[Music] we're here with steve melanie the president and ceo of aviatrix steve john and i started this whole super cloud narrative as a way to describe that something different is happening specifically within the aws ecosystem but more broadly across the cloud landscape at re invent last year you and i spoke on the cube and you said one of your investors guy named nick sterile said to you at the show it's happening steve welcome to the cube what's happening what did nick mean by that yeah we were we were just getting ready to go on and i leaned over and he looked at me and he whispered in my ear and said it's happening he said it just like that and and you're right it was it was kind of funny and we talked about that and what he means is enterprises you know this is why i went to aviatrix three and a half years ago is the the the flip switch for enterprises and they said now we mean it we've been talking about cloud for 12 years or 15 years now we mean it we are digitally transforming we are the movement to cloud is going to make that happen and oh by the way of course it's multi-cloud because enterprises put workloads where they run best where they have the best security the best performance the best cost and the business is driving this transformation and they decide that i'm going to use that azure and another business unit decides i'm using google and another one says i'm using aws and so of course it's going to be multi-cloud and i think we're going to start seeing actual multi-cloud applications once that infrastructure and you know you call it the super cloud once that starts getting built developers are going to go wait a minute so i can pick this feature from google and and that service from azure and that service from aws easily without any hesitation once that happens they're going to start really developing today there aren't multi-cloud applications but but but the what's happening is the enterprise embracing public cloud they're using multiple clouds many of them call it four plus one right they're four different public clouds plus what they have on prem that to me is what's happening i am now re-architecting my enterprise infrastructure from applications all the way down to the network and i am embracing uh uh public clouds in that in that process so i mean you nailed us so many things in there i mean digitally transforming to me this is the digital transformation it's leveraging embracing the capex from the hyperscalers now you know people in the industry we're not trying to do what gartner does and create a new category per se but we do use super cloud as a metaphor so i don't expect necessarily vendors to use it or not but but i and i get that but when you talk about multi-cloud what specifically is new in other words what you touched on some of this stuff what constitutes a modern multi-cloud or what we would call a super cloud you know network architecture what are the salient attributes yeah i would say today so two years ago there was no such thing even as multiple clouds it was aws let's be clear everything was aws and for people to even back then two three years ago to even envision that there would be anything else other than aws people couldn't even envision now people kind of go yeah that was done we now see that we're going to use multiple clouds we're going to use azure we're going to use gcp and we're going to use this and we'll guess we're going to use oracle and even ollie cloud we're going to use five or four or five different public clouds what's but that would be i think of as multiple clouds but from an i.t perspective they need to be able to support all those clouds in these shared services and what they're going to do i actually think we're starting and you may have hit on something in the super cloud or i know you've talked about metacloud that that's got bad connotations for facebook i know everybody's like no please not another meta thing but there is that concept of this abstracted layer above you know writing we call it you know altitude you know aviatrix everything's you know riding above the clouds right that that that common abstracted layer this application infrastructure that runs the application that rides above all the different public clouds and i think once we do that you know dave what's going to happen is i think really what's going to happen is you're going to start seeing these these multi-cloud applications which to my knowledge really doesn't exist today i i think that might be the next phase and in order for that to happen you have to have all of the infrastructure be multi-cloud meaning not just networking and network security from from from aviation but you need snowflake you need hashtag you need datadog you need all the new horsemen of the new multi-cloud which isn't the old guys right this is all new people aviatrix dashie snowflake datadonk you name it that are going to be able to deliver all this multi-cloud cross-cloud wherever you want to talk about it such that application development and deployment can happen seamlessly and frictionlessly across multi-cloud once that happens the entire stack then you're going to start seeing and that to me starts enabling this what you guys call you know the super cloud the meta cloud the whatever cloud but that then rides above all the individual clouds that that's going to start getting a whole new realm of application development in my mind so we've got some work to do to basic do some basic blocking and tackling then the application developers can really build on top of that so so some of the skeptics on on this topic would ask how do you envision this changing networking versus it just being a bolt-on to existing fossilized network infrastructure in other words yeah how do we get from point a where we are today to point b you know so-called networking so we can actually build those uh super cloud applications yeah so you know what it is it's interesting because it goes back to my background at nasira and what we used to talk about then it isn't about managing complexity it's about creating simplicity it's very different and when you put the intelligence into the software right this is what computer science is all about we're turning networking into computer science when you create an abstraction layer we are not just an overlay day we dave we actually integrate in with the native services of the cloud we are not managing the complexity of these multi-clouds we are using it you know controlling the native constructs adding our own intelligence to this and then creating what is basically simplification for the people above it so we're simplifying things not just managing the complexity that's how you get the agility for cloud that's how you get to be able to do this because if all you are is a veneer on top of complexity you're just hiding complexity you're not creating simplicity and what happens is it actually probably gets more complex because if all you're doing is hiding the bad stuff you're not getting rid of it i love that i love that we're doing that at the networking and network security layer you're going to see snowflake and datadog and other people do it at their layers you know i reminds of a conversation i had with cause the one of the founders of pure storage who they're all about simplicity this idea of of creating simplicity versus like you said just creating you know a way to handle the complexity compare you know pure storage with the sort of old legacy emc storage devices and that's what you had you had you you had emc managing the complexity at pure storage disrupting by creating simplicity so what are the challenges of creating that simplicity and delivering that seamless experience that continuous experience across cloud is it engineering is it mindset is it culture is it technology what is it well i mean look at look you see the recession that we're we're hitting you see there is a significant problem that we have in the general it industry right now and it's called skills gap skills shortage it's two problems we don't have enough people and we don't have enough people that know cloud and the reason is everybody on the same tuesday three and a half years ago all said now i mean i'm moving the cloud we're a technology company we don't make sneakers anymore we don't make beer we're a technology company and we're going to digitally transform and we're going to move the cloud guess what three years ago there were probably seven people that understood cloud now everyone on the same tuesday morning all decides to try to hire those same seven people there's just not enough people around so you're going to need software and you're going to have to put the intelligence into the software because you're not going to be able to a hire those people and b even if you hire them you can't keep them as soon as they learn cloud guess what happens dave they're off they're on to the next job at the next highest bidder so how are you going to handle that you have to have software that intelligent software that is going to simplify things for you we have people managing massive multi-cloud network and network security people with two people on-prem they got hundreds right you it's not about taking that complex model that it had on-prem and jam it into the cloud you don't have the people to do it and you're not going to get the people to do it you know i want to ask you yeah so i want to ask you about the go to market challenges because we our industry gets a bad rap for for selling we're really good at selling and then but but actually delivering what we sell sometimes we fall down there so so i love tom sweet as cfo of of dell he talks about the the say do ratio uh how that's actually got to be low but you know but you know what i mean uh the math the fraction guy right so but do do what you say you're going to do are there specific go to market challenges related to this type of cross cloud selling where you can set you have to set the customer's expectations because what you're describing is not going to happen overnight it's a journey but how do you handle that go to market challenge in terms of setting those customer expectations and actually delivering what you say you can sell and selling enough to actually have a successful business um so i think everything's outside in so so i think the the what really is exciting to me about this cloud computing model that with the transformation that we're going through is it is business-led and it is led by the ceo and it is led by the business units they run the business it is all about agility is about enabling my developers and it's all about driving the business market share revenue all these kind of things you know the last transformation of mainframe to on to pc client server was led by technologists it wasn't led by the business and it was it was really hard to tie that to the business so then so this is great because we can look at the initiatives you can look at the the the initiatives of the ceo in your company and now as an i.t person you can tie to that and they're going to have two or three or four initiatives and you can actually map it to that so that's where we start is let's look at what the c your ceo cares about he cares about this he cares about that he cares about driving revenue he cares about agility of getting new applications out to the market sooner to get more revenue there's this and oh by the way transfer made transforming your infrastructure to the cloud is the number one thing so it's all about agility so guess what you need to be able to respond to that immediately because tomorrow the business is going to go to you and say great news dave we're moving to gcp wait what no one told me about that well we're telling you now and uh you need to be ready tomorrow and if you're sitting there and you're tied to the low-level constructs and all you know is aws well i don't have those people and even if i have even if i could hire them i'm not allowed to because i can't hire anybody how am i going to respond to the business and the needs of the business now all of a sudden i'm in the way as the infrastructure team of the ceo's goals because we decided we need to we need to get the ai capabilities of gcp and we're moving to gcp or i just did a big deal with gcp and uh miraculously they said i need to run on gcp right i did a big deal with google right guess what comes along with that oh you're moving to gcp great the business says we're moving to gcp and the i.t guys are sitting there going well no one told me well sorry so it's all about agility it's all about that and the and and complexity is the killer to agility this is all about business they're going to come to you and say we just acquired a company we need to integrate them oh but they got they use the same ip address range as we do there's overlapping ips and oh by the way they're in a different cloud how do i do that no one cares the business doesn't care they're like me they're very impatient get it done or we'll find someone who will yeah so you've got to get ahead of that and so when we in terms of when we talk to customers that's what we do this isn't just about defenses this is about making you get promoted making you do good for your company such that you can respond to that and maybe even enable the company to go do that like we're going to enable people to do true multi-cloud applications because the infrastructure has to come first right you you put the foundation in your big skyscraper like the crew behind me and the plumbing before you start building the floors right so infrastructure comes first then comes then comes the applications yeah so you know again some people call it super cloud like us multi-cloud 2.0 but the the real mega trend that i see steve and i'd love you to bottom line this and bring us home is you know andreessen's all companies are software companies it's like version 2.0 of that and the applications that are going to be built on that top this tie into the digital transformations it was goldman it's jpmc it's walmart it's capital one b of a oracle's acquisition of cerner is going to be really interesting to see these super clouds form within industries bringing their data their tooling and their specific software expertise built on top of that hyperscale infrastructure and infrastructure for companies like yours so bottom line is stephen steve what's the future of cloud how do you see it the future is n plus one so two years ago people had one plus one i had what i had on prem and then what i had in aws they today if you talk to an enterprise they'll have what they call four plus one right which is four public clouds plus what i have on prem it's going to n plus one right and what's going to happen is exactly what you said you're going to have industry clouds you're going to the the multi-cloud aspect of it is going to end it's not going to go from four to one some people think oh it's not going to be four it's going down to one or two bs it's going to end it's going to a lot as they start extending to the edge and they start integrating out to the to the branch offices it's not going to be about that branch offer so that edge iot or edge computing or data centers or campus connecting into the cloud it's going to be the other way around the cloud is going to extend to those areas and you're going to have ai clouds you know whether it's you know ultra beauty who's a customer of ours who's starting to roll out ar and vr out to their retail stores to show you know makeup and this and the other thing these are new applications transformations are always driven by new applications that don't exist this isn't about lift and shift of the existing applications the 10x tam in this market is going to becomes all the new things that's where the explosion is going to happen and you're going to see end level those those branch offices are going to look like clouds and they're going to need to be stitched together and treated like one infrastructure so it's going to go from four plus one to n plus one and that's what you're gonna want as an enterprise i'm gonna want n clouds so we're gonna see an explosion it's not going to be four it's going to be end now at the end underneath all of that will be leveraging and effectively commoditizing the existing csps yeah and but you're going to have an explosion of people commoditizing them and just like the goldmans and the industry clubs are going to do they're going to build their own eye as well right no way no way it's that's what's going to happen it's going to be a 10x on what we saw last decade with sas it's all going to happen around clouds and supercloud steve malini thanks so much for coming back in the cube and helping us sort of formulate this thinking i mean it really started with with with you and myself and john and nick and really trying to think this through and watching this unfold before our eyes so great to have you back thank you yeah it's fun thanks for having me are you welcome but keep it right there for more action from super cloud 22 be right back [Music] you