean, architecturals kind of a joke, but the point is, you know, you have to some sort of architecture, but you don't have to overthink it. >>Totally. No, that's a great thought, by the way. I know it's a joke, but it's a great thought because at the end of the day, you know, what do the customers really want? They want outcomes, right? Why did service technology come? It was because there was an outcome that they needed. They didn't want to get stuck with, you know, the, the, the real estate of, of a, of a server. They wanted to use compute when they needed to, right? Similarly, what you're talking about is, you know, outcome based, you know, desire of our customers and, and, and that's exactly where the word is going to, Right? Cloud really enforces that, right? We are actually, you know, working backwards from a customer's outcome and using, using our area the breadth and depth of our services to, to deliver those outcomes, right? And, and most of our services are in that path, right? When we use VMware cloud and aws, the outcome is a, to migrate then to modernize, but doesn't stop there, use our native services, you know, get the business outcomes using this. So I think that's, that's exactly what we are going through >>Actually, should actually, you're the director of global sales and go to market for VMware cloud on Aus. I wanna thank you for coming on, but I'll give you the final minute. Give a plug, explain what is the VMware cloud on Aus, Why is it great? Why should people engage with you and, and the team, and what ultimately is this path look like for them going forward? >>Yeah. At the end of the day, we want our customers to have the best paths to the cloud, right? The, the best path to the cloud is making sure that they migrate safely, reliably, and securely as well as with speed, right? And then, you know, use that cloud platform to, to utilize AWS's native services to make sure that they modernize their IT infrastructure and applications, right? We want, ultimately that our customers, customers, customer get the best out of, you know, utilizing the, that whole application experience is enhanced tremendously by using our services. And I think that's, that's exactly what we are working towards VMware cloud AWS is, is helping our customers in that journey towards migrating, modernizing, whether they wanna exit a data center or whether they wanna modernize their applications. It's a essential first step that we wanna help our customers with >>One director of global sales and go to market with VMware cloud on neighbors. He's with aws sharing his thoughts on accelerating business transformation on aws. This is a showcase. We're talking about the future path. We're talking about use cases with success stories from customers as she's thank you for spending time today on this showcase. >>Thank you, John. I appreciate it. >>Okay. This is the cube, special coverage, special presentation of the AWS Showcase. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.

(bright upbeat music) >> Greetings, brilliant community and thank you so much for tuning in to theCUBE here for the last three days where we've been live from Detroit, Michigan. I've had the pleasure of spending this week with Lisa Martin and John Furrier. Thank you both so much for hanging out, for inviting me into the CUBE family. It's our first show together, it's been wonderful. >> Thank you. >> You nailed it. >> Oh thanks, sweetheart. >> Great job. Great job team, well done. Free wall to wall coverage, it's what we do. We stay till everyone else-- >> Savannah: 100 percent. >> Everyone else leaves, till they pull the plug. >> Lisa: Till they turn the lights out. We're still there. >> Literally. >> Literally last night. >> Still broadcasting. >> Whatever takes to get the stories and get 'em out there at scale. >> Yeah. >> Great time. >> 33. 33 different segments too. Very impressive. John, I'm curious, you're a trend watcher and you've been at every single KubeCon. >> Yep. >> What are the trends this year? Give us the breakdown. >> I think CNCF does this, it's a hard job to balance all the stakeholders. So one, congratulations to the CNCF for another great KubeCon and CloudNativeCon. It is really hard to balance bringing in the experts who, as time goes by, seven years we've been all of, as you said, you get experts, you get seniority, and people who can be mentors, 60% new people. You have vendors who are sponsoring and there's always people complaining and bitching and moaning. They want this, they want that. It's always hard and they always do a good job of balancing it. We're lucky that we get to scale the stories with CUBE and that's been great. We had some great stories here, but it's a great community and again, they're inclusive. As I've said before, we've talked about it. This year though is an inflection point in my opinion, because you're seeing the developer ecosystem growing so fast. It's global. You're seeing events pop up, you're seeing derivative events. CNCF is at the center point and they have to maintain the culture of developer experts, maintainers, while balancing the newbies. And that's going to be >> Savannah: Mm-hmm. really hard. And they've done a great job. We had a great conversation with them. So great job. And I think it's going to continue. I think the attendance metric is a little bit of a false positive. There's a lot of online people who didn't come to Detroit this year. And I think maybe the combination of the venue, the city, or just Covid preferences may not look good on paper, on the numbers 'cause it's not a major step up in attendance. It's still bigger, but the community, I think, is going to continue to grow. I'm bullish on it. >> Yeah, I mean at least we did see double the number of people that we had in Los Angeles. Very curious. I think Amsterdam, where we'll be next with CNCF in the spring, in April. I think that's actually going to be a better pulse check. We'll be in Europe, we'll see what's going on. >> John: Totally. >> I mean, who doesn't like Amsterdam in the springtime? Lisa, what have been some of your observations? >> Oh, so many observations. The evolution of the conference, the hallway track conversations really shifting towards adjusting to the enterprise. The enterprise momentum that we saw here as well. We had on the show, Ford. >> Savannah: Yes. We had MassMutual, we had ING, that was today. Home Depot is here. We are seeing all these big companies that we know and love, become software companies right before our eyes. >> Yeah. Well, and I think we forget that software powers our entire world. And so of course they're going to have to be here. So much running on Kubernetes. It's on-prem, it's at the edge, it's everywhere. It's exciting. Woo, I'm excited. John, what do you think is the number one story? This is your question. I love asking you this question. What is the number one story out KubeCon? >> Well, I think the top story is a combination of two things. One is the evolution of Cloud Native. We're starting to see web assembly. That's a big hyped up area. It got a lot of attention. >> Savannah: Yeah. That's kind of teething out the future. >> Savannah: Rightfully so. The future of this kind of lightweight. You got the heavy duty VMs, you got Kubernetes and containers, and now this web assembly, shows a trajectory of apps, server-like environment. And then the big story is security. Software supply chain is, to me, was the number one consistent theme. At almost all the interviews, in the containers, and the workflows, >> Savannah: Very hot. software supply chain is real. The CD Foundation mentioned >> Savannah: Mm-hmm. >> they had 16,000 vulnerabilities identified in their code base. They were going to automate that. So again, >> Savannah: That was wild. >> That's the top story. The growth of open source exposes potential vulnerabilities with security. So software supply chain gets my vote. >> Did you hear anything that surprised you? You guys did this great preview of what you thought we were going to hear and see and feel and touch at KubeCon, CloudNativeCon 2022. You talked about, for example, the, you know, healthcare financial services being early adopters of this. Anything surprise either one of you in terms of what you predicted versus what we saw? Savannah, let's start with you. >> You know what really surprised me, and this is ironic, so I'm a community gal by trade. But I was really just impressed by the energy that everyone brought here and the desire to help. The thing about the open source community that always strikes me is, I mean 187 different countries participating. You've got, I believe it's something like 175,000 people contributing to the 140 projects plus that CNCF is working on. But that culture of collaboration extends far beyond just the CNCF projects. Everyone here is keen to help each other. We had the conversation just before about the teaching and the learnings that are going on here. They brought in Detroit's students to come and learn, which is just the most heartwarming story out of this entire thing. And I think it's just the authenticity of everyone in this community and their passion. Even though I know it's here, it still surprises me to see it in the flesh. Especially in a place like Detroit. >> It's nice. >> Yeah. >> It's so nice to see it. And you bring up a good point. It's very authentic. >> Savannah: It's super authentic. >> I mean, what surprised me is one, the Wasm, or web assembly. I didn't see that coming at the scale of the conversation. It sucked a lot of options out of the room in my opinion, still hyped up. But this looks like it's got a good trajectory. I like that. The other thing that surprised me that was a learning was my interview with Solo.io, Idit, and Brian Gracely, because he's a CUBE alumni and former host of theCUBE, and analyst at Wikibon, was how their go-to-market was an example of a modern company in Covid with a clean sheet of paper and smart people, they're just doing things different. They're in Slack with their customers. And I walked away with, "Wow that's like a playbook that's not, was never, in the go-to-market VC-backed company playbook." I thought that was, for me, a personal walk away saying that's important. I like how they did that. And there's a lot of companies I think could learn from that. Especially as the recession comes where partnering with customers has always been a top priority. And how they did that was very clever, very effective, very efficient. So I walked away with that saying, "I think that's going to be a standard." So that was a pleasant surprise. >> That was a great surprise. Also, that's a female-founded company, which is obviously not super common. And the growth that they've experienced, to your point, really being catalyzed by Covid, is incredibly impressive. I mean they have some massive brand name customers, Amex, BMW for example. >> Savannah: Yeah. >> Great point. >> And I interviewed her years ago and I remember saying to myself, "Wow, she's impressive." I liked her. She's a player. A player for sure. And she's got confidence. Even on the interview she said, "We're just better, we have better product." And I just like the point of view. Very customer-focused but confident. And I just took, that's again, a great company. And again, I'm not surprised that Brian Gracely left Red Hat to go work there. So yeah, great, great call there. And of course other things that weren't surprising that I predicted, Red Hat continued to invest. They continue to bring people on theCUBE, they support theCUBE but more importantly they have a good strategy. They're in that multicloud positioning. They're going to have an opportunity to get a bite at the apple. And I what I call the supercloud. As enterprises try to go and be mainstream, Cloud Native, they're going to need some help. And Red Hat is always has the large enterprise customers. >> Savannah: What surprised you, Lisa? >> Oh my gosh, so many things. I think some of the memorable conversations that we had. I love talking with some of the enterprises that we mentioned, ING Bank for example. You know, or institutions that have been around for 100 plus years. >> Savannah: Oh, yeah. To see not only how much they've innovated and stayed relevant to meet the demands of the consumer, which are only increasing, but they're doing so while fostering a culture of innovation and a culture that allows these technology leaders to really grow within the organization. That was a really refreshing conversation that I think we had. 'Cause you can kind of >> Savannah: Absolutely. think about these old stodgy companies. Nah, of course they're going to digitize. >> Thinking about working for the bank, I think it's boring. >> Right? >> Yeah. And they were talking about, in fact, those great t-shirts that they had on, >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. were all about getting more people to understand how fun it is to work in tech for ING Bank in different industries. You don't just have to work for the big tech companies to be doing really cool stuff in technology. >> What I really liked about this show is we had two female hosts. >> Savannah: Yeah. >> How about that? Come on. >> Hey, well done, well done on your recruitment there, champ. >> Yes, thank you boss. (John laughs) >> And not to mention we have a really all-star production team. I do just want to give them a little shout out. To all the wonderful folks behind the lines here. (people clapping) >> John: Brendan. Good job. >> Yeah. Without Brendan, Anderson, Noah, and Andrew, we would be-- >> Of course Frank Faye holding it back there too. >> Yeah, >> Of course, Frank. >> I mean, without the business development wheels on the ship we'd really be in an unfortunate spot. I almost just swore on television. We're not going to do that. >> It's okay. No one's regulating. >> Yeah. (all laugh) >> Elon Musk just took over Twitter. >> It was a close call. >> That's right! >> It's going to be a hellscape. >> Yeah, I mean it's, shit's on fire. So we'll just see what happens next. I do, I really want to talk about this because I think it's really special. It's an ethos and some magic has happened here. Let's talk about Detroit. Let's talk about what it means to be here. We saw so many, and I can't stress this enough, but I think it really matters. There was a commitment to celebrating place here. Lisa, did you notice this too? >> Absolutely. And it surprised me because we just don't see that at conferences. >> Yeah. We're so used to going to the same places. >> Right. >> Vegas. Vegas, Vegas. More Vegas. >> Your tone-- >> San Francisco >> (both laugh) sums up my feelings. Yes. >> Right? >> Yeah. And, well, it's almost robotic but, and the fact that we're like, oh Detroit, really? But there was so much love for this city and recognizing and supporting its residents that we just don't see at conferences. You uncovered a lot of that with your swag-savvy segments, >> Savannah: Yeah. >> And you got more of that to talk about today. >> Don't worry, it's coming. Yeah. (laughs) >> What about you? Have you enjoyed Detroit? I know you hadn't been here in a long time, when we did our intro session. >> I think it's a bold move for the CNCF to come here and celebrate. What they did, from teaching the kids in the city some tech, they had a session. I thought that was good. >> Savannah: Loved that. I think it was a risky move because a lot of people, like, weren't sure if they were going to fly to Detroit. So some say it might impact the attendance. I thought they did a good job. Their theme, Road Ahead. Nice tie in. >> Savannah: Yeah. And so I think I enjoyed Detroit. The weather was great. It didn't rain. Nice breeze outside. >> Yeah. >> The weather was great, the restaurants are phenomenal. So Detroit's a good city. I missed some hockey games. I'd love to see the Red Wings play. Missed that game. But we always come back. >> I think it's really special. I mean, every time I talked to a company about their swag, that had sourced it locally, there was a real reason for this story. I mean even with Kasten in that last segment when I noticed that they had done Carhartt beanies, Carhartt being a Michigan company. They said, "I'm so glad you noticed. That's why we did it." And I think that type of, the community commitment to place, it all comes back to community. One of the bigger themes of the show. But that passion and that support, we need more of that. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> And the thing about the guests we've had this past three days have been phenomenal. We had a diverse set of companies, individuals come on theCUBE, you know, from Scott Johnston at Docker. A really one on one. We had a great intense conversation. >> Savannah: Great way to kick it off. >> We shared a lot of inside baseball, about Docker, super important company. You know, impressed with companies like Platform9 it's been around since the OpenStack days who are now in a relevant position. Rafi Systems, hot startup, they don't have a lot of resources, a lot of guerilla marketing going on. So I love to see the mix of startups really contributing. The big players are here. So it's a real great mix of companies. And I thought the interviews were phenomenal, like you said, Ford. We had, Kubia launched on theCUBE. >> Savannah: Yes. >> That's-- >> We snooped the location for KubeCon North America. >> You did? >> Chicago, everyone. In case you missed it, Bianca was nice enough to share that with us. >> We had Sarbjeet Johal, CUBE analyst came on, Keith Townsend, yesterday with you guys. >> We had like analyst speed dating last night. (all laugh) >> How'd that go? (laughs) >> It was actually great. One of the things that they-- >> Did they hug and kiss at the end? >> Here's the funny thing is that they were debating the size of the CNC app. One thinks it's too big, one thinks it's too small. And I thought, is John Goldilocks? (John laughs) >> Savannah: Yeah. >> What is John going to think about that? >> Well I loved that segment. I thought, 'cause Keith and Sarbjeet argue with each other on Twitter all the time. And I heard Keith say before, he went, "Yeah let's have it out on theCUBE." So that was fun to watch. >> Thank you for creating this forum for us to have that kind of discourse. >> Lisa: Yes, thank you. >> Well, it wouldn't be possible without the sponsors. Want to thank the CNCF. >> Absolutely. >> And all the ecosystem partners and sponsors that make theCUBE possible. We love doing this. We love getting the stories. No story's too small for theCUBE. We'll go with it. Do whatever it takes. And if it wasn't for the sponsors, the community wouldn't get all the great knowledge. So, and thank you guys. >> Hey. Yeah, we're, we're happy to be here. Speaking of sponsors and vendors, should we talk a little swag? >> Yeah. >> What do you guys think? All right. Okay. So now this is becoming a tradition on theCUBE so I'm very delighted, the savvy swag segment. I do think it's interesting though. I mean, it's not, this isn't just me shouting out folks and showing off t-shirts and socks. It's about standing out from the noise. There's a lot of players in this space. We got a lot of CNCF projects and one of the ways to catch the attention of people walking the show floor is to have interesting swag. So we looked for the most unique swag on Wednesday and I hadn't found this yet, but I do just want to bring it up. Oops, I think I might have just dropped it. This is cute. Is, most random swag of the entire show goes to this toothbrush. I don't really have more in terms of the pitch there because this is just random. (Lisa laughs) >> But so, everyone needs that. >> John: So what's their tagline? >> And you forget these. >> Yeah, so the idea was to brush your cloud bills. So I think they're reducing the cost of-- >> Kind of a hygiene angle. >> Yeah, yeah. Very much a hygiene angle, which I found a little ironic in this crowd to be completely honest with you. >> John: Don't leave the lights on theCUBE. That's what they say. >> Yeah. >> I mean we are theCUBE so it would be unjust of me not to show you a Rubik's cube. This is actually one of those speed cubes. I'm not going to be able to solve this for you with one hand on camera, but apparently someone did it in 17 seconds at the booth. Knowing this audience, not surprising to me at all. Today we are, and yesterday, was the t-shirt contest. Best t-shirt contest. Today we really dove into the socks. So this is, I noticed this trend at KubeCon in Los Angeles last year. Lots of different socks, clouds obviously a theme for the cloud. I'm just going to lay these out. Lots of gamers in the house. Not surprising. Here on this one. >> John: Level up. >> Got to level up. I love these 'cause they say, "It's not a bug." And anyone who's coded has obviously had to deal with that. We've got, so Star Wars is a huge theme here. There's Lego sets. >> John: I think it's Star Trek. But. >> That's Star Trek? >> John: That's okay. >> Could be both. (Lisa laughs) >> John: Nevermind, I don't want to. >> You can flex your nerd and geek with us anytime you want, John. I don't mind getting corrected. I'm all about, I'm all about the truth. >> Star Trek. Star Wars. Okay, we're all the same. Okay, go ahead. >> Yeah, no, no, this is great. Slim.ai was nice enough to host us for dinner on Tuesday night. These are their lovely cloud socks. You can see Cloud Native, obviously Cloud Native Foundation, cloud socks, whole theme here. But if we're going to narrow it down to some champions, I love these little bee elephants from Raft. And when I went up to these guys, I actually probably would've called these my personal winner. They said, again, so community focused and humble here at CNCF, they said that Wiz was actually the champion according to the community. These unicorn socks are pretty excellent. And I have to say the branding is flawless. So we'll go ahead and give Wiz the win on the best sock contest. >> John: For the win. >> Yeah, Wiz for the win. However, the thing that I am probably going to use the most is this really dope Detroit snapback from Kasten. So I'm going to be rocking this from now on for the rest of the segment as well. And I feel great about this snapback. >> Looks great. Looks good on you. >> Yeah. >> Thanks John. (John laughs) >> So what are we expecting between now and KubeCon in Amsterdam? >> Well, I think it's going to be great to see how they, the European side, it's a chill show. It's great. Brings in the European audience from the global perspective. I always love the EU shows because one, it's a great destination. Amsterdam's going to be a great location. >> Savannah: I'm pumped. >> The American crowd loves going over there. All the event cities that they choose are always awesome. I missed Valencia cause I got Covid. I'm really bummed about that. But I love the European shows. It's just a little bit, it's high intensity, but it's the European chill. They got a little bit more of that siesta vibe going on. >> Yeah. >> And it's just awesome. >> Yeah, >> And I think that the mojo that carried throughout this week, it's really challenging to not only have a show that's five days, >> but to go through all week, >> Savannah: Seriously. >> to a Friday at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, and still have the people here, the energy and all the collaboration. >> Savannah: Yeah. >> The conversations that are still happening. I think we're going to see a lot more innovation come spring 2023. >> Savannah: Mm-hmm. >> Yeah. >> So should we do a bet, somebody's got to buy dinner? Who, well, I guess the folks who lose this will buy dinner for the other one. How many attendees do you think we'll see in Amsterdam? So we had 4,000, >> Oh, I'm going to lose this one. >> roughly in Los Angeles. Priyanka was nice enough to share with us, there was 8,000 here in Detroit. And I'm talking in person, we're not going to meddle this with the online. >> 6500. >> Lisa: I was going to say six, six K. >> I'm going 12,000. >> Ooh! >> I'm going to go ahead and go big I'm going to go opposite Price Is Right. >> One dollar. >> Yeah. (all laugh) That's exactly where I was driving with it. I'm going, I'm going absolutely all in. I think the momentum here is building. I think if we look at the numbers from-- >> John: You could go Family Feud >> Yeah, yeah, exactly. And they mentioned that they had 11,000 people who have taken their Kubernetes course in that first year. If that's a benchmark and an indicator, we've got the veteran players here. But I do think that, I personally think that the hype of Kubernetes has actually preceded adoption. If you look at the data and now we're finally tipping over. I think the last two years we were on the fringe and right now we're there. It's great. (voice blares loudly on loudspeaker) >> Well, on that note (all laugh) On that note, actually, on that note, as we are talking, so I got to give cred to my cohosts. We deal with a lot of background noise here on theCUBE. It is a live show floor. There's literally someone on an e-scooter behind me. There's been Pong going on in the background. The sound will haunt the three of us for the rest of our lives, as well as the production crew. (Lisa laughs) And, and just as we're sitting here doing this segment last night, they turned the lights off on us, today they're letting everyone know that the event is over. So on that note, I just want to say, Lisa, thank you so much. Such a warm welcome to the team. >> Thank you. >> John, what would we do without you? >> You did an amazing job. First CUBE, three days. It's a big show. You got staying power, I got to say. >> Lisa: Absolutely. >> Look at that. Not bad. >> You said it on camera now. >> Not bad. >> So you all are stuck with me. (all laugh) >> A plus. Great job to the team. Again, we do so much flow here. Brandon, Team, Andrew, Noah, Anderson, Frank. >> They're doing our hair, they're touching up makeup. They're helping me clean my teeth, staying hydrated. >> We look good because of you. >> And the guests. Thanks for coming on and spending time with us. And of course the sponsors, again, we can't do it without the sponsors. If you're watching this and you're a sponsor, support theCUBE, it helps people get what they need. And also we're do a lot more segments around community and a lot more educational stuff. >> Savannah: Yeah. So we're going to do a lot more in the EU and beyond. So thank you. >> Yeah, thank you. And thank you to everyone. Thank you to the community, thank you to theCUBE community and thank you for tuning in, making it possible for us to have somebody to talk to on the other side of the camera. My name is Savannah Peterson for the last time in Detroit, Michigan. Thanks for tuning into theCUBE. >> Okay, we're done. (bright upbeat music)