>>The transformation of Dell into Dell emc. And now Dell Technologies has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the enterprise technology industry. The company has gone from a Wall Street darling rocket ship PC company to a Midling enterprise player, forced to go private to a debt laden powerhouse that controlled one of the most valuable assets in enterprise tech i e VMware, and now is a hundred billion dollar giant with a low margin business. A strong balance sheet in the broadest hardware portfolio in the industry and financial magic that Dell went through would make anyone's head spin. The last lever of Dell EMC of the Dell EMC deal was detailed in Michael Dell's book Play Nice But Win in a captivating chapter called Harry You and the Bolt from the Blue Michael Dell described how he and his colleagues came up with the final straw of how to finance the deal. >>If you haven't read it, you should. And of course, after years of successfully integrating EMC and becoming VMware's number one distribution channel, all of this culminated in the spin out of VMware from Dell and a massive wealth creation milestone pending, of course the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello and welcome to the Cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. My name is Dave Ante and I'll be hosting the program. Now today in conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit, we're gonna hear from four of Dell's senior executives, Tom Sweet, who's the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's gonna share his views on the company's position and opportunities going forward. He's gonna answer the question, why is Dell a good long-term investment? Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau, who's the president of Dell's ISG business. >>That unit is the largest profit driver of Dell. He's gonna talk about the product angle and specifically how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Groot, who is the senior vice president of marketing, will come on the program and give us the update on Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering, and then the new Edge platform called Project Frontier. Now it's also cyber security Awareness month that we're gonna see if Sam has, you know, anything to say about that. Then finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell actually has some pretty forward thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're gonna speak with Jen Vera, who's Dell's chief Human Resource Resource Officer about hybrid work and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. However, before we get into all this, I wanna share our independent perspectives on the company and some research that we'll introduce to frame the program. >>Now, as you know, we love data here at the cube and one of our partners, ETR has what we believe is the best spending intentions data for enterprise tech. So here's a graphic that shows ET R'S proprietary net score methodology in the vertical access. That's a measure of spending velocity. And on the X axis, his overlap of pervasiveness in the data sample, this is a cut for just the server, the storage, and the client sectors within the ETR taxonomy. So you can see Dell CSG products, laptops in particular are dominant on both the X and the Y dimensions. CSG is the client solutions group and accounts for nearly 60% of Dell's revenue and about half of its operating income. And then the arrow signifies that dot, that represents Dell's ISG business that we're gonna talk to Jeff Boudro about. That's the infrastructure solutions group. Now, ISG accounts for the bulk of of the remainder of Dell's business, and it is, it's, as I said, it's most profitable from a margin standpoint. >>It comprises the EMC storage business as well as the Dell server business and Dell's networking portfolio. And as a note, we didn't include networking in that cut had we done. So Cisco would've dominated the graphic. And frankly, Dell's networking business isn't industry leading in the same way that PCs, servers and storage are. And as you can see, the data confirms the leadership position Dell has in its client side, its server and its storage sectors. But the nuance is look at that red dotted line at 40% on the vertical axis that represents a highly elevated net score, and every company in the sector is below that line. Now we should mention that we also filtered the data for those companies with more than a hundred mentions in the survey, but the point remains the same. This is a mature business that generally is lower margin storage is the exception, but cloud has put pressure on margins even in that business in addition to the server space. >>The last point on this graphic is we put a box around VMware and it's prominently present on both the X and Y dimensions. VMware participates with purely software defined high margin offerings in this, in these spaces, and it gives you a sense of what might have been had Dell chosen to hold onto that asset or spin it into the company. But let's face it, the alternatives from Michael Dell were just too attractive and it's unlikely that a spin in would've unlocked the value in the way a spinout did, at least not in the near future. So let's take a look at the snapshot of Dell's financials. To give you a sense of where the company stands today, Dell is a company with over a hundred billion in revenue. Last quarter, it did more than 26 billion in revenue and grew at a quite amazing 9% rate for a company that size. >>But because it's a hardware company, primarily its margins are low with operating income, 10% of revenue, and at 21% gross margin with VMware on Dell's income statement before the spin, its gross margins. Were in the low thirties. Now, Dell only spends about 2% of revenue on r and d because because it's so big, it's still a lot of money. And you can see it is cash flow positive. Dell's free cash flow over the trailing 12 month period is 3.7 billion, but that's only 3.5% of trailing 12 month revenue. Dell's Apex, and of course it's hardware maintenance business is recurring revenue and that is only about 5 billion in revenue and it's growing at 8% annually. Now having said that, it's the equivalent of service now's total revenue. Of course, service now is 23% operating margin and 16% free cash flow margin and more than 5 billion in cash on the balance sheet and an 85 billion market cap. >>That's what software will do for you. Now Dell, like most companies, is staring at a challenging macro environment with FX headwinds, inflation, et cetera. You've heard the story and hence it's conservative and contracting revenue guidance. But the balance sheet transformation has been quite amazing. Thanks to VMware's cash flow, Michael Dell and his partners from Silver Lake at all, they put up around $4 billion of their own cash to buy EMC for 67 billion, and of course got VMware in the process. Most of that financing was debt that Dell put on its balance sheet to do the transaction to the tune of 46 billion. It added to the, to the balance sheet debt. Now Dell's debt, the core debt net of its financing operation is now down to 16 billion and it has 7 billion in cash in the balance sheet. So dramatic delta from just a few years ago. So pretty good picture. >>But Dell a hundred billion company is still only valued at 28 billion or around 26 cents on the revenue dollar H HP's revenue multiple is around 60 cents on the revenue dollar. HP Inc. Dell's, you know, laptop and PC competitor is around 45 cents. IBM's revenue multiple is almost two times. By the way, IBM has more than 50 billion in debt thanks to the Red Hat acquisition. And Cisco has a revenue multiple, it's over three x, about 3.3 x currently. So is Dell undervalued? Well, based on these comparisons with its peers, I'd say yes and no. Dell's performance relative to its peers in the market is very strong. It's winning and has an extremely adept go to market machine, but it's lack of software content and it's margin profile leads. One to believe that if it can continue to pull some valuation levers while entering new markets, it can get its valuation well above where it is today. >>So what are some of those levers and what might that look like going forward? Despite the fact that Dell doesn't have a huge software revenue component since spinning out VMware and it doesn't own a cloud, it plays in virtually every part of the hardware market and it can provide infrastructure for pr pretty much any application in any use case and pretty much any industry and pretty much any geography in the world and it can serve those customers. So its size is an advantage. However, the history for hardware heavy companies that try to get bigger has some notable failures, namely hp, which had to split into two businesses, HP Inc. And hp E and ibm, which has had in abysmal decade from a performance standpoint and has had to shrink to grow again and obviously do a massive 34 billion acquisition of Red Hat. So why will Dell do any better than these two? >>Well, it has a fantastic supply chain. It's a founder led company, which makes a cultural difference in our view, and it's actually comfortable with a low margin software, light business model. Most certainly, IBM wasn't comfortable with that and didn't have these characteristics, and HP was kind of just incomprehensible at the end. So Dell in my opinion, is a much better chance of doing well at a hundred billion or over, but we'll see how it navigates through the current headwinds as it's guiding down. Apex is essentially Dell's version of the cloud. Now remember, Dell got started late. HPE is further along from a model standpoint with GreenLake, but Dell has a larger portfolio, so they're gonna try to play on that advantage. But at the end of the day, these as a service offerings are simply ways to bring a utility model to existing customers and generate recurring revenue. >>And that's a good thing because customers will be loyal to an incumbent if it can deliver as a service and reduce risk for for customers. But the real opportunity lies ahead, specifically Dell is embracing the cloud model. It took a while, but they're on board as Matt Baker Dell's senior vice president of corporate strategy likes to say it's not a zero sum game. What it means by that is just because Dell doesn't own its own cloud, it doesn't mean Dell can't build value on top of hyperscale clouds, what we call super cloud. And that's Dell's strategy to take advantage of public cloud CapEx and connect on-prem to the cloud, create a unified experience across clouds and out to the edge that's ambitious and technically it's non-trivial. But listen to Dell's vice chairman and Coco, Jeff Clark, explain this vision, please play the clip. >>You said also technology and business models are tied together and enabler. That's if, if you believe that, then you have to believe that it's a business operating system that they want, They want to leverage whatever they can, and at the end of the day there's, they have to differentiate what they do. Well that, that's >>Exactly right. If I take that and what, what Dave was saying and and I, and I summarize it the following way, if we can take these cloud assets and capabilities, combine them in an orchestrated way to delivery a distributed platform, game over, >>Eh, pretty interesting, right? John Freer called it a business operating system. Essentially, I think of it sometimes as a cloud operating system or cloud operating environment to drive new business value on top of the hyperscale CapEx. Now, is it really game over? As Jeff Clark said, if Dell can do that, I'd say if it had that today, it might be game over for the competition, but this vision will take years to play out. And of course it's gotta be funded and now it's gonna take time. And in this industry it tends to move. Companies tend to move in lockstep. So as often as the case, it's gonna come down to execution and Dell's ability to enter new markets that are ideally, at least from my perspective, higher margin data management, extending data protection into cyber security as an adjacency and of course edge at telco slash 5G opportunities. >>All there for the taking. I mean, look, even if Dell doesn't go after more higher margin software content, it can thrive with a lower margin model just by penetrating new markets and throwing off cash from those markets. But by keeping close to customers and maybe through Tuck in acquisitions, it might be able to find the next nugget beyond today's cloud and on-prem models. And the last thing I'll call out is ecosystem. I say here ecosystem, ecosystem, ecosystem. Because a defining characteristic of a cloud player is ecosystem, and if Apex is Dell's cloud, it has the opportunity to expand that ecosystem dramatically. This is one of the company's biggest opportunities and challenges. At the same time, in my view, it's just scratching the surface on its partner ecosystem. And it's ecosystem today is is both reseller heavy and tech partner heavy. And that's not a bad thing, but in a, but it's starting to evolve more rapidly. >>The snowflake deal is an example of up to stack evolution, but I'd like to see much more out of that snowflake relationship and more relationships like that. Specifically I'd like to see more momentum with data and database. And if we live at a data heavy world, which we do, where the data and the database and data management offerings, you know, coexist and are super important to customers, like to see that inside of Apex, like to see that data play beyond storage, which is really where it is today and it's early days. The point is with Dell's go to market advantage, which which company wouldn't treat Dell like the on-prem hybrid edge super cloud player that I wanna partner with to drive more business. You'd be crazy not to, but Dell has a lot on its plate and we'd like to see some serious acceleration on the ecosystem front. In other words, Dell as both a selling partner and a business enabler with its platform, its programmable infrastructure as a service. And that is a moving target that will rapidly involve. And of course we'll be here watching and reporting. So thanks for watching this preview of Dell Technology Summit 2022. I'm Dave Vte. We hope you enjoy the rest of the program.

(upbeat music) >> The transformation of Dell into Dell EMC, and now Dell Technologies, has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the enterprise technology industry. The company has gone from a Wall Street darling rocketship PC company, to a middling enterprise player, forced to go private, to a debt-laden powerhouse that controlled one of the most valuable assets in enterprise tech, i.e., VMware. And now is a $100 billion dollar giant with a low-margin business, a strong balance sheet, and the broadest hardware portfolio in the industry. The financial magic that Dell went through would make anyone's head spin. The last lever of the Dell EMC deal was detailed in Michael Dell's book "Play Nice But Win," in a captivating chapter called "Harry You and the Bolt from the Blue." Michael Dell described how he and his colleagues came up with the final straw of how to finance the deal. If you haven't read it, you should. And of course, after years of successfully integrating EMC and becoming VMware's number-one distribution channel, all of this culminated in the spin-out of VMware from Dell, and a massive wealth-creation milestone, pending, of course, the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell, and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello, and welcome to theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Dell Technologies Summit 2022. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'll be hosting the program. Now, today in conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit, we're going to hear from four of Dell's senior executives. Tom Sweet, who's the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's going to share his views on the company's position and opportunities going forward. He's going to answer the question, why is Dell a good long-term investment? Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau, who's the President of Dell's ISG business. That unit is the largest profit driver of Dell. He's going to talk about the product angle, and specifically, how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Grocott, who's the Senior Vice President of Marketing, will come on the program and give us the update on APEX, which is Dell's as-a-Service offering, and then the new edge platform called Project Frontier. Now, it's also Cybersecurity Awareness Month, that we're going to see if Sam has, you know, anything to say about that. Then finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell actually has some pretty forward-thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're going to speak with Jenn Saavedra, who's Dell's Chief Human Resource Officer, about hybrid work, and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. However, before we get into all this, I want to share our independent perspectives on the company, and some research that we'll introduce to frame the program. Now, as you know, we love data here at theCUBE, and one of our partners, ETR, has what we believe is the best spending intentions data for enterprise tech. So here's a graphic that shows ETR's proprietary Net Score methodology on the vertical axis, that's a measure of spending velocity, and on the x-axis is overlap or pervasiveness in the data sample. This is a cut for just the server, the storage, and the client sectors within the ETR taxonomy. So you can see Dell's CSG products, laptops in particular, are dominant on both the x and the y dimensions. CSG is the Client Solutions Group, and accounts for nearly 60% of Dell's revenue, and about half of its operating income. And then the arrow signifies that dot that represents Dell's ISG business, that we're going to talk to Jeff Boudreau about. That's the Infrastructure Solutions Group. Now, ISG accounts for the bulk of the remainder of Dell's business, and it is its, as I said, its most profitable from a margin standpoint. It comprises the EMC storage business, as well as the Dell server business, and Dell's networking portfolio. And as a note, we didn't include networking in that cut. Had we done so, Cisco would've dominated the graphic. And frankly, Dell's networking business isn't industry leading in the same way that PCs, servers, and storage are. And as you can see, the data confirms the leadership position Dell has in its client side, its server, and its storage sectors. But the nuance is, look at that red dotted line at 40% on the vertical axis. That represents a highly elevated Net Score, and every company in the sector is below that line. Now, we should mention that we also filtered the data for those companies with more than a hundred mentions in the survey, but the point remains the same. This is a mature business that generally is lower margin. Storage is the exception, but cloud has put pressure on margins even in that business, in addition to the server space. The last point on this graphic is, we put a box around VMware, and it's prominently present on both the x and y dimensions. VMware participates with purely software-defined high-margin offerings in these spaces, and it gives you a sense of what might have been, had Dell chosen to hold onto that asset or spin it into the company. But let's face it, the alternatives for Michael Dell were just too attractive, and it's unlikely that a spin-in would've unlocked the value in the way a spin-out did, at least not in the near future. So let's take a look at the snapshot of Dell's financials, to give you a sense of where the company stands today. Dell is a company with over $100 billion dollars in revenue. Last quarter, it did more than 26 billion in revenue, and grew at a quite amazing 9% rate, for a company that size. But because it's a hardware company, primarily, its margins are low, with operating income 10% of revenue, and at 21% gross margin. With VMware on Dell's income statement before the spin, its gross margins were in the low 30s. Now, Dell only spends about 2% of revenue on R&D, but because it's so big, it's still a lot of money. And you can see it is cash-flow positive. Dell's free cash flow over the trailing 12-month period is 3.7 billion, but that's only 3.5% of trailing 12-month revenue. Dell's APEX, and of course its hardware maintenance business, is recurring revenue, and that is only about 5 billion in revenue, and it's growing at 8% annually. Now, having said that, it's the equivalent of ServiceNow's total revenue. Of course, ServiceNow has 23% operating margin and 16% free cash-flow margin, and more than $5 billion in cash on the balance sheet, and an $85 billion market cap. That's what software will do for you. Now Dell, like most companies, is staring at a challenging macro environment, with FX headwinds, inflation, et cetera. You've heard the story. And hence it's conservative, and contracting revenue guidance. But the balance sheet transformation has been quite amazing, thanks to VMware's cash flow. Michael Dell and his partners from Silver Lake et al., they put up around $4 billion of their own cash to buy EMC for 67 billion, and of course got VMware in the process. Most of that financing was debt that Dell put on its balance sheet to do the transaction, to the tune of $46 billion it added to the balance sheet debt. Now, Dell's debt, the core debt, net of its financing operation, is now down to 16 billion, and it has $7 billion in cash on the balance sheet. So a dramatic delta from just a few years ago. So, pretty good picture. But Dell, a $100 billion company, is still only valued at 28 billion, or around 26 cents on the revenue dollar. HPE's revenue multiple is around 60 cents on the revenue dollar. HP Inc., Dell's laptop and PC competitor, is around 45 cents. IBM's revenue multiple is almost two times. By the way, IBM has more than $50 billion in debt thanks to the Red Hat acquisition. And Cisco has a revenue multiple that's over 3x, about 3.3x currently. So is Dell undervalued? Well, based on these comparisons with its peers, I'd say yes, and no. Dell's performance, relative to its peers in the market, is very strong. It's winning, and has an extremely adept go-to-market machine, but its lack of software content and its margin profile leads one to believe that if it can continue to pull some valuation levers while entering new markets, it can get its valuation well above where it is today. So what are some of those levers, and what might that look like, going forward? Despite the fact that Dell doesn't have a huge software revenue component since spinning out VMware, and it doesn't own a cloud, it plays in virtually every part of the hardware market. And it can provide infrastructure for pretty much any application in any use case, in pretty much any industry, in pretty much any geography in the world. And it can serve those customers. So its size is an advantage. However, the history for hardware-heavy companies that try to get bigger has some notable failures, namely HP, which had to split into two businesses, HP Inc. and HPE, and IBM, which has had an abysmal decade from a performance standpoint, and has had to shrink to grow again, and obviously do a massive $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat. So why will Dell do any better than these two? Well, it has a fantastic supply chain. It's a founder-led company, which makes a cultural difference, in our view. And it's actually comfortable with a low-margin software-light business model. Most certainly, IBM wasn't comfortable with that, and didn't have these characteristics, and HP was kind of just incomprehensible at the end. So Dell in my opinion, has a much better chance of doing well at 100 billion or over, but we'll see how it navigates through the current headwinds as it's guiding down. APEX is essentially Dell's version of the cloud. Now, remember, Dell got started late. HPE is further along from a model standpoint with GreenLake, but Dell has a larger portfolio, so they're going to try to play on that advantage. But at the end of the day, these as-a-Service offerings are simply ways to bring a utility model to existing customers, and generate recurring revenue. And that's a good thing, because customers will be loyal to an incumbent if it can deliver as-a-Service and reduce risk for customers. But the real opportunity lies ahead. Specifically, Dell is embracing the cloud model. It took a while, but they're on board. As Matt Baker, Dell's Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy, likes to say, it's not a zero-sum game. What he means by that is, just because Dell doesn't own its own cloud, it doesn't mean Dell can't build value on top of hyperscale clouds. What we call supercloud. And that's Dell's strategy, to take advantage of public cloud capex, and connect on-prem to the cloud, create a unified experience across clouds, and out to the edge. That's ambitious, and technically it's nontrivial. But listen to Dell's Vice Chairman and Co-COO, Jeff Clarke, explain this vision. Please play the clip. >> You said also, technology and business models are tied together, and an enabler. >> That's right. >> If you believe that, then you have to believe that it's a business operating system that they want. They want to leverage whatever they can, and at the end of the day, they have to differentiate what they do. >> Well, that's exactly right. If I take that and what Dave was saying, and I summarize it the following way: if we can take these cloud assets and capabilities, combine them in an orchestrated way to deliver a distributed platform, game over. >> Eh, pretty interesting, right? John Furrier called it a "business operating system." Essentially, I think of it sometimes as a cloud operating system, or cloud operating environment, to drive new business value on top of the hyperscale capex. Now, is it really game over, as Jeff Clarke said, if Dell can do that? Uh, (sucks in breath) I'd say if it had that today, it might be game over for the competition, but this vision will take years to play out. And of course, it's got to be funded. And that's going to take time, and in this industry, it tends to move, companies tend to move in lockstep. So, as often is the case, it's going to come down to execution and Dell's ability to enter new markets that are ideally, at least from my perspective, higher margin. Data management, extending data protection into cybersecurity as an adjacency, and of course, edge and telco/5G opportunities. All there for the taking. I mean, look, even if Dell doesn't go after more higher-margin software content, it can thrive with a lower-margin model just by penetrating new markets and throwing off cash from those markets. But by keeping close to customers, and maybe through tuck-in acquisitions, it might be able to find the next nugget beyond today's cloud and on-prem models. And the last thing I'll call out is ecosystem. I say here, "Ecosystem, ecosystem, ecosystem," because a defining characteristic of a cloud player is ecosystem, and if APEX is Dell's cloud, it has the opportunity to expand that ecosystem dramatically. This is one of the company's biggest opportunities and challenges at the same time, in my view. It's just scratching the surface on its partner ecosystem. And its ecosystem today is both reseller heavy and tech partner heavy. And that's not a bad thing, but it's starting to evolve more rapidly. The Snowflake deal is an example of up-the-stack evolution, but I'd like to see much more out of that Snowflake relationship, and more relationships like that. Specifically, I'd like to see more momentum with data and database. And if we live in a data-heavy world, which we do, where the data and the database and data management offerings, you know, coexist and are super important to customers, I'd like to see that inside of APEX. I'd like to see that data play beyond storage, which is really where it is today, in its early days. The point is, with Dell's go-to-market advantage, which company wouldn't treat Dell like the on-prem, hybrid, edge, supercloud player that I want to partner with to drive more business? You'd be crazy not to. But Dell has a lot on its plate, and we'd like to see some serious acceleration on the ecosystem front. In other words, Dell as both a selling partner and a business enabler with its platform, its programmable Infrastructure-as-a-Service. And that is a moving target that will rapidly evolve. And of course, we'll be here watching and reporting. So thanks for watching this preview of Dell Technologies Summit 2022. I'm Dave Vellante, we hope you enjoy the rest of the program. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> The transformation of Dell into Dell EMC and now Dell Technologies has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the enterprise technology industry. The company has gone from a Wall Street darling rocket ship PC company, to a middling enterprise player forced to go private, to a debt-laden powerhouse that controlled one of the most valuable assets in enterprise tech i.e VMware. And now is a 100 billion dollar giant with a low margin business, a strong balance sheet, and the broadest hardware portfolio in the industry. Financial magic that Dell went through would make anyone's head spin. The last lever of Dell EMC, of the Dell EMC deal was detailed in Michael Dell's book, "Play Nice But Win." In a captivating chapter called Harry You and the Bolt from the Blue, Michael Dell described how he and his colleagues came up with the final straw of how to finance the deal. If you haven't read it, you should. And, of course, after years of successfully integrating EMC and becoming VMware's number one distribution channel, all of this culminated in the spin out of VMware from Dell in a massive wealth creation milestone. Pending, of course, the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello, and welcome to theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. My name is Dave Vellante and I'll be hosting the program. Now, today in conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit, we're going to hear from four of Dell's senior executives Tom Sweet, who's the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's going to share his views on the company's position and opportunities going forward. He's going to answer the question, why is Dell a good long-term investment? Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau who's the president of Dell's ISG business. That unit is the largest profit driver of Dell. He's going to talk about the product angle and specifically, how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Grocott who is the senior vice president of marketing will come on the program and give us the update on Apex, which is Dell's as-a-service offering, and then the new edge platform called Project Frontier. Now, it's also Cyber Security Awareness month that we're going to see if Sam has anything to say about that. Then finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell actually has some pretty forward-thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're going to speak with Jennifer Saavedra who's Dell's chief human resource officer about hybrid work and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. However, before we get into all this, I want to share our independent perspectives on the company and some research that will introduce to frame the program. Now, as you know, we love data here at theCUBE and one of our partners, ETR has what we believe is the best spending intentions data for enterprise tech. So here's a graphic that shows ETR's proprietary net score methodology in the vertical axis. That's a measure of spending velocity. And on the x-axis is overlap of pervasiveness in the data sample. This is a cut for just the server, the storage, and the client sectors within the ETR taxonomy. So you can see Dell CSG products, laptops in particular are dominant on both the X and the Y dimensions. CSG is the client solutions group and accounts for nearly 60% of Dell's revenue and about half of its operating income. And then the arrow signifies that dot that represents Dell's ISG business that we're going to talk to Jeff Boudreau about. That's the infrastructure solutions group. Now, ISG accounts for the bulk of the remainder of Dell's business and it is, as I said, it's most profitable from a margin standpoint. It comprises the EMC storage business as well as the Dell server business and Dell's networking portfolio. And as a note, we didn't include networking in that cut. Had we done so, SISCO would've dominated the graphic. And frankly, Dell's networking business is an industry-leading in the same way that PCs, servers, and storage are. And as you can see, the data confirms the leadership position Dell has in its client side, its server and its storage sectors. But the nuance is look at that red dotted line at 40% on the vertical axis. That represents a highly elevated net score and every company in the sector is below that line. Now, we should mention that we also filtered the data for those companies with more than a 100 mentions in the survey, but the point remains the same. This is a mature business that generally is lower margin. Storage is the exception but cloud has put pressure on margins even in that business in addition to the server space. The last point on this graphic is we put a box around VMware and it's prominently present on both the X and Y dimensions. VMware participates with purely software-defined high margin offerings in these spaces, and it gives you a sense of what might have been had Dell chosen to hold onto that asset or spin it into the company. But let's face it, the alternatives from Michael Dell were just too attractive and it's unlikely that a spin in would've unlocked the value in the way a spin-out did, at least not in the near future. So let's take a look at the snapshot of Dell's financials to give you a sense of where the company stands today. Dell is a company with over a 100 billion dollars in revenue. Last quarter, it did more than 26 billion in revenue and grew at a quite amazing 9% rate for a company that size. But because it's a hardware company primarily, its margins are low with operating income 10% of revenue and at 21% gross margin. With VMware on Dell's income statement, before the spin its gross margins were in the low 30s. Now, Dell only spends about 2% of revenue on R&D because because it's so big, it's still a lot of money. And you can see it is cash flow positive, Dell's free cash flow over the trailing 12-month period is 3.7 billion but that's only 3.5% of trailing 12-month revenue. Dell's Apex and of course it's hardware maintenance business is recurring revenue and that is only about 5 billion in revenue and it's growing at 8% annually. Now having said that, it's the equivalent of Service now's total revenue. Of course, Service now has 23% operating margin and 16% free cash flow margin and more than $5 billion in cash on the balance sheet and an 85 billion dollar market cap. That's what software will do for you. Now, Dell, like most companies, is staring at a challenging macro environment with FX headwinds, inflation, et cetera. You've heard the story, and hence it's conservative and contracting revenue guidance. But the balance sheet transformation has been quite amazing thanks to VMware's cash flow. Michael Dell and his partners from Silver Lake et al, they put up around $4 billion of their own cash to buy EMC for $67 billion and of course got VMware in the process. Most of that financing was debt that Dell put on its balance sheet to do the transaction to the tune of $46 billion it added to the balance sheet debt. Now, Dell's debt, the core debt, net of its financing operation is now down to 16 billion and it has 7 billion in cash in the balance sheet. So dramatic delta from just a few years ago. So pretty good picture. But Dell, a 100 billion company, is still only valued at 28 billion or around 26 cents on the revenue dollar. HPE's revenue multiple is around 60 cents on the revenue dollar. HP Inc, Dell's laptop and PC competitor, is around 45 cents. IBM's revenue multiple is almost two times. By the way, IBM has more than $50 billion in debt thanks to the Red Hat acquisition. And Cisco has a revenue multiple, it's over 3X, about 3.3X currently. So is Dell undervalued? Well, based on these comparisons with its peers, I'd say yes and no. Dell's performance relative to its peers in the market is very strong. It's winning and has an extremely adept go to market machine. But it's lack of software content and it's margin profile leads one to believe that if it can continue to pull some valuation levers while entering new markets, it can get its valuation well above where it is today. So what are some of those levers and what might that look like going forward? Despite the fact that Dell doesn't have a huge software revenue component, since spinning out VMware, and it doesn't own a cloud, it plays in virtually every part of the hardware market. And it can provide infrastructure for pretty much any application, in any use case, in pretty much any industry, in pretty much any geography in the world and it can serve those customers. So its size is an advantage. However, the history for hardware-heavy companies that try to get bigger has some notable failures. Namely HP which had to split into two businesses, HP Inc and HPE, and IBM which has had in abysmal decade from a performance standpoint and has had to shrink to grow again and obviously do a massive $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat. So why will Dell do any better than these two? Well, it has a fantastic supply chain. It's a founder-led company which makes a cultural difference, in our view, and it's actually comfortable with a low margin software light business model. Most certainly, IBM wasn't comfortable with that and didn't have these characteristics and HP was kind of just incomprehensible at the end. So Dell in my opinion is a much better chance of doing well at a 100 billion or over, but we'll see how it navigates through the current headwinds as it's guiding down. Apex is essentially Dell's version of the cloud. Now remember, Dell got started late. HPE is further along from a model standpoint with GreenLake. But Dell has a larger portfolio so they're going to try to play on that advantage. But at the end of the day, these as-a-service offerings are simply ways to bring a utility model to existing customers and generate recurring revenue. And that's a good thing because customers will be loyal to an incumbent if it can deliver as-a-service and reduce risk for customers. But the real opportunity lies ahead, specifically Dell is embracing the cloud model. It took a while, but they're on board. As Matt Baker, Dell's senior vice president of corporate strategy likes to say, it's not a zero sum game. What he means by that is just because Dell doesn't own its own cloud, it doesn't mean Dell can't build value on top of hyperscale clouds, what we call super cloud. And that's Dell's strategy to take advantage of public cloud CapEx and connect on-prem to the cloud, create a unified experience across clouds and out to the edge. That's ambitious and technically it's non-trivial. But listen to Dell's vice chairman and co-COO Jeff Clarke explain this vision. Please play the clip. >> You said also technology and business models are tied together and enabler. If you believe that, then you have to believe that it's a business operating system that they want. They want to leverage whatever they can and at the end of the day, they have to differentiate what they do. >> No, that's exactly right. If I take that and what Dave was saying and I summarize it the following way. If we can take these cloud assets and capabilities, combine them in an orchestrated way to deliver a distributed platform, game over. >> Yeah, pretty interesting, right? John Freer called it a business operating system. Essentially, I think of it sometimes as a cloud operating system or cloud operating environment to drive new business value on top of the hyperscale CapEx. Now, is it really game over as Jeff Clarke said, if Dell can do that? I'd say if it had that today, it might be game over for the competition but this vision will take years to play out, and of course it's got to be funded. And now it's going to take time and in this industry, it tends to move, companies tend to move in lockstep. So as often as the case, it's going to come down to execution and Dell's ability to enter new markets that are ideally, at least from my perspective, higher margin. Data management, extending data protection into cyber security as an adjacency and, of course, edge at Telco slash 5G opportunities. All there for the taking. I mean, look, even if Dell doesn't go after more higher margin software content, it can thrive with a lower margin model just by penetrating new markets and throwing off cash from those markets. But by keeping close to customers and maybe through tuck in acquisitions, it might be able to find the next nugget beyond today's cloud and on-prem models. And the last thing I'll call out is ecosystem. I say here ecosystem, ecosystem, ecosystem. Because a defining characteristic of a cloud player is ecosystem and if Apex is Dell's cloud, it has the opportunity to expand that ecosystem dramatically. This is one of the company's biggest opportunities and challenges at the same time, in my view. It's just scratching the surface on its partner ecosystem. And it's ecosystem today is is both reseller heavy and tech partner heavy. And that's not a bad thing, but it's starting to evolve more rapidly. The snowflake deal is an example of up to stack evolution. But I'd like to see much more out of that Snowflake relationship and more relationships like that. Specifically, I'd like to see more momentum with data and database. And if we live at a data heavy world, which we do, where the data and the database and data management offerings coexist and are super important to customers, I'd like to see that inside of Apex. I'd like to see that data play beyond storage which is really where it is today and it's early days. The point is, with Dell's go to market advantage, which company wouldn't treat Dell like the on-prem, hybrid, edge, super cloud player, that I want to partner with to drive more business? You'd be crazy not to. But Dell has a lot on its plate and we'd like to see some serious acceleration on the ecosystem front. In other words, Dell as both a selling partner and a business enabler with its platform. Its programmable infrastructure as-a-service. And that is a moving target that will rapidly involve. And, of course, we'll be here watching and reporting. So thanks for watching this preview of Dell Technology Summit 2022. I'm Dave Vellante, we hope you enjoy the rest of the program. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> In 1946, the acerbic manager of the Dodgers, Leo the Lip Durocher famously said of baseball, great Mel Ott who was player manager of the Giants at the time. You know what happens to nice guys. They finished in last place. The phrase nice guys finish last was born. It became popular outside of baseball. Well joining me today is someone who was a consummate gentlemen and a nice guy who proves that idiom absolutely isn't true at all. He's also written a new book "Play nice and Win" Michael Dell chairman and CEO of Dell technologies, welcome back to the CUBE. >> Thank you very much, Dave, always great to be with you. Wonderful to be on the CUBE and thanks for your great coverage of Dell technologies world. >> Yeah. We're very excited to be covering the virtual version this year, next year we're back face to face I'm Sure. And we're going to talk about your book but I want to start by asking you to comment on the past 12 months, how are you going to remember 2020? >> I'm going to remember it by the resiliency of the world and our team, the adaptability the acceleration of digital transformation which is pretty amazing around the world. The vital role that technology played in addressing some of the biggest challenges, whether it was the creation of vaccines or, you know, decoding the virus itself or just addressing all the challenges that the world had. You know, I think it's a game changer in terms of disease identification and how we prevent these kinds of things going forward. You know, there's still a long way to go in terms of how do we get 7.5 billion people vaccinated and safe. I also think it exposed, you know some of the fault lines in our society. And that's a great learning for all of us in terms of access to healthcare and education and, you know, the digital resources that power the world. And so, yeah, those are some of the things that really stand out for me. >> Well, I mean, I think leaders like yourself and position of influence, absolutely passionate about some of those changes that we see coming in society. So hopefully we'll have time to talk about that but I wanted to get into the business. I think a lot of people, myself included felt that 2020 was going to be a down year for big tech companies like yours and that relied heavily on selling products that data centers and central offices but the remote work trend and the laptop, boom offset, some of those on-prem softness and headwinds combined with VMware the financial performance of Dell technologies was actually quite amazing. Why were you able to do so well last year? >> Well, first of all, you're right. We did, we had record pretty much everything record revenues, record operating income, record cashflow and be also paid down a record amount of debt. And so I think the strength and resiliency of our supply chain, as well as the broad diversified nature of what we provide our customers continue to serve us very well as they moved to this sort of do anything from anywhere in the world. And it continues the first part of this year, business is very strong >> You know, a few weeks ago, of course you officially announced the spinoff of Dell technologies. Wasn't a huge surprise but the 81% equity ownership of VMware are you worried about untethering VMware from Dell or maybe you can share more on what this means for the future of, your two companies and your customers. >> Right? So, I think this will drive additional growth opportunities for both Dell Tech and VMware, while it unlocks a lot of value for our stakeholders. What we've done is to formalize the commercial relationship into a series of agreements and those are unique and differentiated and they provide lots of flexibility and we've driven a tremendous amount of innovation together and that's going to continue and it will, one of the things we said back in 2015 you'll remember is our commitment to keep the VMware ecosystem open and independent and working across the whole industry. We've done that. You'll continue to see us innovate together with Edge solutions, certainly all the great work we've done with VxRail SD LAN, you know Tanzu creates this platform to modernize applications and VMware Cloud and Dell technologies are the easy path to a multi-cloud architecture. And, that continues to work super well and is not going to be slowed down at all. So... and of course, I'll continue to be a chairman of both companies and we're not selling VMware we're distributing our ownership to our shareholders. >> Well, of course, Dell is the largest sort channel if you will, for VMware. So that's ... you guys got a tight relationship but I want to ask you about digital transformation and everybody talked about it pre COVID but nobody really knew exactly what it was but COVID sort of brought that into focus very quickly. If you weren't a digital business, you were out of business. So going forward, how do you see that whole digital transformation playing out? >> You know I think the plot of any company is to figure out how it can use its data and turn that into insights and outcomes and better results and ultimately competitive advantage faster. And as you said, you know, if it's not able to do that, it's probably going to go out of business. And that agenda just got massively accelerated because it was kind of digital was sort of the only thing that worked during this, this past period. So every organization has figured out that technology is not the IT department, it's actually the fulcrum of progress in the entire company. And so we're seeing sort of across the board a dramatic acceleration in the investment in digital technologies, you know, Edge is growing very fast. I think 5G just accelerates this and, you know you're seeing it in all the demand trends. It's quite positive and, you know, I think you'll see even a more rapid separation from those companies that are able to take advantage of this and quickly adjust their businesses their organizations, and those that are >> You better hop on board or get left behind, you know, the Edge. You mentioned the Edge it's a little bit like digital transformation, you know kind of pre COVID and even post COVID. It means a lot of things to a lot of different people but the telecoms transformation and 5G they have there certainly real. How do you see the Edge? >> You know, the Edges is ... think of it as actually the real world, right? It's, not a data center sitting in the center of the universe somewhere. And look today, you know only 10% of data is processed outside of the data center, but, you know, it's estimated by 2025 you got 75% of enterprise data will be processed outside of a traditional data center or a Cloud. And so as everything becomes intelligent connected 5G accelerates that it's going to be a huge acceleration of this whole process of digital transformation. And you know, again, think about this. I mean, the cost of making something intelligent used to be really expensive. Now it's asymptotically approaching zero. And of course all those things are connected. They're talking to each other and exactly what does this mean for every industry. Nobody's really quite sure and not everything is going to work, but, you know we're seeing it in manufacturing, in retail, in healthcare and the growth on the Edge is really accelerating in a meaningful way. And it's not so much about, you know people talking people with machines, we know how to do that. Now it's about the thing right And, you know you've got like 200 billion arm processors, you know out there in the last couple of years, all those things talking to the other things, generating data it happens in the real world. That's what the Edge is. >> Yeah as you know, we're a big fans of the arm model. And I think it just presents huge opportunities for companies like Dell. I want to ask you about Cloud. And I have to say, I think, you know companies like Dell have been maybe a little bit defensive over the last several years when it comes to Cloud but I think you starting to see the Cloud as a gift with all that CAPEX that's being built out by these hyperscalers. You know, thank you. It seems to me, you can build on top of that. How are you thinking about the Cloud as an opportunity for you and your customers especially as the definition of Cloud evolves? >> Well, first, you know, what we see is and the Edge is kind of the third place or the third premise, right? You got Clouds in the public form, you've got the Colo which is really growing fast and, you know the private hybrid Clouds, and now you've got the Edge. And so you've got infrastructure all over the place with Edge being the fastest growing. You know, one of the big things we see is that customers want a consistent way to operate and execute across that whole platform. And, you know, one of the other things that we've been focused on at Dell technologies is how can we move our business to more of a service and subscription on demand and provide customers that flexibility to to pay as they consume. And so, to some extent this is an evolution of, you know, products to services to managed services, to everything as a service. And so, you know, looking at our balance sheet you'll see over $40 billion in remaining performance obligations as we moved the business to that kind of model and it's been growing double digits for several quarters in a row. And so, you know, we're embracing Cloud and on-demand, and as a service, and obviously here at Dell technologies world we're talking a lot about Apex and our continuing initiatives to move our whole business in that direction. >> Yeah. Apex is a real accelerator for that model. I want to switch topics a little bit. I got a long list of things I want to talk about ESG, sustainability, inclusion, you know, is another topic that, that I'm interested in. I want it. And I said before, people like yourself in a position of influence to influence public policy and obviously the employees and your ecosystem why is it not just the right thing to do? Why is... why are those things good business, Michael? >> Well, it's good business because people want to be part of something that is important and purposeful. You know, it's not just make a profit and earn a living right? You know, people want to be inspired and feel that they're part of something special. And look, I think if you look at the positive changes that have occurred in the world certainly you could turn on the news and see the horrible things that happened in the last 24 hours or something like that. But if you step back and think about the amazing progress that's happened in the last several decades, you know a lot of it's been driven by technology and by businesses that have stepped up and made a difference and made commitments. And, you know, we're one of those companies that has made a series of commitments you know, 10 years ago, we set out with our 2020 goals. We accomplished significant majority of those retired those. Now we set out our progress made real 2030 goals all around the ESD themes. And it's not only the right thing to do but it is good for business. It inspires our team members, our customers and I think initiatives like progress made real at Dell and thousands of other companies. Ultimately, those are the things that are going to drive progress forward. I believe, you know, more so than government edicts or regulation, those can play a role. But I think, companies voluntarily driving things like the circular economy and how we include everyone in our business and provide opportunities for everyone to succeed no matter where they come from. I think those are the things that are really going to drive the world forward. >> Well, I want to ask you about public policy because as you say, it's not just the government, but of course sometimes the government can get in the way. You're seeing a lot of vitriol around Val break up big tech but the same time, you're seeing the US government and the EU very willing to help out with the semiconductor competitiveness in the like I know you were tapped with the new administration President Biden, tapping, you know, the best minds in tech and you were asked to part sort of participate give feedback. What can you tell us about, you know your advice to the US government? >> Well, you know, lots of great discussion with the new administration and it's a delight to see that they're focused on semiconductors and sort of the industries of the future. This is a big deal. I mean, you know, we've got some big global competitors out there other nations that are with a deterministic strategy very focused on the industries of the future. But US, you know if you think about the atomic age and, you know the Apollo missions that created the whole semiconductor industry ARPANET and ultimately the Internet and that kind of stopped right there, you know, there wasn't as much government investment in some of those big R and D initiatives that really drove an enormous creation of industries and success for the United States and its citizens. And so I think focusing on semiconductors and how you build the infrastructure of the future really important for the United States to continue to be a leader in that you know, we were, you know, producing a one point about 37% of the world's semiconductors. It's now down to 12% and dropping and really important that more investments are made in that area. It's a combination of capital, talent, you know education knowledge, and also, you know, the policies that promote the development of these kinds of businesses. >> Yah well, Pat's got a very big challenge ahead of them. And so that's why but we've said Intel's too strategic to fail in our view but I wanted to plug your book a little bit. My former boss, you and I have talked about this. He was also a gentleman who proved Leo Durocher wrong. He was very nice guy, but also a winner, Play Nice But Win, why did you decide to write another book? >> Well, you know, Dave, a lot has happened in the last 20 years and especially the last nine or so years since we went private and, you know merged with EMC and VMware and went public again. And, you know, I'd say we... first of all, you know when I wrote the first book in 1998 I wasn't comfortable disclosing a lot. And, and I wasn't vulnerable enough and didn't feel, you know, able to do that. Now I do, you know, I'm older, you know hopefully a little wiser. And so I think everybody's going to like hearing some of the fun stories about not only my childhood but you know, the dorm room and beyond, and leading up to, you know the pivotal changes that have occurred the last decade my alligator wrestling with Carl Icahn and other, you know there's lots of fun stories in there. I got arrested one time. It was only for speeding tickets, don't worry but you know, lots of fun. I'm really looking forward to the book coming out and being able to talk about it. >> I can't wait. You know, I've said many times anybody who could beat the great icon is interesting to me. I wanted to ask you, I mentioned my old boss, Pat McGovern. I used to say to them all the time, "Pat how come you don't buy more companies?" And he'd say," Dave, you know the vast majority of acquisitions and mergers they failed to meet their objectives." Did you ever imagine, I mean... I did the EMC acquisition. Did... how could it not have exceeded your expectations? I wonder if you could give us your final thoughts on that. >> You know, and I talk about this a lot in the book. I mean, these are kind of the ultimate considered decisions. And in the case of the EMC combination it was something that we had thought about going back to 2008, 2009. And then, you know, started thinking about it in 2014 worked on it for a full year before it got announced in 2015 and finally closed in 2016. But yeah, I mean, you know, we thought it would be great. It turned out to be even better than We thought the revenue synergies were far greater. The teams were quite energized. Customers liked what we were providing and you know it's ... and, of course the markets were supportive Right? You know, we were paying close attention to interest rates and how we could structure the merger in a attractive way. And, you know, thank goodness, lots of hard work lots of determination, you know, it's worked out quite well. >> Yeah, great commitment from the Dell team as well. Congratulations on that. Go ahead, please. >> And any adventure continues right? It's...( both chuckles) >> I can't wait to see the next chapter and I can't wait to get the book, but congratulations on that, all your tremendous success you're you are a winner and a gentleman and a friend of the CUBE, Michael Dell. Thanks so much. >> Thank you so much Dave. >> And thank you for watching. And this is the CUBE continuous coverage of Dell tech world 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there, right back. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Awards brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's Coverage of "AWS Public Sector Partner Awards Program". I'm John Furrier your host of theCUBE here in Palo Alto, California doing the remote interviews, during this pandemic we have our remote crews and getting all the stories and celebrating the award winners and here to feature the most Innovative Connect Deployment. We have Accenture of Canada and the Department of Employment and Social Development of Canada known as ESDC. Guys, congratulations Joel Marchildon, Accenture Canada, managing director and Benoit Long, ESDC of Canada chief transformation officer. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on, and congratulations on the award. >> Thank you. >> Thank you and nice to be here >> So obviously, during this pandemic, a lot of disruption and a lot of business still needs to go on including government services. But the citizens and people need to still do their thing you got a business got to run, and you got to get things going. But the disruptions caused a little bit of how the user experiences are. So this Connect has been interesting. Its been a featured part of what we've been hearing at the Public Sector Summit with Teresa Carlson. You guys, this is a key product. Tell us about the award. What is the solution that is starving and deserving of the award? >> Maybe I'll go first and then pass it over to Benoit. But I think the solution is Amazon Connect based Virtual Contact Center that was stood up fairly quickly, over the course of about four days and really in support of benefit that the Government of Canada was was releasing as part of its economic response to the pandemic. And in the end, its a fully functioning featured contact center solution. Includes an IVR. And, we stood it up for about 1500 to 2000 agents. So that's the the crux of the solution. And maybe Benoit can give a bit of insight as to how it came about so quickly. >> Yeah, we're happy to actually, we were obviously like every other government facing enormous pressures at that time to deliver benefits directly to people who were in true need. The jobs are being lost, our current systems were in trouble because of their age and their archaic nature. And so the challenge was quickly how do we actually support a lot of people really fast. And so it came through immediately that after our initial payments were made under what was called the Canada emergency response benefit that we had to support clients directly and so people turn to the transformation team of all teams. If you wish during a firestorm, to say, well, what could you do? And how could you help. And so we had an established relationship with a number of our system integrators, including Accenture. And we were able to run a competition very rapidly, and Accenture won. And then we deployed in, as Joel said, in a matter of four days, what for us was an exceptional and high quality solution to a significant client problem. And I say that because I think you can imagine how people feel in a pandemic of all things, but with the uncertainty that comes with loss of income, loss of jobs, the question of being able to deal with somebody a real; a human being, as well as to be able to efficiently answer a very simple but straightforward questions rapidly and with high quality, was pretty fundamental for us. So the the people in the groups that we're talking through here we're speaking to millions of people, who were literally being asked to accept the payment rapidly and to be able to connect with us quickly. And without this solution, which was exceptionally well done and of high quality personally as a technology solution, it would not have been possible to even answer any of these queries quickly. >> And well, that's a great point. One of the things that you see with the pandemic, its a disaster in the quote disaster kind of readiness thing. Unforeseen, right. So like other things, you can kind of plan for things, hypothetical, you got scenarios. But this is truly a case where every day counts, every minute counts, because humans are involved. There's no ROI calculation. Its not like, well, what's the payback of our system? The old kind of way to think. This is real results, fast. This is what cloud is all about. This is the promise of cloud, can I stand up something quick, and you did it with a partner, okay. This is like not, like normal. Its like, its like unheard of, right. Four days, with critical infrastructure, critical services that were unforeseen. Take us through what was going on in the war room. As you guys knew this was here. Take us through through what happened. >> So I think I can start. As you can imagine the set of executives that were overseeing the payment process was an exceptional, it was like a bunker, frankly, for about two weeks. We had to suspend the normal operations of the vast majority of our programming. We had to launch brand new payments and benefits systems and programs that nobody has seen before the level of simplicity was maximized in order to deliver the funds quickly. So you can imagine its a Warpath if you wish, because the campaign is really around timing. Timing is fundamental. People are literally losing their jobs, there is no support, there is no funding money for them to be able to buy groceries. So, and the trust that people have in the government is pretty much at risk right there. And there is straightforward but extraordinarily powerful magic moment, if you wish. If you can deliver a solution, then you make a difference for a long time. And so the speed is unheard of on all fronts. When it came to the call center capability and the ability for us to support in a service context, the clients that were desperate to reach us, and we're talking hundreds of thousands of calls a day. We're not talking a few thousand here, ultimately, at some point we were literally getting in overtaken by volumes, call centers, because we had our regular ones still operating. Over a million calls were coming in the day. With the capacity to answer 10s of thousands and so the reality is that the Call Centers that we put up here, very quickly became capable of answering more calls than our regular call centers. And that speaks to the the speed of delivery, the quality of the solution, of course, but the scalability of it. And I have to say maybe unheard of, it may be difficult to replicate the conditions to lead to this are rare. But I have to say that my bosses and most of the government is probably now wondering why we can't do this more often. Why can't we operate with that kind of speed and agility. So I think what you've got is a client in our case, under extreme circumstances, now realizing the new normal will never be the same. That these types of solutions and technology and their scalability, their agility, their speed of deployment, is frankly something we want we want all the time. Now we'd like to be able to do them during normal timeline conditions, but even those will be a fraction of what it used to take. It would have taken us a while I can actually tell you because I was the lead technologist to deploy at scale for the government, Canada, all the call center capabilities under a single software as a service platform. It took us two years to design it two years to procure it, and five years to install it. That's the last experience we have of call center, enterprise scale capabilities. And in this case we went from years, to literally days. >> Well, it takes a crisis sometimes to kind of wire up the simplicity solution that you say, why didn't we do this before? The waterfall meetings getting everyone arguing kind of gets in the way and the old software model, I want to come back to the transformation Benoit a minute, Because I think that's going to be a great success story and some learnings and I want to get your thoughts on that. But I want to go to Joel, because Joel, we've talked to many Accenture executives over the years and most recently, this past 24 months. And the message we've been hearing is, "We're going to be faster. We're not going to be seen as that, a consulting firm, taking our times trying to get a pound of flesh from the client." This is an example of my opinion of a partner working with a problem statement that kind of matches the cloud speed. So you guys have been doing this is not new to Accenture. So take us through how you guys reacted, because one, you got to sync up and get the cadence of what Benoit was trying to do sync up and execute take us through what happened on your side. >> Yeah, I mean, so its an unprecedented way of operating for us as well, frankly. And, we've had to look at, to get this specific solution out the door and respond to an RFP and the commercial requirements that go with that we had to get pretty agile ourselves internally on, how we go through approvals, etc, to make sure that we were there to support Benoit and his team and I think that we saw this as a broader opportunity to really respond to it. To help Canada in a time of need. So I think we had to streamline a lot of our internal processes and make quick decisions that normally even for our organization would have taken, could have taken weeks, right, and we were down to hours and a lot of instances. So it forces us to react and act differently as well. But I mean to Benoit's point I think this is really going to hopefully change the way... It illustrates the art of the possible and hopefully will change how quickly we can look at problems and we reduce deployment timeframes from years to months and months to weeks, etc. For solutions like this. And I think the AWS platform specifically in this case, Benoit touched on a lot of things beat the market scalability, but just as the benefit itself has to be simplified to do this quickly. I think one of the one of the benefits of the solution itself is, its simple to use technologically. I mean, we trained, as I said, I think 1600 agents on how to use the platform over the course of a weekend. And they're not normal agents. These were people who were furloughed from other jobs potentially within the government. So they're not necessarily contact center agents, by training, but they became contact center agents over the course of 48 hours. And I think, from that perspective, that was important as well to have something that people could use to answer those calls that we know that we knew were going to come. >> Benoit this is the transformation dream scenario in the sense of capabilities. I know its under circumstances of the pandemic and you guys did solve a big problem really fast and saved lives and then help people get on with their day. But transformation is about having people closest to the problem, execute. And also the people equation people process technology, as they say, is kind of playing out in real time. This is kind of the playbook. Amazon came in and said, "Hey, you want to stand something up?" You wired it together the solution quickly, you have close to it. Looking back now its almost like, hey, why aren't we doing this before, as you said, and then you had to bring people in, who weren't trained and stood them up and they were delivering the service. This is the playbook to share your thoughts on this because this is what you're you're thinking about all the time, and it actually is playing out in real time. >> Well, I would definitely endorse the idea that its a playbook. Its I would say its an ideal and dream playbook to bid like showing up on a basketball court with all the best players in the entire league playing together magically. It is exactly that. So a lot of things had to happen quickly but also correctly, because you can't pull all these things properly together without that. So I would say the partnership with the private sector here was fundamental. And I have to applaud the work that Accenture did particularly I think, as Canadians we were very proud of the fact that we needed to respond quickly. Everyone was in this our neighbors, we knew people who were without support and Accenture's team, I mean, all the way up and down across the organization was fundamental in and delivering this but also literally putting themselves into these roles and to make sure that we would be able to respond and quickly do so. I think the playbook around the readiness for change, I was shocked into existence. I mean, I won't talk about quantum physics, but clearly some higher level of energy was thrown in quickly, mobilize everybody all at once. Nobody was said he is sitting around saying, I wonder if we have changed management covered off, this was changed readiness at its best. And so I think for me from a learning perspective, apart from just the technology side, which is pretty fundamental, if you don't have ready enough technology to deploy quickly, then the best pay your plans in the world won't work. The reality is that to mobilize an organization going forward into that level of spontaneous driving change, exception, acceptance, and adoption, is really what I would aim for. And so our challenge now will be continuing that kind of progression going forward. And we now found the way and we certainly use the way to work with the private sector in an innovative capacity and innovative ways with brand new solutions that are truly agile and scalable, to be able to pull all of the organization all at once very rapidly and I have to admit that it is going to shift permanently our planning, we had 10 year plans for our big transformations, because some of our programs are the most important in the country in many ways. We support people about 8 million Canadians a month, depending on the benefits payments that we deliver. And they're the most marginal needing and requires our support from seniors, to the unemployed, to job seekers and whatnot. So if you think about that group itself, and to be able to support them clearly with the systems that we have its just unsustainable. But the new technologies are clearly going to show us a way that we had never forecast, and I have to say I had to throw up my 10 year plan. And now I'm working my way down from 10 to nine to eight year plans going forward. And so its exciting and nerve wracking sometimes, but then, obviously as a change leader, our goal is to get there as quickly as possible. So the benefits of all these solutions can make a difference in people's lives. >> What's interesting is that you can shorten that timetable, but also frees you up to be focused on what's contemporary and what's needed at the time to leverage the people and the resources you have. And take advantage of that versus having something that you're sitting on that's needs to be refreshed, you can always be on that bleeding edge. And this just brings up the DevOps kind of mindset, agility, the lean startup, the lean company, this is a team effort between Amazon Accenture and ESDC. Its, pass, shoot, score really fast. So this is the new reality. Any commentary from you guys on this, new pass, shoot, score combination because you got speed, you got agility, you're leaner, which makes you more flexible for being contemporary in solving problems? What's your thoughts? >> Yeah. So my perspective on that is most definitely right. I think what we were able to show in what's coming out of a lot of different responses to the pandemic by government is, perfection isn't the most important thing out of the gate, getting something out there that's going to reassure citizens, that's going to allow them to answer their questions or access benefits quickly, is what's becoming more important, obviously, security and privacy, those things are of the utmost importance as well. But its ability to get stuff out there, quickly, test it, change it, test it again, and just always be iterating on the solution. Like I can say what we put out on April 6, within four days, is the backbone of what's out there still today. But we've added an integrated workforce management solution from NICE, and we added some other ISVs to do outbound dialing from Acquia and things like that. So the solution has grown from that MVP. And I think that's one other thing that's going to be a big takeaway. If you're not going to do anything till you got the final end product out there, then its going to be late. So let's go quickly and let's adapt from there. >> Benoit, talk about that dynamic because that's about building blocks, on foundational things and then services. Its the cloud model. >> Yeah, I mean, before the pandemic, I had lunch with Mark Schwartz, which I believe you are quite familiar with. And, I spent an hour and a half with him. We were talking and he was so exciting and energized by what the technologies could do. And I was listening to him and I used to be the chief technology officer for the Government of Canada, right. And so I've seen a lot of stuff and I said, Well, that's really exciting. And I'm sure its possible in some other places, and maybe in some other countries where they didn't have infrastructure and legacy. I guess if I see him again soon. I'll have to apologize for not believing him enough. I think the building blocks of Agile the building blocks sprints and MVPs. I mean, they're enough fundamental to the way we're going to solve our biggest Harriers and scariest problems technologically. And then from a business perspective, service candidate itself has 18,000 employees involved in multiple channels, where the work has always been very lethargic, very difficult. Arduous you make change over years, not months, not days, for sure. And so I think that new method is not only a different way of working, its a completely revamped way of assembling solutions. And I think that the concept of engineering is probably going to be closer to what we're going to do. And I have to borrow the Lego metaphor, but the building blocks are going to be assembled. We know in working, I'm saying this in front of Joel, he doesn't know that yet. (all laughing) (indistinct) partners. We're going to be assembling MVP maps of an entire long program and its going to be iterative, it is going to be designed built, it will be agile as much as we can implement it. But more importantly, as much as we can govern it because the government is... We may have changed a lot, but the government is not necessarily caught on to most of these approaches. But the reality is that, that's where we're heading. And I will say, I'll close perhaps on this answer. The biggest reason for doing that apart from we've proved it is the fact that the appetite inside the organization for that level of mobilization, speed and solutioning, and being engaged rapidly, you just can't take that away from an organization once they've tasted that. If you let them down, well, they'll remember and frankly, they do remember now because they want more of this. And its going to be hard. But its a better hard, better challenge, than the one of having to do things over a decade, then to go fast and to kind of iterate quickly through the challenges and the issues and then move on very much to the next one as rapidly as possible. I think the the other comment I would add is most of this was driven by a client need. And that's not inconsequential because it mobilized everybody to a common focus. If it had been just about, well, we need to get people on side and solutions in place just to make our lives better as providers. Yeah, would it work perhaps, but it would have been different than the mobilization that comes when the client is put in the middle. The client is the focus, and then we drive everyone to that solution. >> Shared success and success is contagious. And when you ride the new wave, you're oh, we need a new board, right? So once you get it, it then spreads like wildfire. This is what we've been seeing. And it also translates down to the citizens because again, being contemporary, none of this just look could feel its success and performance. So as people in business start to adopt cloud. It becomes a nice synergy. This is a key! Joe, take us home here on the Accenture. The award winner, you guys did a great job. Final thoughts. >> Yeah, I mean, I think final thoughts would be happy to have had the opportunity to help. And it was a it was a complete team effort and continues to be. Its not a bunch of eccentric technologists in the background doing this. The commitment from everyone to get this in place and to continue to improve it from Benoit team and from other folks across the government has been paramount to the success. So its been a fantastic if world win like experience and look forward to continuing to build on it. And it has been well said, I think one thing that's done is its created demand for speed on some of these larger transformations. So I looking forward to continuing to innovate with with Benoit team. >> Well, congratulations for the most innovative Connect Deployment. And because you guys from Canada, I have to use the Hockey-Reference. You get multiple people working together in a cohesive manner. Its pass, shoot, score every time and its contagious. (Benoit laughs) Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time and congratulations for winning the election. Take care! >> Thanks. >> Take care. >> Okay, this is theCUBE's Coverage "AWS Public Sector Partner Awards" show. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>from the Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. >>Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Awards program. I'm John Furrow, your host of the Cube here in Palo Alto, California In the remote interviews during this pandemic, we have our remote crews and getting all the stories and celebrating the award winners. And here to feature the most innovative connect deployment. We have a center of Canada and the Department of Employment and Social Development of Canada, known as E S D. C guys. Congratulations, Joel. More Children Censure Canada Managing director and Ben while long sdc of Canada Chief Transformation officer. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on. And congratulations on the award. >>Thank you. >>Thank you. >>So, Ashley, during this pandemic, a lot of disruption and a lot of business still needs to go on, including government services. But the citizens and people need to still do their thing. Business got to run, and you got to get things going. But the disruptions caused a little bit of how the user experiences are. So this connect has been interesting. It's been a featured part of where you've been hearing at the Public Sector summit with Theresa Carlson. You guys, this is a key product. Tell us about the award. What is the solution? That disturbing of deserving reward? >>Maybe I'll get I'll go first and then pass it over to Benoit. But I think the solution is Amazon Connect based Virtual Contact Center that we stood up fairly quickly over the course of about four days and really in support of of benefit that the government of Canada was was releasing as part of its economic response to the pandemic. And in the end that, you know, it's a fully functioning featured contact center solution includes an I V r. And, uh, you know, we stood it up for about 1500 to 2000 agents so that that's the crux of the solution. And maybe Benoit can give a bit of insight as to to how it came about so quickly. >>Yeah, happy to actually wear obviously, like every other government, facing enormous pressures at that time to deliver benefits directly to people who were in true need, the jobs are being lost. Our current systems were in trouble because of their age and barricade cake nature. And so the challenge is was quickly how to actually support a lot of people really fast. And so it came through immediately that after our initial payments were made under what was called Canada Emergency Response Benefit, then we have to support our clients directly. And so people turn to the transformation team of all teams. If you wish during a fire firestorm to say, Well, what could you do and how could you help? And so we had an established relationship with a number of other system integrators, including Accenture, and we were able to run a competition very rapidly. Accenture one. And then we deployed. And as you all said, in a matter of four days, what for us was a new, exceptional on high quality solution to a significant client problem. And I say that because I think you can imagine how people feel in the endemic of all of all things. But with the uncertainty that comes with the loss of income, loss of jobs, the question of being able to deal with somebody really a human being, as well as to be able to be efficiently answer a very simple but straightforward questions rapidly and with high quality, with pretty fundamental for us. So the people in the groups that were talking through here are talking, speaking to millions of people who were literally being asked to to accept the pavement rapidly and to be able to connect with us quickly. And without this solution, which was exceptionally well done and deployed and of high quality personally, just a technology, uh, solution. I would not have been possible to even answer any of these queries quickly. >>And while that's a great 0.1 of the things that you see with the pandemic it's a disaster in the quote disaster kind of readiness thing. Unforeseen, right? So, like other things, you can kind of plan for things that hypothetical. You've got scenarios, but this >>is >>truly a case where every day counts. Every minute counts because humans are involved is no our ROI calculation. It's not like it's not like, Well, what's the payback of our system? The old kind of way to think this is really results fast. This is what cloud is all about. This is the promise of cloud. Can I stand up something quick and you did it with a partner. Okay, this is, like, not, like, normal again. It's like it's, you know, it's like, unheard of, right? Four days with critical infrastructure, critical services that were unforeseen. Take us through what was going on in the war room, as you guys knew this was here. Take us through the through what happened. Yeah, >>So I think I can start a Z. You can imagine the set of executives that we're seeing a payment process. Uh, was an exceptional. It was like a bunker. Frankly, for about two weeks, we had to suspend the normal operations off the vast majority of our programming. We had to launch brand new payments and benefits systems and programs that nobody had seen before. The level of simplicity was maximized to delivered the funds quickly. So you could imagine it's a warpath if you wish, because the campaign is really around. A timing. Timing is fundamental. People are are literally losing their jobs. There is no support. There's no funding money for them to be able to buy groceries. So on the trust that people have in the government, Ai's pretty much at risk right there and then in a very straightforward but extraordinarily powerful magic moment. If you wish. If you can deliver a solution, then you make a difference for a long time. And so the speed unheard off on old friends when he came to the call center capability and the ability for us to support and service context the clients that were desperate to reach us on. We're talking hundreds of thousands of calls, right? We're not talking a few 1000 year. Ultimately, at some point we were literally getting in our over over, taken by volumes, call centers. But we had a regular one still operating over a 1,000,000 calls for coming in today with the capacity to answer, um, you know, tens of thousands. And so the reality is that the counselor that we put up here very quickly became capable of answering more calls than our regular costumes. And that speaks to the speed of delivery, the quality of the solution, of course, but the scalability of it and I have to say, maybe unheard of, it may be difficult to replicate. The conditions to lead to this are rare, but I have to say that my bosses and most of the government is probably now wondering why we can't do this more often, like we can't operate with that kind of speed and agility. So I think what you've got is a client in our case, under extreme circumstances. Now, realizing the new normal will never be the same, that these types of solutions and technology. And then there's scalability. There's agility there, the speed of deployment. It's frankly, something we want. We want all the time. Now we'd like to be able to do it under your whole timeline conditions. But even those will be a fraction of what it used to take. It would have taken us well, actually, I can actually tell you because I was the lead, Ah, technologists to deploy at scale for the government. Canada all the call center capabilities under a single software as a service platform. It took us two years to design it two years to procure it and five years to install it. That's the last experience. We have a call center enterprise scale capabilities, and in this case, we went from years to literally days. >>Well, you know, it takes a crisis sometimes to kind of wire up the simplicity solution that you say. Why didn't we do this before? You know, the waterfall meetings, Getting everyone arguing gets kind of gets in the way of the old the old software model. I want to come back to the transformation been wanna minute, cause I think that's gonna be a great success story and some learnings, and I want to get your thoughts on that. But I want to go to Joel because Joel, we've talked to many Accenture executives over the years and most recently this past 24 months. And the message we've been hearing is we're going to be faster. We're not going to be seen as that. You know, a consulting firm taking our times. Try and get a pound of flesh from the client. This is an example. In my opinion of a partner working with a problem statement that kind of matches the cloud speed. So you guys have been doing this. This is not new to a censure. So take us through how you guys reacted because one you got to sync up and get the cadence of what, Ben? What I was trying to do sync up and execute. Take us through what happened on your side. >>Yeah, I mean, so it's It's Ah, it's an unprecedented way of operating for us as well, frankly, and, um and, uh and, you know, we've had to look at to get this specific solution at the door and respond to an RFP and the commercial requirements that go with that way. Had Teoh get pretty agile ourselves internally on on how we go through approvals, etcetera, to make sure that that we were there to support Ben Wan is team. And I think you know that we saw this is a broader opportunity to really respond to it, to help Canada in a time of need. So So I think we, you know, we had to streamline a lot of our internal processes that make quick decisions that normally even for our organization, would have taken, um, could it could have taken weeks, right? And we were down to hours in a lot of instances. So it helps. It forces us to react and act differently as well. But I mean, to Benoit's point, I think this is really going to to hopefully change the way it illustrates the art of the possible and hopefully will change How, How quick We can look at problems and and we reduced deployment timeframes from from years to months and months to weeks, etcetera for solutions like this. Um, and I think that the AWS platform specifically in this case but what touched on a lot of things to beat the market scale ability But just as the benefit itself was, you know has to be simplified to do this quickly. I think one of the one of the benefits of the solution itself is it's simple to use technologically. I mean, we know least retrained. As I said, I think 1600 agents on how to use the platform over the course of a weekend on and and were able, and they're not normal agents. These were people who are firm from other jobs, potentially within the government. So they're not necessarily contact center agents by training. But they became contact center agents over the course of 48 hours, and I think from that perspective, you know, that was important as well have something that people could could use. The answer those calls that we know that when you were gonna come so >>Ben what this is. This is the transformation dream scenario in the sense of capabilities. I know it's under circumstances of the pandemic, and you guys didn't solve a big, big problem really fast and saved lives and help people get on with their day. But transformations about having people closest to the problem execute and the the also the people equation people process technology, as they say, is kind of playing out in real time. This >>is >>the this is kind of the playbook, you know? Amazon came in said, Hey, you want to stand something up? You wired it together. The solution quickly. You're close to it. Looking back now, it's almost like, Hey, why aren't we doing this before? As you said and then you had to bring people in who weren't trained and stood them up and they were delivering the service. This >>is >>the playbook to share your thoughts on this, because this is what you're you're thinking about all the time and it actually playing out in real time. >>Well, I would definitely endorsed the idea that it's a playbook. It's I would say it's an ideal and dream playbook timidly showing up on the basketball court with all the best players in the entire league playing together magically, it is exactly that. So a lot of things have to happen quickly, but also, um, correctly because you know, you can't pull these things properly together without that. So I would say the partnership with the private sector here was fundamental, and I have to applaud the work that Accenture did particularly, I think, as Canadians, we're very proud of the fact that we needed to respond quickly. Everyone was in this, our neighbors, we knew people who were without support and Accenture's team, I mean, all the way up and down across the organization was fundamental and delivering this, but also literally putting themselves into, uh, these roles and to make sure that we would be able to respond quickly to do so. I think the playbook around the readiness for change I was shocked into existence every night. I won't talk about quantum physics, but clearly some some high level of energy was thrown in very quickly, mobilized everybody all at once. Nobody was said. He's sitting around saying, I wonder if we have change management covered off, you know this was changed readiness at its best. And so I think for me from a learning perspective, apart from just the technology side, which is pretty fundamental if you don't have ready enough technology to deploy quickly than the best paid plans in the world won't work. The reality is that to mobilize an organization going for it into that level of of spontaneous driving, change, exception, acceptance and adoption is really what I would aim for. And so our challenge now we'll be continuing that kind of progression going forward, and we now found the way. We certainly use the way to work with private sector in an innovative capacity in the new, innovative ways with brand new solutions that are truly agile and and and scalable to be able to pull all of the organization. All that one's very rapidly, and I have to admit that it is going to shift permanently our planning. We had 10 year plans for our big transformation, so some of our programs are the most important in the country. In many ways. We support people about eight million Canadians a month and on the benefits payments that we deliver, and they're the most marginal needed meeting and and requires our support from senior study, unemployed jobseekers and whatnot. So if you think about that group itself and to be able to support them clearly with the systems that we have is just unsustainable. But the new technologies are clearly going to show us the way that we had never for forecast. And I have to say I had to throw up, like in your plan. And now I'm working my way down from 10 denying date your plants going forward. And so it's exciting and nerve wracking sometimes, but then obviously has a change leader. Our goal is to get there as quickly as possible, so the benefit of all of these solutions could make a difference in people's lives. >>What's interesting is that you can shorten that timetable but also frees you up to be focused on what's contemporary and what's needed at the time. So leverage the people on the resource is You have and take advantage of that versus having something that you're sitting on that need to be refreshed. You can always be on that bleeding edge, and this brings up the Dev ops kind of mindset agility. The lean startup glean company. You know this is a team effort between Amazon and center and SDC. It's pass, shoot, score really fast. So this isn't the new, the new reality. Any commentary from you guys on this, you know, new pass shoot score combination. Because you got speed, you got agility. You're leaner, which makes you more flexible for being contemporary and solving problems. What's your thoughts? >>So my perspective on that is most definitely right. I think what we what we were able to show and what's. You know, what's coming out of a lot of different responses to the pandemic by government is, um, you know, perfection isn't the most important thing out of the gate. Getting something out there that's going to reassure citizens that's gonna allow them to answer their questions or access benefits quickly is what's becoming more important. Obviously, security and privacy. Those things are of the utmost importance as well. But it's ability to get stuff out there, quickly, test it, change it, tested again and and just always be iterating on the solutions. Like I can say what we put out on April 6th within four days is the backbone of what's out there still today. But we've added, you know, we added an integrated workforce management solution from Nice, and we added some other eyes views to do outbound dialing from acquisition, things like that. So the solution has grown from that M v p. And I think that's one other thing that that's going to be a big takeaways if you're not gonna do anything. So you got the final and product out there, then it's going to be here, right? So let's go quickly and let's adapt from there. >>Then we'll talk about that dynamic cause that's about building blocks, fund foundational things and then services. It's the cloud model. >>Yeah, I mean, before the pandemic, I had lunch with Mark Schwarz, which I believe you're quite familiar with, and, you know, I spent an hour and 1/2 with it. We were talking, and he was so exciting and and energized by what the technologies could do. And I was listening to him, and I used to be the chief technology officer for the government can right? And so I've seen a lot of stuff and I said, Well, that's really exciting, and I'm sure it's possible in some other places. And maybe it's some other countries where you know they didn't have infrastructure and legacy. I guess if I see him again soon, I'll have to. I apologize for not believing him enough, I think the building blocks of edge of the building, blocks of sprints and MVP's I mean they're not fundamental to the way we're gonna. So our biggest, various and scariest problems, technologically and then from a business perspective, Service candidate itself has 18,000 employees involved in multiple channels where the work has always been very lethargic, very difficult, arduous. You make change over years, not months, not days for sure. And so I think that that new method is not only a different way of working, it's a completely re HVAC way of assembly solutions, and I think the concept of engineering is probably going to be closer to what we're going to do on. And I have to borrow the Lego metaphor, but the building blocks are gonna be assembled. We now and working. I'm saying this in front of goal. He doesn't know that you should practice partners. We're gonna be assembling MPP maps of an entire long program, and it's gonna be iterative. It is gonna be designed, built. It will be agile as much as we can implement it. But more importantly, and punches weaken govern. It is, you know, the government is we may have changed. A lot of the government is not necessarily can count on to Most of these things approaches, But the reality is that that's where we're heading. And I will say, Oh, close. Perhaps on this on this answer. The biggest reason for doing that apart from we've proved it is the fact that the appetite inside the organization for that level of globalization, speed solution ing and being engaged rapidly you just can't take that away from an organization. Must be a piece of that. Uh, if you let them down, well, they'll remember. And frankly, they do remember now, cause they want more and it's gonna be hard. But it's a better heart. Ah, a better challenge that the one of having to do things over a decade, then to go fast and to kind of iterating quickly through the challenges and the issues and then move on very much to the next one as rapidly as possible. I think the other company, I would add is most of this was driven by a client need, and that's not inconsequential because it mobilized everybody to comment focused. If you have been just about, well, you know, we need to get people on side and solutions in place just to make our lives better, it providers. Yeah, it would have worked, perhaps, but it would have been different than the mobilisation It comes when the client is put in the middle, the client is the focus, and then we drive. Everyone's with that solution, >>you know, shared success and success is contagious. And when you ride the new way to oh, we need a new board, right? So once you get it, it then spreads like wildfire. This is what we've been seeing. And it also translates down to the citizens because again, being contemporary, none of us just looked could feel it's success in performance. So, as you know, people in business start to adopt cloud. It becomes a nice, nice, nice synergy. This is key. I'll take a year on a center. Um, the award winner. You guys did a great job. Final thoughts. >>Yeah. I mean, I think final thoughts would be happy to have the opportunity that help. And it was a It was a complete team effort and continues to be, um, it's not. It's not a bunch of Accenture technologists in the background in this, you know the commitment from everyone to get this in place. And can you continue to improvement from Benoit's team and from other folks across the government has been, uh, has been paramount to the success. So, um um, it's been a fantastic if world win like experience and, uh, look forward to continuing to build on it. And it has been said, I think one thing this is done is it's created demand for speed on some of these larger transformations. So I'm looking forward to continuing to innovate with with Ben wanting. >>Well, congratulations. The most innovative connect deployment. And because you guys from Canada, I have to use the hockey reference. You get multiple people working together in a cohesive manner. It's pass, shoot, score every time. And you know it's contagious. Thank you very much for your time. And congratulations for winning the >>West. Thanks. Thank you. Okay, this is the >>Cube's coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Award show. I'm John Furrier, host of the Cube. Thanks for watching. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>>from the Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. >>Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Awards program. I'm John Furrow, your host of the Cube here in Palo Alto, California In the remote interviews during this pandemic, we have our remote crews and getting all the stories and celebrating the award winners. And here to feature the most innovative connect deployment. We have a center of Canada and the Department of Employment and Social Development of Canada, known as E S D. C guys. Congratulations, Joel. More Children Censure Canada Managing director and Ben while long sdc of Canada Chief Transformation officer. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on. And congratulations on the award. >>Thank you. >>Thank you. >>So, Ashley, during this pandemic, a lot of disruption and a lot of business still needs to go on, including government services. But the citizens and people need to still do their thing. Business got to run, and you got to get things going. But the disruptions caused a little bit of how the user experiences are. So this connect has been interesting. It's been a featured part of what we've been hearing at the public sector summit with Theresa Carlson. You guys, this is a key product. Tell us about the award. What is the solution? That disturbing of deserving reward? >>Maybe I'll get I'll go first and then pass it over to Benoit. But I think the solution is Amazon. Connect a spiritual contact center that we stood up fairly quickly over the course of about four days and really in support of of benefit that the government of Canada was was releasing as part of its economic response to the pandemic. And in the end that, you know, it's a fully functioning featured contact center solution includes an ai VR and, uh, you know, we stood it up for 1500 to 2000 agents so that that's the crux of the solution. And maybe Benoit can give a bit of insight as to to how it came about so quickly. >>Yeah, I'd be happy to actually wear obviously, like every other government, facing enormous pressures at that time to deliver benefits directly to people who were in true need, the jobs are being lost. Our current systems were in trouble because of their age in the arcade cake Nature. And so the challenge is was quickly how to actually support a lot of people really fast. And so it came through immediately that after our initial payments were made under what was called Canada Emergency Response Benefit, then we have to support our clients directly. And so people turn to the transformation team of all teams. If you wish during a fire firestorm to say, Well, what could you do and how could you help? And so we had an established relationship with a number of other system integrators, including Accenture, and we were able to run a competition very rapidly. Accenture one. And then we deployed in, as you all said, in a matter of four days, what for us was a new, exceptional on high quality solution to a significant client problem. And I say that because I think you can imagine how people feel in that endemic of all of all things. But with the uncertainty that comes with the loss of income, loss of jobs, the question of being able to deal with somebody really a human being, as well as to be able to be efficiently answer a very simple but straightforward questions rapidly and with high quality, with pretty fundamental for us. So the people in the groups that were talking through here are talking, speaking to millions of people who were literally being asked to to accept the pavement rapidly and to be able to connect with us quickly. And without this solution, which was exceptionally well done and deployed and of high quality personally, just a technology, uh, solution. I would not have been possible to even answer any of these queries quickly. >>And while that's a great 0.1 of the things that you see with the pandemic it's a disaster in the quote disaster kind of readiness thing. Unforeseen, right? So, like other things, you can kind of plan for things that hypothetical. You've got scenarios, but this >>is >>truly a case where every day counts. Every minute counts because humans are involved is no our ROI calculation. It's not like it's not like, Well, what's the payback of our system? The old kind of way to think this is really results fast. This is what cloud is all about. This is the promise of cloud. Can I stand up something quick and you did it with a partner. Okay, this is, like, not, like, normal again. It's like it's, you know, it's like, unheard of right? Four days with critical infrastructure, critical services that were unforeseen. Take us through what was going on in the war room, as you guys knew this was here. Take us through the through what happened. Yeah, >>So I think I can start a Z. You can imagine the set of executives that we're seeing a payment process. Uh, was an exceptional. It was like a bunker. Frankly, for about two weeks, we had to suspend the normal operations off the vast majority of our programming. We had to launch brand new payments and benefits systems and programs that nobody had seen before. The level of simplicity was maximized to delivered the funds quickly. So you could imagine it's a warpath if you wish, because the campaign is really around. A timing. Timing is fundamental. People are are literally losing their jobs. There is no support. There's no funding money for them to be able to buy groceries. So on the trust that people have in the government, Ai's pretty much at risk right there and then, in a very straightforward but extraordinarily powerful magic moment. If you wish. If you can deliver a solution, then you make a difference for a long time. And so the speed unheard off on old friends when he came to the call center capability and the ability for us to support and service context the clients that were desperate to reach us on. We're talking hundreds of thousands of calls, right? We're not talking a few 1000 year. Ultimately, at some point we were literally getting in our over over, taken by volumes, call centers, but we had a regular one still operating over a 1,000,000 calls for coming in today. Uh, with the capacity to answer, um, you know, tens of thousands. And so the reality is that the counselor that we put up here very quickly became capable of answering more calls than our regular costumes. And that speaks to the speed of delivery, the quality of the solution, of course, but the scalability of it and I have to say, maybe unheard of, it may be difficult to replicate. The conditions to lead to this are rare, but I have to say that my bosses and most of the government is probably now wondering why we can't do this more often like we can't operate with that kind of speed and agility. So I think what you've got is a client in our case, under extreme circumstances. Now, realizing the new normal will never be the same, that these types of solutions and technology. And then there's scalability. There's agility there, the speed of deployment. It's frankly, something we want. We want all the time. Now we'd like to be able to do it under your whole timeline conditions. But even those will be a fraction of what it used to take. It would have taken us well, actually, I can actually tell you because I was the lead. Ah, technologist, to deploy at scale for the government, Canada, all the call center capabilities under a single software as a service platform. It took us two years to design it. Two years to procure it and five years to install it. That's the last experience. We have a call center enterprise scale capabilities, and in this case, we went from years to literally days. >>Well, you know, it takes a crisis sometimes to kind of wire up the simplicity solution that you say. Why didn't we do this before? You know the waterfall meetings, Getting everyone arguing gets kind of gets in the way of the old, the old software model. I want to come back to the transformation been wanna minute, cause I think that's going to be a great success story and some learnings, and I want to get your thoughts on that. But I want to go to Joel because Joel we've talked to many Accenture executives over the years and most recently this past 24 months, And the message we've been hearing is we're going to be faster. We're not going to be seen as that. You know, a consulting firm taking our times. Try and get a pound of flesh from the client. This is an example, in my opinion of a partner working with the problem statement that kind of matches the cloud speed. So you guys have been doing this. This is not new to a censure. So take us through how you guys reacted because one you got to sync up and get the cadence of what? Ben? What I was trying to do, sync up and execute. Take us through what happened on your side. >>Yeah. I mean, so it's It's Ah, It's an unprecedented way of operating for us as well, frankly, and, um and, uh and, you know, we've had to look at to get this specific solution at the door and respond to an RFP and the commercial requirements that go with that way. Had Teoh get pretty agile ourselves internally on on how we go through approvals, etcetera, to make sure that that we were there to support Ben Wan is team. And I think you know that we saw this is a broader opportunity to really respond to it, to help Canada in a time of need. So So I think we, you know, we had to streamline a lot of our internal processes and make quick decisions that normally, even for our organization, would have taken, um, could it could have taken weeks, right? And we were down to hours in a lot of instances. So it helps. It forces us to react and act differently as well. But I mean, to Benoit's point, I think this is really going to to hopefully change the way it illustrates the art of the possible and hopefully will change how, How quickly we can look at problems and and we reduce deployment timeframes from from years to months and months to weeks, etcetera for solutions like this. Um, and I think that the AWS platform specifically in this case but what touched on a lot of things to beat the market scale ability But just as the benefit itself was, you know has to be simplified to do this quickly. I think one of the one of the benefits of the solution itself is it's simple to use technologically. I mean, we know least retrained. As I said, I think 1600 agents on how to use the platform over the course of a weekend on and and were able, and they're not normal agents. These were people who are firm from other jobs, potentially within the government. So they're not necessarily contact center agents by training. But they became contact center agents over the course of 48 hours that I think from that perspective, you know, that was important as well have something that people could could use. The answer those calls that you know that when you're gonna come So, >>Ben, what this is This is the transformation dream scenario in the sense of capabilities. I know it's under circumstances of the pandemic, and you guys didn't solve a big, big problem really fast and saved lives and help people get on with their day. But transformations about having people closest to the problem execute and the the also the people equation. People process technology, as they say, is kind of playing out in real time. This >>is >>the this is kind of the playbook, you know, Amazon came in said, Hey, you want to stand something up? You wired it together. The solution quickly. You're close to it. Looking back now, it's almost like, Hey, why aren't we doing this before? As you said and then you had to bring people in who weren't trained and stood them up and they were delivering the service. This >>is >>the playbook to share your thoughts on this, because this is what you're you're thinking about all the time and it actually playing out in real time. >>Well, I would definitely endorsed the idea that it's a playbook. It's I would say it's an ideal and dream playbook to build like showing up on the basketball court with all the best players in the entire league playing together magically, it is exactly that. So a lot of things have to happen quickly, but also correctly because you know you can't pull these things properly together without that. So I would say the partnership with the private sector here was fundamental. And I have to applaud the work that Accenture did particularly, I think, as Canadians, we're very proud of the fact that we needed to respond quickly. Everyone was in this, our neighbors, we knew people who were without support and Accenture's team, I mean all the way up and down across the organization was fundamental in and delivering this, but also literally putting themselves into, uh, these roles and to make sure that we would be able to respond quickly, do so. I think the playbook around the readiness for change. I was shocked into existence every night. I won't talk about quantum physics, but clearly some some high level of energy was thrown in very quickly, mobilized everybody all at once. Nobody was said. He's sitting around saying, I wonder if we have change management covered off, you know this was changed readiness at its best. And so I think for me from a learning perspective, apart from just the technology side, which is pretty fundamental if you don't have ready enough technology to deploy quickly than the best plans in the world won't work. The reality is that to mobilize an organization going forward into that level of of spontaneous driving, change, exception, acceptance and adoption is really what I would ain't for. And so our challenge Now we'll be continuing that kind of progression going forward, and we now found a way. And we certainly use the way to work with private sector in an innovative capacity and in innovative ways with brand new solutions that are truly agile and and scalable to be able to pull all of the organization. All that one's very rapidly, and I have to admit that it is going to shift permanently our planning. We had 10 year plans for our big transformation, so some of our programs are the most important in the country. In many ways. We support people about eight million Canadians a month and on the benefits payments that we deliver, and they're the most marginal needed meeting and and requires our support from senior studio, unemployed jobseekers and whatnot. So if you think about that group itself and to be able to support them clearly with their systems that we have is just unsustainable. But the new technologies are clearly going to show us the way that we had never for forecast. And I have to say I had to throw up, like in your plan. And now I'm working my way down from 10 denying date your plants going forward. And so it's exciting and nerve wracking sometimes. But then, obviously, as a change leader, our goal is to get there as quickly as possible, so the benefit of all of these solutions could make a difference in people's lives. >>What's interesting is that you can shorten that timetable but also frees you up to be focused on what's contemporary and what's needed at the time. So leverage the people on the resource is You have and take advantage of that versus having something that you're sitting on that need to be refreshed. You can always be on that bleeding edge, and this brings up the Dev ops kind of mindset agility. The lean startup glean company. You know this is a team effort between Amazon and center and SDC. It's pass, shoot, score really fast. So this isn't the new, the new reality. Any commentary from you guys on this, you know, new pass shoot score combination. Because you got speed, you got agility. You're leaner, which makes you more flexible for being contemporary and solving problems. What's your thoughts? >>Yeah, So my perspective on that is most definitely right. I think what we what we were able to show and what's. You know, what's coming out of a lot of different responses to the pandemic by government is, um, you know, perfection isn't the most important thing out of the gate. Getting something out there that's going to reassure citizens that's going to allow them to answer their questions or access benefits quickly is what's becoming more important. Obviously, security and privacy. Those things are of the utmost importance as well. But it's ability to get stuff in there, quickly, test it, change it tested again and just always be iterating on the solutions. Like I can say what we put out on April 6th within four days is the backbone of what's out there still today. But we've added, you know, we added an integrated workforce management solution from Nice, and we added some other eyes views to do outbound dialing from acquisition, things like that. So the solution has grown from that M v p. And I think that's one other thing that that's going to be a big takeaways if you're not gonna do anything. So you got the final and product out there, then it's going to be here, right? So let's go quickly and let's adapt from there. >>Then we'll talk about that dynamic cause that's about building blocks, fund foundational things and then services. It's the cloud model. >>Yeah, I mean, before the pandemic, I had lunch with Mark Schwarz, which I believe you're quite familiar with, and, you know, I spent an hour and 1/2 with it. We were talking, and he was so exciting and and energized by what the technologies could do. And I was listening to him, and I used to be the chief technology officer for the government. Can't right. And so I've seen a lot of stuff and I said, Well, that's really exciting, and I'm sure it's possible in some other places. And maybe it's some other countries where you know they didn't have infrastructure and legacy. I guess if I see him again soon, I'll have to. I apologize for not believing him enough, I think the building blocks of agile, the building blocks of sprints and MVP's I mean, they're not fundamental to the way we're going to solve our biggest various and scariest problems technologically and then from a business perspective. Service candidate itself has 18,000 employees involved in multiple channels, where the work has always been very lethargic, very difficult, arduous. You make change over years, not months, not days for sure. And so I think that that new method is not only a different way of working, it's a completely revamped way of assembly solutions, and I think the concept of engineering is probably going to be closer to what we're going to do. Um, and I have to borrow the Lego metaphor, but the building blocks are gonna be assembled. We now and working. I'm saying this in front of goal. He doesn't know that you should practice partners. We're gonna be assembling MPP maps of an entire long program, and it's gonna be iterative. It is gonna be designed, built. It will be agile as much as we can implement it. But more importantly, and punches weaken govern. It is, you know, the government is we may have changed. A lot of the government is not necessarily can count on to Most of these things approaches. But the reality is that that's where we're headed. And I will say, Oh, close. Perhaps on this on this answer. The biggest reason for doing that apart from we've proved it is the fact that the appetite inside the organization for that level of globalization, speed solution ing and being engaged rapidly you just can't take that away from an organization. Must be a piece of that. Uh, if you let them down, well, they don't remember. And frankly, they do remember now, cause they want more and it's gonna be hard. But it's a better heart. Ah, a better challenge that the one of having to do things over a decade, then to go fast and to kind of iterating quickly through the challenges and the issues and then move on very much to the next one as rapidly as possible. I think The other company, I would add, is most of this was driven by a client need, and that's not inconsequential because it mobilized everybody to comment focused. It could have been just about well, you know, we need to get people on side and solutions in place just to make our lives better. It is his providers. Yeah, it would have worked, perhaps, but it would have been different than the mobilisation It comes when the client is put in the middle. The client is the focus. And then we drive. Everyone's with that, >>you know, shared success and and successes contagious. And when you ride the new way to oh, we need a new board, right? So once you get it, it then spreads like wildfire. This is what we've been seeing. And it also translates down to the citizens because again, being contemporary numbers just look and feel. It's success in performance. So, as you know, people in business start to adopt cloud. It becomes a nice, nice, nice synergy. This is key. I'll take a year on a center. Um, the award winner. You guys did a great job. Final thoughts. >>Yeah. I mean, I think final thoughts would be happy to have the opportunity that help. And it was a It was a complete team effort and continues to be, um, it's not. It's not a bunch of Accenture technologists in the background in this, you know the commitment from everyone to get this in place. And can you continue to improvement from Benoit's team and from other folks across the government has been has been paramount to the success. So, um um, it's been a fantastic world win like experience and, uh, look forward to continuing to build on it. And it has been said, I think one thing this is done is it's created demand for speed on some of these larger transformations. So I'm looking forward to continuing to innovate with with Ben wanting. >>Well, congratulations. The most innovative connect deployment. And because you guys from Canada, I have to use the hockey reference. You get multiple people working together in a cohesive manner. It's pass, shoot, score every time. And you know it's contagious. Thank you very much for your time. And congratulations for winning the West. Thanks. Okay, this is the Cube's coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Award show. I'm John Furrier, host of the Cube. Thanks for watching. Yeah, Yeah, >>yeah, yeah, yeah

ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking we will soon be taking off on our way to altitude please keep your seatbelts fastened and remain in your seats we will be experiencing turbulence until we are above the clouds ladies and gentlemen we are now cruising at altitude sit back and enjoy the ride [Music] altitude is a community of thought leaders and pioneers cloud architects and enlightened network engineers who have individually and are now collectively leading their own IT teams and the industry on a path to lift cloud networking above the clouds empowering Enterprise IT to architect design and control their own cloud network regardless of the turbulent clouds beneath them it's time to gain altitude ladies and gentlemen Steve Mulaney president and CEO of aviatrix the leader of multi cloud networking [Music] [Applause] all right good morning everybody here in Santa Clara as well as to the what millions of people watching the livestream worldwide welcome to altitude 2020 alright so we've got a fantastic event today really excited about the speakers that we have today and the experts that we have and really excited to get started so one of the things I wanted to just share was this is not a one-time event this is not a one-time thing that we're gonna do sorry for the aviation analogy but you know sherry way aviatrix means female pilot so everything we do as an aviation theme this is a take-off for a movement this isn't an event this is a take-off of a movement a multi-cloud networking movement and community that we're inviting all of you to become part of and-and-and why we're doing that is we want to enable enterprises to rise above the clouds so to speak and build their network architecture regardless of which public cloud they're using whether it's one or more of these public clouds so the good news for today there's lots of good news but this is one good news is we don't have any powerpoint presentations no marketing speak we know that marketing people have their own language we're not using any of that in those sales pitches right so instead what are we doing we're going to have expert panels we've got Simone Rashard Gartner here we've got 10 different network architects cloud architects real practitioners they're going to share their best practices and there are real-world experiences on their journey to the multi cloud so before we start and everybody know what today is in the u.s. it's Super Tuesday I'm not gonna get political but Super Tuesday there was a bigger Super Tuesday that happened 18 months ago and maybe eight six employees know what I'm talking about 18 months ago on a Tuesday every enterprise said I'm gonna go to the cloud and so what that was was the Cambrian explosion for cloud for the price so Frank kibrit you know what a Cambrian explosion is he had to look it up on Google 500 million years ago what happened there was an explosion of life where it went from very simple single-cell organisms to very complex multi-celled organisms guess what happened 18 months ago on a Tuesday I don't really know why but every enterprise like I said all woke up that day and said now I'm really gonna go to cloud and that Cambrian explosion of cloud went meant that I'm moving from very simple single cloud single use case simple environment to a very complex multi cloud complex use case environment and what we're here today is we're gonna go and dress that and how do you handle those those those complexities and when you look at what's happening with customers right now this is a business transformation right people like to talk about transitions this is a transformation and it's actually not just the technology transformation it's a business transformation it started from the CEO and the boards of enterprise customers where they said I have an existential threat to the survival of my company if you look at every industry who they're worried about is not the other 30 year old enterprise what they're worried about is the three year old enterprise that's leveraging cloud that's leveraging AI and that's where they fear that they're going to actually get wiped out right and so because of this existential threat this is CEO lead this is board led this is not technology led it is mandated in the organization's we are going to digitally transform our enterprise because of this existential threat and the movement to cloud is going to enable us to go do that and so IT is now put back in charge if you think back just a few years ago in cloud it was led by DevOps it was led by the applications and it was like I said before their Cambrian explosion is very simple now with this Cambrian explosion and enterprises getting very serious and mission critical they care about visibility they care about control they care about compliance conformance everything governance IT is in charge and and and that's why we're here today to discuss that so what we're going to do today is much of things but we're gonna validate this journey with customers did they see the same thing we're gonna validate the requirements for multi-cloud because honestly I've never met an enterprise that is not going to be multi-cloud many are one cloud today but they all say I need to architect my network for multiple clouds because that's just what the network is there to support the applications and the applications will run and whatever cloud it runs best in and you have to be prepared for that the second thing is is architecture again with IT in charge you architecture matters whether it's your career whether it's how you build your house it doesn't matter horrible architecture your life is horrible forever good architecture your life is pretty good so we're gonna talk about architecture and how the most fundamental and critical part of that architecture and that basic infrastructure is the network if you don't get that right nothing works right way more important and compute way more important than storm dense storage network is the foundational element of your infrastructure then we're going to talk about day 2 operations what does that mean well day 1 is one day of your life that's who you wire things up they do and beyond I tell everyone in networking and IT it's every day of your life and if you don't get that right your life is bad forever and so things like operations visibility security things like that how do I get my operations team to be able to handle this in an automated way because it's not just about configuring it in the cloud it's actually about how do I operationalize it and that's a huge benefit that we bring as aviatrix and then the last thing we're going to talk and it's the last panel we have I always say you can't forget about the humans right so all this technology all these things that we're doing it's always enabled by the humans at the end of the day if the humans fight it it won't get deployed and we have a massive skills gap in cloud and we also have a massive skill shortage you have everyone in the world trying to hire cloud network architects right there's just not enough of them going around so at aviatrix we as leaders do we're gonna help address that issue and try to create more people we created a program and we call the ACE program again an aviation theme it stands for aviatrix certified engineer very similar to what Cisco did with CCI ease where Cisco taught you about IP networking a little bit of Cisco we're doing the same thing we're gonna teach network architects about multi-cloud networking and architecture and yeah you'll get a little bit of aviatrix training in there but this is the missing element for people's careers and also within their organization so we're gonna we're gonna go talk about that so great great event great show when to try to keep it moving I'd next want to introduce my my host he's the best in the business you guys have probably seen him multiple million times he's the co CEO and co-founder of tube Jon Fourier okay awesome great great speech they're awesome I'd totally agree with everything you said about the explosion happening and I'm excited here at the heart of Silicon Valley to have this event it's a special digital event with the cube and aviatrix were we live streaming to millions of people as you said maybe not a million maybe not really take this program to the world this is a little special for me because multi-cloud is the hottest wave and cloud and cloud native networking is fast becoming the key engine of the innovation so we got an hour and a half of action-packed programming we have a customer panel two customer panels before that Gartner is going to come on talk about the industry we have a global system integrators we talk about how they're advising and building these networks and cloud native networking and then finally the Aces the aviatrix certified engineer is gonna talk more about their certifications and the expertise needed so let's jump right in and let's ask someone rashard to come on stage from Gartner check it all up [Applause] okay so kicking things off sitting started gartner the industry experts on cloud really kind of more to your background talk about your background before you got the gardener yeah before because gardener was a chief network architect of a fortune five companies with thousands of sites over the world and I've been doing everything and IT from a C programmer in a 92 a security architect to a network engineer to finally becoming a network analyst so you rode the wave now you're covering at the marketplace with hybrid cloud and now moving quickly to multi cloud is really was talking about cloud natives been discussed but the networking piece is super important how do you see that evolving well the way we see Enterprise adapt in cloud first thing you do about networking the initial phases they either go in a very ad hoc way is usually led by non non IT like a shadow I to your application people are some kind of DevOps team and it's it just goes as it's completely unplanned decreed VP sees left and right with different account and they create mesh to manage them and their direct connect or Express route to any of them so that's what that's a first approach and on the other side again it within our first approach you see what I call the lift and shift way we see like enterprise IT trying to basically replicate what they have in a data center in the cloud so they spend a lot of time planning doing Direct Connect putting Cisco routers and f5 and Citrix and any checkpoint Palo Alto divides that the audinate that are sent removing that to that cloud and I ask you the aha moments gonna come up a lot of our panels is where people realize that it's a multi cloud world I mean they either inherit clouds certainly they're using public cloud and on-premises is now more relevant than ever when's that aha moment that you're seeing where people go well I got to get my act together and get on this well the first but even before multi-cloud so these two approach the first one like the ad hoc way doesn't scale at some point idea has to save them because they don't think about the two they don't think about operations they have a bunch of VPC and multiple clouds the other way that if you do the left and shift wake they cannot take any advantages of the cloud they lose elasticity auto-scaling pay by the drink these feature of agility features so they both realize okay neither of these ways are good so I have to optimize that so I have to have a mix of what I call the cloud native services within each cloud so they start adapting like other AWS constructor is your construct or Google construct then that's what I call the optimal phase but even that they realize after that they are very different all these approaches different the cloud are different identities is completely difficult to manage across clouds I mean for example AWS has accounts there's subscription and in adarand GCP their projects it's a real mess so they realize well I can't really like concentrate use the cloud the cloud product and every cloud that doesn't work so I have I'm doing multi cloud I like to abstract all of that I still wanna manage the cloud from an API to interview I don't necessarily want to bring my incumbent data center products but I have to do that in a more API driven cloud they're not they're not scaling piece and you were mentioning that's because there's too many different clouds yes that's the piece there so what are they doing whether they really building different development teams as its software what's the solution well this the solution is to start architecting the cloud that's the third phase I call that the multi cloud architect phase where they have to think about abstraction that works across cloud fact even across one cloud it might not scale as well if you start having like 10,000 security group in AWS that doesn't scale you have to manage that if you have multiple VPC it doesn't scale you need a third party identity provider so it barely scales within one cloud if you go multiple cloud it gets worse and worse see way in here what's your thoughts I thought we said this wasn't gonna be a sales pitch for aviatrix you just said exactly what we do so anyway I'm just a joke what do you see in terms of where people are in that multi-cloud so a lot of people you know everyone I talked to started in one cloud right but then they look and they say okay but I'm now gonna move to adjourn I'm gonna move do you see a similar thing well yes they are moving but they're not there's not a lot of application that use a tree cloud at once they move one app in deserve one app in individuals one get happen Google that's what we see so far okay yeah I mean one of the mistakes that people think is they think multi-cloud no one is ever gonna go multi-cloud for arbitrage they're not gonna go and say well today I might go into Azure because I got a better rate of my instance that's never do you agree with that's never going to happen what I've seen with enterprise is I'm gonna put the workload in the app the app decides where it runs best that may be a sure maybe Google and for different reasons and they're gonna stick there and they're not gonna move let me ask you infrastructure has to be able to support from a networking team be able to do that do you agree with that yes I agree and one thing is also very important is connecting to that cloud is kind of the easiest thing so though while their network part of the cloud connectivity to the cloud is kind of simple I agree IPSec VP and I reckon Express that's a simple part what's difficult and even a provisioning part is easy you can use terraform and create v pieces and v nets across which free cloud providers right what's difficult is the day-to-day operations so it's what to find a to operations what is that what does that actually mean this is the day-to-day operations after you know the natural let's add an app let's add a server let's troubleshoot a problem so so your life something changes how would he do so what's the big concerns I want to just get back to this cloud native networking because everyone kind of knows with cloud native apps are that's been a hot trend what is cloud native networking how do you how do you guys define that because that seems to be the oddest part of the multi cloud wave that's coming as cloud native networking well there's no you know official garner definition but I can create one on and if another spot is do it I just want to leverage the cloud construct and a cloud epi I don't want to have to install like like for example the first version was let's put a virtual router that doesn't even understand and then the cloud environment right if I have if I have to install a virtual machine it has to be cloud aware it has to understand the security group if it's a router it has to be programmable to the cloud API and and understand the cloud environment you know one things I hear a lot from either see Saussure CIOs or CXOs in general is this idea of I'm definitely on going API so it's been an API economy so API is key on that point but then they say okay I need to essentially have the right relationship with my suppliers aka clouds you call it above the clouds so the question is what do i do from an architecture standpoint do I just hire more developers and have different teams because you mentioned that's a scale point how do you solve this this problem of okay I got AWS I got GCP or Azure or whatever do I just have different teams or just expose api's where is that optimization where's the focus well I take what you need from an android point of view is a way a control plane across the three clouds and be able to use the api of the cloud to build networks but also to troubleshoot them and do they to operation so you need a view across a three cloud that takes care of routing connectivity that's you know that's the aviatrix plug of you right there so so how do you see so again your Gartner you you you you see the industry you've been a network architect how do you see this this plane out what are the what are the legacy incumbent client-server on-prem networking people gonna do well these versus people like aviatrix well how do you see that plane out well obviously all the incumbent like Arista cisco juniper NSX right they want to basically do the lift and ship or they want to bring and you know VM I want to bring in a section that cloud they call that NSX everywhere and cisco monks bring you star and the cloud recall that each guy anywhere right so everyone what and and then there's cloud vision for my red star and contrail is in the cloud so they just want to bring the management plane in the cloud but it's still based most of them it's still based on putting a VM them in controlling them right you you extend your management console to the cloud that's not truly cloud native right cloud native you almost have to build it from scratch we like to call that cloud naive clown that so close one letter yeah so that was a big con surgeon reinvent take the tea out of cloud native it's cloud naive that went super viral you guys got t-shirts now I know you love but yeah but that really ultimately is kind of double edged sword you got to be you can be naive on the on the architecture side and rolling out but also suppliers are can be naive so how would you define who's naive and who's not well in fact they're evolving as well so for example in Cisco you it's a little bit more native than other ones because they're really scr in the cloud you can't you you really like configure API so the cloud and NSX is going that way and so is Arista but they're incumbent they have their own tools is difficult for them they're moving slowly so it's much easier to start from scratch Avenue like and you know a network happiness started a few years ago there's only really two aviatrix was the first one they've been there for at least three or four years and there's other ones like al kira for example that just started now that doing more connectivity but they wanna create an overlay network across the cloud and start doing policies and trying abstracting all the clouds within one platform so I gotta ask you I interviewed an executive at VMware Sanjay Pune and he said to me at RSA last week oh the only b2 networking vendors left Cisco and VMware what's your respect what's your response to that obviously I mean when you have these waves as new brands that emerge like aviation others though I think there'll be a lot of startups coming out of the woodwork how do you respond to that comment well there's still a data center there's still like a lot of action on campus and there's the one but from the cloud provisioning and clown networking in general I mean they're behind I think you know in fact you don't even need them to start to it you can if you're small enough you can just keep if you're in AWS you can user it with us construct they have to insert themselves I mean they're running behind they're all certainly incumbents I love the term Andy Jesse's that Amazon Web Services uses old guard new guard to talk about the industry what does the new guard have to do the new and new brands that emerge in is it be more DevOps oriented neck Nets a cops is that net ops is the programmability these are some of the key discussions we've been having what's your view on how you this programmability their most important part is they have to make the network's simple for the dev teams and from you cannot have that you cannot make a phone call and get every line in two weeks anymore so if you move to that cloud you have to make the cloud construct as simple enough so that for example a dev team could say okay I'm going to create this VP see but this VP see automatically being associate to your account you cannot go out on the internet you have to go to the transit VP see so there's a lot of action in terms of the I am part and you have to put the control around them too so to make it as simple as possible you guys both I mean you're the COC aviatrix but also you guys a lot of experience going back to networking going back to I call the OSI mace which for us old folks know what that means but you guys know what this means I want to ask you the question as you look at the future of networking here a couple of objectives oh the cloud guys they got networking we're all set with them how do you respond to the fact that networking is changing and the cloud guys have their own networking what some of the pain points that's going on premises and these enterprises so are they good with the clouds what needs what are the key things that's going on in networking that makes it more than just the cloud networking what's your take on well as I said earlier that once you you could easily provision in the cloud you can easily connect to that cloud is when you start troubleshooting application in the cloud and try to scale so this that's where the problem occurs see what you're taking on it and you'll hear from the from the customers that that we have on stage and I think what happens is all the cloud the clouds by definition designed to the 80/20 rule which means they'll design 80% of the basic functionality and they'll lead to 20% extra functionality that of course every Enterprise needs they'll leave that to ISVs like aviatrix because why because they have to make money they have a service and they can't have huge instances for functionality that not everybody needs so they have to design to the common and that's they all do it right they have to and then the extra the problem is that Cambrian explosion that I talked about with enterprises that's holy that's what they need that they're the ones who need that extra 20% so that's that's what I see is is there's always gonna be that extra functionality the in in an automated and simple way that you talked about but yet powerful with up with the visible in control that they expect of on prep that that's that kind of combination that yin and the yang that people like us are providing some I want to ask you were gonna ask some of the cloud architect customer panels it's the same question this pioneers doing some work here and there's also the laggers who come in behind the early adopters what's gonna be the tipping point what are some of those conversations that the cloud architects are having out there or what's the signs that they need to be on this multi cloud or cloud native networking trend what are some the signals that are going on in their environment what are some of the thresholds or things that are going on that there can pay attention to well well once they have application and multiple cloud and they have they get wake up at 2:00 in the morning to troubleshoot them they don't know it's important so I think that's the that's where the robber will hit the road but as I said it's easier to prove it it's ok it's 80s it's easy use a transit gateway put a few V PCs and you're done and use create some presents like equinox and do Direct Connect and Express route with Azure that looks simple is the operations that's when they'll realize ok now I need to understand our car networking works I also need a tool that give me visibility and control not button tell me that I need to understand the basic underneath it as well what are some of the day in the life scenarios that you envision happening with multi Bob because you think about what's happening it kind of has that same vibe of interoperability choice multi-vendor because you have multi clouds essentially multi vendor these are kind of old paradigms that we've lived through the client server and internet working wave what are some of those scenarios of success and that might be possible it would be possible with multi cloud and cloud native networking well I think once you have good enough visibility to satisfy your customers you know not only like to keep the service running an application running but to be able to provision fast enough I think that's what you want to achieve small final question advice for folks watching on the live stream if they're sitting there as a cloud architect or a CXO what's your advice to them right now in this more because honestly public cloud check hybrid cloud they're working on that that gets on-premise is done now multi clouds right behind it what's your advice the first thing they should do is really try to understand cloud networking for each of their cloud providers and then understand the limitation and is what there's cloud service provider offers enough or you need to look to a third party but you don't look at a third party to start with especially an incumbent one so it's tempting to say on and I have a bunch of f5 experts nothing against that five I'm going to bring my five in the cloud when you can use a needle be that automatically understand Easy's and auto scaling and so on and you understand that's much simpler but sometimes you need you have five because you have requirements you have like AI rules and that kind of stuff that you use for years you cannot do it's okay I have requirement and that met I'm going to use legacy stuff and then you have to start thinking okay what about visibility control about the tree cloud but before you do that you have to understand the limitation of the existing cloud providers so first try to be as native as possible until things don't work after that you can start taking multi-cloud great insight somewhat thank you for coming someone in charge with Gardner thanks for sharing informatica is known as the leading enterprise cloud data management company we are known for being the top in our industry in at least five different products over the last few years especially we've been transforming into a cloud model which allows us to work better with the trends of our customers in order to see agile and effective in the business you need to make sure that your products and your offerings are just as relevant in all these different clouds than what you're used to and what you're comfortable with one of the most difficult challenges we've always had is that because we're a data company we're talking about data that a customer owns some of that data may be in the cloud some of that data may be on Prem some of that data may be actually in their data center in another region or even another country and having that data connect back to our systems that are located in the cloud has always been a challenge when we first started our engagement with aviatrix we only had one plan that was Amazon it wasn't till later that a jerk came up and all of a sudden we found hey the solution we already had in place for her aviatrix already working in Amazon and now works in Missouri as well before we knew what GCP came up but it really wasn't a big deal for us because we already had the same solution in Amazon and integer now just working in GCP by having a multi cloud approach we have access to all three of them but more commonly it's not just one it's actually integrations between multiple we have some data and ensure that we want to integrate with Amazon we have some data in GCP that we want to bring over to a data Lake assure one of the nice things about aviatrix is that it gives a very simple interface that my staff can understand and use and manage literally hundreds of VPNs around the world and while talking to and working with our customers who are literally around the world now that we've been using aviatrix for a couple years we're actually finding that even problems that we didn't realize we had were actually solved even before we came across the problem and it just worked cloud companies as a whole are based on reputation we need to be able to protect our reputation and part of that reputation is being able to protect our customers and being able to protect more importantly our customers data aviatrix has been helpful for us in that we only have one system that can manage this whole huge system in a simple easy direct model aviatrix is directly responsible for helping us secure and manage our customers not only across the world but across multiple clouds users don't have to be VPN or networking experts in order to be able to use the system all the members on my team can manage it all the members regardless of their experience can do different levels of it one of the unexpected advantages of aviatrix is that I don't have to sell it to my management the fact that we're not in the news at 3 o'clock in the morning or that we don't have to get calls in the middle of the night no news is good news especially in networking things that used to take weeks to build or done in hours I think the most important thing about a matrix is it provides me a Beatrix gives me a consistent model that I can use across multiple regions multiple clouds multiple customers okay welcome back to altitude 2020 for the folks on the livestream I'm John for Steve Mulaney with CEO of aviatrix for our first of two customer panels on cloud with cloud network architects we got Bobby Willoughby they gone Luis Castillo of National Instruments David should Nick with fact set guys welcome to the stage for this digital event come on up [Applause] [Music] hey good to see you thank you okay okay customer panelist is my favorite part we get to hear the real scoop gets a gardener given this the industry overview certainly multi clouds very relevant and cloud native networking is the hot trend with a live stream out there and the digital event so guys let's get into it the journey is you guys are pioneering this journey of multi cloud and cloud native networking and is soon gonna be a lot more coming so we want to get into the journey what's it been like is it real you got a lot of scar tissue and what are some of the learnings yeah absolutely so multi cloud is whether or not we we accepted as a network engineers is is a reality like Steve said about two years ago companies really decided to to just to just bite the bullet and and and move there whether or not whether or not we we accept that fact we need to now create a consistent architecture across across multiple clouds and that that is challenging without orchestration layers as you start managing different different tool sets and different languages across different clouds so that's it's really important that to start thinking about that guys on the other panelists here there's different phases of this journey some come at it from a networking perspective some come in from a problem troubleshooting which what's your experiences yeah so from a networking perspective it's been incredibly exciting it's kind of a once-in-a-generation 'el opportunity to look at how you're building out your network you can start to embrace things like infrastructure as code that maybe your peers on the systems teams have been doing for years but it just never really worked on bram so it's really it's really exciting to look at all the opportunities that we have and then all the interesting challenges that come up that you that you get to tackle an effect said you guys are mostly AWS right yep right now though we're we are looking at multiple clouds we have production workloads running in multiple clouds today but a lot of the initial work has been with Amazon and you've seen it from a networking perspective that's where you guys are coming at it from yep we evolved more from a customer requirement perspective started out primarily as AWS but as the customer needed more resources from Azure like HPC you know as your ad things like that even recently Google Google Analytics our journey has evolved into more of a multi cloud environment Steve weigh in on the architecture because this has been the big conversation I want you to lead this second yeah so I mean I think you guys agree the journey you know it seems like the journey started a couple years ago got real serious the need for multi cloud whether you're there today of course it's gonna be there in the future so that's really important I think the next thing is just architecture I'd love to hear what you you know had some comments about architecture matters it all starts I mean every Enterprise I talk to maybe talk about architecture and the importance of architecture maybe Bobby it's a fun architecture perspective we sorted a journey five years ago Wow okay and we're just now starting our fourth evolution of our network marketer and we call it networking security net SEC yeah versus Justice Network yeah and that fourth generation architectures be based primarily upon Palo Alto Networks an aviatrix I have Atrix doing the orchestration piece of it but that journey came because of the need for simplicity ok the need for a multi cloud orchestration without us having to go and do reprogramming efforts across every cloud as it comes along right I guess the other question I also had around architectures also Louis maybe just talk about I know we've talked a little bit about you know scripting right and some of your thoughts on that yeah absolutely so so for us we started we started creating the network constructs with cloud formation and we've we've stuck with that for the most part what's interesting about that is today on premise we have a lot of a lot of automation around around how we provision networks but cloud formation has become a little bit like the new manual for us so we we're now having issues with having the to automate that component and making it consistent with our on premise architecture making it consistent with Azure architecture and Google cloud so it's really interesting to see to see companies now bring that layer of abstraction that SEO and brought to the to the web side now it's going up into into the into the cloud networking architecture so on the fourth generation of you mentioned you're in the fourth gen architecture what do you guys what have you learned is there any lessons scar tissue what to avoid what worked what was some of the that's probably the biggest list and there is that when you think you finally figured it out you have it right Amazon will change something as you or change something you know transit gateways a game changer so in listening to the business requirements is probably the biggest thing we need to do up front but I think from a simplicity perspective we like I said we don't want to do things four times we want to do things one time we won't be able to write to an API which aviatrix has and have them do the orchestration for us so that we don't have to do it four times how important is architecture in the progression is it you guys get thrown in the deep end to solve these problems or you guys zooming out and looking at it it's that I mean how are you guys looking at the architecture I mean you can't get off the ground if you don't have the network there so all of those that we've gone through similar evolutions we're on our fourth or fifth evolution I think about what we started off with Amazon without a direct connect gate without a trans a gateway without a lot of the things that are available today kind of the 80/20 that Steve was talking about just because it wasn't there doesn't mean we didn't need it so we needed to figure out a way to do it we couldn't say oh you need to come back to the network team in a year and maybe Amazon will have a solution for it right you need to do it now and in evolve later and maybe optimize or change the way you're doing things in the future but don't sit around and wait you can't I'd love to have you guys each individually answer this question for the live stream because it comes up a lot a lot of cloud architects out in the community what should they be thinking about the folks that are coming into this proactively and/or realizing the business benefits are there what advice would you guys give them an architecture what should be they be thinking about and what are some guiding principles you could share so I would start with looking at an architecture model that that can that can spread and and give consistency they're different to different cloud vendors that you will absolutely have to support cloud vendors tend to want to pull you into using their native toolset and that's good if only it was realistic to talk about only one cloud but because it doesn't it's it's it's super important to talk about and have a conversation with the business and with your technology teams about a consistent model how do I do my day one work so that I'm not you know spending 80 percent of my time troubleshooting or managing my network because I'm doing that then I'm missing out on ways that I can make improvements or embrace new technologies so it's really important early on to figure out how do I make this as low maintenance as possible so that I can focus on the things that the team really should be focusing on Bobby your advice the architect I don't know what else I can do that simplicity operations is key right all right so the holistic view of j2 operation you mentioned let's can jump in day one is your your your getting stuff set up day two is your life after all right this is kind of what you're getting at David so what does that look like what are you envisioning as you look at that 20 mile stare at post multi-cloud world what are some of the things that you want in a day to operations yeah infrastructure is code is really important to us so how do we how do we design it so that we can fit start making network changes and fitting them into like a release pipeline and start looking at it like that rather than somebody logging into a router seoi and troubleshooting things on in an ad hoc nature so moving more towards the DevOps model yes anything on that day - yeah I would love to add something so in terms of day 2 operations you can you can either sort of ignore the day 2 operations for a little while where you get well you get your feet wet or you can start approaching it from the beginning the fact is that the the cloud native tools don't have a lot of maturity in that space and when you run into an issue you're gonna end up having a bad day going through millions and millions of logs just to try to understand what's going on so that's something that that the industry just now is beginning to realize it's it's such as such a big gap I think that's key because for us we're moving to more of an event-driven operations in the past monitoring got the job done it's impossible to modern monitor something there's nothing there when the event happens all right so the event-driven application and then detection is important yeah I think Gardiner was all about the cloud native wave coming into networking that's going to be here thing I want to get your guys perspectives I know you have different views of how you came on into the journey and how you're executing and I always say the beauties in the eye of the beholder and that kind of applies the network's laid out so Bobby you guys do a lot of high-performance encryption both on AWS and Azure that's kind of a unique thing for you how are you seeing that impact with multi cloud yeah and that's a new requirement for us to where we we have a requirement to encrypt and they never get the question should I encryption or not encrypt the answer is always yes you should encrypt when you can encrypt for our perspective we we need to migrate a bunch of data from our data centers we have some huge data centers and then getting that data to the cloud is the timely expense in some cases so we have been mandated that we have to encrypt everything leave from the data center so we're looking at using the aviatrix insane mode appliances to be able to encrypt you know 10 20 gigabits of data as it moves to the cloud itself David you're using terraform you got fire Ned you've got a lot of complexity in your network what do you guys look at the future for yours environment yeah so something exciting that or yeah now is fire net so for our security team they obviously have a lot of a lot of knowledge base around Palo Alto and with our commitments to our clients you know it's it's it's not very easy to shift your security model to a specific cloud vendor right so there's a lot of stuck to compliance of things like that where being able to take some of what you've you know you've worked on for years on Bram and put it in the cloud and have the same type of assurance that things are gonna work and be secured in the same way that they are on prem helps make that journey into the cloud a lot easier and Louis you guys got scripting and get a lot of things going on what's your what's your unique angle on this yeah no absolutely so full disclosure I'm not a not not an aviatrix customer yet it's okay we want to hear the truth that's good Ellis what are you thinking about what's on your mind no really when you when you talk about implementing the tool like this it's really just really important to talk about automation and focus on on value so when you talk about things like encryption and things like so you're encrypting tunnels and crypting the path and those things are it should it should should be second nature really when you when you look at building those back ends and managing them with your team it becomes really painful so tools like a Beatrix that that add a lot of automation it's out of out of sight out of mind you can focus on the value and you don't have to focus on so I gotta ask you guys I'll see aviatrix is here they're their supplier to this sector but you guys are customers everyone's pitching you stuff people are not going to buy my stuff how do you guys have that conversation with the suppliers like the cloud vendors and other folks what's that what's it like we're API all the way you got to support this what are some of the what are some of your requirements how do you talk to and evaluate people that walk in and want to knock on your door and pitch you something what's the conversation like it's definitely it's definitely API driven we we definitely look at the at the PAP i structure of the vendors provide before we select anything that that is always first in mind and also what a problem are we really trying to solve usually people try to sell or try to give us something that isn't really valuable like implementing a solution on the on the on the cloud isn't really it doesn't really add a lot of value that's where we go David what's your conversation like with suppliers you have a certain new way to do things as as becomes more agile and essentially the networking and more dynamic what are some of the conversation is with the either incumbents or new new vendors that you're having what do what do you require yeah so ease of use is definitely definitely high up there we've had some vendors come in and say you know hey you know when you go to set this up we're gonna want to send somebody on site and they're gonna sit with you for your day to configure it and that's kind of a red flag what wait a minute you know do we really if one of my really talented engineers can't figure it out on his own what's going on there and why is that so I you know having having some ease-of-use and the team being comfortable with it and understanding it is really important Bobby how about you I mean the old days was do a bake-off and you know the winner takes all I mean is it like that anymore but what's the Volvic a bake-off last year for us do you win so but that's different now because now when you when you get the product you can install the product and they double your energy or have it in a matter of minutes and so the key is is they can you be operational you know within hours or days instead of weeks but but do we also have the flexibility to customize it to meet your needs could you want to be you want to be put into a box with the other customers when you have needs that your pastor cut their needs yeah almost see the challenge that you guys are living where you've got the cloud immediate value depending how you can roll up any solutions but then you have might have other needs so you got to be careful not to buy into stuff that's not shipping so you're trying to be proactive at the same time deal with what you got I mean how do you guys see that evolving because multi-cloud to me is definitely relevant but it's not yet clear how to implement across how do you guys look at this baked versus you know future solutions coming how do you balance that so again so right now we we're we're taking the the ad hoc approach and experimenting with the different concepts of cloud and and really leveraging the the native constructs of each cloud but but there's a there's a breaking point for sure you don't you don't get to scale this like Alexa mom said and you have to focus on being able to deliver a developer they're their sandbox or they're their play area for the for the things that they're trying to build quickly and the only way to do that is with the with with some sort of consistent orchestration layer that allows you to so use a lot more stuff to be coming pretty quickly hides area I do expect things to start to start maturing quite quite quickly this year and you guys see similar trend new stuff coming fast yeah part of the biggest challenge we've got now is being able to segment within the network being able to provide segmentation between production on production workloads even businesses because we support many businesses worldwide and and isolation between those is a key criteria there so the ability to identify and quickly isolate those workloads is key so the CIOs that are watching or that are saying hey take that he'll do multi cloud and then you know the bottoms-up organization Nick pops you're kind of like off a little bit it's not how it works I mean what is the reality in terms of implementing you know in as fast as possible because the business benefits are but it's not always clear in the technology how to move that fast yeah what are some of the barriers one of the blockers what are the enablers I think the reality is is that you may not think you're multi-cloud but your business is right so I think the biggest barriers there is understanding what the requirements are and how best to meet those requirements and then secure manner because you need to make sure that things are working from a latency perspective that things work the way they did and get out of the mind shift that you know it was a cheery application in the data center it doesn't have to be a Tier three application in the cloud so lift and shift is is not the way to go yeah scale is a big part of what I see is the competitive advantage to a lot these clouds and needs to be proprietary network stacks in the old days and then open systems came that was a good thing but as clouds become bigger there's kind of an inherent lock in there with the scale how do you guys keep the choice open how're you guys thinking about interoperability what are some of the conversations and you guys are having around those key concepts well when we look at when we look at the upfront from a networking perspective it it's really key for you to just enable enable all the all the clouds to be to be able to communicate between them developers will will find a way to use the cloud that best suits their their business need and and like like you said it's whether whether you're in denial or not of the multi cloud fact that then your company is in already that's it becomes really important for you to move quickly yeah and I a lot of it also hinges on how well is the provider embracing what that specific cloud is doing so are they are they swimming with Amazon or Azure and just helping facilitate things they're doing the you know the heavy lifting API work for you or are they swimming upstream and they're trying to hack it all together in a messy way and so that helps you you know stay out of the lock-in because they're you know if they're doing if they're using Amazon native tools to help you get where you need to be it's not like Amazon's gonna release something in the future that completely you know makes you have designed yourself into a corner so the closer they're more than cloud native they are the more the easier it is to to deploy but you also need to be aligned in such a way that you can take advantage of those cloud native technologies will it make sense tgw is a game changer in terms of cost and performance right so to completely ignore that would be wrong but you know if you needed to have encryption you know teach Adobe's not encrypted so you need to have some type of a gateway to do the VPN encryption you know so the aviatrix tool give you the beauty of both worlds you can use tgw with a gateway Wow real quick in the last minute we have I want to just get a quick feedback from you guys I hear a lot of people say to me hey the I picked the best cloud for the workload you got and then figure out multi cloud behind the scenes so that seems to be do you guys agree with that I mean is it do I go Mull one cloud across the whole company or this workload works great on AWS that work was great on this from a cloud standpoint do you agree with that premise and then witness multi-cloud stitch them all together yeah from from an application perspective it it can be per workload but it can also be an economical decision certain enterprise contracts will will pull you in one direction that value but the the network problem is still the same doesn't go away yeah yeah yeah I mean you don't want to be trying to fit a square into a round Hall right so if it works better on that cloud provider then it's our job to make sure that that service is there and people can use it agree you just need to stay ahead of the game make sure that the network infrastructure is there secure is available and is multi cloud capable yeah I'm at the end of the day you guys just validating that it's the networking game now cloud storage compute check networking is where the action is awesome thanks for your insights guys appreciate you coming on the panel appreciate it thanks thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay welcome back on the live feed I'm John fritz T Blaney my co-host with aviatrix I'm with the cube for the special digital event our next customer panel got great another set of cloud network architects Justin Smith was aura Justin broadly with Ellie Mae and Amit Oh tree job with Koopa welcome to stage [Applause] all right thank you thank you okay he's got all the the cliff notes from the last session welcome back rinse and repeat yeah yeah we're going to go under the hood a little bit I think I think they nailed the what we've been reporting and we've been having this conversation around networking is where the action is because that's the end of the day you got a move a pack from A to B and you get workloads exchanging data so it's really killer so let's get started Amit what are you seeing as the journey of multi cloud as you go under the hood and say okay I got to implement this I have to engineer the network make it enabling make it programmable make it interoperable across clouds and that's like I mean almost sounds impossible to me what's your take yeah I mean it it seems impossible but if you are running an organization which is running infrastructure as a cordon all right it is easily doable like you can use tools out there that's available today you can use third-party products that can do a better job but but put your architecture first don't wait architecture may not be perfect put the best architecture that's available today and be agile to iterate and make improvements over the time we get to Justin's over here so I have to be careful when I point a question in Justin they both have the answer but okay journeys what's the journey been like I mean is there phases we heard that from Gartner people come in to multi cloud and cloud native networking from different perspectives what's your take on the journey Justin yeah I mean from our perspective we started out very much focused on one cloud and as we started doing errands we started doing new products the market the need for multi cloud comes very apparent very quickly for us and so you know having an architecture that we can plug in play into and be able to add and change things as it changes is super important for what we're doing in the space just in your journey yes for us we were very ad hoc oriented and the idea is that we were reinventing all the time trying to move into these new things and coming up with great new ideas and so rather than it being some iterative approach with our deployments that became a number of different deployments and so we shifted that tore in the network has been a real enabler of this is that it there's one network and it touches whatever cloud we want it to touch and it touches the data centers that we need it to touch and it touches the customers that we need it to touch our job is to make sure that the services that are available and one of those locations are available in all of the locations so the idea is not that we need to come up with this new solution every time it's that we're just iterating on what we've already decided to do before we get the architecture section I want to ask you guys a question I'm a big fan of you know let the app developers have infrastructure as code so check but having the right cloud run that workload I'm a big fan of that if it works great but we just heard from the other panel you can't change the network so I want to get your thoughts what is cloud native networking and is that the engine really that's the enabler for this multi cloud trend but you guys taken we'll start with Amit what do you think about that yeah so you are gonna have workloads running in different clouds and the workloads would have affinity to one cloud over other but how you expose that it matter of how you are going to build your networks how we are gonna run security how we are going to do egress ingress out of it so it's a big problem how do you split says what's the solution what's the end the key pain points and problem statement I mean the key pain point for most companies is how do you take your traditionally on-premise network and then blow that out to the cloud in a way that makes sense you know IP conflicts you have IP space you pub public eye peas and premise as well as in the cloud and how do you kind of make a sense of all of that and I think that's where tools like a v8 ryx make a lot of sense in that space from our site it's it's really simple its latency its bandwidth and availability these don't change whether we're talking about cloud or data center or even corporate IT networking so our job when when these all of these things are simplified into like s3 for instance and our developers want to use those we have to be able to deliver that and for a particular group or another group that wants to use just just GCP resources these aren't we have to support these requirements and these wants as opposed to saying hey that's not a good idea our job is to enable them not to disable them do you think you guys think infrastructure is code which I love that I think it's that's the future it is we saw that with DevOps but I do start getting the networking is it getting down to the network portion where it's network is code because storage and compute working really well is seeing all kubernetes and service master and network as code reality is it there is got work to do it's absolutely there I mean you mentioned net DevOps and it's it's very real I mean in Cooper we build our networks through terraform and on not only just out of fun build an API so that we can consistently build V nets and VPC all across in the same unit yeah and even security groups and then on top an aviatrix comes in we can peer the networks bridge bridge all the different regions through code same with you guys but yeah everything we deploy is done with automation and then we also run things like lambda on top to make changes in real time we don't make manual changes on our network in the data center funny enough it's still manual but the cloud has enabled us to move into this automation mindset and and all my guys that's what they focus on is bringing what now what they're doing in the cloud into the data center which is kind of opposite of what it should be that's full or what it used to be it's full DevOps then yes yeah I mean for us was similar on-premise still somewhat very manual although we're moving more Norton ninja and terraform concepts but everything in the production environment is colored Confirmation terraform code and now coming into the datacenter same I just wanted to jump in on a Justin Smith one of the comment that you made because it's something that we always talk about a lot is that the center of gravity of architecture used to be an on-prem and now it's shifted in the cloud and once you have your strategic architecture what you--what do you do you push that everywhere so what you used to see at the beginning of cloud was pushing the architecture on prem into cloud now I want to pick up on what you said to you others agree that the center of architect of gravity is here I'm now pushing what I do in the cloud back into on pram and and then so first that and then also in the journey where are you at from 0 to 100 of actually in the journey to cloud DUI you 50% there are you 10% yes I mean are you evacuating data centers next year I mean were you guys at yeah so there's there's two types of gravity that you typically are dealing with no migration first is data gravity and your data set and where that data lives and then the second is the network platform that interrupts all that together right in our case the data gravity sold mostly on Prem but our network is now extending out to the app tier that's going to be in cloud right eventually that data gravity will also move to cloud as we start getting more sophisticated but you know in our journey we're about halfway there about halfway through the process we're taking a handle of you know lift and shift and when did that start and we started about three years ago okay okay go by it's a very different story it started from a garage and one hundred percent on the clock it's a business spend management platform as a software-as-a-service one hundred percent on the cloud it was like ten years ago right yes yeah you guys are riding the wave love that architecture Justin I want to ask user you guys mentioned DevOps I mean obviously we saw the huge observability wave which is essentially network management for the cloud in my opinion right yeah it's more dynamic but this isn't about visibility we heard from the last panel you don't know what's being turned on or turned off from a services standpoint at any given time how is all this playing out when you start getting into the DevOps down well this this is the big challenge for all of us as visibility when you talk transport within a cloud you know we very interesting we we have moved from having a backbone that we bought that we own that would be data center connectivity we now I work for as or as a subscription billing company so we want to support the subscription mindset so rather than going and buying circuits and having to wait three months to install and then coming up with some way to get things connected and resiliency and redundancy I my backbone is in the cloud I use the cloud providers interconnections between regions to transport data across and and so if you do that with their native solutions you you do lose visibility there are areas in that that you don't get which is why controlling you know controllers and having some type of management plane is a requirement for us to do what we're supposed to do and provide consistency while doing it a great conversation I loved when you said earlier latency bandwidth I think availability with your sim pop3 things guys SLA I mean you just do ping times between clouds it's like you don't know what you're getting for round-trip times this becomes a huge kind of risk management black hole whatever you want to call blind spot how are you guys looking at the interconnects between clouds because you know I can see that working from you know ground to cloud I'm per cloud but when you start doing with multi clouds workload I mean SL leis will be all over the map won't they just inherently but how do you guys view that yeah I think we talked about workload and we know that the workloads are going to be different in different clouds but they are going to be calling each other so it's very important to have that visibility that you can see how data is flowing at what latency and what our ability is hour is there and our authority needs to operate on that so it's solely use the software dashboard look at the times and look at the latency in the old days strong so on open so on you try to figure it out and then your day is you have to figure out just and what's your answer to that because you're in the middle of it yeah I mean I think the the key thing there is that we have to plan for that failure we have to plan for that latency and our applications it's starting start tracking in your SLI something you start planning for and you loosely couple these services and a much more micro services approach so you actually can handle that kind of failure or that type of unknown latency and unfortunately the cloud has made us much better at handling exceptions a much better way you guys are all great examples of cloud native from day one and you guys had when did you have the tipping point moment or the Epiphany of saying a multi clouds real I can't ignore it I got to factor it into all my design design principles and and everything you're doing what's it was there a moment or was it was it from day one now there are two divisions one was the business so in business there was some affinity to not be in one cloud or to be in one cloud and that drove from the business side so it has a cloud architect our responsibility was to support that business and other is the technology some things are really running better in like if you are running dot network load or you are going to run machine learning or AI so that you have you would have that preference of one cloud over other so it was the bill that we got from AWS I mean that's that's what drives a lot of these conversations is the financial viability of what you're building on top of it which is so we this failure domain idea which is which is fairly interesting is how do I solve or guarantee against a failure domain you have methodologies with you know back-end direct connects or interconnect with GCP all of these ideas are something that you have to take into account but that transport layer should not matter to whoever we're building this for our job is to deliver the frames in the packets what that flows across how you get there we want to make that seamless and so whether it's a public internet API call or it's a back-end connectivity through Direct Connect it doesn't matter it just has to meet a contract that you signed with your application folks yeah that's the availability piece just on your thoughts on that I think any comment on that so actually multi clouds become something much more recent in the last six to eight months I'd say we always kind of had a very much an attitude of like moving to Amazon from our private cloud is hard enough why complicate it further but the realities of the business and as we start seeing you know improvements in Google and Asia and different technology spaces the need for multi cloud becomes much more important as well as those are acquisition strategies I matured we're seeing that companies that used to be on premise that we typically acquire are now very much already on a cloud and if they're on a cloud I need to plug them into our ecosystem and so that's really change our multi cloud story in a big way I'd love to get your thoughts on the clouds versus the clouds because you know you compare them Amazon's got more features they're rich with features I see the bills are haiku people using them but Google's got a great Network Google's networks pretty damn good and then you got a sure what's the difference between the clouds who where they've evolved something whether they peak in certain areas better than others what what are the characteristics which makes one cloud better do they have a unique feature that makes Azure better than Google and vice versa what do you guys think about the different clouds yeah to my experience I think there is the approach is different in many places Google has a different approach very devops friendly and you can run your workload like your network can spend regions time I mean but our application ready to accept that MS one is evolving I mean I remember ten years back Amazon's network was a flat network we will be launching servers and 10.0.0.0 mode multi-account came out so they are evolving as you are at a late start but because they have a late start they saw the pattern and they they have some mature set up on the I mean I think they're all trying to say they're equal in their own ways I think they all have very specific design philosophies that allow them to be successful in different ways and you have to kind of that in mine is your architectural and solution for example Amazon has a very much a very regional affinity they don't like to go cross region in their architecture whereas Google is very much it's a global network we're gonna think about as a global solution I think Google also has advantages there to market and so it has seen what asier did wrong it's seen what AWS did wrong and it's made those improvements and I think that's one of their big advantage at great scale to Justin thoughts on the cloud so yeah Amazon built from the system up and Google built from the network down so their ideas and approaches are from a global versus or regional I agree with you completely that that is the big number one thing but the if you look at it from the outset interestingly the the inability or the ability for Amazon to limit layer 2 broadcasting and and what that really means from a VPC perspective changed all the routing protocols you can use all the things that we have built inside of a data center to provide resiliency and and and make things seamless to users all of that disappeared and so because we had to accept that at the VPC level now we have to accept it at the LAN level Google's done a better job of being able to overcome those things and provide those traditional Network facilities to us it's just great panel can go all day here's awesome so I heard we could we'll get to the cloud native naive question so kind of think about what's not even what's cloud is that next but I got to ask you had a conversation with a friend he's like when is the new land so if you think about what the land was at a data center when is the new link you get talking about the cloud impact so that means st when the old st was kind of changing into the new land how do you guys look at that because if you think about it what lands were for inside a premises was all about networking high speed but now when you take the win and make essentially a land do you agree with that and how do you view this trend and is it good or bad or is it ugly and what's what you guys take on this yeah I think it's the it's a thing that you have to work with your application architect so if you are managing networks and if you're a sorry engineer you need to work with them to expose the unreliability that would bring in so the application has to hand a lot of this the difference in the Layton sees and and the reliability has to be worked through the application there land when same concept as it be yesterday I think we've been talking about for a long time the erosion of the edge and so is this is just a continuation of that journey we've been on for the last several years as we get more and more cloud native when we start about API is the ability to lock my data in place and not be able to access it really goes away and so I think this is just continuation that thing I think it has challenges we start talking about weighing scale versus land scale the tooling doesn't work the same the scale of that tooling is much larger and the need to automation is much much higher in a way than it was in a land that's what we're seeing so much infrastructure as code yeah yeah so for me I'll go back again to this its bandwidth and its latency right that bet define those two land versus win but the other thing that's comes up more and more with cloud deployments is where is our security boundary and where can I extend this secure aware appliance or set of rules to protect what's inside of it so for us we're able to deliver VRS or route forwarding tables for different segments wherever we're at in the world and so they're they're trusted to talk to each other but if they're gonna go to someplace that's outside of their their network then they have to cross a security boundary and where we enforce policy very heavily so for me there's it's not just land when it's it's how does environment get to environment more importantly that's a great point and security we haven't talked to yet but that's got to be baked in from the beginning that's architecture thoughts on security are you guys are dealing with it yeah start from the base have app to have security built in have TLS have encryption on the data I transit data at rest but as you bring the application to the cloud and they are going to go multi-cloud talking to over the Internet in some places well have apt web security I mean I mean our principals day Security's day zero every day and so we we always build it into our design we load entire architecture into our applications it's encrypt everything it's TLS everywhere it's make sure that that data is secured at all times yeah one of the cool trends at RSA just as a side note was the data in use encryption piece which is a homomorphic stuff was interesting all right guys final question you know we heard on the earlier panel was also trending at reinvent we take the tea out of cloud native it spells cloud naive okay they got shirts now he being sure he's gonna got this trend going what does that mean to be naive so if you're to your peers out there watching a live stream and also the suppliers that are trying to you know supply you guys with technology and services what's naive look like and what's native look like when is someone naive about implementing all this stuff so for me it's because we are in hundred-percent cloud for us its main thing is ready for the change and you will you will find new building blocks coming in and the network design will evolve and change so don't be naive and think that it's static you wall with the change I think the big naivety that people have is that well I've been doing it this way for twenty years and been successful it's going to be successful in cloud the reality is that's not the case you have to think some of the stuff a little bit differently and you need to think about it early enough so that you can become cloud native and really enable your business on cloud yeah for me it's it's being open minded right the the our industry the network industry as a whole has been very much I am smarter than everybody else and we're gonna tell everybody how it's going to be done and we have we fell into a lull when it came to producing infrastructure and and and so embracing this idea that we can deploy a new solution or a new environment in minutes as opposed to hours or weeks or four months in some cases is really important and and so you know it's are you being closed-minded native being open-minded exactly and and it took a for me it was that was a transformative kind of where I was looking to solve problems in a cloud way as opposed to looking to solve problems in this traditional old-school way all right I know we're out of time but I ask one more question so you guys so good it could be a quick answer what's the BS language when you the BS meter goes off when people talk to you about solutions what's the kind of jargon that you hear that's the BS meter going off what are people talking about that in your opinion you here you go that's total B yes what what triggers use it so that I have two lines out of movies that are really I can if the if I say them without actually thinking them it's like 1.21 jigowatts how you're out of your mind from Back to the Future right somebody's gonna be a bank and then and then Martin ball and and Michael Keaton and mr. mom when he goes to 22 21 whatever it takes yeah those two right there if those go off in my mind somebody's talking to me I know they're full of baloney so a lot of speeds would be a lot of speeds and feeds a lot of data did it instead of talking about what you're actually doing and solutioning for you're talking about well I does this this this and okay 220 221 anytime I start seeing the cloud vendor start benchmarking against each other it's your workload is your workload you need to benchmark yourself don't don't listen to the marketing on that that's that's all I'm a what triggers you and the bsp I think if somebody explains you a not simple they cannot explain you in simplicity then that's a good one all right guys thanks for the great insight great panel how about a round of applause practitioners DX easy solutions integrating company than we service customers from all industry verticals and we're helping them to move to the digital world so as a solutions integrator we interface with many many customers that have many different types of needs and they're on their IT journey to modernize their applications into the cloud so we encounter many different scenarios many different reasons for those migrations all of them seeking to optimize their IT solutions to better enable their business we have our CPS organization it's cloud platform services we support AWS does your Google Alibaba corkle will help move those workloads to wherever it's most appropriate no one buys the house for the plumbing equally no one buys the solution for the networking but if the plumbing doesn't work no one likes the house and if this network doesn't work no one likes a solution so network is ubiquitous it is a key component of every solution we do the network connectivity is the lifeblood of any architecture without network connectivity nothing works properly planning and building a scalable robust network that's gonna be able to adapt with the application needs its when encountering some network design and talking about speed the deployment aviatrix came up in discussion and we then further pursued an area DHT products that incorporated aviatrix is part of a new offering that we are in the process of developing that really enhances our ability to provide cloud connectivity for the lance cloud connectivity there's a new line of networking services that we're getting into as our clients move into hybrid cloud networking it is much different than our traditional based services an aviatrix provides a key component in that service before we found aviatrix we were using just native peering connections but there wasn't a way to visualize all those peering connections and with multiple accounts multiple contacts for security with a v8 church we were able to visualize those different peering connections of security groups it helped a lot especially in areas of early deployment scenarios were quickly able to then take those deployment scenarios and turn them into scripts that we can then deploy repeatedly their solutions were designed for work with the cloud native capabilities first and where those cloud native capabilities fall short they then have solution sets that augment those capabilities I was pleasantly surprised number one with the aviatrix team as a whole in their level of engagement with us you know we weren't only buying the product we were buying a team that came on board to help us implement and solution that was really good to work together to learn both what aviatrix had to offer as well as enhancements that we had to bring that aviatrix was able to put into their product and meet our needs even better aviatrix was a joy to find because they really provided us the technology that we needed in order to provide multi cloud connectivity that really added to the functionality that you can't get from the basic law providing services we're taking our customers on a journey to simplify and optimize their IT infrastructure aviatrix certainly has made my job much easier okay welcome back to altitude 2020 for the digital event for the live feed welcome back I'm John Ford with the cube with Steve Mulaney CEO aviatrix for the next panel from global system integrators the folks who are building and working with folks on their journey to multi cloud and cloud native networking we've got a great panel George Buckman with dxc and Derek Monahan with wwt welcome to the stage [Applause] [Music] okay you guys are the ones out there advising building and getting down and dirty with multi cloud and cloud native networking we heard from the customer panel you can see the diversity of where people come into the journey of cloud it kind of depends upon where you are but the trends are all clear cloud native networking DevOps up and down the stack this has been the main engine what's your guys take of the disk journey to multi cloud what do you guys seeing yeah it's it's critical I mean we're seeing all of our enterprise customers enter into this they've been through the migrations of the easy stuff you know now they're trying to optimize and get more improvement so now the tough stuffs coming on right and you know they need their data processing near where their data is so that's driving them to a multi cloud environment okay we heard some of the edge stuff I mean you guys are exactly you've seen this movie before but now it's a whole new ballgame what's your take yeah so I'll give you a hint so our practice it's not called the cloud practice it's the multi cloud practice and so if that gives you a hint of how we approach things it's very consultative and so when we look at what the trends are let's look a little year ago about a year ago we were having conversations with customers let's build a data center in the cloud let's put some VP C's let's throw some firewalls with some DNS and other infrastructure out there and let's hope it works this isn't a science project so what we're trying we're starting to see is customers are starting to have more of a vision and we're helping with that consultative nature but it's totally based on the business and you got to start understanding how the lines of business are using the apps and then we evolved into that next journey which is a foundational approach to what are some of the problem statement customers are solving when they come to you what are the top things that are on their my house or the ease of use of jelly all that stuff but what specifically they did digging into yeah some complexity I think when you look at multi cloud approach in my view is network requirements are complex you know I think they are but I think the approach can be let's simplify that so one thing that we try to do and this is how we talk to customers is let's just like you simplify an aviatrix simplifies the automation orchestration of cloud networking we're trying to simplify the design the planning implementation of infrastructure across multiple workloads across multiple platforms and so the way we do it is we sit down we look at not just use cases and not just the questions in common we anticipate we actually build out based on the business and function requirements we build out a strategy and then create a set of documents and guess what we actually build in the lab and that lab that we platform we built proves out this reference architecture actually works absolutely we implement similar concepts I mean we they're proven practices they work great so well George you mentioned that the hard part is now upon us are you referring to networking what is specifically were you getting at Tara so the easy parts done now so for the enterprises themselves migrating their more critical apps or more difficult apps into the environments you know they've just we've just scratched the surface I believe on what enterprises that are doing to move into the cloud to optimize their environments to take advantage of the scale and speed to deployment and to be able to better enable their businesses so they're just now really starting the >> so do you get you guys see what I talked about them in terms of their Cambrian explosion I mean you're both monster system integrators with you know top fortune enterprise customers you know really rely on you for for guidance and consulting and so forth and boy they're networks is that something that you you've seen I mean does that resonate did you notice a year and a half ago and all of a sudden the importance of cloud for enterprise shoot up yeah I mean we're seeing it okay in our internal environment as yeah you know we're a huge company or right customer zero or an IT so we're experiencing that internal okay and every one of our other customers so I have another question oh I don't know the answer to this and the lawyer never asks a question that you don't know the answer to but I'm gonna ask it anyway d XE @ wwt massive system integrators why aviatrix yep so great question Steve so I think the way we approach things I think we have a similar vision a similar strategy how you approach things how we approach things that it worldwide technology number one we want to simplify the complexity and so that's your number one priorities let's take the networking but simplify it and I think part of the other point I'm making is we have we see this automation piece as not just an afterthought anymore if you look at what customers care about visibility and automation is probably the at the top three maybe the third on the list and I think that's where we see the value and I think the partnership that we're building and what I what I get excited about is not just putting yours in our lab and showing customers how it works it's Co developing a solution with you figuring out hey how can we make this better right mr. piller is a huge thing Jenna insecurity alone Network everything's around visibility what automation do you see happening in terms of progression order of operations if you will it's the low-hanging fruit what are people working on now and what are what are some of the aspirational goals around when you start thinking about multi cloud and automation yep so I wanted to get back to answer that question I want to answer your question you know what led us there and why aviatrix you know in working some large internal IT projects and and looking at how we were going to integrate those solutions you know we like to build everything with recipes where Network is probably playing catch-up in the DevOps world but with a DevOps mindset looking to speed to deploy support all those things so when you start building your recipes you take a little of this a little of that and you mix it all together well when you look around you say wow look there's this big bag of a VHS let me plop that in that solves a big part of my problems that I have to speed to integrate speed to deploy and the operational views that I need to run this so that was 11 years about reference architectures yeah absolutely so you know they came with a full slate of reference architectures already the out there and ready to go that fit our needs so it's very very easy for us to integrate those into our recipes what do you guys think about all the multi vendor interoperability conversations that have been going on choice has been a big part of multi cloud in terms of you know customers want choice didn't you know they'll put a workload in the cloud that works but this notion of choice and interoperability is become a big conversation it is and I think our approach and that's why we talk to customers is let's let's speed and be risk of that decision making process and how do we do that because the interoperability is key you're not just putting it's not just a single vendor we're talking you know many many vendors I mean think about the average number of cloud applications a customer uses a business and enterprise business today you know it's it's above 30 it's it's skyrocketing and so what we do and we look at it from an Billy approaches how do things interoperate we test it out we validate it we build a reference architecture it says these are the critical design elements now let's build one with aviatrix and show how this works with aviatrix and I think the the important part there though is the automation piece that we add to it invisibility so I think the visibility is what's what I see lacking across the industry today and the cloud needed that's been a big topic yep okay in terms of aviatrix that you guys see them coming in there one of the ones that are emerging and the new brands emerging with multi cloud you still got the old guard incumbents with huge footprints how our customers dealing with that that kind of component in dealing with both of them yeah I mean where we have customers that are ingrained with a particular vendor and you know we have partnerships with many vendors so our objective is to provide the solution that meets that client and you they all want multi vendor they all want interoperability correct all right so I got to ask you guys a question while we were defining de to operations what does that mean I mean you guys are looking at the big business and technical components of architecture what does de two operations mean what's the definition of that yeah so I think from our perspective my experience we you know de to operations whether it's it's not just the you know the orchestration piece and setting up and let it a lot of automate and have some you know change control you're looking at this from a data perspective how do I support this ongoing and make it easy to make changes as we evolve that the the cloud is very dynamic the the nature of how that fast is expanding the number of features is astonishing trying to keep up to date with a number of just networking capabilities and services that are added so I think day to operation starts with a fundable understanding of you know building out supporting a customer's environments and making it the automation piece easy from from you know a distance I think yeah and you know taking that to the next level of being able to enable customers to have catalog items that they can pick and choose hey I need this network connectivity from this cloud location back to this on pram and being able to have that automated and provisioned just simply by ordering it for the folks watching out there guys take a minute to explain as you guys are in the trenches doing a lot of good work what are some of the engagement that you guys get into how does that progress what is that what's what happens there they call you up and say hey I need multi-cloud or you're already in there I mean take us through why how someone can engage to use a global si to come in and make this thing happen what's looks like typical engagement look like yeah so from our perspective we typically have a series of workshops in a methodology that we kind of go along the journey number one we have a foundational approach and I don't mean foundation meaning the network foundation that's a very critical element we got a factor in security we got a factor in automation so we think about foundation we do a workshop that starts with education a lot of times we'll go in and we'll just educate the customer what does VPC sharing you know what is a private link and Azure how does that impact your business you know customers I want to share services out in an ecosystem with other customers and partners well there's many ways to accomplish that so our goal is to you know understand those requirements and then build that strategy with them thoughts George oh yeah I mean I'm one of the guys that's down in the weeds making things happen so I'm not the guy on the front line interfacing with the customers every day but we have a similar approach you know we have a consulting practice that will go out and and apply their practices to see what those and when do you parachute in yeah when I then is I'm on the back end working with our offering development leads for the networking so we understand or seeing what customers are asking for and we're on the back end developing the solutions that integrate with our own offerings as well as enable other customers to just deploy quickly to meet their connectivity needs it so the patterns are similar great final question for you guys I want to ask you to paint a picture of what success looks like and you know for name customers you don't forget in reveal of kind of who they are but what does success look like in multi-cloud as you as you paint a picture for the folks here and watching on the live stream it's if someone says hey I want to be multi-cloud I got to have my operations agile I want full DevOps I want programmability security built in from day zero what does success look like yeah I think success looks like this so when you're building out a network the network is a harder thing to change than some other aspects of cloud so what we think is even if you're thinking about that second cloud which we have most of our customers are on to public clouds today they might be dabbling in that is you build that network foundation an architecture that takes in consideration where you're going and so once we start building that reference architecture out that shows this is how to sit from a multi-cloud perspective not a single cloud and let's not forget our branches let's not forget our data centers let's not forget how all this connects together because that's how we define multi-cloud it's not just in the cloud it's on Prem and it's off Prem and so collectively I think the key is also is that we provide them an hld you got to start with in a high-level design that can be tweaked as you go through the journey but you got to give a solid structural foundation and that networking which we think most customers think as not not the network engineers but as an afterthought we want to make that the most critical element before you start the journey Jorge from your seed had a success look for you so you know it starts out on these journeys often start out people not even thinking about what is gonna happen what what their network needs are when they start their migration journey to the cloud so I want this success to me looks like them being able to end up not worrying about what's happening in the network when they move to the cloud good guys great insight thanks for coming on share and pen I've got a round of applause the global system integrators [Applause] [Music] okay welcome back from the live feed I'm shuffle with the cube Steve Eleni CEO of aviatrix my co-host our next panel is the aviatrix certified engineers also known as aces this is the folks that are certified their engineering they're building these new solutions please welcome Toby Foster min from Attica Stacy linear from Terra data and Jennifer Reid with Victor Davis to the stage I was just gonna I was just gonna rip you guys and say where's your jackets and Jen's got the jacket on okay good love the aviatrix aces pile of gear there above the clouds soaring to new heights that's right so guys aviatrix aces love the name I think it's great certified this is all about getting things engineered so there's a level of certification I want to get into that but first take us through the day in the life of an ace and just to point out Stacey's a squad leader so he's like a squadron leader Roger and leader yeah squadron leader so he's got a bunch of aces underneath him but share your perspective day-in-the-life Jeff we'll start with you sure so I have actually a whole team that works for me both in the in the North America both in the US and in Mexico and so I'm eagerly working to get them certified as well so I can become a squad leader myself but it's important because one of the the critical gaps that we've found is people having the networking background because they're you graduate from college and you have a lot of computer science background you can program you've got Python but networking in packets they just don't get and so just taking them through all the processes that it's really necessary to understand when you're troubleshooting is really critical mm-hmm and because you're gonna get an issue where you need to figure out where exactly is that happening on the network you know is my my issue just in the V PCs and on the instant side is a security group or is it going on print and this is something actually embedded within Amazon itself I mean I should troubleshot an issue for about six months going back and forth with Amazon and it was the vgw VPN because they were auto-scaling on two sides and we ended up having to pull out the Cisco's and put in aviatrix so I could just say okay it's fixed and actually actually helped the application teams get to that and get it solved yeah but I'm taking a lot of junior people and getting them through that certification process so they can understand and see the network the way I see the network I mean look I've been doing this such for 25 years but I got out when I went in the Marine Corps that's what I did and coming out the network is still the network but people don't get the same training they get they got in the 90s it's just so easy just write some software and they work takes care of itself yes I'll be will get I'll come back to that I want to come back to that that problem solved with Amazon but Toby I think the only thing I have to add to that is that it's always the network fault as long as I've been in network have always been the network's fault and I'm even to this day you know it's still the network's fault and part of being a network guy is that you need to prove when it is and when it's not your fault and that means you need to know a little bit about a hundred different things to make that and now you got a full stack DevOps you gotta know a lot more times another hundred and these times are changing yeah they say you're a squadron leader I get that right what is what does a squadron leader first can you describe what it is I think probably just leading all the network components of it but not they from my perspective when to think about what you asked them was it's about no issues and no escalation soft my day is a good that's a good day yes it's a good day Jennifer you mentioned the Amazon thing this brings up a good point you know when you have these new waves come in you have a lot of new things newly use cases a lot of the finger-pointing it's that guy's problem that girl's problem so what is how do you solve that and how do you get the young guns up to speed is there training is that this is where the certification comes in well is where the certification is really going to come in I know when we we got together at reinvent one of the the questions that that we had with Stephen the team was what what should our certification look like you know she would just be teaching about what aviatrix troubleshooting brings to bear but what should that be like and I think Toby and I were like no no no that's going a little too high we need to get really low because the the better someone can get at actually understanding what actually happening in the network and and where to actually troubleshoot the problem how to step back each of those processes because without that it's just a big black box and they don't know you know because everything is abstracted in Amazon Internet and Azure and Google is substracted and they have these virtual gateways they have VPNs that you just don't have the logs on it's you just don't know and so then what tools can you put in front of them of where they can look because there are full logs well as long as we turned on the flow logs when they built it you know and there's like each one of those little things that well if they had decided to do that when they built it it's there but if you can come in later to really supplement that with training to actual troubleshoot and do a packet capture here as it's going through then teaching them how to read that even yeah Toby we were talking before we came on up on stage about your career you've been networking all your time and then you know you're now entering a lot of younger people how is that going because the people who come in fresh they don't have all the old war stories they don't know you talk about you know that's dimmer fault I walk in bare feet in the snow when I was your age I mean it's so easy now right they say what's your take on how you train the young P so I've noticed two things one is that they are up to speed a lot faster in generalities of networking they can tell you what a network is in high school level now where I didn't learn that too midway through my career and they're learning it faster but they don't necessarily understand why it's that way or you know everybody thinks that it's always slash 24 for a subnet and they don't understand why you can break it down smaller why it's really necessary so the the ramp up speed is much faster for these guys that are coming in but they don't understand why and they need some of that background knowledge to see where it's coming from and why is it important and old guys that's where we thrive Jennifer you mentioned you you got in from the Marines health spa when you got into networking how what was it like then and compared it now almost like we heard earlier static versus dynamic don't be static cuz then you just set the network you got a perimeter yeah no there was no such thing ya know so back in the day I mean I mean we had banyan vines for email and you know we had token ring and I had to set up token ring networks and figure out why that didn't work because how many of things were actually sharing it but then actually just cutting fiber and running fiber cables and dropping them over you know shelters to plug them in and oh crap they swung it too hard and shattered it now I gotta be great polished this thing and actually shoot like to see if it works I mean that was the network crimped five cat5 cables to run an Ethernet you know and then from that just said network switches dumb switches like those were the most common ones you had then actually configuring routers and you know logging into a Cisco router and actually knowing how to configure that and it was funny because I had gone all the way up and was a software product manager for a while so I've gone all the way up the stack and then two and a half three years ago I came across to to work with entity group that it became Victor Davis but we went to help one of our customers Davis and it was like okay so we need to fix the network okay I haven't done this in 20 years but all right let's get to it you know because it really fundamentally does not change it's still the network I mean I've had people tell me well you know when we go to containers we will not have to worry about the network and I'm like yeah you don't I do and then with this were the program abilities it really interesting so I think this brings up the certification what are some of the new things that people should be aware of that come in with the aviatrix ace certification what are some of the highlights can you guys share some of the some of the highlights around the certifications I think some of the importance is that it's it doesn't need to be vendor specific for network generality or basic networking knowledge and instead of learning how Cisco does something or how Palo Alto does something we need to understand how and why it works as a basic model and then understand how each vendor has gone about that problem and solved it in a general that's true in multi cloud as well you can't learn how cloud networking works without understanding how a double u.s. senator and GCP are all slightly the same but slightly different and some things work and some things don't I think that's probably the number one take I think having a certification across clouds is really valuable cuz we heard the global si help the business issues what does it mean to do that is it code is that networking is it configuration is that aviatrix what is the I mean op C aviatrix is the ASA certification but what is it about the multi cloud that makes it multi networking and multi vendor easy answer is yes so you got to be a generalist getting your hands and all you have to be right it takes experience because it's every every cloud vendor has their own certification whether that's hops and advanced networking and advanced security or whatever it might be yeah they can take the test but they have no idea how to figure out what's wrong with that system and the same thing with any certification but it's really getting your hands in there and actually having to troubleshoot the problems you know actually work the problem you know and calm down it's going to be okay I mean because I don't know how many calls I've been on or even had aviatrix join me on it's like okay so everyone calm down let's figure out what's happening it's like we've looked at that screen three times looking at it again it's not gonna solve that problem right but at the same time you know remaining calm but knowing that it really is I'm getting a packet from here to go over here it's not working so what could be the problem you know and actually stepping them through with those scenarios but that's like you only get that by having to do it you know and seeing it and going through it and then I have a question so we you know I just see it we started this program maybe months ago we're seeing a huge amount of interest I mean we're oversubscribed on all the training sessions we've got people flying from around the country even with coronavirus flying to go to Seattle to go to these events were oversubscribed good is that watching leader would put there yeah is that something that you see in your organization's are you recommending that to people do you see I mean I'm just I guess I'm surprised I'm not surprised but I'm really surprised by the demand if you would of this multi cloud network certification because it really isn't anything like that is that something you guys can comment on or do you see the same things in your organization's I say from my side because we operate in the multi cloud environment so it really helps and it's beneficial for us yeah I think I would add that uh networking guys have always needed to use certifications to prove that they know what they know right it's not good enough to say yeah I know IP addresses or I know how a network works and a couple little check marks or a little letters buying helps give you validity um so even in our team we can say hey you know we're using these certifications to know that you know enough of the basics and enough of the understandings that you have the tools necessary right so I guess my final question for you guys is why an eighth certification is relevant and then second part is share what the livestream folks who aren't yet a certified or might want to jump in to be AVH or certified engineers why is it important so why is it relevant and why shouldn't someone want to be an ace-certified I'm uses the right engineer I think my views a little different I think certification comes from proving that you have the knowledge not proving that you get a certification to get no I mean they're backwards so when you've got the training and the understanding and the you use that to prove and you can like grow your certification list with it versus studying for a test to get a certification and have no understanding of ok so that who is the right person that look at this is saying I'm qualified is it a network engineer is it a DevOps person what's your view you know is it a certain you know I think cloud is really the answer it's the as we talked like the edge is getting eroded so is the network definitions eating eroded we're getting more and more of some network some DevOps some security lots and lots of security because network is so involved in so many of them that's just the next progression there I would say I expand that to more automation engineers because we have those now probably extended as well well I think that the training classes themselves are helpful especially the entry-level ones for people who may be quote-unquote cloud architects but I've never done anything and networking for them to understand why we need those things to really work whether or not they go through to eventually get a certification is something different but I really think fundamentally understanding how these things work it makes them a better architect makes them better application developer but even more so as you deploy more of your applications into the cloud really getting an understanding even from our people who have tradition down on Prem networking they can understand how that's going to work in the cloud - well I know we've got just under 30 seconds left I want to get one more question than just one more for the folks watching that are maybe younger that don't have that networking training from your experiences each of you can answer why is it should they know about networking what's the benefit what's in it for them motivate them share some insights and why they should go a little bit deeper in networking Stacey we'll start with you we'll go down I'd say it's probably fundamental right if you don't deliver solutions networking use the very top I would say if you fundamental of an operating system running on a machine how those machines talk together as a fundamental change is something that starts from the base and work your way up right well I think it's a challenge because you you've come from top down now you're gonna start looking from bottom up and you want those different systems to cross communicate and say you built something and you're overlapping IP space not that that doesn't happen but how can I actually make that still operate without having to reappear e-platform it's like those challenges like those younger developers or sis engineers can really start to get their hands around and understand those complexities and bring that forward in their career they got to know the how the pipes are working and because know what's going some plumbing that's right and the works a how to code it that's right awesome thank you guys for great insights ace certified engineers also known as aces give a round of applause thank you okay all right that concludes my portion thank you Steve thanks for have Don thank you very much that was fantastic everybody round of applause for John Currier yeah so great event great event I'm not going to take long we've got we've got lunch outside for that for the people here just a couple of things just call to action right so we saw the Aces you know for those of you out on the stream here become a certified right it's great for your career it's great for knowledge is is fantastic it's not just an aviatrix thing it's gonna teach you about cloud networking multi-cloud networking with a little bit of aviatrix exactly what the Cisco CCIE program was for IP network that type of the thing that's number one second thing is is is is learn right so so there's a there's a link up there for the four to join the community again like I started this this is a community this is the kickoff to this community and it's a movement so go to what a v8 community bh6 comm starting a community at multi cloud so you know get get trained learn I'd say the next thing is we're doing over a hundred seminars in across the United States and also starting into Europe soon will come out and will actually spend a couple hours and talk about architecture and talk about those beginning things for those of you on the you know on the livestream in here as well you know we're coming to a city near you go to one of those events it's a great way to network with other people that are in the industry as well as to start to learn and get on that multi-cloud journey and then I'd say the last thing is you know we haven't talked a lot about what aviatrix does here and that's intentional we want you you know leaving with wanting to know more and schedule get with us in schedule a multi our architecture workshop session so we we sit out with customers and we talk about where they're at in that journey and more importantly where they're going in that in-state architecture from networking compute storage everything and everything you heard today every panel kept talking about architecture talking about operations those are the types of things that we saw we help you cook define that canonical architecture that system architecture that's yours so for so many of our customers they have three by five plotted lucid charts architecture drawings and it's the customer name slash aviatrix arc network architecture and they put it on their whiteboard that's what what we and that's the most valuable thing they get from us so this becomes their twenty-year network architecture drawing that they don't do anything without talking to us and look at that architecture that's what we do in these multi hour workshop sessions with customers and that's super super powerful so if you're interested definitely call us and let's schedule that with our team so anyway I just want to thank everybody on the livestream thank everybody here hopefully it was it was very useful I think it was and joined the movement and for those of you here join us for lunch and thank you very much [Applause] [Music]

>> live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage. It's the Cube covering Veum World 2019. Brought to you by IBM Wear and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to the cubes Live coverage Of'em World 2019 in San Francisco, California We're here at Mosconi North Lobby. Two sets. Jumper of my Coast. David wanted Dave 10 years. Our 10th season of the cue coming up on our 10 year anniversary May of 2020. But this corner are 10 years of the Cube. Our next guest is Sanjay Putting Chief Operating Officer Of'em where who took the time out of his busy schedule to help us do a commemorative look back. Thanks for coming to our studio. Hello, John. That was great. Fans of yours was really regulations on the 10 year mark with the, um well, we really appreciate your partnership. We really appreciate one. Things we love doing is covering as we call that thing. David, I coined the term tech athletes, you know, kind of the whole joke of ESPN effect that we've been called and they're really tech athlete is just someone who's a strong in tech always fighting for that extra inch. Always putting in the hard work discipline, smart, competitive. You get all that above. Plus, you interviewed athletes today on state real athletes. Real athletes, Tech show. So I guess they would qualify as Tech athlete Steve Young. That's pretty funny. It was a >> great time. We've been trying to, you know, Veum World is now the first time was 2004. So it's 1/16 season here, and traditionally many of these tech conference is a really boring because it's just PowerPoint dead by power point lots of Tec Tec Tec Tec breakout sessions. And we're like, You know, last year we thought, Why don't we mix it up and have something that's inspirational education We had Malala was a huge hit. People are crying at the end of the session. Well, let's try something different this year, and we thought the combination of Steve Young and Lyndsey one would be great. Uh, you know, Listen, just like you guys prepped for these interviews, I did a lot of prep. I mean, I'm not I'm a skier, but I'm nowhere close to an avid skier that watch in the Olympics huge fan of Steve Young so that part was easy, but preparing for Lindsay was tough. There were many dynamics of that interview that I had to really think through. You want to get both of them to converse, you know, he's She's 34 he's 55. You want to get them to really feel like it's a good and I think it kind of played out well. >> You were watching videos. A great prep. Congratulations >> trying t o show. It's the culture of bringing the humanization aspect of your team about tech for good. Also, you believe in culture, too, and I don't get your thoughts on that. You recently promoted one of your person that she has a chief communications Johnstone Johnstone about stars you promote from within. This >> is the >> culture you believe it. Talk about the ethos. Jones is a rock star. We love her. She's just >> hardworking, credible, well respected. Inside VM where and when we had a opening in that area a few months ago, I remember going to the her team meeting and announcing, and the team erupted in cheers. I mean that to me tells me that somebody was well liked from within, respected within and pure level and you know the organization's support for a promotion of that kind of battlefield promotion. It's great big fan of hers, and this is obviously her first show at Vienna. Well, along with Robin, Matt, look. So we kind of both of them as the chief marketing officer, Robin and Jones >> and Robinson story. Low Crawl made her interim first, but they then she became Steve Made it Permanent way. >> Want them to both do well. They have different disciplines. Susan, uh, national does our alliances, you know, if you include my chief of staff for the six of my direct reports are women, and I'm a big believer in more women. And take why? Because I want my Sophia, who's 13 year old do not feel like the tech industry is something that is not welcome to women in tech. So, you know, we really want to see more of them. And I hope that the folks who are reporting to me in senior positions senior vice president is an example can be a role model to other women who are aspiring, say, one day I wanna be like a Jones Stone or Robin. Madam Local Susan Nash, >> John and I both have daughters, so we're passionate about this. Tech is everywhere, so virtually whatever industry they go into. But I've asked this question Sanjay of women before on the Cube. I've never asked him in. And because you have a track record of hiring women, how do you succeed in hiring women? Sometimes way have challenges because way go into our little network. Convenient. What? What's your approach? Gotta >> blow off that network and basically say First off, if that network is only male or sometimes unfortunately white male or just Indian male, which is sometimes the nature of tech I mean, if you're looking for a new position, tell the recruiters to find you something that's different. Find me, Ah woman. Find me on underrepresented minority like an African American Latino and those people exist. You just have a goal. Either build a network yourself. So you've got those people on your radar. We'll go look, and that's more work on us, says leaders. But we should be doing that work. We should be cultivating those people because the more you promote capable. First off, you have to be capable. This is not, you know, some kind of affirmative action away. We want capable people. Someone shouldn't get the job just because they're a woman just because the minority, that's not the way we work. We want capable people to do it. But if we have to go a little further to find them, we'll go do it. That's okay. They exist. So part of my desires to cultivate relationships with women and underrepresented minorities in the world that can actually in the world of tech and maintain those relationships because you never know you're not gonna hire them immediately. But at some point in time, you might need to have them on your radar. >> Sanjay, I wanna ask you a big picture question. I didn't get a chance to ask path this morning. I was at the bar last night just having a little dinner, and I was checking out Twitter. And he said that the time has never been. It's never been a greater time arm or important time to be a technologist. Now I saw that I went interesting. What does that mean? Economic impact, social impact? And I know we often say that, and I don't say this to disparage the comment. It's just to provide historical context and get a get it open discussion about what is actually achievable with tech in this era and what we actually believe. So I started to do some research and I started right down. First of all, I presume you believe that right on your >> trusty napkin at the >> bar. So there has never been a more important time to be a technologist. You know, it's your company at your league. You know, Pat, I presume you agree with it. Yeah, absolutely. I slipped it back to the 1900. Electricity, autos, airplanes, telephones. So you we, as an industry are up against some pretty major innovations. With that historical context, Do you feel as though we can have a similar greater economic and social impact? >> Let's start with economic first and social. Next time. Maybe we should do the opposite, but economic? Absolutely. All those inventions that you >> have are all being reinvented. The technology the airplanes all been joined by software telephones are all driving through, you know, five g, which is all software in the future. So tech is really reinventing every industry, including the mundane non tech industries like agriculture. If you look at what's happening. Agriculture, I ot devices are monitoring the amount of water that should go to particular plant in Brazil, or the way in which you're able to use big data to kind of figure out what's the right way to think about health care, which is becoming very much tech oriented financial service. Every industry is becoming a tech industry. People are putting tech executives on their boards because they need an advice on what is the digital transformations impact on them cybersecurity. Everyone started by this. Part of the reason we made these big moves and security, including the acquisition of carbon black, is because that's a fundamental topic. Now social, we have to really use this as a platform for good. So just the same way that you know a matchstick could help. You know, Warm house and could also tear down the house. Is fire good or bad? That's been the perennial debate since people first discovered fire technology. Is this the same way it can be used? Reboot. It could be bad in our job is leaders is to channel the good and use examples aware tech is making a bit force for good. And then listen. Some parts of it may not be tech, but just our influence in society. One thing that pains me about San Francisco's homelessness and all of the executives that a partner to help rid this wonderful city of homeless men. They have nothing to attack. It might be a lot of our philanthropy that helps solve that and those of us who have much. I mean, I grew up in a poor, uh, bringing from Bangla, India, but now I have much more than I have. Then I grew up my obligations to give back, and that may have nothing to do with Tech would have to do all with my philanthropy. Those are just principles by which I think when you live with your a happier man, happier woman, you build a happier >> society and I want to get your thoughts on common. And I asked a random set of college students, thanks to my son that the network is you said your daughter to look at the key to Pat's King Pat's commentary in The Cube here this morning that was talking about tech for good. And here's some of the comments, but I liked the part about tech for good and humanity. Tech with no purpose is meaningless tech back by purposes. More impactful is what path said then the final comments and Pat's point quality engineering backing quality purpose was great. So again, this is like this is Gen Z, not Millennials. But again, this is the purpose where it's not just window dressing on on industry. It's, you know, neutral fire. I like that argument. Fire. That's a good way Facebook weaponizing Facebook could be good or bad, right? Same thing. But the younger generation. You're new demographics that are coming into cloud. Native. Yeah, what do you think? >> No. And I think that's absolutely right. We have to build a purpose driven company that's purposes much more than just being the world's best softer infrastructure company or being the most profit. We have to obviously deliver results to our shareholders. But I think if you look at the Milton Friedman quote, you know, paper that was written that said, the sole purpose of a company is just making profits, and every business school student is made to read that I >> think even he >> would probably agree that listen today While that's important, the modern company has to also have a appropriate good that they are focused on, you know, with social good or not. And I don't think it's a trade off being able to have a purpose driven culture that makes an impact on society and being profitable. >> And a pointed out yesterday on our intro analysis, the old term was You guys go Oh, yeah, Michael Dell and PAD shareholder value. They point out that stakeholder value, because now the stakeholder Employees and society. So congratulations could keep keep keep it going on the millennial generation. >> Just like your son and our kids want a purpose driven company. They want to know that the company that working for is having an impact. Um, not just making an impression. You do that. It shows like, but having an impact. >> And fire is the most popular icon on instagram. Is that right? Yeah, I know that fire is good. Like your fire. Your hot I don't know. I guess. Whatever. Um fire. Come comment. There was good Sanjay now on business front. Okay, again, A lot of inflection points happen over 10 years. We look back at some of this era, the Abel's relationship would you know about. But they've also brought up a nuance which we talked about on the intro air Watch. You were part of that acquisition again. Pig part of it. So what Nasiriyah did for the networking STD see movement that shaped VM. Whereas it is today your acquisition that you were involved and also shaping the end user computing was also kind of come together with the cloud Natives. >> How is >> this coming to market? I mean, you could get with >> my comparison with carbon black there watch was out of the building. Carbon black is not considered. >> Let's talk about it openly. And we talked about it some of the earnings because we got that question. Listen, I was very fortunate. Bless to work on the revitalization of end user computing that was Turbo charged to the acquisition of a watch. At that time was the biggest acquisition we did on both Nice era and air watch put us into court new markets, networking and enterprise mobility of what we call not additional work space. And they've been so successful thanks to know not just me. It was a team of village that made those successful. There's a lot of parallels what we're doing. Carbon, black and security. As we looked at the security industry, we feel it's broken. I alluded to this, but if I could replay just 30 seconds of what I said on some very important for your viewers to know this if I went to my doctor, my mom's a doctor and I asked her how Doe I get well, and she proposed 5000 tablets to me. Okay, it would take me at 30 seconds of pop to eat a tablet a couple of weeks to eat 5000 tablets. That's not how you stay healthy. And the analogy is 5000 metres and security all saying that they're important fact. They use similar words to the health care industry viruses. I mean, you know, you and what do you do instead, to stay healthy, you have a good diet. You eat your vegetables or fruit. Your proteins drink water. So part of a diet is making security intrinsic to the platform. So the more that we could make security intrinsic to the platform, we avoid the bloatware of agents, the number of different consuls, all of this pleasure of tools that led to this morass. And what happens at the end of that is you about these point vendors, Okay, Who get gobbled up by hardware companies that's happening spattered my hardware companies and sold to private equity companies. What happens? The talent they all leave, we look at the landscape is that's ripe for disruption, much the same way we saw things with their watch. And, you know, we had only companies focusing VD I and we revitalize and innovative that space. So what we're gonna do in securities make it intrinsic and take a modern cloud security company carbon black, and make that part of our endpoint Security and Security Analytics strategy? Yes, they're one of two companies that focus in the space. And when we did air watch, they were number three. Good was number one. Mobile line was number two and that which was number three and the embers hands. We got number one. The perception in this space is common. Lacks number two and crowdstrike number one. That's okay, you know, that might be placed with multiple vendors, but that's the state of it today, and we're not going point against Crowdstrike. Our competition's not just an endpoint security point to a were reshaping the entire security industry, and we believe with the integration that we have planned, like that product is really good. I would say just a cz good upper hand in some areas ahead of common black, not even counting the things we're gonna integrate with it. It's just that they didn't have the gold market muscle. I mean, the sales and marketing of that company was not as further ahead that >> we >> change Of'em where we've got an incredible distribution will bundle that also with the Dell distribution, and that can change. And it doesn't take long for that to take a lot of customers here. One copy black. So that's the way in which we were old. >> A lot of growth there. >> Yeah, plenty of >> opportunity to follow up on that because you've obviously looked at a lot of companies and crowdstrike. I mean, huge valuation compared to what you guys paid for carbon black. I mean, >> I'm a buyer. I mean, if I'm a buyer, I liked what we paid. >> Well, I had some color to it. Just when you line up the Was it really go to market. I mean some functions. Maybe not that there >> was a >> few product gaps, but it's not very nominal. But when you add what we announced in a road map app, defensive alderman management, the integration of works based one this category is gonna be reshaped very quickly. Nobody, I mean, the place. We're probably gonna compete more semantic and McAfee because most of those companies that kind of decaying assets, you know, they've gotten acquired by the companies and they're not innovating. So I'd say the bulk of the market will be eating up the leftover fossils of those sort of companies as as companies decided they want to invest in legacy. Technology is a more modern, but I think the differentiation from Crowdstrike very clear is we integrate these, these technology and the V's fear. Let me give an example. With that defense, we can make that that workload security agent list. Nobody can do that. Nobody, And that's apt defense with carbon black huge innovation. I described on stage workspace one plus carbon black is like peanut butter and jelly management. Security should go together. Nobody could do that as good as us. Okay, what we do inside NSX. So those four areas that I outlined in our plans with carbon black pending the close of the transaction into V sphere Agent Lis with workspace one unified with NSX integrated and into secure state, You know, in the cloud security area we take that and then send it through the V m. Where the devil and other ecosystem channels like you No idea. Security operative CDW You know, I think Dimension data, all the security savvy partners here. I think the distribution and the innovation of any of'em were takes over long term across strike may have a very legitimate place, but our strategy is very different. We're not going point tool against 0.0.2 wish reshaping the security industry. Yeah, What platform? >> You're not done building that platform. My obvious question is the other other assets inside of Arcee and secureworks that you'd like to get your hands on. >> I mean, listen, at this point in time, we are good. I mean, it's the same thing like asking me when we acquired air watching. Nice Here. Are you gonna do more networking and mobility? Yeah, but we're right now. We got enough to Digest in due course you. For five years later, we did acquire Arkin for network Analytics. We acquired fellow Cloud for SD when we're cloud recently, Avi. So the approach we take a hammer to innovations first. You know, if you're gonna have an anchor acquisition, make sure it's got critical mass. I mean, buying a small start up with only 35 people 10 people doesn't really work for us. So we got 1100 people would come back, we're gonna build on it. But let's build, build, build, build, partner and then acquire. So we will partner a lot with a lot of players. That compliment competition will build a lot around this. >> And years from now, we need >> add another tuck in acquisition. But we feel we get a lot in this acquisition from both endpoint security and Security Analytics. Okay, it's too early to say how much more we will need and when we will need that. But, you know, our goal would be Let's go plot away. I have a billion dollar business and then take it from there. >> One more security question, if I may say so. I'm not trying to pit you against your friends and AWS. But there are some cleared areas where your counter poise >> Stevens just runs on eight of us comin back. >> That part about a cloud that helps your class ass business. I like the acquisition. But Steven Schmidt, it reinforced the cloud security conference, said, You know, this narrative in the industry that security is broken is not the right one. Now, by the way, agree with this. Security's a do over pat kill singer. And we talked about that for five years ago. Um, but then in eight of you says the shared security model, when you talk to the practitioners like, yeah, they they cover, that's three and compute. But we have the the real work to d'oh! So help me square that circle. >> Yeah, I think if aws bills Security Service is that our intrinsic to their platform and they open up a prize, we should leverage it. But I don't think aws is gonna build workload security for azure compute or for Gogol compute. That's against the embers or into the sphere. Like after finishing third accordion. And they're like, That's not a goal. You go do it via more So from my perspective. Come back to hydrogen. 80. If there's a workload security problem that's going to require security at the kernel of the hyper visor E C to azure compute containers. Google Compute. >> Who's gonna do >> that? Jammer? Hopefully, hopefully better than because we understand the so workloads. Okay, now go to the client site. There's Windows endpoints. There's Mac. There's Lennox. Who should do it? We've been doing that for a while on the client side and added with workspace one. So I think if you believe there is a Switzerland case for security, just like there was a Switzerland case for management endpoint management I described in Point management in Point Security going together like peanut butter and jelly, Whatever your favorite analogy is, if we do that well, we will prove to the market just like we did with their watch An endpoint management. There is a new way of doing endpoint security. Dan has been done ever before. Okay, none >> of these >> guys let me give an example. I've worked at Semantic 15 years ago. I know a lot about the space. None of these guys built a really strategic partnership with the laptop vendors. Okay, Del was not partnering strategically on their laptops with semantic micro. Why? Because if this wasn't a priority, then they were, you know, and a key part of what we're doing here is gonna be able to do end point management. And in point security and partner Adult, they announced unified workspace integrated into the silicon of Dell laptops. Okay, we can add endpoint security that capability next. Why not? I mean, if you could do management security. So, you know, we think that workspace one, we'll get standing toe work space security with the combination of workspace one and security moving and carbon black. >> Sanjay, we talked about this on our little preview and delivery. Done us. We don't need to go into it. The Amazon relationship cleared the way for the strategy in stock price since October 2016 up. But >> one of the >> things I remember from that announcement that I heard from the field sales folks that that were salespeople for VM wear as well as customers, was finally clarity around. What the hell? We're doing the cloud. So I bring up the go to market In the business side, the business results are still strong. Doing great. You guys doing a great job? >> How do you >> keep your field troops motivated? I know Michael Dell says these are all in a strategy line. So when we do these acquisitions, you >> had a lot >> of new stuff coming in. I mean, what's how do you keep him trained? Motivated constantly simplifying whenever >> you get complex because you add into your portfolio, you go back and simplify, simplify, simplify, make it Sesame Street simple. So we go back to that any cloud, any app, any device diagram, if you would, which had security on the side. And we say Now, let's tell you looking this diagram how the new moves that we've made, whether it's pivotal and what we're announcing with tanz ou in the container layer that's in that any Apple air carbon black on the security there. But the core strategy of the emer stays the same. So the any cloud strategy now with the relevance now what, what eight of us, Who's our first and preferred partner? But if you watched on stage, Freddie Mac was incredible. Story. Off moving 600 absent of the N word cloud made of us Fred and Tim Snyder talked about that very eloquently. The deputy CTO. They're ratty Murthy. CTO off Gap basically goes out and says, Listen, I got 800 APS. I'm gonna invest a lot on premise, and when I go to the cloud, I'm actually going to Azure. >> Thanks for joining you. Keep winning. Keep motivated through winning >> and you articulate a strategy that constantly tells people Listen. It's their choice of how they run in the data center in the cloud. It's their choice, and we basically on top of all of those in the any cloud AP world. That's how we play on the same with the device and the >> security. A lot of great things having Sanjay. Thanks >> for you know what a cricket fan I am. Congratulations. India won by 318 goals. Is that >> what they call girls run against the West Indies? I think you >> should stay on and be a 40 niner fan for when you get Tom baseball get Tom Brady's a keynote will know will be in good Wasn't Steve Young and today love so inspirational and we just love them? Thank you for coming on the Cube. 10 years. Congratulations. Any cute moments you can point out >> all of them. I mean, I think when I first came to, I was Who's the d? I said ASAP, like these guys, John and Dave, and I was like, Man, they're authentic people. What I like about you is your authentic real good questions. When I came first year, you groomed me a lot of their watch like, Hey, this could be a big hat. No cattle. What you gonna do? And you made me accountable. You grilled me on eight of us. You're grilling me right now on cloud native and modern, absent security, which is good. You keep us accountable. Hopefully, every you're that we come to you, we want to show as a team that we're making progress and then were credible back with you. That's the way we roll. >> Sanjay. Thanks for coming. Appreciate. Okay, we're live here. Stay with us for more of this short break from San Francisco v emerald 2019

>> live from Las Vegas. It's the queue covering Dell Technologies. World twenty nineteen. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners. >> The one Welcome to the Special Cube Live coverage here in Las Vegas with Dell Technologies World 2019. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante breaking down day one of three days of wall the wall Coverage - 2 Cube sets. Uh, big news today and dropping here. Dell Technology World's series of announcements Cloud ability, unified work spaces and then multi cloud with, uh, watershed announced with Microsoft support for VMware with Azure are guests here theCUBE alumni that Seo, senior leader of'Em Where Sanjay *** and such a great to see you, >> John and Dave always a pleasure to be on your show. >> So before we get into the hard core news around Microsoft because you and Satya have a relationship, you also know Andy Jassy very well. You've been following the Clouds game in a big way, but also as a senior leader in the industry and leading BM where, um, the evolution of the end user computing kind of genre,  that whole area is just completely transformed with mobility and cloud kind of coming together with data and all this new kinds of applications. The modern applications are different. It's changing the game on how end users, employees, normal people use computing because some announcement here on their What's your take on the ever changing role of cloud and user software? >> Yeah, John, I think that our vision , as  you know, it was the first job I came to do at VMware almost six years ago, to run and use a computing. And the vision we had at that time was that you should be able to work at the speed of life, right? You and I happen to be on a plane at the same time  yesterday coming here, we should be able to pick our amps up on our devices. You often have Internet now even up at thirty thousand feet. In the consumer world, you don't lug around your CDs, your music, your movies come to you. So the vision of any app on any device was what we articulated with the digital workspace We. had Apple and Google very well figured out. IOS later on Mac,  Android,  later on chrome . The Microsoft relationship in end use the computing was contentious because we overlapped. They had a product, PMS and in tune. But we always dreamed of a day. I tweeted out this morning that for five and a half years I competed with these guys. It was always my dream to partner with the With Microsoft. Um, you know, a wonderful person, whom I respect there, Brad Anderson. He's a friend, but we were like LeBron and Steph Curry. We were competing against each other. Today everything changed. We are now partners. Uh, Brad and I we're friends, we'll still be friends were actually partners  now why? Because we want to bring the best of the digital workspace solution VMware brings workspace one to the best of what Microsoft brings in Microsoft 365 , active directory, E3 capabilities around E. M. S and into it and combined those together to help customers get the best for any device. Apple, Google and Microsoft that's a game changer. >> Tell about the impact of the real issue of Microsoft on this one point, because is there overlap is their gaps, as Joe Tucci used to say, You can't have any. There's no there's no overlap if you have overlapped. That's not a >> better to have overlapped and seems right. A gaps. >> So where's the gaps? Where this words the overlapping cloud. Next, in the end user world, >> there is a little bit of overlap. But the much bigger picture is the complementarity. We are, for example, not trying to be a directory in the Cloud That's azure active directory, which is the sequel to Active Directory. So if we have an identity access solution that connect to active directory, we're gonna compliment that we've done that already. With Octo. Why not do that? Also inactive Directory Boom that's clear. Ignored. You overlap. Look at the much bigger picture. There's a little bit of overlap between in tune and air Watch capabilities, but that's not the big picture. The big picture is combining workspace one with E. M s. to allow Office 365 customers to get conditional access. That's a game, so I think in any partnership you have to look past, I call it sort of these Berlin Wall moments. If the U. S and Soviet Union will fighting over like East Germany, vs West Germany, you wouldn't have had that Berlin wall moment. You have to look past the overlaps. Look at the much bigger picture and I find the way by which the customer wins. When the customer wins, both sides are happy. >> Tearing down the access wall, letting you get seamless. Access the data. All right, Cloud computing housely Multi cloud announcement was azure something to tell on stage, which was a surprise no one knew was coming. No one was briefed on this. It was kind of the hush hush, the big news Michael Delll, Pat Girl singer and it's nothing to tell up there. Um, Safia did a great job and really shows the commitment of Microsoft with the M wear and Dell Technologies. What is this announcement? First, give us your take an analysis of what they announced. And what does it mean? Impact the customers? >> Yeah, listen, you know, for us, it's a further That's what, like the chess pieces lining up of'Em wars vision that we laid up many years for a hybrid cloud world where it's not all public cloud, it isn't all on premise. It's a mixture. We coined that Tom hybrid loud, and we're beginning to see that realize So we had four thousand cloud providers starting to build a stack on VM, where we announced IBM Cloud and eight of us. And they're very special relationships. But customers, some customers of azure, some of the retailers, for example, like Wal Mart was quoted in the press, released Kroger's and some others so they would ask us, Listen, we're gonna have a way by which we can host BMO Workloads in there. So, through a partnership now with Virtue Stream that's owned by Dell on DH er, we will be able to allow we, um, where were close to run in Virtue Stream. Microsoft will sell that solution as what's called Azure V M, where solutions and customers now get the benefit of GMO workloads being able to migrate there if they want to. Or my great back on the on premise. We want to be the best cloud infrastructure for that multi cloud world. >> So you've got IBM eight of us Google last month, you know, knock down now Azure Ali Baba and trying you. Last November, you announced Ali Baba, but not a solution. Right >> now, it's a very similar solutions of easy solution. There's similar what's announced with IBM and Nash >> So is it like your kids where you loved them all equally or what? You just mentioned it that Microsoft will sell the VM wear on Azure. You actually sell the eight of us, >> so there is a distinction. So let me make that clear because everything on the surface might look similar. We have built a solution that is first and preferred for us. Called were MacLeod on a W s. It's a V m er manage solution where the Cloud Foundation stack compute storage networking runs on a ws bare metal, and V. Ember manages that our reps sell that often lead with that. And that's a solution that's, you know, we announced you were three years ago. It's a very special relationship. We have now customer attraction. We announce some big deals in queue, for that's going great, and we want it even grow faster and listen. Eight of us is number one in the market, but there are the customers who have azure and for customers, one azure very similar. You should think of this A similar to the IBM ah cloud relationship where the V C P. V Partners host VM where, and they sell a solution and we get a subscription revenue result out of that, that's exactly what Microsoft is doing. Our reps will get compensated when they sell at a particular customer, but it's not a solution that's managed by BM. Where >> am I correct? You've announced that I think a twenty million dollars deal last quarter via MacLeod and A W. And that's that's an entire deal. Or is that the video >> was Oh, that was an entirely with a customer who was making a big shift to the cloud. When I talked to that customer about the types of workloads, they said that they're going to move hundreds off their APs okay on premise onto via MacLeod. And it appears, so that's, you know, that's the type of cloud transformation were doing. And now with this announcement, there will be other customers. We gave an example of few that Well, then you're seeing certain verticals that are picking as yours. We want those two also be happy. Our goal is to be the undisputed cloud infrastructure for any cloud, any cloud, any AP any device. >> I want to get your thoughts. I was just in the analysts presentation with Dell technology CFO and looking at the numbers, the performance numbers on the revenue side Don Gabin gap our earnings as well as market share. Dell. That scales because Michael Delll, when we interviewed many years ago when it was all going down, hinted that look at this benefits that scale and not everyone's seeing the obvious that we now know what the Amazon scale winds so scale is a huge advantage. Um, bm Where has scale Amazon's got scale as your Microsoft have scales scales Now the new table stakes just as an industry executive and leader as you look at the mark landscape, it's a having have not world you'd have scale. You don't If you don't have scale, you're either ecosystem partner. You're in a white space. How do companies compete in this market? Sanjay, what's your thoughts on I thinkit's >> Jonah's? You said there is a benefit to scale Dell, now at about ninety billion in revenue, has gone public on their stock prices. Done where Dellvin, since the ideal thing, the leader >> and sir, is that point >> leader in storage leader inclined computing peces with Vienna and many other assets like pivotal leaders and others. So that scale VM, Where about a ten billion dollar company, fifth largest software company doing verywell leader in the softer to find infrastructure leader, then use a computing leader and softer, defined networking. I think you need the combination of scale and speed, uh, just scale on its own. You could become a dinosaur, right? And what's the fear that every big company should have that you become ossified? And I think what we've been able to show the world is that V M wear and L can move with scale and speed. It's like having the combination of an elephant and a cheetah and won and that to me special. And for companies like us that do have scaled, we've to constantly ask ourselves, How do we disrupt ourselves? How do we move faster? How do we partner together? How do we look past these blind spots? How do we pardon with big companies, small companies and the winner is the customer. That's the way we think. And we could keep doing that, you'll say so. For example, five, six years ago, nobody thought of VMware--this is going before Dell or EMC--in the world of networking, quietly with ten thousand customers, a two million dollar run rate, NSX has become the undisputed leader and software-defined networking. So now we've got a combination of server, storage and a networking story and Dell VMware, where that's very strong And that's because we moved with speed and with scale. >> So of course, that came to an acquisition with Nice Sarah. Give us updates on the recent acquisitions. Hep C e o of Vela Cloud. What's happening there? >> Yeah, we've done three. That, I think very exciting to kind of walk through them in chronological order about eighteen months ago was Velo Cloud. We're really excited about that. It's sort of like the name, velocity and cloud fast. Simple Cloud based. It is the best solution. Ston. How do we come to deciding that we went to talk to our partners like t other service providers? They were telling us this is the best solution in town. It connects to the data center story to the cloud story and allows our virtual cloud network to be the best softer. To find out what you can, you have your existing Mpls you might have your land infrastructure but there's nobody who does softer to find when, like Philip, they're excited about that cloud health. We're very excited about that because that brings a multi cloud management like, sort of think of it like an e r P system on top of a w eso azure to allow you to manage your costs and resource What ASAP do it allows you to manage? Resource is for materials world manufacturing world. In this world, you've got resources that are sitting on a ws or azure. Uh, cloud held does it better than anybody else. Hefty. Oh, now takes a Cuban eighty story that we'd already begun with pivotal and with Google is you remember at at PM world two years ago. And that's that because the founders of Cuban eighties left Google and started FTO. So we're bringing that DNA we've become now one of the top two three contributors to communities, and we want to continue to become the de facto platform for containers. If you go to some of the airports in San Francisco, New York, I think Keilani and Heathrow to you'LL see these ads that are called container where okay, where do you think the Ware comes from Vienna, where, OK, and our goal is to make containers as container where you know, come to you from the company that made vmc possible of'Em where So if we popularized PM's, why not also popularised the best enterprise contain a platform? That's what helped you will help us do >> talk about Coburn at ease for a minute because you have an interesting bridge between end user computing and their cloud. The service is micro. Services that are coming on are going to be powering all these APS with either data and or these dynamic services. Cooper, Nettie sees me the heart of that. We've been covering it like a blanket. Um, I'm gonna get your take on how important that is. Because back Nelson, you're setting the keynote at the Emerald last year. Who burn it eases the dial tone. Is Cooper Netease at odds with having a virtual machine or they complimentary? How does that evolving? Is it a hedge? What's the thoughts there? >> Yeah, First off, Listen, I think the world has begun to realize it is a world of containers and V ems. If you looked at the company that's done the most with containers. Google. They run their containers in V EMS in their cloud platform, so it's not one or the other. It's vote. There may be a world where some parts of containers run a bare metal, but the bulk of containers today run and Beyonce And then I would say, Secondly, you know, five. Six years ago, people all thought that Doctor was going to obliterate VM where, But what happened was doctors become a very good container format, but the orchestration layer from that has not become daugher. In fact, Cuban Eddie's is kind of taking a little of the head and steam off Dr Swarm and Dr Enterprise, and it is Cooper Navy took the steam completely away. So Senses Way waited for the right time to embrace containers because the obvious choice initially would have been some part of the doctor stack. We waited as Borg became communities. You know, the story of how that came on Google. We've embraced that big time, and we've stated a very important ball hefty on All these moves are all part of our goal to become the undisputed enterprise container platform, and we think in a multi cloud world that's ours to lose. Who else can do multi cloud better than VM? Where may be the only company that could have done that was Red Hat. Not so much now, inside IBM, I think we have the best chance of doing that relative. Anybody else >> Sanjay was talking about on our intro this morning? Keynote analysis. Talking about the stock price of Dell Technologies, comparing the stock price of'Em where clearly the analysis shows that the end was a big part of the Dell technologies value. How would you summarize what v m where is today? Because on the Kino there was a Bank of America customers. She said she was the CTO ran, she says, Never mind. How we got here is how we go floors the end wars in a similar situation where you've got so much success, you always fighting for that edge. But as you go forward as a company, there's all these new opportunities you outlined some of them. What should people know about the VM? We're going forward. What is the vision in your words? What if what is VM where >> I think packed myself and all of the key people among the twenty five thousand employees of'Em are trying to create the best infrastructure company of all time for twenty one years. Young. OK, and I think we have an opportunity to create an incredible brand. We just have to his use point on the begins show create platforms. The V's fear was a platform. Innocent is a platform workspace. One is a platform V san, and the hyper convert stack of weeks right becomes a platform that we keep doing. That Carbonetti stuff will become a platform. Then you get platforms upon platforms. One platforms you create that foundation. Stone now is released. ADelle. I think it's a better together message. You take VX rail. We should be together. The best option relative to smaller companies like Nutanix If you take, you know Veum Where together with workspace one and laptops now put Microsoft in the next. There's nobody else. They're small companies like Citrix Mobile. I'm trying to do it. We should be better than them in a multi cloud world. They maybe got the companies like Red Hat. We should have bet on them. That said, the end. Where needs toe also have a focus when customers don't have Dale infrastructure. Some people may have HP servers and emcee storage or Dell Silvers and netapp storage or neither. Dellery emcee in that case, usually via where, And that's the way we roll. We want to be relevant to a multi cloud, multi server, multi storage, any hardware, any cloud. Any AP any device >> I got. I gotta go back to the red hat. Calm in a couple of go. I could see you like this side of IBM, right? So So it looks like a two horse race here. I mean, you guys going hard after multi cloud coming at it from infrastructure, IBM coming at it with red hat from a pass layer. I mean, if I were IBM, I had learned from VM where leave it alone, Let it blossom. I mean, we have >> a very good partisan baby. Let me first say that IBM Global Services GTS is one about top sai partners. We do a ton of really good work with them. Uh, I'm software re partner number different areas. Yeah, we do compete with red hat with the part of their portfolios. Relate to contain us. Not with Lennox. Eighty percent plus of their businesses. Lennox, They've got parts of J Boss and Open Stack that I kind of, you know, not doing so well. But we do compete with open ship. That's okay, but we don't know when we can walk and chew gum so we can compete with Red Hat. And yet partner with IBM. That's okay. Way just need to be the best at doing containing platform is better than open shifter. Anybody, anything that red hat has were still partner with IBM. We have to be able to look at a world that's not black and white. And this partnership with Microsoft is a good example. >> It's not a zero sum game, and it's a huge market in its early days. Talk >> about what's up for you now. What's next? What's your main focus? What's your priorities? >> Listen, we're getting ready for VM World now. You know in August we want to continue to build momentum on make many of these solutions platforms. So I tell our sales reps, take the number of customers you have and add a zero behind that. OK, so if you've got ten thousand customers of NSX, how do we get one hundred thousand customers of insects. You have nineteen thousand customers of Visa, which, by the way, significantly head of Nutanix. How do we have make one hundred ninety thousand customers? And we have that base? Because we have V sphere and we have the Delll base. We have other partners. We have, I think, eighty thousand customers off and use of computing tens of millions of devices. How do we make sure that we are workspace? One is on billion. Device is very much possible. That's the vision. >> I think that I think what's resonating for me when I hear you guys, when you hear you talk when we have conversations also in Pat on stage talks about it, the simplification message is a good one and the consistency of operating across multiple environments because it sounds great that if you can achieve that, that's a good thing. How you guys get into how you making it simple to run I T. And consistent operating environment. It's all about keeping the customer in the middle of this. And when we listen to customs, all of these announcements the partnership's when there was eight of us, Microsoft, anything that we've done, it's about keeping the customer first, and the customer is basically guiding up out there. And often when I sit down with customers, I had the privilege of talking hundreds of thousands of them. Many of these CEOs the S and P five hundred I've known for years from S athe of'Em were they'LL Call me or text me. They want us to be a trusted advisor to help them understand where and how they should move in their digital transformation and compared their journey to somebody else's. So when we can bring the best off, for example, of developer and operations infrastructure together, what's called DEV Ops customers are wrestling threw that in there cloud journey when we can bring a multi device world with additional workspace. Customers are wrestling that without journey there, trying to figure out how much they keep on premise how much they move in the cloud. They're thinking about vertical specific applications. All of these places where if there's one lesson I've learned in my last ten twenty years of it has become a trusted advisor to your customers. Lean on them and they will lean on you on when you do that. I mean the beautiful world of technology is there's always stuff to innovate. >> Well, they have to lean on you because they can't mess around with all this infrastructure. They'LL never get their digital transformation game and act together, right? Actually, >>= it's great to see you. We'Ll see you at PM, >> Rollo. Well, well, come on, we gotta talk hoops. All right, All right, All right, big. You're a big warriors fan, right? We're Celtics fan. Would be our dream, for both of you are also Manny's themselves have a privileged to go up against the great Warriors. But what's your prediction this year? I mean, I don't know, and I >> really listen. I love the warriors. It's ah, so in some senses, a little bit of a tougher one. Now the DeMarcus cousins is out for, I don't know, maybe all the playoffs, but I love stuff. I love Katie. I love Clay, you know, and many of those guys is gonna be a couple of guys going free agents, so I want to do >> it again. Joy. Well, last because I don't see anybody stopping a Celtics may be a good final. That would be fun if they don't make it through the rafters, though. That's right. Well, I Leonard, it's tough to make it all right. That sounds great. >> Come on. Sanjay Putin, CEO of BM Wear Inside the Cube, Breaking down his commentary of you on the landscape of the industry and the big news with Microsoft there. Other partner's bringing you all the action here Day one of three days of coverage here in the Cubicle two sets a canon of cube coverage out there. We're back with more after this short break.

>> System partners. Lie from Barcelona, Spain. It's the cue covering Sisqo Live Europe, brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> Hello and welcome Back to the Cubes Live coverage Day two of three days of wall to wall coverage here in Europe in Barcelona, Spain. Francisco Live twenty nineteen I'm John Career with Dave. A long takes too many man hosting great loaded interviews this week here. Francisco live guys kicking off day to day one was all the big announcement Cisco putting in all the announcement's really is setting in and the messaging coming together, the product portfolios filling out. Clearly, Cisco is adopting and path to the cloud, taking their data center business, securing that bring that data center into the cloud kind of hybrid multi cloud, big messes around multi cloud and then under the hood data center traffic patterns, air changing. Its not a ribbon replaces extension to the environment. Cisco's intent based networking plus Cloud plus Cloud center management. A lot of stuff we discussed that yesterday, but I want your take. Is Cisco's positioning viable? And what does it mean, Visa VI? The competition, because Cisco is a blue chip tech player, certainly have zillions of customers very relevant. This is a huge impact. How their position themselves do. >> Yeah, so So John Roemer a few years ago we were saying, Hyper clouds going Teo hybrid. The hyper scale clouds, the public loud provide you going to take over the world and boy Cisco's in trouble because if a third or half of the market all of a sudden evaporate from them, those enterprise buyers of switches and routers and everything else like that, Cisco is doomed. Well, you know, we listen to the keynote yesterday and Cisco's talking about all of their solutions anywhere. And when you go through the ecosystem of Public Cloud hybrid Cloud multi Cloud, say this Cisco have a play there, and the answer is absolutely, you know, it's not just the you know, after empty acquisition, which has software in a ws. But, you know, S t win is going to be a critical component to get from my data centers to the public clouds on DH. Cisco has software and solutions and consulting TTO help customers in all of these environment. So we always know that there's partnerships and there's competition. There's a lot of players out there, but you know, it was good to see them. You know, talking. You know a lot about what they're doing with Cooper Netease with Amazon because you can't talk about cloud either public cloud or multi cloud without first talking about Amazon. Last year we were a little critical John and said, OK, Google's great, but Google's number three or four. So you've got to be there was Amazon got to be there with Microsoft and certified that we've already interviewed a couple of service writers always been a strength for Sisko to be in there on. So, you know, good positioning. Well, you know, we talked yesterday a bunch about the bridge to possible on where to go. But the more I think about that anywhere is what Cisco's branded everything. And that's when when you talk multicolored multi clouds, really a whole bunch of clouds and a whole bunch of things. And therefore I need a player that's going to help give me coverage in all of these environment and Cisco's making a strong case to be >> there. And Dave. So I mean Stew's, right? A couple years ago, we were critical of Cisco and I think rightfully so. I think the whole industry looked at them as not in the middle of the fairway and certainly the recovery shot. Francisco is really strong because a lot changed. Go back a few years. They didn't have a good ecosystem for developers. They didn't have a good open source position. They kind of work, you know. Do I go up to stack or not? But they had the court networking, so there's a lot of people are saying, Hey, if Cisco doesn't make a move, they're doomed. We were one of them, so lots changed. You seeing the adoption of micro services containers, AP eyes the growth of definite That Suzy we has initiated is clear proof in my opinion. Then you've got the data center guys saying, Hey, what could take networking and and take this and enable clouds. So Cisco, making good moves, put themselves in pole position for growth? >> Well, I think the first point is if you roll back ten years ago, we've not Francisco. We were critical. What? All of it. It was clear to us that cloud was going to be where all the growth wass and if you didn't have a public cloud, you are going to be in trouble unless you developed a cloud strategy. So certainly Cisco de Liam see now you know William c. V. M. Where none of them really owned a public cloud strategy. And five years ago, they had to figure it out. Well, they've figured out that actually, managing multi clouds is a great opportunity. And so Francisco's got a viable strategy. Networks between clouds are going to flatten their going to need management specifically as it relates to Cisco and maybe their competition. They have TTo position themselves as R multi cloud management system is higher performance and more secure than the competition. That's what they have to sell their customers on. And the second piece of that is they got a transition from selling ports to selling software on there, making that transition. So I like their strategy, By the way, I also like VM wear strategy. They capitulated to a ws and now they're tight with a w s. IBM went out, paid two million dollars for soft layer, so they've got a cloud strategy. Oracles got a cloud strategy. Microsoft got a great cloud stress. So if you go through and >> tickle at the hole and they have clouds, so let's let's just understand something. There's clouds and then clouds strategies. Right? So thirty >> four billion dollars that IBM paying for Red Hat is giving them a multi cloud strategy. More than just saying, we have a bunch of data centers in their medals. But it >> was both, maybe not so much in the public cloud, right? I would say I would argue that their public cloud has failed to meet their expectations. That's funnel cloud IBM. And that's why they had to pay thirty four billion dollars for for Red Hat, I would say just the opposite about Microsoft. Their public cloud strategy has been an enormous success, and they're very well positioned for multi cloud. >> Okay, so let's just put on the table. So Cisco looks at the public cloud as partners, not competitors. So Amazon Azure Google aren't competing with Cisco. There are there ways or they're partnering. We'll we'll come understand. Competition is all about understanding, Absolutely as a cloud. So I would say Cisco's strategy to partner just like he did, just like everyone else. And l did. That's the competitive, not cloud So. Or maybe this is the question. Are the public clouds competitive to Sisko >> that their frenemies John? Uh, >> you know, the answer's. Yes, there's no question about this. They're growing at twenty, thirty, forty percent a year. Francisco and IBM, HP. They're growing it, you know, much lower. So single digits. If that's >> so such on, we know if Amazon if there is a profitable space that they can offer competitive service, they will. You know, security. You said Cisco's got a great position Security, both what they've had for a long time, and they've done acquisitions like duo. More recently on DH, you know, we've seen lots of pieces of the public cloud ecosystem that Cisco's bought over the last few years. Clicker was one on one we spent some time talking about, but absolutely, you know, Amazon goes after some of those pieces, so they're gonna partner Cisco's Got it. Last I checked it at least three dozen products in the eight of us marketplace. But you know it is. They can live there, but there will be competition. So >> this girl's got some huge assets in this game. They've got eight hundred thousand plus customers. They, you know, sixty percent of the networking market, so they own the install base. It's really the only market that you can think of that's a major market where they're the dominant player still owns, you know, sixty percent of market never just go for >> networking, and VM wear for the hyper visor are very similar. In that case, Dave and both have now have a similar strategy as to how they're going. >> That's the most interesting competitive dynamic, in my view, is V M wearing this acquisition of Nice era and obviously, Cisco. Cisco is not going to take this lying down. They've got a C. I A and no, they claim number one. They didn't say whose data that was I was looking squinting for is that I D C. Guard divorce her. But, >> well, let's talk about growth because you know how I always complain about market. Researchers aren't on the mark in terms of the reality of where the market is, So you mentioned growth. So are we. If we're early on cloud growth and that's where the growth is, what is the cloud adoption going to look like over the next ten to twenty years? Is it going to look more like public Cloud or is going to look more like on premises evolving to cloud operations And if the growth of cloud operations is all things wide area Network mentioned the wind, then there's more growth coming. So that's the case. Is Sisko going to be able to capture that growth for the future? >> Well, I mean, in terms of growth, I think eight of us is on its way to being a one hundred billion dollars revenue company, and that's pretty impressive given where they are today. I mean, they're gonna triple in revenue, so that's that's where the growth is. So now Cisco's already participating in a huge TAM. What they've got to do is hold on to that business and identify new opportunities where they could manage multi cloud instances and compete effectively with V M. Where who's coming at it from the hyper visor? And now, they said yesterday, trying to do to networks in storage what it did for systems and then IBM Red hat coming out. It really, from the applications perspective and with the services view Microsoft with a foot in both camps, You got Oracle in its little niche. Just really interest. >> We got an install a base that's moving to the cloud. You got net new company they're going to be started might have on premise. Orgel Full Cloud. This is the question that everyone's going to ask. I think Cisco can take their existing base with moving packets from Point A to Point B and storing and making datum or intelligence moving Date around is a big networking phenomenon. >> Here's the question. Here's a question, Andy Jassy would say. We believe they're going to be far fewer data centers in the future that most data is going to live in the public lounge. The likes of Michael Dell, Yeah, Charles Robbins, et cetera. I think they see the world is a hybrid world, right? That there's going to be Mohr data that's in a hybrid on Prem Plus Cloud, then is going to be in the >> public. You know, I love Andy Jazzy, but I'll just say first of all I understand is bias in his perspective. And I think he's right at one level. Why wouldn't Amazon see people moving data centers to the flower? I get that I say that it's going to be in the networks. That's where the action will be. Where are the networks of the networks? In the cloud of the networks on premise. Are the networks on a phone? I OT So if coyote and edge coming together, it's all one network. Yeah, you're gonna have The value is going to be in the network. Not necessarily. The clouds we say or is shared values. >> Yeah. I mean, you talk about EJ computing and Io ti. Cisco's got muraki, which is growing strong. SD LAN is a critical component for this multi cloud piece. There really posed toe, you know, drive this next generation of five G not something we've dug into a lot yet, but, you know, it is finally coming, you know, really soon here. And Cisco has a lot of those pieces to be able to hit the next. >> It always went back to the data, in my opinion, and the leverage points for data are Saso. Yeah, if your own the applications business, you're doing well there, You're in a good position. All the data's running over Cisco Networks, so that puts them in A in a really good position. And and as we know the likes of a Ws and Microsoft Alibaba senator, they're trying to get as much data into their clouds as possible. >> And what I loved yesterday in the keynote is data was actually one of the central components that they talked about, which the Cisco I know of ten or twenty years ago. I was just bitch that ran over our pipes. So they understand the value of data. And they're driving to that mark. >> Well, we've been saying on the Cube now for nine years days at the center of the value proposition Data at the Centre Data Center. Value proposition. This is actually happening. It's really going way. See? A lot of growth and cloud, Dave. Good commentaries do. Well done. We have Sergeant Gupta, one of the bank. All the leaders coming on the Cube here. Francisco breakdown. I'm gonna ask him the tough questions. Stay with us for day two. Coverage here in the Cube live in Barcelona for a stupid him in David want breaking down all the action. We'll be right back with more after this short break

Live from London England, it's the CUBE covering .NEXT Conference Europe 2018 brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome Back to the CUBE here from London. Our reporting of Nutanix NEXT 2018 in Europe. With me here is Frans Coppus. You are an ICT manager at  Driessen? I'm very curious. Driessen is a customer of Nutanix? I understand that you develop HRM software among other things? >> Tell me about Driessen.  How does this work? >> Yes, well Driessen is a family business. We are a business service provider for the public sector in the Netherlands and the Driessen Group is actually a group of companies that make employment possible. We do that through the offering  of several different services. You should think of connecting people to work, so a staffing function, but next to this , we also develop software and services to take over processes for other companies or to make processes easier. >> That sounds a bit like on one hand you are a Employment Placement company, helping people get work, but on the other hand, you also seem to do something with software and the delivery of your services as a software product. How does that work? >> Yes, that's right. We deliver services to make other companies' processes easier.  You should think of payroll and things like that, but also all other kinds of processes for which we mainly use the digital services that we develop ourselves. For example, think of  a package like AFAS profit , where AFAS profit falls short on some functionality that customers would want to make use of. We can  help those customers to provide that extra functionality to improve processes. >> Yeah, that sounds like you are software development shop. You develop the software in-house? >> Tell me more about that.  Do you do this on-premise? Do you use the cloud? What tools do your developers use? How does that work? >> Well, have a team of about 25 in-house software developers.  They are spread across a number of our different companies , and the software we develop runs  partially on prem  and partially also in the cloud. >> Yes, and I understand that you have been doing this with Nutanix for a year, year and a half to provide a foundation for your infrastructure. Can you explain how this works?  What Nutanix products and services you use? What are some of the benefits? >> Well, we started looking into modernization  of our data center at the beginning of last year. That was how it started. Then we looked further into things. We already had some interest in Nutanix. We did some more research and  ultimately we  decided to choose Nutanix and basically slowly replace our entire data center  with Nutanix. So we installed some hardware  but subsequently we also selected AHV as the hypervisor layer. We came from VMWare so we basically migrated everything. I must say that the implementation itself went very quickly. The implementation of the Nutanix environment  was really a piece of cake and then we started to migrate our VMs to the platform one-by-one.  And this year we completed this process. Currently, our entire data center is running on Nutanix.  What were the problems you were hoping to solve? Well, you should mainly think about scalability.  We liked the fact  that we could start small with Nutanix  but when needed we could scale easily. Performance was an issue in the previous environment, which we also completely resolved. I think the biggest challenge we had was to make things easier. We had created a pretty complex landscape over the years. That was actually the main reason why we ultimately chose for Nutanix. Simplification of the whole landscape. Easy to manage, especially also  since we are using a mixed solution. Partially on- prem and partially in the cloud. With Nutanix this is easy to manage. >> Yeah, exactly.  Since you are an ICT manager. I can imagine that your role also changes? I assume that at first, the main  focus was on infrastructure, as it was difficult and where attention was needed. How has your role changed over the course of time? >> Yeah, that's exactly right. That role is changing.  Initially, you are very focused on the operation to keep all the "balls in the air." All sorts of things you actually don't want to have to deal with.  And this is what we are now seeing. We are able to manage the environment with fewer people.  That means you free up more time and together with the management team,  you can use this this to look into how we can improve our services How can we improve our availability?  And all of this at equal or lower cost and with less effort. >> Yeah, and I assume, to use the word " digital transformation", is also a challenge for you? You want to move closer to your customer.  How do you do that as an IT department? How how move closer to the business internally at Driessen, but also external customers? How does that work? >>Well, the needs of the customer is often translated by the Business to the software developers. What is important for us is the time-to-market. The development life cycle is pretty rapid. We work a lot on the basis of orders and as such it often goes paired with requirements that we need to adhere to. So, time to market is very important in such cases. With Nutanix we are actually able to deploy software faster and offer new features to our software engineers  who in turn can use this. >> Yes, so you are saying that your software developers can thus get closer to the business. They require less time to lay the groundwork, as it were.  We are here at .NEXT, we have watched the  keynotes, heard a lot announcements. Nutanix started as an infrastructure. A so-called modernization of what you had. Meanwhile, there are 15 products. It has become much more gigantic. When you look at the growth of the amount of people walking around here, 3,500 people.  I am curious, how are you looking at this? You will be walking around here for a few more days. You've watched the keynotes. You see the crowds. What is your impression of the event? >> Well I must say, "very cool!" Last year I went to Nice, That was a very good conference. That was also the reason that made me think "I coming back this year for sure". During the first keynote, it was really cool to see, how much bigger the entire  event has become but also the success of Nutanix. Last year, in Nice, I spoke with  some of my peers who were still 't doubt whether they would transition to Nutanix. Well, I told him about our experiences and told them I would recommend it for sure including the use of AHV as hypervisor.   You are starting to feel how everything has matured. So much more has been added. I was impressed with what products  I have seen over the last two days along with the simplicity and maturity of the products  Really super cool to see.  What really stuck with me.   What really impressed me was Frame. Frame is really super cool. It's also something we are for sure looking at to use. In addition, Beam looks very appealing. I must honestly say, we now have our entire data center on prem. Also our DR environment is on prem, because when we made the decision, there was no Beam. If I would have to make the decision again, I would absolutely choose Beam to help solve DR. There too, the simplicity with which you can manage it is really cool to see. Well, in the future we continue  to monitor such developments and I am sure that we will work with  products such as Beam and Frame in the future. >> The made the announcement of the core product. The core products to essentials, which is a bit of the uplift. Those are the next small steps you can take. And then you get enterprise. Thats where you are especially finding the new product offerings such  SaaS products , the Xi Cloud , and what I am curious about is the following. I also know from Nutanix from the perspective of infrastructure? I have seen them grow. And looking at all the announcements they have made. All those products they have developed  What was for you the lightbulb moment?  The moment where you thought "when I get home after the weekend,  I am going to use this?" I want to learn more about this!"  What is that one product from which you say  I want to get started with that!" >> I think , if I had to choose it, then I would say, "I will definitely get started with Frame"   to look at how we can provide our colleagues with a workplace when they work remote or things like that. >> Yes, >> Is also one of the issues that you are trying to solve using Nutanix? Traditionally, Nutanix did lots of VDI. Still does a lot of VDI. Is that something that the Driessen Group is moving towards? >> Yeah, well at least for a part of our colleaguesI, I see ways to implement Frame as a substitute for a VDI environment. >> Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Exactly. Yes. Exactly right.  >> Also, I was really...  and I did not realize that  they were working on this, but Nutanix  is building its own Cloud I am very curious what this will bring.  Especially if this will seamlessly integrate with your on prem environment. At the moment, I find that to be the strength of Nutanix?  The fact that you can  you can easily switch between on your own prem Nutanix environment or a cloud environment. Well, if there is also another Nutanix in the Cloud option, that would be cool. Exactly. >> All right, last question. You employ developers  Today, we also saw some announcements  during the keynote around cloud-native as it is called so nicely So Karbon, databases in the Cloud with Era with Buckets, S3, S3 storage. Are these things from which you think,  "my developers will make use of this?" Yes. Yes. My developers are all knocking on the door.  They want to  get started with containers and other stuff. So that's very good to hear that Nutanix is also diligently working on that and how it will integrate within Nutanix.  So my software developers will be very happy with that. >> Yeah, great!  Well congratulations! That really sounds like a top store!. A very nice story about Driessen. how you are using Nutanix. Well, I wish you success with your next steps that you will undoubtedly take. That was it for now.  Thanks for watching the Cube together with Frans here in London Til next time.

Live from London England, it's the CUBE covering .NEXT Conference Europe 2018 brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome Back to the CUBE here from London. Our reporting Nutanix NEXT 2018 in Europe. Next to me is Frans Coppus. You are a manager at ICT Driessen? I'm very curious. Driessen, customer Nutanix? I understand you among other software make HRM? >> Tell me about Driessen. How does that work? How does that work? >> Yeah, uh well Driessen is a family business. We are a business service provider for the public sector in the Netherlands The Driessen Group is actually a group of companies that make work possible. We do that through the offering  of several different services. You should think of connecting people to work, so a staffing function, but next to this , we also develop software and services to take over processes for other companies or to make processes easier. >> That sounds a bit like you're on the edge. On the one hand you are a Employment Placement company, helping people get work, but on the other hand, you seem to do something with software and delivering your services as a software product. How does that work? >> Yeah, and do We indeed. That's right. We deliver services to other processes make companies easier. Think of payroll and things like that, but also all kinds of other processes and that's what  we mainly use the digital services and we develop these ourselves. For example, you should think of  a package like AFAS profit , where AFAS profit falls short in some functionality , but which customers  would like to make use of. We can we who help these customers  to provide that extra functionality to improve processes. >> Yeah, that sounds like you are software development house. you develops yes the software. >> That's right. >> How about that? Do your on-premises? If you do in the cloud? Where working with your developers? How does that work? How does that work? >> Well, we do it with a club of about 25 software developers we in private service to have. Spread across a number of different companies we have, and the software we Developing running Indeed, partly on prem and partly also in the cloud. >> Yes I understand that you do for a year or half do with Nutanix such as underlay for your infrastructure. Can you explain how how together is how the services which Nutanix products you use? What advantages do you have it? >> Well, we indeed the beginning of last year we look at our data center to actually modernize. That was the rise. When we have oriented ourselves. We already had some interest in Nutanix. Are there going deeper into deepen and finally we indeed decided to limit to Nutanix choose that. To actually the entire data center, we had slowly going to replace by Nutanix. Um, so we are there put down a piece of hardware, but then also chosen as the AHV hypervisor layer. We came from VMWare. We have it all petted or migrated to the implementation itself completely very quickly should say importing t soup boiler and was really a piece of cake and Then we started to one for our VMs to migrate to the platform. Uh, and that we have this year we found rounded. Currently running our entire data center running on actually uh uh on Nutanix indeed. Yes, because what were the problems you hoping to solve? of And, then you should think about a particular piece Scalability is not it? So for example we fine with Nutanix in any case, could reasonably small start, but if necessary, uh easy to be scales. Performance was an issue on the old surroundings. We actually have completely resolved. I think the biggest uh what we the biggest challenge we had was to make it easier. We had Yes quite a complex landscape been built up over the years. Uh and um, well that was actually the main why we express sible for Nutanix have chosen. Yes, simplification of the whole landscape. Easy to manage, especially since we thus actually have a mixed environment. Deel where I click ofthe cloud? Uh, well that's fine with Nutanix to manage, so eh. >> Yeah, exactly. I imagine when he hey you are IT manager. I can imagine your role uh too changed huh? First it was take I to really focus on infrastructure, What was difficult was that many friction. Um, what's your role in the course of changing time? >> Yeah, no, that's exactly right. That role is changing. uh in Initially at very busy to focus after the operation. To put it all in keep air. Uh sorts of things you actually yes it sounds I think you would not actually working with it wants to keep. Uhm, uhm, and we now see. We see Now just that with fewer people and a much more simple way that environment can manage. That means you some more time for free, and the time, even trying especially uh to stop uh along with the business see how we can provide our services improve? How can we availability improve? And say to equal or less cost and with less effort. >> Yeah, because I assume that you have to code word to use some digital transformation that I take for you are also an issue. Yes. You can also just wants to more to move the client. How do you do that if like, hey if IT department? How how you slide closer against the business and Driessen itself but also to the customer? How does that work with you? >> Uh well, uh, let's say, the customer needs to of course translated into the business Go to frequent the software developers. So what really us is very important is the time-to-market. Development course is very fast. We work a lot on the basis of Procurement and tendering often various demands we put than we meet to come. Yes. So, time to market is very important that, uh, that's why we uh um with Nutanix able to actually faster to deploy new features to provide direction our software developers then with them to get started. >> Yeah, yeah, because you say your software developers can thus closer So sit closer to that business. That requiring less time to UH to lay the groundwork, as it were. Um, I'm looking for, they not here .NEXT, uh we have the keynotes seen a lot announcements. Nutanix started as if modernization of infrastructure of What you had here. Meanwhile, are 15 products. It has become much more gigantic. If you people around here are looking grown. 3500 people, so therefore I am a bit like it? How do you doing that? Do you walk here too a few days around. You've seen the keynotes. You see the crowds. What is your impression of the event? >> Well I must say, very cool eh, I'm I last year in Nice, eh it was a very good conference. That was the reason I was thinking of now, I'm going this year definitely return. It was really cool to see the first keynote, how much greater it has now become, the whole event, but also the success of Nutanix. I uh, I spoke last year in Nice yet some of my peers still 't doubt was whether they would over Steps to Nutanix. Well I told him what our experiences were with it. And uh, and said, I it can definitely recommend. Also say the Using the AHV as Hypervisor. In the meantime brand just, it's so much matured. Uh uh, there's so much more added. I was really what really impressed me over the last two days have seen all new products and adulthood and the simplicity of such products. Yes. Really super cool to see, uh, what I was really stuck, I really of was impressed, was particularly Frame. Frame is uh uh uh uh really super cool. That is also something we definitely presently to look for to use it. In addition, Beam is something that very appealing. I must say, we have now uh uh uh uh all say data center on prem. So Also my DR environment we have on prem, because when we made the decision, there was no Beam. Yes, if I would again to choose, I would absolutely sure choose the DR uh using to solve beam. There too, the simplicity with which you can manage. Uh that's really cool to see. Well, we will in the future ensure that species continue to follow developments and uh I know sure that in the future to work uh continue with products such as a beam and a frame for example. >> Yeah, because what you see uh huh, they the announcement made by the core product. Heh, the core of the core products to essentials, which is a bit of the uplift heh? Those are the following small steps you can convert, yes, and then you get enterprise. Yes. There are now especially the really new projects uh Xi SaaS products de Xi Cloud and uh, and I am very curious to now is look I also know from Nutanix heh from that perspective? Infrastructure, and I have seen them grow. And watching all the announcements they done. All those products they ge done. What would really be for you the, you know, What was with you the light that went so you say yes I'll go you know when I uh home After the weekend, here I'm going to stroke. Here I would like to know more. What is the one product that you now say, I really want to get to work? >> I think if I had to choose it, then I would say, then I'm going to frame me definitely started to look at how we can put that to say uh uh uh uh our employees easier by a work to provide when they for instance remote work or things like that. >> Yes, is also one of the uh the issues which you who wants you solve by Nutanix Heh? Traditionally, did Nutanix many VDI. Still does much VDI. Is that something that uh, where you go when Driessen? >> Yeah, well at least for a part of our I'm sure a staff uh uh ways to deal deploy Frame say as a substitute for a VDI environment yes. >> Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Exactly. Yes. Exactly right. Uhm. >> And also I was really huh, and I did not think they were doing, but I understood so which uh Nutanix now we actually their own cloud is building. Yes. Yes that I am very curious what that is going to bring. Surely as say, seamlessly integrates with your back on prem omgeving. I actually find that to be the strength of this time of Nutanix heh? The that you you can switch easily between on your own prem Nutanix environment or a cloud environment. Yes. Well, if there is still a uh a Nutanix variation in the Cloud comes in, yes it is uh totally cool. Exactly. Yes. Exactly. Yes. >> Last >> though demand. You have of course developers in dienst. We have today also in the keynote various announcements seen around cloud-native as nice hot. Heh? So Karbon, databases in the Cloud with Era with Buckets, S3, S3 storage. Uh, these are also things that you think of, hey, that my developers will also get to work? Yes. Yes. mac we stand on all to knock on the door. Who want to containers to work and that kind Affairs , Uh uh uh so that's very good to hear that Also there say Nutanix fully is doing, and how it integrates within uh Nutanix, so uh, yes, there will my Software developers will be very happy with it. Yes. >> Yeah, great! but congratulations. That sounds like really a top story. A very nice story about Driessen. how you Using Nutanix. Well, I wish you success with the following to step. Thank you. Which undoubtedly UH will come. uhm. And that was it for UH for now. Thanks for look at the Cube Together with Frans herein in London uh, and until next time.

>> Live from London, England, it's theCUBE, covering .NEXT Conference Europe 2018. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back to London, England. I'm Stu Miniman with my cohost, Eup Piscar, and we're going to dig into one of the partnerships that Nutanix have. Joining me, two CUBE alums, Michael Cade, who's a technologist with Veeam. Had you on the program last year in Nice, and welcome back a little closer to home for you, here in London. >> Yeah cheers Stu, Hidey-ho. >> And welcome, six months with Nutanix, someone I've known. CUBE alumni. So, wherever you go, you know, there are CUBE alumnis always. So Jay Chitnis, who's the head of Global Strategic Alliances with Nutanix. Jay, thanks for joining us. >> Stu, thanks for having me. It's great to be here, guys. >> Alright, first of all You know, Michael, what's it mean having the show here in London, and would love your opinion, having kind of, how Nutanix's doing with Europe adoption. >> Yeah, so, obviously being in London means I don't have to go on a plane and travel anywhere, right? So, that's one benefit, but one thing, I was there last year, obviously, we spoke. I think one of the things I can see here is how many people are here. Feel's like its doubled in numbers, doubled in size. Doubled the conversations, obviously with us, with our product coming out in July/August of this year. Only a version one but we're seeing good feedback, good strong feedback and lots of questions around that. >> Yeah absolutely, 3500 is the number I heard here. Jay, we're going to talk about with Veeam, so set the stage for us, data protection, what's going, Nutanix positioning, and what you look to that. >> Yeah, its a vibrant landscape, right? So, just to kind of pick up a little bit on the thread around the European side. We've got over 50 partners here. Over 50 technology partners and a number of channel partners. There's just a vibrant buzz and one of the first things that people always talk about is we're in the the nation of GDPR. If you start to think about just where's this nation, this notion of data and where does it reside, data mobility and that sort of thing. That's one of the first things that we get hit with all the time; we get asked a lot. And so, it's really core to what we do. That's where the relationship really comes in. >> I love the little commentary there at that GDPR. Cause I remember last year, like most of last year, every show that had data protection, everything, we talked about GDPR a lot. To be honest, once we got past May, we didn't talk about it a lot. I mean, we said we knew it's real when there were some lawsuits and that happened rather fast to some of the really large companies, but is this still a major conversation with costumers, where are we and? >> Yeah, yeah, massively so that sovereignty of data, where is resides is something that, speaking to enterprise and mid-market customers over in Europe, there absolutely still top of mind is, why are we keeping that data? Where are we keeping that data? How do we leverage our tool set to understand where that data is? And then actually provide some insight into where it is, and report against things like violations between different locations. And just, We obviously had to go through that process of becoming GDPR compliant ourselves, and obviously as a global company, you have to kind of eat your own dog food. And understand, you have to know your own data, understand what that's doing, why we're keeping that? How it's being stored, and the message we just relay back into content and let our customers then use that. >> So what does that look? Maybe from a technology perspective, if you had to deal with GDPR, from an Nutanix standpoint, from a Veeam standpoint. What does it change, right? What does it change in terms of backing up? What does it change in terms of storing it? In a cloud or on print? Have you seen any majors changes in how that works for customers? >> Yeah, so the good the is that thinking about what that data is and where it's being stored. They know that in Germany that data may not be able to leave Germany or that data may not be able to leave the UK or Ireland and they might have offices in remote locations in various different countries. So, a simple thing that we put in was the ability to put tagging on repositories, on our physical constructs so that we knew the data path and the workflow. And then be able to use then Veeam one to be able to report against that so you understood where that data was going but also flag up any of those violations that may be where a backup job has pushed it to a different location. We need to know about that and we need to fix it as fast as possible. So that's one of the areas that we're talking >> So, I can imagine that this is not only has had an impact from a technology perspective from a vendor's side, but also in the service provider market. I guess a lot of service providers have gone into that phase to be able to help customers with their GDPR issues. >> Yeah, yeah, absolutely, so we were already aligned with our VCSP program. 20,000 VCSP partners out there and their model is as a service, so being able to provide, as a service and help them understand what that data is and know where that data is residing, is key to, that those customers that can't necessarily put their workloads into the public cloud but they can put it into a trusted service provider of VCSP. >> Or a trusted, like an enterprise private cloud. Or, one of the things that we're seeing is, when you start to think about data and where it resides, it's not just the cloud. It's not a discussion of is it on prem, is it in the cloud. There's this notion about this distributed cloud, some of this stuff that we talked about earlier this morning around what does that mean when you start to think about where, first of all, the amount of data that's sitting in everything other than what we would consider an enterprise cloud. That's one. The second thing is, how do you protect it? How do you back it up? What do you do at things that at the edge, right? That requires a fundamentally different way of looking at things. Just the size and the volume of the data. >> Yeah, one of the key things that we're seeing is that sprawl of data. Not necessarily, it doesn't really matter where that data resides. Whether it is on premises or whether it's in the public cloud. It's the data and that sprawl of data that can sit on many different platforms. >> Alright, Want to pivot the conversation a little bit lets talk about AHV. So, in the earnings announcement earlier this week, the number I heard was 38% looking at the last four quarters trailing, so strong growth. I actually, when I had asked Dheeraj about two years ago and said, "okay well what's the goal?" He said "Look, we're going to keep building and do it, and customers will have choice." You know, if we get to 50%, that felt about right to him then, when I talked to him he said "This seems right." It's not like we're going to eradicate everybody's other virtualization. That's not the goal. It's to do what makes sense. I remember one of the .NEXT's when Veeam said "We're going to go down the path to adopt AHV". There are actually tears in the audience. So, we know that ecosystem is super important to AHV. So Jim, maybe set the table for us with the guideline as to where we are with the partner eco system. Obviously Veeam's got some good, exciting stuff recently. But overall? >> Look, at the end of the day, the 38% number that you mentioned is critical, right? One of the things that we look at is, this is it's, our philosophy has always been about freedom and, so, some semblance of choice. And it doesn't matter whether you have a preference for a private cloud, a public cloud, a hypervisor. What we really are focused on is, how do we enhance incremental value add, especially in a management staff, right? So it's not necessarily a, we absolutely want to become a Hypervisor company. That's not the goal here. In order to, when you look at our partner landscape, and our partner ecosystem, it kind of fits into a few things. First and foremost, it's about customers who want, when they buy Nutanix, it's because they're buying Nutanix to fit in to a certain environment. Data protection, management, management and orchestration, networking and security. And then there's obviously customers who buy Nutanix for running something on top us, right? An, ISV, and enterprise ISV, big data applications, cloud native applications and things of that nature. One of the cornerstones for that ecosystem is to support AHV and we're starting to see a significant amount of our partners, not only looking at supporting AHV but actually going further and deeper. So, we look at things in terms of the breadth of the ecosystem, which is great, we want to grow that, but we also look as the depth. And someone like Veeam, who said, "Hey look, we were partnering with you on the breadth, where we were doing some stuff around supporting ESX." But really, the game changer was AHV. AHV support which was what, August? >> Yeah, yeah, beginning of August. I think the same premise as to what you were just saying Jay, so bring that simplicity model, we don't really care about what that is sitting on top. With a management layer, we're offering this hardware up as a service, or this layer of abstraction. From a Veeam, obviously, form a Veeam perspective, it's all about the ease of use, the reliability, but also the flexibility. And that's something that we kind of have that synergistic approach. >> I think that's a very shared common vision, right? It's making sure that you provide a seamless experience. One click sort of experience. But, being able to do so in a more cohesive manner. >> Michael, I want you to bring us inside. I remember back when Veeam supported Microsoft Hyper-V. It was a big deal. There's a lot of engineering work that goes into it. And a move, Veeam was more than just a virtualization company. Today Veeam is multi-cloud, they can play in lots of environment. Give us a little insight as to what happened and what's special has been done for the interface and the technology to fully support AHV with Veeam. >> Yeah, I think, so 12 years ago, Veeam started out protecting those virtual workloads. Virtualization first, Vmware first, then Hyper-V. And then the physical agents came and really that platform started to get broadened. What then happened is the AHV adoption rate from you guys was obviously rising so saw that and went in, and, but we took a different approach in terms of, okay, just because of what we've done in a Vmware and Hyper_V world, doesn't necessarily mean that that will fit our Nutanix AHV customers. So we went out, we seeded the market, understood what that looked like, how it looked from both a Nutanix point of view and also existing AHV customers. And then built the new AHV platform that we have to be able to protect them. But we still wanted to keep that agentless approach. But from a management perspective, we offer out a web interface that allows us to look very similar to the prism interface, the management layout. So that, an admin doesn't have to shift his command stature, his knowledge of working in management into that mind set. So, version one, and again, there's a considerable amount of effort gone into that has a pretty, pretty full-on feature list of features in that version one and that's going to continue to roll out over 2019 and beyond. >> So looking at this from a customers perspective, you know, back when I built an IS platform based on Nutanix, based on VH, one of the things that was high on my list was a AVH support. Simply because AVH over hypervisor, it became a commodity. I, even as a service provider, even as an IS provider, I didn't really care what hypervisor I ran. And so, support from VM to actually be able to back up VM's on AHV, and that was top priority for me. And seeing you guys use that different UI, even though it was a little bit over shot, because you know, we've been using VM for maybe a decade already. We're used to it. A little bit of a culture shock to start using it, but when you do, it becomes a totally different experience because it is aligned with Nutanix. So maybe tell us about why you've taken that approach of using the way of integrating with the Nutanix UI instead of staying at your old UI? >> Yeah, and so exactly, so mostly around Nutanix admins and their feedback around, if we could just have another tab that looks and feels exactly how our management plane looks like. Then that would be of more of a benefit. Now, obviously we didn't feedback on replication. There's still visibility of those jobs, there's no configuration, lettered out, that's one of the biggest asks that we're getting in the forums, in the public forums, is when can we have exactly what you're asking for there. Is it around how can we bring that central management back into VBR because they may have Nutanix clusters running different hypervisors and that's all supported from us but then, but, then, now we've got to go outside of that single management interface into the prism-like management for that, so, I kind of see that from that perspective. But, so that was really the main key for version one is, get something out that's the same as what our Nutanix administrators are used to. >> So, if we're talking about future, right, so what's next for VM and Nutanix? Real short question, short answer maybe. >> Yeah, without being fired, I'm but... (Jay laughs) So, version two, update one, so 1.1. That will be out in the next few, let's say weeks, months. And that really doesn't bring any major features or changes. That's the generic bug fixes, there's a few things that needed to be ironed out in the interface but also as the process. So that will be relatively soon. Then, the good thing around the ability to develop against what we're doing with AHV, is that because it's so separate from the VBR piece. It allows us to hopefully keep that much more frequent cadence of release. So we'll be starting to see more news about version two as we get into early 2019. >> Just a last thing, wondering what you could say about adoption so far? How much pent up demand was there? You know, I'd like to hear first from the Veeam standpoint. How many customers, if you can share anything about that? And then, Jay, what this means for AHV adoption? >> So, I don't know specific numbers, up to date numbers, but I have seen the sales force numbers grow from an opportunity perspective, and that's specifically where Veeam availability and Nutanix AHV is included in that sales force opportunity. So one of the things, though, is that we're seeing, if you're familiar with the Veeam forums, that, in particular, forum thread is growing and growing because people are understanding that we can help shape what we do here, we want those customers that are using it on a daily business to give us that feedback. >> Do you expect there to be new Veeam customers due to this offering? >> Yeah, yeah, absolutely. >> Yeah, I think we absolutely expect new Veeam customers. I think at the end of the day, going back your question around AVH, having a healthy ecosystem is really what's going to drive AHV adoption. So partners like Veeam who've done that is really what is providing some choice back. So you're question around what do we expect in the next few months, quarters, what we're seeing is a lot demand on, what's the right way, We're seeing a lot more demand on additional functionality that people customers would like to add into their grate. So AHV is just the beginning of the platform. It's not the end state and then, we're starting to see is a lot of customers, partners who are taking on things like, "Oh, well that's interesting, now I can do something with files, or buckets, or add on top of it where now all of a sudden, I can derive even more value. So AHV is just step one if you will, right? >> Yeah, I think that's important as well. So we've got update four coming out early next year that's going to bring the ability to leverage the Nutanix buckets that we've heard about this week. There's also other cloud mobility, but for the option of being able to convert those machines and send the up into Azure or AWS to be able to run tests and development up there. But, that whole cloud mobility about movement of data and making it seamless using the same tool set. One of the key differentiators is the VBK format. So those who know Veeam, they use the VBK format and that's exactly the same format that the Nutanix AHV product uses as well. >> Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, congratulations. Really looked at, as I said, this is really opening the door to start the journey as to where your customers are going. I've been hearing feedback from customers that have been waiting for this for a while and excited to see how this matures as things go forward. So, Jay, Michael, thanks so much for joining us and stay with us, full day of coverage here at Nutanix .NEXT 2018 in London. Thanks of watching theCUBE. (electronic beat)

>> Live from London, England, it's the Cube, Covering .Next Conference Europe 2018. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Hi, and welcome to the Excel Center in London, England, where 3500 customers, partners, and employees of Nutanix have gathered for the annual European show of Nutanix .Next 2018. I'm Stu Miniman, my cohost for two days of wall to wall exclusive coverage from the Cube is Joep Piscaer, our first European co-host. Joep, I first met you two years ago at the Nutanix show in Vienna. Last year was in Nice. We're now in London, and now you're not just a guest, but a host. Thanks so much for joinin' us. >> Thank you. So, it was awesome three years ago I was a customer, then I transitioned into a tech champion as well, for getting to know the technology and the people behind Nutanix, and now I'm here as a co-host, looking at Nutanix as a company. >> Well, we really appreciate you joining us. Give us, first of all, some more credibility in the European space, and also we always love to get the practitioner viewpoint. So, you have been a customer, you're part of I believe the NTC Program that Nutanix has, so you understand the technology. We're going to get to talk to some of the customers, some of those executives, and the like, so lookin' forward to havin' ya' sit with me, and dig into it, including, a first on the Cube, you're going to do one interview in your native tongue of Dutch. >> Yes, oh yeah. It's going to be completely in Nederlands, so completely Dutch, and I'm looking forward to that. >> Alright, so Dheeraj Pandey was on stage this morning, and Dheeraj, masterful, gives quite a good keynote, talking about how Nutanix is now nine years old, and so therefore he says still very young when you look at most of the technology companies out there, but they've come a long way. I've watched Nutanix since the very early days, and still kind of blows my mind. Some of the companies I've watched in their ascendancy, I remember VMware back when they were about 100 people. Nutanix, I met when they were about 30 people. Pernixdata that Nutanix bought, Soft Jamb that we're going to have on later today, introduced me to the company when it was three people and a dog, and Nutanix now, over I think 3000, 3500 people, announced last night their Q 1 2019 earnings, and some of the quick speeds would be 313 million dollars of revenue. That is up 14% year over year for the quarter, up 3% quarter over quarter from the previous quarter. Strong growth in a lot of the financials, really moving strongly along their path to be software, which is 51% of billings were from the software, and expect to read somewhere between 70 and 75% in the next four to six quarters, so aggressively meeting that, and publicly traded company, you kind of look at it and say "Wow, this Nutanix has a seven billion dollar market cap before the market opened today. We'll see what the market thinks of their earnings." What's just it that at a high level, you've been watching Nutanix for a while, so what's your take on the company? >> So, you know, I met em' a couple years ago as well. I think they were 100 people big back then. I learned from them from a technology perspective, so I just got to know the technology, got to know why they were building the startup, building this technology, and this was back in the day when it was basically a VDI product, and it was hardware. It was a thin layer of software, and they kept building that out, and building it out. At some point I became a customer of them, when their appliances were becoming so mature, that I actually saw the advantages that they were touting. Ease of management, one click for everything, and that made such a difference in the world back then, that it's just so good to see them growing and growing from the VDI product it was at some point, all to where it is now. This is not a startup anymore, this is a big company, with a portfolio that's becoming very broad, very deep as well. So seeing them grow this quickly, it's been pretty much amazing to see. I haven't seen a company go that fast in a long time. >> Yeah, well it's one of the things that really, if you look at where we are in technology today, things move fast. So the rest of the team for the Cube is at Amazon re:Invent, and the amount of announcements coming out of them is just staggering, but we're going to talk here about Nutanix. Actually the amount of announcements that Nutanix had, considering as you said they started out, really you think of that thin layer, to really simplify IT. Deeraj in the keynote talked about, "We want to achieve invisible together." was the line that he used, and simplifying things are really tough. That's really what characterized the wave of hyperconverged infrastructure in my mind. When I talk to users, why the bought it, it was simplifying it. It was not, when you think back to VMware, VMware was real easy. It was "Oh, I'm going to consolidate. I'm going to get high utilization.", and there was a clear cost savings. Well today, this hyperconverge is, if you look at building it one way, versus buying it this other way, the actual raw dollars was not that immediately compelling. It is the operational simplicity, and therefore I can allow, in many ways they say IT can now say yes to the business, and focus on things that add value to the business. Move up the stack. a line that I've used at a few of these Nutanix shows is "First, I want to modernize my platform, and then I can do things like modernize my application, modernize all my operations around that." It's catalyst to help customers along their journey for digital transformation. Is that what you've seen? >> Oh yeah, absolutely. So looking at my own experience, I've seen it so clearly that simplifying that infrastructure later, five, six years ago, that was the driver for us to move there. It's become so much more than just a simplification. It's become a story of freeing up time from the IT ops personnel to do other stuff. Just like you said, saying yes to the business, because infrastructure used to be hard. It used to be difficult. You'd need to spend a lot of time on it, and now it's really so easy, it's become a commodity. You either get it from the cloud, you get it from Nutanix or VM or whoever, and that frees up time for the IT ops personnel to do value add stuff on top of it, and I kind of see Nutanix going along that same route. They focused on the infrastructure part. They're still an infrastructure company I think, but they're expanding into that whole journey the customer's going through as well. I think we're going to here a lot more about the hybrid strategy, about cloud, about hybrid cloud, about how to manage that, instead of just the infrastructure stuff. >> Yeah, you bring a good point, that customer journey is definitely one that they talked about, and let's talk about the way you look at the Nutanix portfolio now. The way that Nutanix has framed it, is they gave, it was the customer journey of crawl, walk, run. So first, we have Core, which really is the primary product we've been thinking about, it's what the vast majority of Nutanix customers use, it's HCI, it's Prism, it's those pieces to manage that Core piece. Then, we add on top of that is Essentials, which really looked at some of the expansion areas. Files is one that they launched as an announcement about two years ago I believe it was, that they have Blocks now, which is now a highly scalable object model there, and the Prism Pro, so a bunch of pieces to add on and go beyond the Core, and then they have Enterprise, which is is ICloud's kind of the branding that they have along these, but Leap is DR as a service. They've got Frame, which is desktop as a service. They've got Era, and they've got a whole lot of other software solutions out there that make up this whole portfolio. I wouldn't say it was simple. It took me two or three times of hearing it before it started to crystallize, but if you look out from that customer lens, the customer doesn't need to worry about where these buckets have, it's the, you know, "I'm buying Core stuff, I'm probably growing to Essentials, and then there's areas where Enterprise will make sense.", and it's likely going to be a different go to market and different buying motion. Take something like Frame, who we're going to have on the program today. Frame today is not attached to the Nutanix appliance itself, it was born in the cloud, and many of the enterprise solutions are born in the cloud, multi-cloud. So what's your take on how they're splitting up and discussing the portfolio? >> Just like you said, it took me awhile to figure out what that whole portfolio was, you know, the Core, Essentials, Enterprise stuff, but I do think looking at it from a customer perspective, it does make sense. So they started out simplifying the Core infrastructure. Now they're simplifying the Essentials in the data center as well, like files, like micro-segmentation, like monitoring. Those are topics that customers still spend a lot of time on, but they don't necessarily want to. They want to have something that is readily off the shelf, it's easy to use, easy to expand upon, so I do see Essentials as a good expansion of that messaging that they have been giving for quite a number of years already. Simplifying what is already in the data center already, and then the stretch into the cloud, into the hyper-cloud, delivering services that are still so difficult to do yourself, like take VDI for example. That's still difficult. Sending up an entire environment, managing it, you have to have really specialized people to do that for you, to do the do the design, and being able to get that directly from the cloud makes that so much easier. So I do agree with the de-segmentation into three big buckets, and I do think customers are going to respond positively to it. >> Alright, so, you brought up a term hyper-cloud, that I really didn't feel that we heard a lot about in the keynote this morning. It's an area I want to poke and understand a little bit more when I hear from Nutanix. I was talkin' to one customer in prep for this, and he said a year ago, and the last couple of times, but hearin' a lot about Google. Diane Greene on the stage, I believe it was the D.C show, I didn't see Google here. I know there is updates as to where the Google relationships are going. They did mention Kubernetes. The Kubernetes offer that Nutanix has is called Karbon. I actually expect to see not only what we will have Nutanix on the program here to talk about it, but at the Kubernetes show Kubcon in Seattle in two weeks. Nutanix is one of the sponsors that we'll have on the program there. Other than Kubernetes and how that fits into the cloud native discussion, I haven't heard a good cohesive message as to Nutanix's hybrid, they talk about how Nutanix lives in a lot of environments, and many of their products live in multi-cloud, and there's some nuance there. I think VMware has a nice clear message on hybrid. Microsoft of course, and of course VMware is the partnership with Amazon is really the core of what they're doing there. They're doing more cloud native and Kubernetes. They bought Heptio. There are things going on there. Amazon is talking a lot more about hybrid. We'll see if they actually use the term hybrid when they talk about it. Nutanix's messaging, we're going to have Deeraj on today, he says "Azure Stack gets a lot of press, but there's not a lot of people using it. VMware on AWS gets a lot of press, once again, not a lot of companies using it yet". And while I agree, customers actually feel comforted by the message that they understand how do I get from where I am today, to where I need to go? And of course I'm not saying that everybody goes 100% public cloud. The hybrid multi cloud world kind of looks like where we'll be for the next five or 10 years at least, and Edge puts a whole 'nother spin on things. What do you want to hear from Nutanix? What is hybrid, customers might not care about hybrid, but the message about where they're going with cloud is I think what they want clarity on. >> Yeah, I agree. So I think Nutanix doesn't call it hybrid, they're calling it hyperconverged cloud, which makes sense from their historical background. I do think Nutanix has ways to go in developing their own hybrid. Cloud story, making a management layer on top of it, like VMware's done, like Microsoft's doing. So I do think Nutanix is only on the beginning of this journey for themselves, but you're only seeing the small acquisitions they're doing, or the small steps they're taking. Acquiring Frame is one of those unexpected things for me. I would never have thought Nutanix would go that direction, So I do think Nutanix is taking small steps in the right direction. But like you said, they're story isn't complete yet. Its not a story that customers can buy into fully just now, so they do still need a little bit of time for that. >> Yeah, well Joep, really appreciate you helpin' us break down this. We've got two days of full coverage. So much your goin' is that, right, MNA in the space, it's a software world, picking up pieces are easy, heck, one of the under riding rumors I've heard for the last couple of years is "will someone take Nutanix off the table?" Not something I expect them to specifically direct, but at a seven billion dollar market, that would be a large acquisition, but we have seen a few of those in the last couple a' years. so for Joep Piscaer, I'm Stu Miniman, stay with us for two days. Wall to wall coverage. Thecube.net is of course where to see all of the live and on demand content. Thanks so much for watchin' the Cube. (contemplative music)