>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of next level network experience event brought to you by Info blocks Hi ups to Minuteman and welcome to the Cube's coverage of the info blocks virtual event. Digging into the next level networking experience. I'm here with John Furrier, who is the host of the event. John. We've been talking about next level networking for for a few years now. Everything's multi cloud cloud native SAS adoption, really transforming the way that we have to think about networking. Tell us a little bit about this event. >>So as you know, yeah, again go back years from when member VM Ware bought in a sexual like Okay, you know that's going to change the game software to find networking. And we love that. We were all riffing on program ability. You saw the Dev Ops trajectory hitting networking. We would say that's where the action is on this event really kind of speaks to Info Blocks as a company which is really well known for DNS. I mean, they had cricket. Liu Stuart Bailey, that really kind of the pioneers in DNS and security have constantly been adding innovation to it, but DNS is one of those things where it's kind of like not thought about, but it runs everywhere, runs the web. It is critical infrastructure and, you know D HCP. We all know what that is. We have a home router, and then he got I p address management. These have been traditionally different things for enterprises, and everyone has it. They got to deal with it. And it's really, ultimately the location and how things resolved and connect. So you know, it really becomes a foundational opportunity to figure out where the access is not only a remote access, but security. So we had a great bunch of guests looking at looking at the info blocks. Next level networking, because they bought, had an acquisition, a Cube alumni snap route recently, and this caught our attention because they were doing Cloud Native. And one of the guests we had was Glenn Sullivan. He was the founder of Snap Route. He was the the guy who did all the Siri work for Apple. So this guy knows large scale of those cloud native We had kuna Sunni, who's the runs? Corporate development in all of the products for info blocks. He kind of went into the strategy of how they're taking the I won't say boring DNs, but the critical infrastructure of DNS and how they're extending the functionality with an abstraction layer around D D I, which is DNS DCP and management. And then we had some great guests on there. We had a Craig Sanderson from info blocks. He's on there. You'll hear from him. He talked about the security and then finally a customer who's running a big school district who, with Covert 19 exposes all these challenges around what has been called the borderless enterprise. So really, next level is that, you know, how do you deal with all this stuff? And that's been a big issue. So we're gonna unpack all that in this virtual event. We have four great interviews, and so it's going to be a great program. >>Yeah, John, as you said it to some of those foundational pieces of how network is done, a lot of times runs, you know, under the radar, something you don't need to think about. But all of these changes, as we said, you know my data. My network is now highly distributed, especially I would expect that the impact of the global pandemic and work from home are really causing even more of these challenges and to think about distributed infrastructure even more. So what are some of the themes we should be looking for here? How much of them kind of tie into what we've been talking about the last couple of years in some of these cloud native worlds? >>That's great questions to I'll get into some of the themes of the program, but you brought up the covert 19 again. We've been talking about this in our reporting. You've been doing a ton of interviews following all your your stuff as well as well as all of our team. Covert 19 really exposes the aspect of critical infrastructure, and to me it's like it's the It's the great I o T experiment happening in real time. It's forcing companies saying, Hey, the work. The future of work is about workplace. The location is now home workforce. Are the people emotional? They want ease of use. They want a different experience. They're all not in the office workloads and work flows. All of them have the common word working it so I think over 19 exposes this what I call I o t experiment because everyone is now borderless. It changes the game and really puts the pressure on security network access. And ultimately, you know, the bad guys are out there so you could have someone a teacher at home or a worker at home, and they get some malware attack and they're not sophisticated, zoom or whatever they're using for tools. All that's changed and they're vulnerable. So this brings up a huge networking challenge from whether even VP ends or even relevant or not to everything. So, to me, that is a huge point. You're gonna hear that throughout the commentary that that's kind of teased out. But the real things about innovation around the cloud you're gonna hear info blocks and they're experts talk about what they're doing and how they see cloud scale and cloud native integrating into an older paradigm like DNS. And to me, that's the That's the evolution of this DD I concept. That's an abstraction layer that creates innovation opportunities but also takes away a lot of the complexities around managing all the DNS things out there and again, that's the access of the network. It's a it's a place of truth is really kind of low level, but it's really foundational. So to me, that's the main theme. And customers want ease of use into it, whether they're at home or not, and replacing the old ways to putting a box out there. That's the way it was, DNs DNs. People would manage it all. Now they want to have it provisioned, managed a manage service cloud Native Cloud operations because it's only gonna get has to get that way. >>Yeah, it's interesting, John. You know, we watched the whole wave of software defined impact networking. I think of a company like Info blocks. They've been around for decades. They're dominant in the space is that they play in. Traditionally, it would have been an appliance that you thought of for their environment you talked about. They now have the snapper out acquisition as part of what they're doing. So it just what should we be looking for? What are they really the main point? That Info Box wants to bring people together for this next level networking experience? >>Well, Glenn Sullivan was one of my favorite discussions, and he's been on. He's a cube alumni and he's so smart. He came again from Apple. He knows that he knows what large scale looks like. Snap route was really early and was one of those technologies that just, you know, it has the core DNs built in kubernetes built in. They were doing some pretty aggressive, I would call it for lack of a better word kubernetes on bare metal. They were doing stuff, but really super cool kubernetes you combine that with DNS and info blocks actually has the core DNs that's actually in every kubernetes of in the CN CF. So everything that comes out of the CN CF from a core DNS standpoint is info blocks. So yeah, they're definitely relevant in the whole CNC of Cloud Native foundation, effort around cloud native. And as that scales just micro services, you're gonna have to have this new abstraction layer and also be compatible with automation. So that's, um, we didn't go into the weeds on that, but that was essentially the head room for all the different conversations roles of cloud native and open source technologies enabling borderless enterprises because you got to have the operation side and you got to have the program ability. So you start to get into the true dev ops that we used to riff on all the time. You know, move fast, break stuff to don't break anything. Right? So ops, ops and Dev have to come together. This is where the winners and losers of networking will be determined. You gotta provide the enablement for developers, but you gotta provide the stability of an operational checklist. >>Yeah, John, I guess the last question I want to ask you before we get to the guests, You know, that operational change, You know, we saw for so many years it was, Oh, all the networking people, they're going to have to learn to code up weight. Dev ops is actually gonna spreading the information around. And maybe I won't need a particular networking team. But we understand when things go wrong, you've gotta have somebody with the expertise that could be able to dig in. What are you know, who should be listening to this? What are some of those organizational implications for what you're talking about with info blocks? >>That's a great point. I mean, the biggest challenge that I see in all this entire digital transformation as it starts to get down into the cloud native world is, most people are asking the wrong questions. They don't even know what they're talking about When it comes down to trying to compare an apple to an orange, they're really kind of disconnected on language. You got server people in networking. We know that they have different languages, and working together is key. When you think about something like DNS, that's a technical. That's an operator that's an I t person, that someone who's running critical infrastructure. But when you start to think about the security aspect of it, it's a CSO conversation. So what I'm seeing come out of this that's critical, is when you start to get into this cloud native world. You have more stakeholders in the value proposition of all this and with covert 19. As I pointed out, you know you got hacks and you got security. So when you talk with security, that's up and down the organization. That's the CSO down to the teams themselves. We have about automation horizontally scaling with Dev ops. That's multiple teams, so you have an integration kind of stakeholders. You know DNS servers, all networking. All these people have to kind of come together. So the people who should watch this are the people who are concerned about scaling the modern enterprise, which is borderless, which is code word for multiple access points and multiple connection points. R i o t um, how do you make that work? And that's the real challenge. So it's kind of like an I t a person who wants to figure out where the puck will be so they could be there when it's there and skate to where the puck is, as we say, and and the CSO of the senior people have to understand that DNS cannot be overlooked because whether it's a managed service. So So Cloudflare had a huge out into the DNS. Setting DNS takes down everything. So it's ah, it's the most fertile ground and the most targeted ground for attacks, and that is well understood. So getting the right questions in place foundational we had to set up the modern enterprise, and then that's going to be a construct for the cloud native architecture and ultimately the developer environment. So yeah, it's a topic that's kind of nerdy with DNS, But it has implications across digital transformation. >>Jonah expecting lots of conversations around security and automation how they tie into all of the modern and modernization themes. Absolutely some pieces that shouldn't be left behind. All right, John Ferrier, Thanks so much for helping us kick off. Really interested. Make sure to stick with us off to listen to all the guest interviews here that John has done the info blocks. Next level networking experience. Instrument, man. And thank you for watching the Cube. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.