>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube. Covering NetApp Insight 2017. Brought to you by NetApp. >> Hello everyone, welcome back. We're live in here Las Vegas with NetApp Insight 2017. This is the Cube's exclusive coverage. I'm John Furrier, the host of Cube. Also co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media. My co-host Keith Townsend, CTO advisor, talking about the channels, talking about services, talking about data fabric. Our next two guests is Mark Carlton, it's the group technical director of Concorde Technology group, and Adam Bergh who's the data center practice director of Presidio. Guys you're on the front lines. Got the A-Team shirts on. Guys you're on the A-Team, which is a very high bar at NetApp, so congratulations. I've had a few on today already. What's exciting is that this whole digital transformation kind of cliche, it's kind of legit. It's happening. No brainer on that. But it's not a buzzword anymore, it's actually happening. Here's from the front lines. Share your perspective on what this means because most of the folks that are adopting data realize that it's not an after thought. It's fundamental, foundational thinking. But they're busy. They got a lot on their plate. They got dev option, the cloud, and on-premise transformation. They got data governance architecture. They got security practices that are being unbundled from IT. Internet of things over the top. All this stuff's happening. It's crazy. >> Yeah I mean you're absolutely right. So this concept of data transforming and data transformational services was sort of a buzz word three years ago, even when NetApp rolled out this concept of the data fabric right? It really was just a buzz word. It was an idea of freely moving your data in and out of multiple clouds. Not having siloed data. Being able to move your data where you need it when you need it. I mean we're really finally at this point in time, this inflection point where this is a reality for our customers. And I actually want to kind of bring up what NetApp announced here today at insight with ONTAP 9.3. So a little history lesson, NetApp has been promising this data fabric where they're able to freely move data in and out of their different portfolio products. And one of that vision was to move data between their SolidFire platform and their ONTAP platform. So there's two major platforms that they have in the all flash world. So with 9.3 and element 10, which was also announced simultaneously, we actually have the ability now to move data between these two platforms to really start to envision this data fabric world. So I'm really excited that we're actually seeing this vision that was kind of laid out by NetApp three and four years ago. >> That's super hard too by the way. It's not easy, but I got to ask you because, again, in the cloud world you see things like kubernetes, certainly containers has been the rage. But the orchestration aspect of cloud native services in apps is key. You're bringing up an issue around the data. Orchestration of data isn't easy. How do you do it? Okay you can, I get the announcement. SolidFire and ONTAP working well together in 9.3. Is it easy? >> Yep. >> Can you share your thoughts on how easy it is or what needs to be done to set up for that (mumbles)? >> We don't really talk about this, but I'm going to because we saw it today. Cloud orchestrator. >> Yep. >> So this is a gorgeous new interface that NetApp's putting out there to bring that reality of in going to click a button and I'm going to deploy a kubernetes workload. I'm going to deploy doc or I'm going to deploy workloads in Azure. I'm going to deploy a workload in ONTAP on-premises. I'm going to deploy a workload in AWS. And I'm going to be able to freely move that data. I've got a button that's going to make this, the data orchestration happen. It's really fundamentally changing something that's very complex into something that's very easy and accessible to most customers. >> And that's, by the way, the premise of multi-cloud too by the way. So you're saying that they're going to be able to orchestrate and move data across clouds? >> Yes. >> Seamlessly? >> Yeah, across clouds. >> That's hard to do. Mark you have a comment on that? >> Yeah and I think that's really given us the flexibility-- >> John: By the way, not a lot of companies do this probably? >> No, no. And that's why NetApp stands out. And this it makes the conversation with customers really easy now today when we're talking to customers. We're not talking about the technology all the time, we're talking about what you want to do. What do you want to do for your business? How do you want to use your data? How do you want to access your data? And the tools that NetApp are starting to bring out around this, and giving us the capability and flexibility to give control back to the customer. To do what they want to do at that time. They don't have to make them decisions now. So and having that so it's orchestrated across the multiple cloud platforms, and be able to move that data to where the data's best placed for what that business needs is a great conversation to have. We couldn't have that a few years ago. We weren't able to, you were talking about this with data. And now when I talk to customers, I talk about the data fabric, but I don't actually mention it. It's just a strategy in my head. So as I'm going through a conversations, I'm starting to under right what are you wanting to do and how you want me to point it out? >> John: It went from pipe dream to reality basically? >> Yeah. >> Alright so let me just get this so I get right 'cause this again, and we've been looking at this. Not a lot of people do it so we're tracking it. Multi-cloud certainly is what customers want. It's hard to get there. So the question is, every cloud's got a different architecture. S3 and Amazon then how you move and stack it from there is different. It's also different on-prem. So you go back and look at like I got Spark on this, Dupe on this, and I'm pipe lining data here. But then they pipeline it differently (mumbles). So you have different clouds, but then on-prem might be different. How does a, if a customer says okay bottom line me. On-prem, I can move data from on prem to the cloud or is it only across clouds? Or both? >> So we can move data freely, anywhere we want it today. >> Including on premise? >> Today. >> Okay. So let me paint you a picture. Traditional architectures, I'm going to talk about something like a flex pod architecture from NetApp in Sisco. That's your traditional, I'm running traditional workloads on premises. I need some of that data now to flow up into AWS. I spin up instantaneously a cloud ONTAP workload. I click a mouse button, I have a snap mirror to Amazon AWS. Wait a minute. I wanted that data over in Azure. I click a mouse button, I've spun up a cloud ONTAP instance over in Azure, and I've snap mirrored my data over there freely. I want that data back into an S3 type bucket down into on-premises, I'm going to set up a storage grid web scale workload. I can bring that data into an object S3 type data workload instantaneously. I have that data-- >> So your abstracting away the complexity of the cloud so I don't have to rewrite code? >> Adam: Absolutely. >> Does it for you? Alright I'm going to throw-- you guys is good. Cracking the host here. You guys are killin me here. Good, your good. Alright here's a tough one. Okay I got a policy question. I got region in Germany. My data's in Germany, but I replicated it in the U.S., and I don't know what's going on over there. How does a customer deal with that because now in cloud you got regional issues. You got GDPR now going on. So your in the UK, you know what I'm talkin about. So I check the box on the policy. I'm okay in Germany, but my data center in Ireland has replicated data. >> Yeah. >> So this is a really conflict in the privacy. How do you manage that? Is that managed? (speakers talk over each other) >> It genuinely goes down to what sort of data, and what are they doing at the time, or what type of data you're collecting. The conversations I'm having with customers around the GDPR as such because in the UK we're talking about it all the time. Every customer is wanting to talk about are they done the road? Where are they? Try to build that foundation and understanding of-- >> Is that the number one thing you're talkin about to customers is GDPR right now? >> GDPR comes up, you see I wouldn't say it comes up in every conversation. I mean it has to. The main reason it has to is because now we've got that privacy by design so you've got to start to understand as you're designing these solutions and you're designing where this data's going to sit-- >> And the deadline is looming right? I mean I don't know the exact date but-- >> May the 28th in 2018, and it's creeping up. Customers are still sat trying to think about GDPR. They-- >> They're procrastinating till, right. >> Yeah. And I'll still walk into meetings and mention GDPR, and people will look at me and go, "Well what's that." >> You're going, "You're screwed." >> Yeah and we're just getting (mumbles). >> Could be an interesting conversation. >> Y2K all over again. >> It is, and as soon as start getting some (mumbles) conversations. But if you look at what Azure's doing around that NWS, and how they're strengthening that message. Some people are moving it to like an Azure cloud platform because of the GDPR capabilities and the security capabilities that it has, and how that-- And that goes for things like the Office 365 suites and those sorts of areas. Because you're able to start moving your data and freely have that movement, and then we go into things like cloud control and how you can back that up and how we can move the data again from NetApp. It's a software element that gives you the capability to backup Office 365 suites from one cloud to another cloud. >> So GDPR, you see, as a big opportunity for cloud providers like Azure. >> So long as it's-- >> They bring something to the table right? >> Yeah they bring different things to the table. They bring, you have elements of data where you need that on-premise solution. You need to have control, and you need to have that restriction about where that data sits. And some of the talks here that are going on at the moment is understanding, again, how critical and how risky is that data? What is it you're keeping, and what is-- How high does that come up in our business value it is? So if that's going to be your on-premise solution, then maybe other data that can go push out into the cloud. But I would say Azure, the AWS suites, and Google they are really pushing down that security. What you can do, how you can protect it, how you can protect that data, and you've got the capabilities of things like LSR or GSR on having that global reach or that local repositories for the object storage. So you can to control by policies, you can write into this country, but you are not allowed to go to this country and you're not allowed to go to that one. And cloud does give you that to a certain element, but also then you have to step back into maybe search the thing that-- >> So does that make cloud orchestrated more valuable or does it still got more work to do because under what Adam was saying is that the point and click is a great way to provision. >> Man: Mhm. >> Right? You can move onto other things pretty quickly. So in your scenario about the country nuances, does cloud orchestrator handle that too or? >> So the cloud orchestrator will, I mean the promise is that you will be able to pick and choose where you want your data to live. When you want it to move it tomorrow, you know you pick the data center, you pick the geo, you pick your AWS availability zone, and that's where you move your data. You'll have a drop down box that will show you a list of AWS availability zones where your data will live. So if you have specific requirements, specific compliancies that you need to abide by, that will be baked into the application. And if specific requirements change, you can change with it very, very easily. >> John: You can manage a policy to an interface. >> Managing the policy's very easily. And the point being is that we can no longer build silos where your data is stuck in the space that it is. Because of some things like GDPR in Europe or other regulations, you need to have the ability to move that data when you need to. Maybe even at a moment's notice. >> So I got to ask. This is obviously a pressing time in our country, obviously the attacks happened in Vegas. So a lot of people aren't going to make the trip here, have not made the trip, some people stayed at home. So I'd love to ask you guys if you can just take a minute for each of you to share what's exciting that's happening here. Because you know this is a cool announcement. Cloud orchestrator is getting a lot of good buzz. I've been watching the feedback on Twitter from some of the influencers and some of the practitioners. We had a previous guest mention it. What's ah-ha moment here for folks that should know about what's happening that might have missed it because they couldn't make it? >> So I don't know. For me the ah-ha moment was when they said NetApp was finally delivering that the real vision of NVME over fabrics. So we've had a lot of, there's a lot of other storage partners out there that have been talking about NVME as this game changing platform, but really what they're doing's NVME on the backend. Really the promise of NVME is the over the fabric portion of it. NetApp is building into their flagship ONTAP platform a checkbox that says, "I'm going to make this NVME over fabric. "I'm going to make this "storage class memory as a check box." >> John: What's the impact of customers? >> Impact is ultra low latency. Latencies that you can't even achieve with SSDs today. Even with SSDs, NVME on the backend of your controllers. It really is going to enable the high quality analytics. The data services that we just couldn't even achieve at one millisecond latencies, we're down into sub millisecond. .1 millisecond latencies. >> John: So huge performance gains? >> Huge performance gains. It's really going to enable a whole new suite of ideas that we can't even think about. >> And developers will win on this too. It makes data more valuable (mumbles). Mark thoughts on what's exciting here for the folks that couldn't make it? >> I think from my point of view it is that going into orchestration and management point. So leading on from really what Adam was saying then, you were going into developers and how they're going to get the benefit of working with the more performing kit, easier to manage, so they can start to develop that. The orchestration and management and the provisioning and being able to roll out these environments. There's the plugins to some of the areas that we talked about today, and the expansion of that management suite and the ease of that management suit for multiple different users to be able to benefit from it. I want to say from a development and a, or a customers side: the easier we make it to manage, the infrastructure you kind of forget about. Which means you can start to concentrate on the application, how you deliver, what you deliver. And that's really where I see NetApp moving too. It's taken it away from this is the infrastructure and you've got a flexpod, taking it to the next level and going, "Right okay. "Now let's show you what we can do "and how you can use this infrastructure "to be able to benefit your business." And that's one of the big things that I am starting to see. >> The thing I am excited about is the pub initiative. The NetApp.io is the URL. ONTAP, pun intended, you know beer. The developer dev-op story is coming together. I think when you combine some of the Invenio fabric issues is look at the developer pressures to make the infrastructure programmable. That's a huge challenge, and automation's got to be enabled. So I'd love to get your thoughts on how NetApp is positioned visa via what customers want to get to which is, I call self driving infrastructure. Larry Elson calls it self driving databases. But that's pretty much what we want. You want to have under the hood stuff work. But it's the developers and it's using the data in a programmatic way to do automation, hit that machine learning, some of that bounded activity's going to be automated, but then the unbounded data analytics starts to kick in really nicely. >> So element OS is really one of NetApp strategies of what they're calling the next generation data center. And I kind of talk about it with customers as we call it transparent infrastructure to your developers and dev-ops teams. Infrastructure that they don't even have to carry about, care about. That it's highly scalable, highly performant, API driven, cloud like architectures, but on-premise, on-premises so you don't have to worry about cloud sort of data security issues, encryption issues up in the cloud. So you have that cloud like transparent architecture. I mean who knows what hardware runs in the cloud. Do you know what hardware runs in AWS Azure? We don't really care right? >> John: They make their own. >> Yeah we don't care. It works right? It's transparent to the end user, and that's what NetApp is promising really. >> John: Well server-less looks good too right? >> Yeah absolutely. >> Interesting. >> That's really what we're talking about, and that's element OS from NetApp is really the heart of that sort of story. >> Alright so take a step back. You guys are very successful, super smart. Thanks for sharing. It's great conversation, wish we had more time. But the role of the channel is changing. It used to be move boxes through the channel back in the day. That's no longer a storage company. They're a data company, I get that. High level message. I get the positioning. But the reality is you still need to gear to store the stuff on. So still some business there, but the role of the channel and the providers, whether you call em VARS or global (mumbles). You guys in particular have a lot of expertise. The cloud guys are very narrow. They get all the large scale business. But as these solutions start to become vertical, you need data that's specialized to the app, but you want the horizontally scalable benefits of the infrastructure. So you got to balance specialism, which is domain expertise, in a vertical and general, scalable cloud. So that means it's an opportunity for the channel to be basically cloud providers. So the question is, is that happening in your mind? Do you see that playing out because that means bringing technology to the table and using native clouds, not cloud natives, like the native infrastructures of service. 'Cause the action SaaS. Everyone's going to be a SaaS company. >> I mean we're fundamentally turning Presidio in from that traditional, "Hey we're slinging hardware" to a data service is a data management and cloud consulting model where we're even developing our own cloud based tools. Our own cloud based orchestration tools. So we're developing a tool called cloud concierge. So cloud concierge is something that we're not even going to charge for, but what it does it multi-cloud management on-premises, point and click deployment models. Single point of billing infrastructure for multi-cloud charge back and other features like that. So that's where we really see the future of a company like Presidio is something like cloud concierge. >> 'Cause you could bring a lot to the table, so why not build your own tech on top of clouds. >> So we're really becoming a tool company where we're developing our own intellectual property-- >> It's kind of a loaded question, but you guys are on the front lines. It's really kind of, it's more of a directional thing. Mark do you see the same thing in the UK? >> Yeah I was going to say from my point of view we, in our company we deliver infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, backup as a service. So there's lots of different cloud elements that we build within the company. Really that's driven through the conversations, again, we're having with customers. And customers don't, the customers we're talking to and the customers in UK, a lot of them don't jump straight into a cloud opportunity. It's either, like a little bit of data, see what it does, make sure it's the right application. But the, again, that conversation. Because it's changing, our business is having to change. >> Well the purpose of sales channels is to have indirect sales. And companies can't hire people fast enough that actually know the domain specific things. So I see the trend really moving fast along the lines of the specialty channel partners now turning into actual technology partners. >> Yes-- >> So that's going to be a threat to (mumbles) of the world. >> And that's the thing. That's one of the key things. Customers when I talk to them, they're not looking for a partner to sell them something. They're looking for a partner to help them strengthen their IT solutions. >> John: And cross the bridge to the future. >> Yeah. And that's it. And they want a partner they can grow with and keep moving with-- >> Keith you want to get a question in edgewise here? I mean come on buddy. (laughs) >> It was pretty tough. Actually I would like to bring it back to the technology. I'm a technologist at heart. And while this sounds great and magical, one of the practical problems we run into in this type of data mobility is cost and just size of data. So... Let's operationalize this. Bring this down to the ops guy. When, at the end of the month, am I going to see a large egress bill from AWS, Azure. At the end of the month am I going to have the equivalent of bad MPV scores from my internal developers just saying, "Yeah I asked for the data to be moved "from AWS to Azure, "but it was several terabytes and it took several days." So operationalize this for me. Bring it down to the ops perspective. Where is the op cost in this solution. >> NetApp has some really cool technologies around this. I want to talk about one or two real quick. NetApp private storage. This is your own hardware connected to multiple clouds. You want to take that cloud from IBM SoftLayer to Azure to AWS, the data doesn't even have to move. You're basically making a cloud connect through an Equinex data center into multiple clouds. You have the ability to have zero egress charges and multi-cloud hyper scaler access for that for those analytical services. That's one solution. Another one is what's rolling out in the new storage grid web scale 11.0 that NetApp just announced today. It's complete hooks into AWS for all their analytical tools that are prebuilt in AWS. So your data can live on-premises in your own S3 buckets, but you can make API calls into AWS when certain data changes. Where you have the analysis happening in the cloud on your data, but your data never leaves your own physical hardware where you control the data governance of that data. So there are solutions out there that NetApp is really on the forefront of solving these solutions where-- I want my data on-premise. I don't want to pay egress charges, but I still want to take advantage of these amazing services that AWS and Azure are putting together. >> So speedlight. I think we still need to answer that speedlight problem. You know I have, let's say that I go with a CNF like Equinix, and Equinix has data centers across the U.S. and the world practically. But data still has gravity. I can't magically move terabytes of data from one facility, CNF, to another one. What are the limits of the technologies? Where can we go? What are other solutions we need to probably take a look at when it comes to sharing data across geographic regions? >> Yeah so I would say from my point of view, this is when things come into such as our (mumbles) region. And you look at what we're doing with the SJ platforms and how they spread those out because their repositories are moving that data about. And how you can drive that policy driven, you're writing into one place in the background. Then the data is seamlessly moving between different areas. If it's something like a migration where you're actually moving data from one platform to another, there's tools. If you think of things within the MPS solution, which Adam talked about earlier, if it was set within a Equinix building, and you had your express routes and you had your direct connects into the cloud providers that are there, you can use tools that are built into NetApp to actually be able to move that data between those cloud providers or change the VMs and such. It's the virtual machines from a VM platform or hyper V platform, or whichever it'd be to be able to move that using an on command shift tool. So no data is having to move. You're not having to, you've got none of those costs. I think from a management, because of how easy it is to move the data or of the control we have over data now. Using things like OCI and those tools to be able to manage and understand what your costs are, what the drawbacks are, understand where you've got VMs. Do you use that data? A lot of customers don't have that insight. They will go, "I need to move 10 terabytes." Because they think that's what they have. Realistically, 8 terabytes of that data has been sat there, not touched for the last 10 years. And if you move all that 8 terabytes, it's going to cost you money because it's just going to be sat there. You need to move the data that you need to work with. And that's one of the conversations that I have with customers today. It's not about just throwing everything up into the cloud 'cause that's not always the cost effective solution. It's about putting the right data into the right place and the right file solution. So it might be one terabyte needs to go there, but it's what you're going to do with it. Are you going to use it primarily to run analytics again to start to use it to drive the business forward, or is it a terabyte that you're going to sit there and archive. >> Yeah the cheapest data, the cheapest faster data transfer is that transfer you never have to make. So if you don't have to make the data transfer, you'll save money in both time and cost for moving that data. I really appreciate that feedback. >> Guys thanks for coming on the Cube. The A-Team, love when it comes all together. Love the riff on the A-Team. But the bar is high. You guys are really smart. Love the conversation goin back and forth. You guys are answering all the tough questions. Final question for you is, you're on the front lines. The world's changing. What's the advice to your peers out there that are watching? How to attack this environment because how do you win under this pressure? It's a hard game right now, a lot of hard stuff's being done. Whether that's cloud architecting, that's on-prem private cloud, or moving to the cloud. A lot of heavy lifting's going on. It looks easy. I want the magic. I want push button cloud orchestration to consumer apps. Your advice. >> Find a strong partner. So I mean if you're going out there, you're not going to be able to learn everything yourself. You want to have a strong partner that's got a big team. A team that has the breath and scope to deal with some of the big challenges out there that can put together best of breed solutions from multiple vendors. So not just NetApp, not just our cloud partners, but someone who has the breath and depth and scope. Find that right partner that's good for you and your organization. >> John: Mark? >> And I agree in the way of the partnership side of things. That's really what's going to drive customers. In making sure that you've got a partner that you can rely on to be able to move forward. Make sure they can help you understand your business, but you clearly understand what your business is trying to achieve. So it's, I ask people today what's your business? Do you understand your business? Do you understand your customers? And a lot of the time it's yeah. We understand what they do. But they don't understand the business. And it's key to understanding what you need to do, how you need to achieve it, and having a partner that can support you through that phase. >> Awesome, great. Thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. I would add community as the open source continues to grow, big part of it. Being part of the community, being great partnerships, being transparent. It's the Cube bringing all the data to you here live in Las Vegas for NetApp Insight 2017. I'm John Furrier with Keith Townsend. More live coverage after this short break. >> Woman: Calling all barrier breakers, status quo smashers, world changers.

>> Announcer: Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering NetApp Insight 2017. Brought to you by, NetApp. >> Hey welcome back everyone, live here in Las Vegas. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage of NetApp Insight 2017, here at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconeANGLE Media, and co-host of theCUBE. My co-host this week is Keith Townsend, @CTOAdvisor, and our next guests are Josh Atwell, who's a developer advocate at NetApp, and Jason Benedicic, who's with, Principal Consultant ANS Group Cloud Service Provider in the UK, great topic, talking DevOps. Guys, welcome to theCUBE, good to see you again. >> Good to see you as well, thank you. >> Boy, DevOps has gone mainstream. >> It's a thing. >> Okay, it's absolutely gone mainstream, we've been saying it for years, I remember going back a few years ago, you say, DevOps, huh? Infrastructure as Code? Everyone loves it, it's now the new model, people are moving fast to. What's goin on with NetApp and tell all of us your story. Go ahead. >> So within NetApp, we look at DevOps as a unique opportunity for us to level up. Everybody that's doing infrastructure and going from saying, you just going out and developing an application to saying, we can actually help deliver you the best experience. We look at where applications are being developed and supported, everybody likes to say it's straight out to the public cloud, that's where all the innovation happens, but, it's also happening on premises as well. The reason that we see most frequently is that reduced friction. You know, going to the public cloud, that has become a model that people can go out, they can get what they need and do what they need, and it's been something that's significantly easier than what their local IT organization has had. DevOps is forcing infrastructure and IT to understand that availability and reliability, which is what we've always been measured on, is no longer the core measure that we have to focus on. It's agility and availability and delivering unique services. >> Well I would just say to your point, Wikibon analysts research have validated your point, and they actually show the data that the on premise, they call it true private cloud, numbers, are growing actually, not declining. What is declining is about $1.5 billion in non-differentiated labor, but that's shifting to SAS models. So what it means is, the on premise action, in a cloud operational way, is growing. Which is not saying that's declining, it's just saying, people are getting their house in order. They're doing DevOps on prem. Prep to do cloud. >> Yeah. >> Cloud's got native stuff, you do versioning, you can put some stuff in the cloud, test/dev, sure, there's great use cases, but most enterprises are on prem, getting ready to take advantage of it. >> It's an absolute and conversation, and that's also somethin' that we are working really hard with our customers, in our field and the entire company as a whole. To understand, it's not an or conversation. Most companies are looking at how do we solve a variety of different challenges, how do we accommodate for a variety of different workloads that are being developed, and how do we modernize the mode one operational workloads that we've had and bring them into the future with new services. So, it's an absolute and conversation. It's a pretty exciting time to be dealing with IT. >> So Jason, as we think about DevOps, we give, we have plenty of examples for private cloud and inside of our own datacenters, but you help run a public cloud. >> So we run services within a public cloud. >> Right. >> And a hybrid model. So we run a number of services to man assessments, so we help in the UK, I think we're a little bit further behind than the US is currently, so some of the biggest services that we do is helping people to assess their applications, assess their data, and understand what they can move. Using things like the Gartner TIME Analysis, where we can take best leverage of on premises private cloud, where you've got hybrid approach, where you've got native. We got the expertise around retooling and assessment services to move legacy applications into a cloud model, and then we provide management services on top, and those sorts of things. That's where we use, utilize the DevOps, around taking what would be our managed services ITIL processes, things that people would traditionally do manually. We take a lot of that, and we prepackage that up into workflows and data automation operations for our customers so they can provision where they like, across a multitude of on premises and in the public cloud. So we take that work which would traditionally be done by a analyst on a desk or that sort of thing, package that up, using a lot of NAVs, APIs, and Solufy tooling. So, we're saving enterprises time so they can work on what's really important to them, and that's their line of business applications. >> So from an assessment perspective, I love to get feedback, what are customers learning? Is it, that they thought they could just lift and shift, or that they have to go through some type of DevOps transformation -- >> Yeah, so -- >> What's been the balance of the results? >> Yeah, so a lot of people don't necessarily understand where they are. There are a lot of misconceptions around being able to lift and shift things to the crowd, but that's not really a great cost model. I find in the public sector in the UK a lot, is you've got a lot of legacy applications that potentially people don't have any knowledge of, 'cause the people that ran them and installed them in the first place have long gone. They need to understand what those applications do for their business, what the business processes around them are, and how they can take that forward into a new model. A lot of retooling. Actually, a lot of time we see the application should probably be ditched and let's look for something that we can just build cloud native. >> So, that requires a new set of skills to operate at that higher level of the stack as we call it in the industry, however, that leaves a lot of low level work that still needs to be done, so automation has kind of walked hand-in-hand with DevOps. What is the NetApp story around automation and helping to remediate some of this low level activity that needs to be done repeatedly? >> Big focus for us as a company is not trying to dictate tooling to people. If you are using Docker, we offer a native Docker volume plugin that allows you to plug right into Docker and be able to provision and manage storage as an application owner or developer, to get what you need, and to handle the services that are available there. When we look at configuration management, or helping code and artifact management, cloud, with Openstack, or VMware vRealize Suite, our initiative is to make the NetApp products seamless and invisible into your processes. How do we remove and eliminate handoffs, and how do we make all of those processes effortless, so that as you identify those tasks, and those high effort but low value tasks that has to be -- taken advantage of. >> And automation -- and automation's critical there. >> Yeah, yeah. Being able to automate those things, remove people from that process, and using their skills and talents for things like auditing, and understanding proper behavior, checking that people are delivering what they are supposed to, and consuming from a policy framework. >> I'd like to get back to the automation, but I just want to shift to Josh, so hold the thought on automation. Josh, I want to get your thoughts on, as we get to automation we start talking about hybrid cloud. You're doing hybrid cloud. That's your -- >> Yeah. >> You're on the front line, you're doing it. Also, hybrid cloud also means things differently, so when you think about hybrid cloud, a customer's got to get their act together. We heard earlier from the NetApp folks, the VP of Engineering, we're doing three things: modernizing the infrastructure, that's just like, okay go clean house, fix things, making sure we're solid, rock solid, build the next generation data center, be ready for the cloud. >> Yep. >> Okay. So, there's some things that need to get done there. What's your view on the table stakes to get there, because you got orchestration capabilities, cloud orchestration demo is hot, we saw that, at the show here. What is NetApp doing to make hybrid cloud easier? >> Across all the products that we utilize run NetApp, you've got APIs on everything. They got a lot of really good tools there, and they're moving away from the traditional hardware. I've been working with NetApp for like 16 years on. It was a hardware company, a software company, and now it's just moved on even further. There's a further evolution there, a management company. It's not just, you're managing your data, the data flow, the fabric around it, and the tools that are on offer there are just game changers. Especially the Cloud Automation option this morning. Yeah, that was great. >> As people know NetApp, eight years ago, they were -- I was scratching my head saying, wait a minute, why are you going to Amazon? So, early in cloud, so clearly they know what DevOps is, so it's not just lip service, we know that, that's just my personal observation and experience with NetApp, but Josh, I want you to talk to the audience that is either a NetApp customer or looking at NetApp, what's different now, what should they know about the new NetApp now, obviously you're on the A-Team, I see the shirt there, but, NetApp has changed and they're changing. I mean, SolidFire came in, you're seeing a lot more action on the DevOps cloud with the flash, some good stuff there, but NetApp has been an innovative company, what's the new story for NetApp in your words? >> For me, it's the speed that they're able to react to the market, moving the ONTAP to a cadence model, six month releases, moving products away from tin, into software, it's all about the value of what we can provide. We've got standalone products now from NetApp that can just do Office 365 backup. That's something that's completely moved forward. You've got a level of innovation and speed coming out of NetApp that's just unrivaled. >> Josh, I'd like to get your thoughts back to automation now, I'm CSO, the cost thing I hear all the time is the following narrative, I don't want the shiny new toy, I got to lot of stuff on my plate. I got an application development team I need to scale up and make modern, which is DevOps, not just take the old guys and put 'em in, I got to recruit, retrain, replatform, I have cybersecurity going on, I got to unbolt that from IT and make that essentially a top line, top reporting to the board, do all the cyber stuff, and I got the data governance stuff to deal with, and by the way, I got IoT over the top coming in. If it's not clear as day on the cloud, it doesn't meet my conversation. How do you guys engage in a dialog like that? One, do you agree with that, that makes that statement, but, that's a lot of stuff going on. Bombs are dropping inside the customer's environment, they're like, this is Hell right now, I got to lot of stuff to do. How do you guys help that environment? >> I think one thing that we have to be mindful of is that we've moved beyond being able to define a very static and rigid infrastructure architecture. In the past, we would define what our storage, what our compute, what our networking is, and that's going to -- what it's going to be. It's very easy to say I know how to support 10,000 Exchange users. That's always been something that we've been comfortable talking about. What you outlined, is the new reality for IT in that, we are getting a diverse set of requirements where we'll come in and say we need to deliver this new application so that we can get to market and capture -- I was actually talking to someone in the military. I said, what if the military was to develop a new recruiting tool, and they go in and say, we need to build this recruiting tool, but we actually don't know how much data is going to be required for it. IT is not comfortable with that conversation. But NetApp has developed, our portfolio, and the integrations and tool sets that we've integrated with, to make that conversation a little bit easier. >> They're not comfortable because they can't forecast it, or it's a blank check in their mind, or they don't know what the -- how to architect it, what's the -- >> It's because we're not accustomed to architecting for those types of scenarios. We generally have focused on what is going to be your use case, when do you need it delivered by, how much do you need? We're still having that same conversation, but the answer now is, I don't know, but we have to ready for whichever direction it goes. >> That creates a good point, at VMWorld we noticed that there's a convergence, not a lot of people are talking about this yet, but I can see the canary in the coal mine chirping away, is that the convergence between hardware and software stacks are coming together. There are untested use cases coming down the pike. >> Yeah. >> That just -- I need this, but, we haven't tested it. Or we don't know the capacity, so you have to have a serverless mindset, you got to have DevOps mindset, you really got to be prepared. >> Well there's certainly a lot of maturity that we're working through. We are definitely from a DevOps perspective, in that juvenile phase, where we're learning who we are, the changes that are happening to us as we go, and we're getting a much more responsible view of what we're trying to deliver against. It's really uncomfortable for a lot of people to have a conversation where there's so many unknowns, but fortunately, the technologies we're able to bring to market and deliver, are providing that, as I describe it, a foothold to make you feel stable in that process to at least know that your data's getting where it needs to be and protected. >> Keith, I know you got to question, but my final point of that is that, that kind of, we see that evolve in the customer mindset too, where you start to see the word trusted relationship become real. It became a cliche, we're a trusted partner, but reality now with all this uncertainty, they need the headroom, they got to cross the bridge with the future with proven people. So that's why I kind of like, I don't mean to dis on the startups, but the shiny new toy's not going to win the day. You got to really hit the scenario today, and prepare to cross that bridge to the future with partners, and I think that's what you're saying. >> Yeah, that is a big part, and the partnerships that we have with folks like Red Hat and Jfrog, where we're trying to improve that experience of implementing these environments and supporting these new workloads, is absolutely a big part of what we're doing. >> So I'd like to talk a little about the necessity of requirements coming from the business, and tying it into something I heard from the stage yesterday. I'm not a storage guy. >> Me neither. >> I'm a data guy. And you've said that before, but one of the things that has interested me is this concept of the data fabric. >> Yes. >> Can you tie in the vision of data fabric to kind of this model of DevOps and being able to adjust to the changing needs of the business? >> I think what's really important and to be mindful of is that as we are seeing IT getting these requirements, as the businesses are identifying what is really impactful and the innovation that we need to deliver on, the data fabric is providing choice. It's allowing you to look at being able to deliver these enterprise class protection and replication, and capabilities, and allowing you to develop, innovate, and run your workloads wherever is most important to you, without having to completely reshift your thinking and what your skillsets are. We are able to level up everyone that has been involved with NetApp, and has invested their career, and invested their energy and becoming knowledgeable in that space, now allowing them to extend out into new areas in the cloud, hybrid cloud frameworks, but also providing these capabilities to the people consuming those resources without them having to care about the infrastructure. They know it is there, they know they can reach out to it and define snapshotting and take advantage of clones, and deliver a good developer experience, without having to understand exactly what's happening in the infrastructure. >> Guys, thanks so much for coming on, I see having seamless infrastructure is what everyone wants, but it's hard. >> Yeah. (laughing) >> Final comments, as you go into the future now with DevOps, it's become now operationalized, a lot more work to do, it's not that easy, what's the hardest thing about DevOps, final comment, you guys each weigh in and get the last word. What's the hardest thing about DevOps that people may not understand, 'cause it sounds so easy, it's magic. >> I think the hardest thing for most people is having a critical eye, and being pragmatic about where the challenges really are. If you look at the methodologies that DevOps promotes, it is really identifying the constraints in the work flow process. Regardless of what you're developing and what you're doing, being very pragmatic and realistic about where those constraints are, and focusing energy on solving for those constraints. I think with we deliver out to market, we are providing people some stability, so that as they're going through this process and things feel really shaky as they accelerate their pace of development and release of software, they have some stability so they, when they focus, they don't feel like the wheels are coming off the cart, if you will. >> I think what I find is that you need to -- people need to understand DevOps isn't something that you can buy, you need to build. You need to get the right people, you need to get the right processes, the right mindset, and embrace it. A lot of people think it's just -- You see job adverts these days, I want a full stack DevOps engineer, it's just not that simple. You've got to take the time, take the effort, and move with it, and learn as much as you can. >> And it's a talent issue too, and I just -- I guess one final final question 'cause this just popped in my head, at Big Data NYC last week in New York, what became very clear to us was, certainly in big data applications analytics, a lot of things are being automated. But, question for you is, when should you automate, one comment on Big Dat NYC a guy said, if you do it more than twice manually, automate it. Not that easy in storage and networks and data, but is there -- most DevOps guys have an eye for automate that. They see it, they automate it. What are some of the things you see being automated away? Is there like a ethos, is there like a saying? If you automate twice, what's your thoughts on automation? What should you automate, what's the order of operations, what's the low hanging fruit? >> With respect to DevOps in particular, it is truly finding the constraint. Identifying areas where people are becoming a bottleneck in processes, or the process itself is a bottleneck to success. Focus on that area first. Now, it's also easy to just try to pick the low hanging fruit, and do various things, but there needs to be a discipline in looking at, where are your actual bottlenecks and how can I remove those bottlenecks? >> So you read in a blog post, you got to know your environment, see the pressure point, constraints -- >> Yeah. >> Get some direction, advice, but -- >> Correct. >> You're saying, look at your environment. >> Yeah, we're now moving away from a world where virtualization allowed us to just thrown everything into a big resource pool and we just didn't pay attention to it any longer. We are now actually having to start having conversations -- >> It's engineering involved. >> again, yep. >> It's engineering involved. >> It is. >> Not just writin' some code. Josh, thoughts on automation? What ya automate first? >> I share a lot of those things. You need to look at your processes. You need to look at where you've got your bottlenecks, like he said, things that we would traditionally do in the past as a service provider where you got teams of analysts and engineers working on things. If you can speed that up and allow them to provide a better service to your customers, then yeah, certainly, work on that automation. Deploying out new models, even internal stuff that we need to deploy out, if you need to do that more than once or twice, for test environments, all those sorts of things, then yeah, certainly, automate that out. Because the more time you get out of your people, the more value you are delivering to the business. >> Thanks Josh, A-Team, love the shirt, quick soundbite, what's the A-Team, is there a certification, is there a bar to get over? >> It's a pretty high bar. It's an advocacy program, it's quite a small tight knit group of partners and customers of NetApp. We work in a 360 feedback loop between the NetApp Product Management Teams and other developers, and just give feedback and then rave about them when we feel is necessary. >> Have a beer, or coffee and tea, and say, I love when a plan comes together. (laughing) I couldn't resist. >> That's what John had also mentioned, NetApp has also delivered a developer and opensource community, called The Pub. So at netapp.io, it's a location, we actually have the code on bar behind me, we've got people that are coming in who have interest in containers, interest in Openstack, DevOps, and these new models. We have a large community, over 900 people participating. >> It's called The Pub? >> The Pub. >> John: Is there a URL? >> Yep, netapp.io. >> Netapp.io, and just -- you know we're data driven, seven years been monitoring the community's data, just anecdotally, the favorite drinks of developers in our community, beer and tea. >> Makes sense. >> Pretty makes sense. Beer obviously, tea no coffee? >> Slow release caffeine, I think that probably works better. (laughing) >> Thanks guys so much Josh and Jason, data from the field from the front lines on cutting edge DevOps is going mainstream. This is the cloud native, native cloud, on premise infrastructure innovation here at NetApp. I'm John Furrier, Keith Townsend, we'll be back with more, after this short break.