>> Announcer: Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCube! Covering NAB 2017. Brought to you by HGST. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at NAB 2017, a hundred thousand people. The Las Vegas Convention Center is packed. And it's everything you could ever want to get involved in video and media, and it' pretty crazy exciting. I hope, trying and get the guys from spending all of our budget money next year on new cameras. But, we're excited to have Brian Raleigh on. He's a VP post-production and production business intelligence at ABC Studios. Welcome. >> Thank you, I'm excited to be here, as well. >> Absolutely, so first impressions of the show. You said you haven't been that many times. As you walk around, what strikes you? >> Yeah, this is only my second time here. I will say I've seen plenty of booths that have the words Ingestion, Transcode, Archival, Distribution, there certainly is a lot of distribution out here, the broadcasting convention. >> Jeff: Right. >> Which makes sense. >> But you're involved in that pesky little process between what comes off the camera and what goes out to distribution. >> Yeah, exactly. We're prior to broadcast, right. So my world is really production and post-production, and the production management systems we use within them. >> Right. So love to hear, kind of, how is that world evolved? It used to be you had an artist on a machine, with local files doing the editing and all this stuff, and clearly that world is long, long gone. >> Yeah, most of our production and post-production workflow is in the cloud. >> Jeff: Right. >> Or however you want to call it. And very recently, what we've done, is we've tried to move on from the kind of, email-based world and saving everything on your desktop-based world, a lot of it revolves around the push to move off of that revolves around security. >> Jeff: Right. >> Efficiencies, better distribution, better control over who has access to what. So my role is really to introduce digital production management systems. Digital daily systems, digital purchase order systems. Digital scheduling systems. >> Jeff: Right. >> Kind of take us into more of like a wholistic, one-way world that covers both the production side as well as the studio side. >> And where would you say you are on that journey? >> Year one, is what I would say. >> Year one. Early in year one, early days. >> So our department is called, the Production Business Intelligence Department, but that's really, I would say we have more enthusiasm for business intelligence than we do have knowledge of business intelligence. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> So phase one is really getting our systems rolled out. To get these digital systems in use, with 100% adoption, on all of our shows, and all of our studio and network users. Once we have that piece done, we can actually start to collect the data and make some use out of it. >> Right, right And how has kind of the efficiency in the workflow, I know you're still early days, how do you anticipate it really being impacted by moving to more cloud-based systems versus local, on your hard drive controlled? >> Yeah, so security is a hundred times better than it was before, right? Just because everything is hidden behind a password now. Access is much more controlled. Efficiency has increased many times over, as well. I'll say that we project, over the course of our first year with these systems, we will have reduced our email count, just within the studio, by 650,000. >> Well, who doesn't love that. >> Right, exactly. I keep telling them it's good. >> Jeff: Golly. >> Everything is more searchable now. >> Jeff: Right. >> Higher quality. We're getting things faster. Our PAs are no longer burning thousands of DVDs and distributing them all across town, so it's improved our world in many ways. >> Right, and how do you kind of boil that ocean. Is it kind of by department, is it by show, is it one little slice kind of spread really, really wide? I mean, that's a big roll out. You guys are a huge studio. >> When the department, that used to be called the Production Technology Department, and when it started eight, nine years ago, the approach was really like, let's build everything in house, and try to piece it out one by one. What we have learned is, that doesn't really work. It's really difficult to get adoption and it was going to take a huge workforce in order to build what we needed. >> Jeff: Right. >> So we started to go with the Best in Breed approach, with these applications. And what came with them was 24/7 support and kind of white glove training and admin services. >> Jeff: Right. >> So because I have a really small centralized team, they can focus on just the training administration. And we have really this third-party service team that comes with each one of these production management systems that we use. >> Right. >> So we've been able boil the ocean because we have a lot of help. >> Right. And the other nice thing is just because of the nature of the studios, teams kind of form around shows, right? So now you can onboard a new team around your infrastructure piece. They do the show for one season, two seasons, however many season. >> Brian: Yeah. >> Then they go away. >> Yeah, what's been really good is even though it's a huge training endeavor, for sure, with our production teams, because we have something like, 8,000 people on our freelance production teams at any time. And they're a transient workforce. They go from studio to studio and show to show. >> Jeff: Right. >> But I think something like 60 to 70% of the people that we hire, we've hired before. >> Jeff: Okay. >> So the good news is once we've trained them once, there's a good likelihood that we won't need to train them again. >> Right. And, so there's kind of the application centric piece of it, and then there's kind of the infrastructure piece behind the application. I mean, good news is, you didn't have it eight years ago, but I mean the development's on the infrastructure side around storage and bandwidth and CPU. Huge change from where it was before. I mean, could you even have done what you were hoping to do eight years, kind of compared to where you are today? No, I don't think, the companies just didn't exist at that point. That's right. So the companies weren't there because the technology wasn't there. >> Jeff: Right. >> Now they've both kind of aligned, and aligned at a good time, right? When I think people are ready to hear that we need to modernize the studio. There's so much competition out there, that we need to make sure that we're doing things as good or better than everyone else. >> Right. And you said security a bunch of times. >> Brian: Yeah. >> So was the security, was it a security hole? Was it people forgetting their laptop at the coffee shop? >> Brian: Yeah. >> I mean what were some of your main security concerns that you've now been able to address? >> It's interesting. So we're ABC Studios, but we do a lot of co-productions with Marvel Studios. And Marvel Studios culture is very security centric. And because we worked so hand-in-hand with them, we've been very cognizant of the security abilities of these applications as we bring them in. So I will say, we didn't have any big outbreaks, right? We didn't have, we had shows like Lost, that people were really concerned about. >> Right. >> Scripts getting out, but more recently, we haven't had these huge high security titles, but now that Marvel is onboard, it's made us very security conscious. >> Okay. And it's more early leaks that people getting access to the assets-- >> Yeah, mostly we're worried about scripts. >> Right, right. Really, mostly scripts, as opposed to images, or-- >> Well, you're right. Scripts and rough cuts, I would say. >> Right, right, right. Okay, so that's kind of the bat, the stick. In terms of a carrot, what were some of the benefits that you hoped to achieve or you are really starting to achieve on the carrot side of the equation? >> Well, so we're still in phase one, as I said, in kind of rolling out these applications. >> Right, we'll let you talk about this in private. We will not hold you to whatever you say that's being, actually in production. >> The carrot, is so we're now called production business intelligence, but we don't have much intelligence, at this point, so, now that we're seeing some light at the end of the tunnel, in terms of rolling out these systems, the hope is, the carrot is, we're going to be able to find some really great business insights from the data we collect. The kinds of questions we want to be able to answer are things like, which of our directors that are hire are costing us the most in production staff overtime. When an editor's cut delivers, and it delivers 11 minutes long, how does that correlate with the length and complexity of the script? You start to learn these things, and the hope will be that what was going to be a nine-day production schedule, we really can do it in eight. >> Jeff: Right. >> We'll have the data, not just anecdotally, but like real data to back that up. >> Right. Now I wonder, and don't tell me if you can't, but within kind of the whole budget of a movie, production, post-production, distribution, promotion, what piece is post-production? I mean, I just think of the complexity of it. It can be just a sinkhole, if it's not managed well. >> Yeah, as a part of the production, well it depends on the show, right? >> Right, right, you know, kind of a general-- >> The variance is in visual effects, right, but I would say 10 to 20% of the budget is post-production. >> Jeff: Okay. >> And the systems piece of it is much, much less. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> One, maybe one percent. >> Right. So you could make a pretty significant impact >> Yeah. >> On the budget by being more efficient. >> For sure. >> And leveraging that intelligence. >> Well, below the line, which is what these systems really do impact, so not just post-production but production, as well as two-thirds of the budget. So absolutely, I mean that's many millions of dollars. >> Right, right. Okay, so as you look forward, have you got any insights that are kind of helping you drive to the next place, or are you just kind of working down a road map as you look at 2017, I know we're a third of the way through, which I find really hard to believe. What's kind of on your agenda, what's next, where are you going next? >> I'd say we're still working down the roadmap. We have, like I said, we have documents figured out, we have digital dailies figured out, we have production purchase orders figured out, now we're going to start looking at asset management. And we're going to start looking at scheduling. In hopes that ultimately we can really, I guess the real vision here is that we can have kind of a production ratio, right? We can start to rate our productions against each other based on all of this information that we have, but it requires some additional systems first. >> All right, Brian. Well, I wish you, at least you've got 650,000 less emails. >> I know it's a good start. >> I mean that should free up a ton of time. >> Brian: Yes. >> That's a great start. All right, he's Brian Raleigh from ABC, I'm Jeff Frick. Again, thanks for stopping by. >> Brian: Thank you. >> All right, you're watching theCUBE, from NAB 2017. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

(fast-paced instrumental music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to the special CUBE conversation, here at theCUBE Studio in Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier, Co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media and host of theCUBE for our special CMO signal series we're launching. Really talkin' to the top thought leaders in marketing, in the industry, really pushing the envelope on a lot of experimentation. And Robson Grieve, Chief Marketing Officer of New Relic, is here. Welcome to this CUBE conversation. >> Thank you, excited to be with you. >> So, New Relic is a very progressive company. You have a founder who's very dynamic, writes code, takes sabbaticals, creates product, he's a musician, is prolific. That kind of sets the tone for your company, and you guys are also state of the art DevOps company. >> Robson: Yes. >> So, pressure's on to be a progressive marketer, you guys are doing that. >> Yeah, I think some of the great things about that DevOps culture are process wise it allows us to experiment with different ways of working. And we've obviously talked a little bit about Agile and the way a different way of thinking about how you actually do the work can change the way you output the kind of things you're willing to make, the way the teams work together. And the degree to which you can integrate marketing and sales, really, around shorter time frames, faster cycle times. And so, we have a great culture around that. We also have a really great culture around experimentation. I think that's one of the biggest things that Lou talks a lot about is, let's try things, let's look for experiments, let's see where we can find something unexpected that could be a big success, and let's not be afraid for something to go wrong. If you can do that, then you have way higher odds of finding the Geo TenX. >> And you guys are also in the analytics, you also look at the signal, so you're very data driven, and I'll give you a prop for that, give you a plug. (Robson laughing) New Relic, a very data driven company. But today we're seeing a Seed Changer, a revolution in the tech industry. Seeing signals like cryptocurrency, blockchain, everyone's goin' crazy for this. They see disruption in that. You've got AI and a bunch of other things, so, and you got the Cloud computing revolution, so all of this is causing a lot of horizontally, scalable change, which is breaking down the silos of existing systems. >> Yeah. >> But, you can't just throw systems away. You have systems in marketing. So, how are you dealing with that dynamic, because we're seeing people going, hey, I just can't throw away my systems, but I got to really be innovative and agile to the real-time nature of the internet now, while having all those analytics available. >> Yeah. >> How do you tackle that, that issue? >> Yeah, there's a couple ways to think about analytics. Number one is, what do you need to know in real-time to make sure things are working and that your systems are up and running and operating effectively? And that runs through everything from upfront in web experiences and trial experiences, that kind of thing. Through to how our leads and customers progressing through a funnel, as they get passed around the various parts of a company. But then the second approach we take to data is, after all that's happened, how can we look backwards on it and what patterns emerge when you look at it over the scale of longer period of time. And so, that's the approach today. You're right, you can't just everything and throw it out and start over again, 'cause some startups stop by with a really cool idea. But, you have to be aggressive about experimentation. I think that's the, back to that big idea that we talked about experimentation. We are trying out a lot of different things all the time. Looking for things that could be really successful. Of course, Intercom is one that we started to experiment with a little bit for in product communications and we've expanded over time as we found it more and more useful. And, so that's not, we haven't taken and just ripped something else out of it, made some giant bet on something brand new. We've tried it, we've gotten to know it, and then we found ways to apply that. We're doing that with a number of different technologies right now. >> Yeah, you're in a very powerful position, you're Chief Marketing Officer, which has to look over a lot of things now, and certainly with IT and Cloud. You're essentially in the middle of the fabric of the organization. Plus, people are knockin' on your door to sell you stuff. >> Yeah. (laughing) >> So, what is-- >> That's happened. (laughing) >> It happens all the time, he's got the big budget. >> What are they saying to you? Who's knockin' on your door, right now? Who's peppering you. Who's tryin' to get on your calendar? Who's bombarding you? Where are you saying, Hey, I'm done with that, or Hey, I'm lookin' for more of that. How do you deal with that tension, 'cause I'm sure it must be heavy. >> Yeah, I think there is definitely a lot of optionality in the market, for sure. I think there's a new wave of martech vendors. Many of whom are sitting right in between sales ops and marketing ops. That's a layer we're really interested in. Systems that can help us better understand the behavior of sale's reps, and how they're using things that we're making, and then systems that you can better understand, indications of prospect intent. >> So, funnel and pipeline, or those kinds of things? >> Yeah, we think about it more from the context of authentic engagement. And so, we don't want to apply too much of a-- >> Structure to it. >> Structure, a sales structure to it. We want to try to follow the customer's intent through the process, 'cause the best prospect is someone who is authentically engaged in trying to find a solution to their problem. And so, if we can avail ourselves to people in a thoughtful, and creative, and authentic way, when they need us, when they're trying to solve that problem, then I think that they can become much more successful prospects. >> I love your angle on agile marketing. I think that's table steaks, not that you got to behave that way, and I'd love to get your thoughts, I'll get your thoughts later on the management style and how you make that happen. But, you mentioned engagement, this is now the new Holy Grail. There's a lot of data behind it, and it could be hidden data, it could be data decentralized all over the place. This is the hottest topic. How do you view engagement as a CMO, and the impact to the organization? What are you lookin' for, what's the key premise for your thesis of getting engagement? >> It's really the number one, two, and three topic we're talking about right now, and we think about it on the content side. How do we get ourselves really producing a constant stream of content that has value to people? That either helps them solve a problem right now, or helps them think about an architectural issue in a different way. We're trying to invest more and more technical resources in people who can produce things that are relevant to all the different kinds of users that we have. DevOps people, SREs, our traditional developer customers. We want to go deep and be super relevant at a content level for them. But then once they start to spend time with us, we want to then have a progressive way to pull them deeper and deeper into our community. And so, the things that we can do, something's in digital for that, but then often there's a pop off line, and we do a lot of workshops, a lot of education. >> Face-to-face? >> Face-to-face, where we're in communities, we look at a map at the start of the year and say, where do we have big user communities, and then we drop events into those places where we take our educators and our product experts and get customers to share with each other. And that becomes a really great platform to put them together and have them help each other, as well as learn more about what our product does. >> So, it sounds like you're blending digital with face-to-face? >> Robson: Yeah, absolutely. >> That's a key part of your strategy? >> Key part is to make sure that we're getting time and attention from the people who are making decisions, and what technologies they're going to buy, but also that we're really investing time in the people who are using it in their everyday lives to do their job better. That's a really-- >> Give some examples of outcomes that you've seen successful from that force. That's a really unique, well unique is pretty obvious if you think about it, but some people think digital is the Holy Grail, let's go digital, let's lower cost. But, face-to-face can be expensive, but you're blending it. What's the formula and what are some of the successes that you've seen as a result. >> Yeah, we tend to try to create events that are good for a very specific audience. So, if you think about a targeting formula that you would use in digital that will make digital really efficient, that same idea works really well for an event. So, if you got a user community that's really good at doing one thing with your product and you feel like if they knew a few more things that they could get better. Then we help them really advance to the next level, and so we run certification programs, where we'll pull together a group of confident users and help them get to the next level. And things like that allow us to make a really targeted event that allows us to reach out to a group and move them to a higher level of competency. To have competency focus is a big deal. Can we help you get better at your job? But then communities, is the other big one. Can we help you connect with people who are doing the same things? Solving the same kinds of problems and are interested in the same topics as you are. >> It sounds like the discovery path of the user, the journey, your potential. >> Yeah, it's important to us for sure. >> And content sounds like it's important too. >> It helps with your engagement. How you dealing with the content? Is that all on your properties? How about off property measurement? How do you get engagement for off property? >> Yeah, we're experimenting a lot in that area, of off property. I think we've had tons of success inside our own website and our blogs, and those kinds of-- >> You guys do pop out a lot of content, so it's content rich. >> Yes, we definitely have a lot, we hopefully, our attitude is, we want to turn our company inside out, so we want to take all of our experts-- >> Explain that, that's important topic, so, you guys are opening up what? >> We have got customer support people, we have technical sales, and technical support engineers, we've got marketing people who are thought leaders in Cloud and other architecture topics. We really want to take all the expertise that they've got and we want to share it with our community. >> John: How do you do that, through forums, through their Twitter handles? >> Through all of the above, really. Through their Twitter handles, through content that they write and produce through videos, through a podcast series that we run. We're really trying to expand as much as possible, but then inside our user help community, anytime somebody solves a problem for one customer, we want to add it to that-- >> Sounds like open-source, software. (laughing) >> From a knowledge perspective, that's really an important idea for us. >> Yeah, that's awesome. You worry about the risk. I like the idea of just opening it up. You're creating building blocks of knowledge, like code. It's almost like an open-source software, but no, it's open knowledge. >> We think if we can help people get really successful at the work they're trying to do, that it's going to do great things for us as a brand. >> What's the rules of the road, because obviously you might have some hay makers out there. Some employee goes rogue, or you guys just trusting everyone, just go out and just do it. >> Well, it's constant effort to distribute publishing rights and allow people to take more and more ownership of it, and to maintain some editorial controls, because I think quality is a big thing. It's probably a bigger concern for us then somebody going rogue. At some level, if that happens to you, you can't stop it. >> So, is this a new initiative or is it progression? >> It's been ongoing for awhile. It's progression of an effort we started probably 18 months ago, and it's a wonderful way for an engineering team, and a product management team, and a marketing team to get together around a really unified mission as well. So our content project is just one of those things that I think really pulls us together inside the company in a really fun way as well. >> It's interesting, you seeing more and more what social peers want to talk to each other and not the marketing guy, and say, Hey, get the Kool-Aid, I like the product, I want to talk to someone to solve my problem. >> Want to have a real conversation about it, and I think that's our job, is to not think of it as marketing, but to think of it as just facilitating a real conversation about how our product works for somebody. >> I'd love to talk about leadership as the Chief Marketer for New Relic in the culture that you're in, which is very cool to be in on the front-end, in the front lines doing cool things. What do you do? How do you manage yourself, how do you manage your time? What do you do, how do you organize the troops, how do you motivate them? What's your management style for this marketing in the modern era? >> I think, number one, we're trying to create an organization that is full of opportunities for people, so it's something that we've done. I've been there for about two and a half years, and we've really looked hard for people who have tons of potential and finding great things to work on. On new projects, and then let them try out ideas that they've got. So, if they can own an idea, give it a shot, and even if it doesn't work, they'll learn a bunch from the process of trying. >> What are the craziest ideas you've heard from some of your staff? (laughing) >> Oh boy, you know a lot of them involve video. There's always a great idea for a video that's risky. And we've made-- >> So the Burger King one with Net Neutrality going around the web is the funniest video I've seen all week. >> Robson: Yeah, yeah. >> Could be risky, could be also a double-edged sword, right? >> Yeah, video is one of those places where you have to check yourself a little bit, 'cause it could be a great idea, and so sometimes you have to actually make it and look at it, and say, would we publish this or not? And, yeah, so that's definitely the place to be. >> So common sense is kind of like your. >> Yeah, you start with common sense, for sure. And, I think we want to be a part of it being culturally responsible in Silicon Valley right now, is really making sure that we're attentive to making sure that we're putting in the right kind of workplace environment for people. And so, our content and the way we go to market has to reflect that as well, so there's a bunch of filters that you put on it, but you have to take risks and try to make things, and if they work great, and if they don't then the cost of that is less than. The cost of failure is so low in some of these things, so you just have to try. >> Well, you know, we're into video here at theCUBE. I have to ask you, do you see video more and more in the marketing mix and if so, how does that compare to old methods? We've seen the media business change and journalism, certainly on the analyst community. Who reads white papers? Maybe the do, maybe they don't. Or, how do they engage? What content formally do you see as state of the art engagement? Is is video, is it a mix, how do you view that? >> It's a mix, really. I think video's really powerful. And it can be great to tree topics and short form in a really powerful way. I think we can stretch it out a little bit in terms of how to and teaching and education also. But, there are times when other things like a white paper are still relevant. >> Yeah, they got to do their homework and get ready for the big test. >> Yes. >> How to install. (laughing) >> Exactly, yeah. >> Okay, big surprises for you in the industry, if you could look back and talk to yourself a few years ago and say, Wow, I didn't know that was going to happen, or I kind of knew this was going to be a trend we would be on. Where is the tailwinds, where's the headwinds in the industry as a marketer to be innovated, to be on the cutting edge, to deliver the value you need to do for your customers and for the company? >> Yeah, I think there's a bunch of great tailwinds organizationally and in the approach to work. And you talked about Agile. I think it's been a great thing to see people jump in and try to work in a different way. That's created tons of scale for a department like ours, where we're tryin' to go to more countries, and more places constantly. Having a better way to work, where we waste less effort, where we find problems and fix things way faster, has given us the chance to build leverage. And I think that's just that integration of engineering, attitudes, with marketing processes has been a, is an awesome thing. Everybody in our marketing department, or at least a lot of people have read the DevOps handbook, and we've got a lot of readers, so the devotes of that thought process that don't suit an engineering jobs. >> DevOps, Ethos, I think is going to be looked at as one of those things, that's a moment in history that has changed so much. I was just at Sundance Film Festival, and DevOps, Ethos is going to filmmaking. >> Robson: Yeah. >> And artistry with a craft and how that waterfall for the Elite Studios is opening up an amateur market in the Indy, so their Agile filmmakers and artists now doing cool stuff. So, it's going to happen. And of course, we love the infrastructures code. We'll talk about that all day long We love DevOps. (Robson laughing) So I got to ask you the marketing question. It will be a theme of my program of the CMO is, if I say marketing is code, infrastructure is code, enabled a lot of automation, some abstracted a way horizontally scaled, and new opportunities, created a lot of leverage, a lot of value, infrastructures code, created the Cloud. Is there a marketing as code Ethos, and what would that look like? If I would say, apply DevOps to marketing. If you could look at that, and you could say, magic wand. Give me some DevOps marketing, marketing as code. What would you have automated in a way that would be available to you? What would the APIs look like? What's your vision for that? >> What about the APIs, that's a good question. >> John: I don't think they exist yet, but we're fantasizing about it. (laughing) >> Yeah, I think the things that tend to slow marketing departments down really are old school, things like approvals. And how hard it is to get humans to agree on things that should be really easy. So, if the first thing you-- >> Provisioning an order. (laughing) >> The first thing you could do is just automate that system of agreeing that something's ready to go and send it out that I think you'd create so much efficiency in side marketing departments all over the world. Now that involves having a really great, and API's a great thought in that, because the expectations have to get matched up of what's being communicated on both sides, so we can have a channel on which to agree on something. That to me is-- >> Analytics are probably huge too. You want to have instant analytics. I don't care which database it came from. >> Yes, exactly. And that's the sense of DevOps and can use. But then you got some feedback on, did it work, was it the right thing to do, should we do more of it, should we fix it in some specific way? Yeah, I think that's-- >> I think that's an interesting angle, and the face-to-face thing that I find really interesting, because what you're doing is creating that face-to-face resource, that value is so intimate, and it's the best engagement data you can get is face-to-face. >> Yeah, I think it also allows us to build relationships to the point where we are getting invited into slack channels to help companies in real-time sometimes. I think there's a real-- >> So humanizing the company and the employees is critical. >> Yeah. >> You can't just be digital. >> Yes, it's a big deal. >> Awesome. Robson, thank so much for coming on theCUBE. The special CMO series. Is there a DevOps, can we automate away, what's going to automate, where's the value going to be in marketing? Super exciting, again, martech. Some are sayin' it's changing rapidly with the Cloud, AI, and all these awesome new technologies. What's going to change, that's what we're going to be exploring here on the CMO CUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (upbeat instrumental music)

(bright music) >> Hello, everyone. Welcome to theCUBE Studio here in Palo Alto. We're here for our next segment, The Future of Networking. We're going to experience the future of networking through a demo of SD-WAN in action with Riverbed. I'm here with Josh Dobies, the vice president of product marketing, and Vivek Ganti, senior technical marketing engineer. We're going to give a demo of SteelConnect in action. Guys, thanks for joining me on this segment. Let's get into what are we going to show here, showing SD-WAN in action. This is experiencing the future of networking. >> Thanks, John. So what's exciting about this next wave of networking is just how much you can do with minimal effort in a short amount of time. So in this segment, we're actually going to show a typical transformation of a company that's going from a traditional, 100% on-premises world into something that's going to be going into the cloud. And so we're going to kind of basically go in timelapse fashion through those phases that a company will go through to bring the internet closer to their business. >> Great, Vivek, you're going to show a demo, set up the demo, what is the state? It's a real demo, is it a canned demo, what's going on under the hood? Tell us through what's going to happen. >> It's an absolutely real demo. Everything you'll see in today's demo is going to be real, the real appliances, the links you'll see are going to be real. The traffic is going to be real. And it's going to be a fun demo. >> Well the future of networking, and experiencing it is going to be exciting. Let's get through in the demo. I'll just say, as someone who's looking at all the complexity out there, people want to be agile. There's so much complexity with IoT and AI and all this network connections, people want simplicity. >> Right. >> So you can show simplicity and ease of use and value, I'm all interested. >> That's exactly it. Step one is we have to get out of the world of managing boxes. And we have to get into a software-defined world that's based on policies. So one of the first things that a company needs to do to start realizing these benefits of efficiency is to get away from the provisioning work that's involved in bringing up a new site. So that's the first thing that Vivek's going to show right now. >> John: Vivek, jump into it, show us the demo. >> Absolutely, so what you're looking at right now is the web console of SteelConnect manager. This Riverbed's SD-WAN solution. You're looking at a bunch of sites for a company called Global Retail, which is spread all over the world. What I'm going to do now is bring up a new site, really zero touch provisioning in Dallas, sitting here in Palo Alto. So let's get started. I'm going to jump right into network design and look at sites. I'll click here on add sites and really just enter a few physical location details for my site in Dallas. And the moment I click here on submit, not only is a pointer being created on the map for me, but there's a lot of automation and orchestration happening in the backend. What I mean by that is that there's a default uplink created for my Dallas site, and there's also a VLAN created for my site in Dallas. Of course I can go and add more uplinks and VLANS for my site, but then a lot of this heavy lifting in terms of creating these is automatically done for me by SteelConnect. But right now it's just a pointer on the map. It's not a real site. We don't have an appliance. But that's the beauty of it, John. What SteelConnect lets me do is it gives me the flexibility and the freedom to deploy my entire site from ground up, my entire network from ground up, before I deploy the first piece of hardware. The way I'm able to do that is with this concept called shadow appliance, which is really a cardboard cutout of what will be once I have the hardware appliance. So I'm going to click here on add appliances. I'm going to say create shadow appliance. >> So shadow appliance, the customer knows the appliance, they might have the serial number. >> Yeah. >> But it's not connected, it's not even there yet. >> No, it's not even there yet. >> They're doing all the heavy lifting, preparing for it to drop in. >> Yeah, think of it as just designing it or drawing it on white paper, except you get to see what your network's going to look like before you deploy anything. So I'm going to drop, let's say an SDI-130 gateway, add my site in Dallas, which I just created, and click here on submit. And that's the beauty of this, that now with this shadow appliance, I can click on this and really configure everything, right down to the very port level. And once I do have the hardware, which I ship to someone and have someone plug it in. >> So now you're configured. Now the appliance gets shipped there, someone, it could be anybody, could be a non-employee, just says, instructions: plug it in and put this ethernet cable in. >> Yeah, and sitting here in Palo Alto, I'm entering my appliance serial number. Click here on submit, and now that the appliance is connected to the internet, it knows to contact core services in the cloud, download its configuration, it knows what organization it belongs to, and it comes online in a matter of seconds, really. You'll see that it's already online as I was talking to you. >> John: Let's look at that, hold on. Dallas, right there, online, okay. >> Vivek: Yeah, and when it says pending, it means that it's actually downloading its current configuration. It's going to be up to date in less than a minute. And once it does that, when I look at the dashboard, this checkmark will be green, and it's going to start forming all those IPSec VPN tunnels, there you go. It's going to now start forming all those IPSec VPN tunnels to all my other existing sites, automatically forming so that I don't have to do any of the heavy lifting. >> John: So it does a self-discovery of the network. It just went red there, real quick. >> Josh: That's okay, this is where it's going to start creating the VPN tunnels. >> Vivek: Right, it's basically associating all those, it's negotiating all the security associations with all my other appliances. >> So no one's involved? No humans involved, this is the machine, get plugged in, downloads the code, then goes out and says where do I got to connect to my other networks. >> Yeah, the power of this is what you're not doing, right? So you could do all this by hand. And this is the way that legacy networks are configured, if you're still, you know, hardware-based approach. You have to go in and really think hard about the IP addresses, the subnets for each individual box, if you're going to create that full mesh connectivity, you're going to have to do that at an exponential level every time you deploy a new piece of hardware. So with this approach, with the design first, you don't have to do any staging. And when you deploy, the connectivity is going to happen, you know, for you automatically. >> John: Let's take a look at the site, see if it turned green. >> Vivek: Yeah, it's right now, if I click on it, you'll see that my appliance is online, but right now all the lines are red because it's still in the process of creating those IPSec VPN tunnels. But you'll see that in the next couple of minutes or so, all these lights will turn green, and what that means is now I have a single unified fabric of my entire network. But while we're waiting on that, let's actually move ahead and do something even cooler. Let's say our company called Global Network, Global Retail, wants to transition some of its applications to the cloud, because as we know, John, a lot of companies want to do that. For a few pennies on the dollar, you can make a lot of things somebody else's problem. So we've worked really hard with AWS and Microsoft to make that integration really work well. What I mean by that is when I click here on network design and AWS, I have a cross-account access going between my SteelConnect manager and AWS Marketplace so that I don't ever have to log back into the AWS Marketplace again. Once I do that, I can see all of my VPCs across all of my regions so that with a single click, and that's what I'm going to do here, I'm going to say connect to all my subnets in Frankfurt, I can choose to deploy a gateway of instance of my choice in the Frankfurt site. So what I'm going to do now- >> John: So you're essentially telling Frankfurt, connect to my Amazon. >> Vivek: Yes. >> John: And I'm going to set up some cloud stuff for you to work with. >> Vivek: So you already have your VPC infrastructure or your VNet infrastructure on AWS or Azure. What I'm doing is I'm providing optimized, automated connectivity for you. So I can choose to deploy- [John] All with just one click of the button. >> Vivek: All with one click of the button. So you see that I can choose an EC2 instance of my choice for the gateway. I'm going to leave it to t2.medium, and then SteelHead, because, WAN optimization because the moment we start migrating huge data sets to the cloud in Frankfurt or, say, Ireland in Azure, latency becomes a real issue. So we want to be sure that we're also optimizing the traffic end to end. I'm going to leave redundancy to on so that there's high availability, and I'll leave AWS routing to auto, and I'll talk about that in just a bit. So when I click here on subnet, what's happening is SteelConnect is logging into my AWS account. It's looking at all my VPCs, it knows what subnets it has to connect to, it's going to plop a gateway appliance as well as a WAN optimization appliance, do all the plumbing between those appliances, and make sure that all traffic is routed through the SteelHeads for WAN optimization, and it creates all those downloads for me automatically. And the beauty of this solution, again, is that not only does it provide automated connectivity for me between, say, different regions of AWS but also between AWS and Azure. We've suddenly become the cloud brokers of the world. We can provide automated, optimized connectivity between AWS and Azure. So let me show that to you also. >> John: Yeah, show me the Azure integration. >> Vivek: So I'm going to search for maybe subnets in Europe, Ireland, I'm going to connect to that. The workflow is exactly the same. Once I do connect, it gives me the option to deploy an instance of my gateway and my SteelHead. So I'm going to select that and then click on submit. So now when I go back to my dashboard, you'll see that, oh by the way, my Dallas site is now online. And when I click on it, you'll see all my tunnels have also come online. >> John: Beautiful. >> Vivek: Going back to what we just talked about- >> John: Frankfurt and Ireland are up an running. >> Vivek: Exactly. >> John: With Amazon and Azure piece there. >> Vivek: Yeah, it does take about four or seven minutes for those appliances to come online, they download their latest firmware, but that's nothing- >> John: Minutes aren't hours, and that's not days. >> Vivek: Exactly, not hours, not days, not weeks. >> Right, I mean a key use case here, when you think about cloud connectivity today, it's still rather tedious to connect your on-premise location into these cloud-based, virtual environments. And so what network operators do is they do that in as few locations as possible, typically in a data center. And what that means is now you're limited, because all the traffic that you need to go into those environments has to get backhauled into your data center before going there. So now, because this is automated, and it's all part of that same secure VPN, if you have some developers that are working on an app and they're using infrastructure as a service, you know, as part of their work, they can do that from whichever remote office they're sitting at or their home office or at a coffee shop. And there's no need to create that additional latency by backhauling them to the data center before going to the cloud. >> So all that stuff gets done automatically, on the networking side, with you guys. >> Exactly, exactly. So step one is really creating this easy button to have connectivity, both on premises and in the cloud. >> Connectivity with all those benefits of the tunneling and stuff, that's either pre-existing or that's been set up by an instance. >> Exactly, secure VPN, full mesh connectivity across all the places where you're doing business or you need assets to run in the cloud. Then the second phase is, okay, how do you want to dictate which applications are running over which circuits in this environment? And this is where, again, with a legacy approach, it's been really tedious to define which applications should be steered across one link, if you can identify those applications at all. So what Vivek's going to show next is the power of policy and how you can make it easy to do some things that are very common: steering video, steering voice and dealing with, you know, SaaS applications in the cloud. So you want to give them a taste of that? >> Vivek: Absolutely. So let's go to rules, and let's create a new traffic rule, say, I want to make sure that across all my sites for my organization, I want video, which is a bandwidth-intensive application, as you all know, doesn't really choke up my MPLS link, which is my most precious link across all my sites. I should be able to configure that with as much ease as I just said it. So let's do that. We can do that with the software defined intelligence of SteelConnect. I can apply that rule to all my sites, all my users, and I'm going to select applications, where I search for video. There's already a pre-configured application group for video. I'm going to select online collaboration and video. And under path preference, I'm going to say that for this application, don't use my MPLS as my primary, but use my internet link as the primary. >> John: And the reason for that is to split traffic between the value of the link's cost or >> Vivek: Exactly. >> John: Importance. >> Vivek: Exactly. Load balance gets really important. So I'm going to save that as my primary- >> John: So plenty of people that are watching YouTube videos or, you know. >> Vivek: (laughs) Right, exactly. >> Exactly, video is one of the biggest hogs of bandwidth. It's basically creating an insatiable demand, right, so you definitely need to look for your best option in terms of capacity. And with internet broadband, maybe you're going to sacrifice a little bit on quality, but video, you know, deals with that pretty well. But it's just hard to configure that at each and every single box where you're trying to do that, so. >> Vivek: Yeah, as opposed to configuring that on each and every individual box or every individual site, I'm creating this globally applied rule to all my sites. And I'm going to select MPLS as a secondary. I'm going to select a path quality profile, which means that if there's some severe degradation in my internet link, go ahead and use my MPLS link. So I'm going to say latency sensitive metrics, and I'm going to apply a DSCP tag of high, click here on submit, and the moment I turn this rule on, it automatically updates all of the IPs, all of the uplinks, all of the routes across my entire organization. >> John: So you're paying the quality of service concept to all dimensions of apps. >> Vivek: Absolutely, whether it's video- >> John: Video, Snapchat, livestreaming, to downloading, uploading. >> Vivek: Yeah, and I can create the same kind of rule even for voice, where maybe I have my MPLS, since that's my primary and most precious link available for all my sites, have that as a primary and my secondary as my route VPN, which is my- [John] If you're a call center, you want to have it probably go over the best links, right? >> Vivek: Exactly. And assign it the DSCP tag of urgent so that that traffic gets sent at the expense of all my other traffic. >> John: Awesome, that's great stuff. Policy is great for cloud. What about security? Take us through a demo of security. >> So that's a really good question. I mean, as soon as you're starting to use internet broadband connectivity in these remote locations, one of the first things you think about is security. With the secure VPN connectivity, you're assuring that that traffic is encrypted, you know, end to end, if it's going from branch to data center or even branch into cloud. And that was really step one that Vivek showed earlier. Step two is when you realize, you know what, there are certain applications that are living in the cloud, things like Office 365 or Salesforce.com that truly are a trusted extension of your business. So let's turn that spigot up a little bit, and let's steer those applications that we trust direct from branch to the internet, and by doing that we can avoid, again, that backhaul into the data center. And with an application-defined approach, this becomes really easy. >> Vivek: Yeah, and I can do that with a very simple rule here, too. I'm going to apply that rule to all my sites. I'm going to say for applications, let's say trusted SaaS apps like Salesforce, Dropbox, and Box, I'm going to select a group called trusted SaaS apps, and now under path preference, I'm going to say for these applications, I know that I've set an organizational default that for all my traffic, go over my MPLS link and break out to the internet that way, but for some applications that I've defined as trusted SaaS apps, break out to the internet directly. >> John: Those are apps that they basically say are part of our business operation. >> Vivek: Yeah. >> John: Salesforce, Workday, whatever they might be. >> Vivek: Absolutely. So you're opening that spigot just a little bit, as Josh was talking about. And I can choose to apply a path quality profile so that there's a dynamic path quality-based path selection and apply a QoS priority. I'm going to leave it to high and submit. And the powerful thing about this is even though I've applied this to all my sites, I can choose to apply this to individual sites or maybe an individual VLAN in a site or an individual user group or even a single user for follow the user policies. And that's the entire essence of the software-defined intelligence of SteelConnect. The ease with which we can deploy these rules across our entire organization or go as granular to a single user is a very powerful concept. >> Josh: One of the things too, John, in terms of security, which you were asking about earlier, is that not only is a policy-based approach helping you be efficient at how you configure this but it's also helping you be efficient in how you audit that your security policies are in place because if you were doing this on a box-by-box basis, if you really, truly wanted to do an audit with the security team, you're going to have to look at every single box, make sure there's no typo whatsoever in any of those commands. But here we've just made a policy within the company that there are certain applications that are trusted. We have one policy, we see that it's on, and we know that our default is to backhaul everything else. And so that becomes the extent of the audit. The other thing that's interesting is that by just turning off this policy, that becomes your roll back, right? The other thing that's really hard about configuring boxes with lots of commands is that it's almost sometimes impossible to roll things back. So here you have a really easy button on a policy-by-policy basis to roll back if you need to. >> John: And just go, you know, clean sheet. But this path-based steering is an interesting concept. You go global, across all devices, you have the roll back, and go in individually to devices as well. >> Josh: That's right, that's right. Now, this next click of bringing that internet closer to you, is where you say, you know what? In addition to trusted SaaS applications, let's go ahead and have even recreational internet traffic go straight from the branch out to the internet at large. >> John: Love that term, recreational internet. (laughing) It's basically the playground, go play out there in the wild. (laughing) >> Josh: Exactly. >> John: There's bad guys out there. But that's what you mean, is traffic that's essentially, you're basically saying, this is classified as, assume the worst, hope for the best. >> Right, exactly. And that's where you do have to protect yourself from a network security standpoint. So that next step is to say okay, well instead of backhauling all of that recreational, dangerous internet traffic, what if we could put some more powerful IDS, IPS capabilities out there at the edge? And you can do that by deploying traditional firewall, more hardware, at those edge devices. But there's also cloud-based approaches to security today. So what Vivek is going to show next is some of the power of automation and policy that we've integrated with one cloud security broker named Zscaler. >> Vivek: Zscaler, yeah, so- >> John: Jump into it. >> Vivek: Our engineers have been working very closely with engineers from Zscaler, and really the end result is this, where we do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of connecting to the Zscaler cloud. What I mean by that is what you're looking at on the SteelConnect interface, going back to that entire concept of single pane of glass, is that you can see all your Zscaler nodes from SteelConnect right here. And on a site-by-site basis, we will automatically select for you what Zscaler nodes are the closest to you based on minimum latency. And we select a primary and a secondary. We also give you the option of manually selecting that, but by default, we'll select that for you so that any traffic that you want to break out to the internet will go to the Zscaler cloud like it's a WAN cloud by itself. So I can go to my organization and networking default and say that hey, you know what, for all of my traffic, break out by default to the Zscaler cloud as the primary so that it's all additionally inspected over there for all those IDS and IPS capabilities that Josh was talking about. And then break out to the internet from there. And that's, again, a very powerful concept. And just to remind you though, the traffic path rule that we just created for trusted SaaS apps will still bypass the Zscaler cloud because we've asked those applications to go directly out to the internet. >> John: Because of the path information. But Zscaler, talk about how that works because you mentioned it's a cloud. >> Vivek: Yes. >> John: Is it truly a cloud, is it always on? What's the relationship with- >> I mean, this is what's interesting. And the cloud is basically a collection of, you know, data centers that are all connected together. And so some of the complexity and effort involved in integrating a cloud-based security solution like Zscaler is still often very manual. So without this type of integration, this collaboration we've done with them, you would still have to go into each box and basically manually select and choose which, you know, data center of Zscaler's should we be redirecting to. And you know, if they add a new data center that's closer, you would have to go and reconfigure it. So there's a lot of automation here where the system is just checking, what's my best access into Zscaler's cloud, over and over again and making sure that traffic is going to be routed that way. >> John: And Zscaler's always on, is an always-on security model. >> Yeah, active backup, exactly. There's many of those locations. >> Alright, so visibility. Now, as the internet connections are key to the, you know, zero touch provisioning you guys demoed earlier, IoT is coming around the corner, and it's bringing new devices to the network. That's more network connections. >> Josh: Right. >> Usually they're who is that person out there, what's that device, a lot of unknown, autonomous, so how do I use the visibility of all this data? >> Yeah, visibility's important to every organization, and once we start talking about autonomous networks, it becomes even more important for us to dive deeper and make sure that our networks are performing the way we want them to perform. It goes back to that entire concept of trust but verify. So I'm creating all these policy rules, but how do I know that it's actually working? So if you look at my interface now, actually, let's pause for a second and just enjoy what we've done so far. (laughing) >> John: A lot of green. >> Vivek: You'll see that my, a lot of green, and a lot of green lines. So this is my site in AWS, which I just brought up, and this is my site in Ireland. So if I click on the tunnel between- >> John: Are those the only two cloud sites? Are the rest on premise? >> Vivek: The rest are all on premise, exactly. So if I want to, say, click on the tunnel over here between my Azure site and my AWS site, which I just brought up, it gives me some basic visibility parameters, like what's my outbound and inbound throughput, what's my latency and packet loss. We don't see any real values here because we're not sending any data right now. >> John: But if you would, you would see full connection points so you can make decisions or like, workloads to be there, so as you look at- >> Vivek: Absolutely. >> John: Connection to the cloud. >> Vivek: It's all real time data. But if you want to dive in deeper, we can look at what we call SteelCentral Insights for SteelConnect so you can look at- >> John: Hold on, you're going too fast. Back up for a second. This is an Insight's dashboard. >> Vivek: Yes. >> John: Powered by what data? >> Vivek: Powered by the data that is being pulled from all of those- >> John: Those green- >> Vivek: All those gateways. >> John: All those points. >> Vivek: All those green points. >> John: So this is where the visualization of the data gives the user some information to act on, understand, make course corrections. >> Vivek: Exactly. >> John: Okay, now take us through this again. >> Vivek: So you can look at what your top uplinks are. So I'm looking at my site in New York City. So I can look at what my top uplinks are, what my top applications are, who are my top users? Who's using BitTorrent? I can see here that Nancy Clark is using the BitTorrent. So I might have to go ahead and create a rule to block that. >> John: You know what kind of movie she just downloaded, you know, music? >> Josh: Exactly, exactly. >> John: So you can actually look at the application type. So you mentioned BitTorrent. So same with the video, even though you're path steering, you still see everything through this? >> Vivek: Absolutely. >> Exactly, I mean this is application defined networking in action, where, you know, the new primitives that network administrators and architects are now able to use are things like application, user, location, you know, performance SLA, like the priority of that application, any security constraint. And that's very much aligned to the natural language of business. You know, when the business is talking about, you know, which users are really important for which applications that they're sending to which locations, I mean, now you have a pane of glass that you can interact with that is basically aligned to that. And that's some of the power there. >> John: Alright, so what are you showing here now? Back to the demo. >> Vivek: Back to the demo. The next part of the demo is, it's actually a bonus segment. We're going to talk about our integration with Xirrus Wifi. We recently announced that we are working with Xirrus. We bought them, and we're really excited to show how these two products, Xirrus access points, Xirrus wifi, and SteelConnect, can work hand in glove with each other. Because this goes back to the entire concept of not just SD-WAN but SD-LAN for an end-to-end software-defined network. So what I want to show you next is really hot off the presses. >> John: This is new tech you're showing, new technology? >> Vivek: Yes. >> Josh: So when SteelConnect was launched last year, there are wifi capabilities in the gateways that Vivek showed during the zero touch provisioning part. Xirrus is well regarded as having some of the, you know, most dense capabilities for accessing- >> John: Like stadiums, we all know that, we all lived that nightmare. >> Josh: Exactly. >> John: I got all these bars on wifi but no connectivity. >> Josh: Exactly, so stadiums, conventions, you know, when you think about the world of IoT that's coming and just how many devices are going to be vying for that local area wifi bandwidth, you need to have an architecture like Xirrus that has multiple radios that can service all of those things. And so what we've been doing is taking, you know, the steps as quickly as possible to bring the Xirrus wifi, in addition with the wifi that SteelConnect already had, into the same policy framework, right? Cause you don't want to manage those things, necessarily, going forward as different and distinct entities. >> John: So SteelConnect has the wifi in the demo. >> Exactly, so I'm now moving to a different org, where we have about four or five sites, and I'm going to go ahead and add an appliance. And I'm going to add this Xirrus access point and deploy it in my site at Chicago. So I just click here on submit, and you'll see that the access point will come online within, in less than a minute. And once it does come online, I can actually start controlling this Xirrus access point, not just from the XMS cloud, which is the Xirrus dashboard, but also from SteelConnect manager, going back to that concept of single pane of glass, so- >> John: So we have another example of zero touch provisioning. >> Vivek: Zero touch provisioning. >> John: Send the device, and someone just plugs it in and installs it, doesn't have to be an expert. Could be the UPS guy, could be anybody. >> Vivek: Yeah, anybody. Just connect it to the right port and you're done. And that's what it is here, so you see that this appliance in Chicago, which is a Xirrus access point, is online. And now I can go ahead and play with it. I can choose to deploy an SSID and broadcast it at my site in Chicago. You see that I'm only broadcasting Riverbed dash two, and when I go to my XMS dashboard, and can see that one access point is actually up. This is the same access point that we just deployed in the Chicago site, and that profile called Chicago is already configured. So when I click on it, I can see that my SSID is also displaying over here, and I can do so much more with this interface. >> John: It really brings network management into the operational realm of networking. >> Vivek: Absolutely. >> John: Future experience of networking is not making it as a separate function, but making it an integral part of deploying, provisioning, configuring. >> Exactly, and the policies to automate how it's all used, right, so if we just take a step back, what we literally did in just a few minutes, we deployed a new location in Dallas without anybody needing to be there other than to plug in the box. We extended the connectivity from on premises, not only into one cloud but two clouds, AWS and Azure. We started leveraging public internet in these remote sites to offload our MPLS for video. We steered SaaS applications that were trusted out there directly to the internet. And then we pulled in a third-party capability of Zscaler to do additional security scrubbing in these remote locations. That applies to every single site that's in this environment. And we literally did it while we were talking about the value in the use cases, you know? >> Great demo, great SD-WAN in action. Josh, Vivek, thanks for taking the time to give the demo. Experiencing the future of networking in real time, thanks for the demo, great stuff. >> Thanks, John. >> This is theCUBE, watching special SD-WAN in action with Riverbed, thanks for watching. I'm John Furrier. (bright music)

(light techno music) >> Hello and welcome to our special Mobile World Congress '1, #MWC17. I'm John Furrier inside theCUBE Studio breaking down all the analysis we're going to be covering at Mobile World Congress. We kind of know some news is coming out, that's Monday and Tuesday all day coverage. We're here with @rUvreuv, Reuv Cohen, an entrepreneur I've known for years. Going back to when we first met in the cloud days back in '08 timeframe, '09, when dev ops was really the beginning of the movement. You've been an entrepreneur, you've sold multiple companies, multi-time successful entrepreneur. But you've been deep in the cloud game. Welcome to theCUBE special coverage of Mobile World Congress. >> Thanks for inviting me, I'm happy to be here. >> The other thing, too, is we just tried to get the Periscope thing working so we have our little Periscopes going here. But this is really the media landscape that's going to be one of the themes at Mobile World Congress that certainly will be front and center. These service providers have to have a business model. And media entertainment has been on their to-do list. Just a lot of the plumbing hasn't gotten done. And the new trend that's going to be really front and center is AI. We were joking about that. But seriously, you're doing a lot of discussions around AI. And then Intel's 5G now, which they pre-announced this week, prior to Mobile World Congress with 5G. Their positioning is a step-up game changer. So you got 5G overlay network, you have real plumbing that's getting done with NFV, Network Functions Virtualization. You have the app market exploding. Will the service providers ever make it? Will the telco's actually figure out a business model? >> Well, you know, they're always the pipes, and you're always going to need pipes. There's an endless amount of opportunities for those people figuring out what to do with those pipes. I don't know, this is the question we've been asked for 20 years. Do they want to be more than dumb pipes, right? >> Well, they've yet to find a business model. I mean, I think one of the things, I was looking at the Intel announcement, was, is 5G a technology looking for a problem, or does it really actually create a step-up function in terms of capability. I mean 4G is just an evolution of 3G, LTE is getting some speeds there. But, I mean, my family hits their caps on all the data we're doing. People are hitting their data caps, we need more data. So the question is, is that going to be ready for prime time? Your thoughts on? >> Well, there's almost like a Moore's law of data, right. The more data you have available to use, the more things you can do with it. You know, Periscope's a prime example. Now they're doing a whole variety of different video-related things, Facebook lives, there's a YouTube lives, everyone wants to do live. And all that requires massive amounts of data, especially if you want to do high definition related things. We were actually trying to set up a Periscope before the broadcast this morning. And one of the first things that became apparent was we had to limit our bit rate to 800 kilobits, which is relatively small when you think about it. >> Yeah, that's the bandwidth issues. I mean, at the end of the day it comes down to the last miles, we always say. But let's get into some of the analysis of Mobile World Congress and let's get down under the hood. Is could truly ready for prime time? And when I say cloud, I mean, obviously, full-stack infrastructure because network virtualization has been one of those kind of shifting sands, if you will. NFV has been one of those things that's been kind of evolving. OpenStack is seen to be much more of a telco use case at some of the OpenStack summits we've covered. Your thoughts on the progress of cloud-ready telcos? >> You know it comes down to, if you're going to build an application, whether you're an enterprise, whether you're an individual developer or something in between, you're probably not going to build it in your own data center. Whether that's a closet in the back of your office, or your own... You're probably going to go and build something that's quick and fast and efficient. And that really is starting to look like things that are server-less, things that are event-driven and that isn't really sitting in your own data center anymore. >> So what's your take on the ecosystem? Do you think that the ecosystem play for the Mobile World Congress is going to shift at all? I mean, I was commenting to Dave Vellante just last week and Jeff Frick, here on theCUBE team that CES, which we don't go to anymore because it's gotten too big. But this year we did cover it here in the studio like we're doing with Mobile World Congress. It just seems that CES is no longer a consumer electronics show, it's more of a car show. Autonomous vehicles are, obviously, front and center, that's the glam, that's the eye candy. Mobile World Congress doesn't seem to be a device show anymore, or it's shifting away. Last year Mark Zuckerberg gave the keynote speech, and you saw that shift. What's Mobile World Congress turning into, in your opinion? >> It's an app show. So, where CES still sort of has this focus on the actual physical things that you can touch and build. The mobile apps of the world are now the things that dominate mobility. Is a phone interesting? Not really. (John laughs) What you do on your phone is definitely interesting. >> It's interesting to look at also, and talking to folks about, Mobile World Congress is one of those shows, it's a biz dev show, too. A lot of people who fly over to Barcelona don't really go for the pure content. There's more business deals going on. All the top executives of the big technology companies go there. Your thoughts on landscape of the vendors out there that are suppliers to this new consumerized market. You see deals happening that you think would be interesting? Where do you see the formation of the industry lining up? Obviously, some things have to get done at a technical level. 5G's great, great hope for that. But some companies are trying to transform look at Cisco, companies like Cisco, companies like Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, VM Ware, AWS, Google, Intel, Qualcomm. I mean there seems to be a feeling of posturing and a reef-set, if you will. >> 2017, so far, is shaping up to be the year of Snapchat, if you ask me. With a pending IPO they're saying that their revenues are going to be increasing 5x. It looks like everything we've been talking about, the app-based world, is sort of culminating in this Snapchat thing. So the question is, is Snapchat going to live up to all the hype that's surrounding them as this sort of, next generation of you know, the next Facebook, the next Google, the next whatever. >> Well it's interesting, Snapchat brings up the conversation of, the people who have their head in the sand versus people who are riding this wave. Facebook was totally pooh-pooh'ed during the IPO. I remember leading up to the IPO, it was like, oh my God, there's no way they can do it. They can never be the next Google, that was kind of the comparison. Google was compared to Microsoft, and then Facebook was compared to Google. And then everyone was like, no frickin' way that's going to happen. Why would anyone want to seed that company? It's a social net for college kids, and now some adults are coming on. And then look what happened, so the world changed. Snapchat's the same way, so it's interesting, it's not what you think. The core competency shifts and the user consumption becomes democratized. So the question is, what does Snapchat mean for telcos? Does that mean that they're just pipes? What do they do? How do they get in front of this? You got Netflix, you got Amazon out there with, now, the video stuff. >> People want content and they want it fast, they want it in high quality and they want it on the go. So, yeah it is the question. I think that the challenge that a lot of these telco's are having is the fact that they still have a bit of a monopoly in many parts of the world and they use that monopoly to inflict quite a bit of pain. So it's, I don't think that's something that they're going to be able to get away with very much longer. >> So what's your take on AI? Since you've been doing a lot of AI. And obviously, AI's been around. In the 80's when I got my CS degree, LISP was out there, neural networks, object-oriented programming was hitting the scene. You know, you had this kind of mind-set, and it was still, AI was this elusive academic mental model and some coding. Now it's all the rage, when you look at autonomous vehicles and you look at IOT, drones, a new landscape is here, connected consumer. Your thoughts on where AI, is it, right now, certainly it's hyped, we all agree on that. >> There's been several iterations of AI over the last 40 years. Every time technology appears you hear about AI. In the 70's you saw things like Space Odyssey and there was this rush to AI-related activities around the first generation of computing. Then that sort of, we realized it wasn't really possible and it disappeared for 25 years. Then it reemerged in your early days of internet, oh, it was still too early. (John laughs) So now 15, 20 years later, again, we are in this, another dawn of AI. But there is some critical differences. Now there are tooling that allows you to do the sorts of things that we had only dreamt of before, whether it's natural language processing, generation of information and other various forms of analytics. So all these things are culminating in these opportunities that were really never possible until now, including things like cloud computing. >> Machine learning certainly is the center of that. I love the machine learning rates. But machine learning's been around for a long time as well. I mean machine learning isn't necessarily new, it's mostly software that has to do with algorithms. But now you have data to compute. This is the new thing, right? Data's available and you got tons to compute. >> Yeah, it was hard >> Yeah. >> It was really, really hard. And anyone that's actually tried to go out and do a machine learning system, neural net, realized quite quickly that you had to be a phD to figure out how to use these tools. So now all these tools are being put together into platforms and end-user applications. So no longer do I have to go and try to put together a Lego, you know, erector set of stuff. I can go, I can get mostly everything I need to solve a problem and I can be off to the races quite quickly. >> So what's your up work you're doing now, Reuv? You've been an entrepreneur, give us the latest update on what's in your world right now. You were, obviously, instrumental in a lot of cloud ventures and, obviously, you've been in the industry, certainly as an influencer as well, you've got the little blue check on Twitter, which I don't have yet. Twitter rejected me twice, I got to get to the... Stu has it, Stu Miniman on our team. In all seriousness, this is a new world and you're on the front lines both as a media producer, you've got a great podcast, but also you're in the industry. Where is cloud going and where's that top of the stack action because that really is, you mentioned apps, that's where the action is right now. What do you see happening and what are you up to these days? >> Well, you know, a couple areas. One of the things they don't tell you is, after you sell your business, you lose a little bit of your purpose. (laughs) Personal problem, for sure, but. >> You make some good cash. >> Yeah, exactly. Put it in the bank there, bank some cash. >> Yeah, so after Anomaly and Virtual Stream exited there was this period where I get to do things that I want to do. And investing in other start ups was, you know, the thing that apparently, you do. I focused heavily on AI-related companies. Actually I just recently did an investment in a company called Zoom.AI, which is really doing some cool stuff around enterprise-focused AI work. Also, I've got a day job as well outside that. I recently joined a company here in San Jose that focuses on security for containerized environments. So, sort of policy-based security, very low level stuff. >> At the orchestration layer, or at the docker layer or where would you...? >> It's at, it's even lower than that. It essentially orchestrates the policy around things like system calls and networking itself. So, rather than having to focus on the complexities of all the various parts of an environment, what we do is we basically say, hey, look at the tags that exist and things like Kubernetes. And then those tags define the policies in which things can communicate with one another. Let's say it's a layer three network, or what has read or write access to the system calls themselves. >> Is that a new company for you, that you guys launched? >> Well, we're in the process of launching. >> So stealth? >> It's stealthy, I'm telling you about it right now. (both laugh) >> What's the name? >> Appareto. >> Appareto, so there it is. We're launching on theCUBE here, on Periscope, pre-recorded for our Mobile World Congress special coverage. Alright so this is, basically, this is the cloud native goes to full scale cloud, for apps. >> Exactly, so containers, we've come full circle. Anyone that's been around for a while knows containers is certainly not a new trend. Solaris, you know, 25 years ago doing containers. The implementation of it around micro-services and the tooling around dev ops and docker and other various Kubernetes-types deployments have made it much more readily attainable, in terms of using it within an enterprise or a run of the mill application. >> We were talking with a lot of folks leading up to Mobile World Congress prep for our special coverage and micro-services comes up heavily, and micro-services as an integration layer. And one of the things that we're seeing, I want to get your thoughts on this, is you see IBM just announced this week here in San Francisco at their IBM Connect event, oh, it's our Lotus Domino and Verved, which is their collaborative software. But the key to all this collaborative software, even to the Oracle's of the world and to Amazon, is integration with third party apps. And micro-services and containers become a critical component of that. So, for entrepreneurs and/or app developers, a new kind of third party developer is emerging and they need to integrate. What is the role micro-services play in all of this? This is a really key point, because this will point right at the telcos. Because whoever can embrace an ecosystem of app developers from an integrations standpoint will win, in my opinion. Your thoughts, do you see it in the same way? And how does micro-services and all this stuff play into that? >> Well, there's two... >> It's the glue layer? >> Yeah, it's the glue. Lego is, again, is kind of the thing that pops in my mind. There are these two, sort of, battling schools of thought. One is micro-services which allows you to easily plug and play these various components. The other is server-less, these things that are very event-driven, they're transient. They allow you to, again, act as a kind of glue that puts everything together. One's based on, predominantly, the idea of containers which is kind of a lightweight OS. And the other is basically saying, I don't need an OS. All I need is the functions that I need, when I need them, and I put them together and I'm off to the races. I think that most applications aren't ready for a whole choice of just doing one or the other, it's kind of a combination. So the exciting thing now, is you can do what used to take weeks or months, in a matter of days with these types of technologies. >> So your final thought on Mobile World Congress. What do you expect to see in the hype cycle noise and where's the signal? Where do you see this event happening, what's your thoughts? >> I think we're going to see a lot more in the focus of things like media and convergence. I think video-related activities is certainly going to remain to be hot. I think the tooling around enabling that type of high definition video focus is going to be a priority for a lot of these companies and the tooling around that will be a priority. >> We're here with Reuv breaking down the Mobile World Congress analysis and preview and all of what's happening in the news. Obviously, Intel, with the 5G, big announcement. I think they raised the curtain early. Obviously, they're competing with Qualcomm which has a different licensing agreement than Intel. Which is, you know, you see Apple as a big customer of Qualcomm and Intel. Interesting because as the price of the hardware goes down the chip guys want more cash, Qualcomm wants more cash than Intel. Very interesting dynamic, I think this ecosystem is going to be something that's going to watch. I think there's going to be a battle. I'm predicting that at Mobile World Congress we'll see a battle of the ecosystem. You're going to see whoever can make the market and shift the game, will be the winner. Reuv, thanks for spending the time, appreciate it. This is SiliconANGLE broadcasting here in Palo Alto for Mobile World Congress '17, special coverage. Thanks for watching. (light techno music)