>> Narrator: TheCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music intro) (logo background tingles) >> Hi everybody, welcome back to day three of MWC23, my name is Dave Vellante and we're here live at the Theater of Barcelona, Lisa Martin, David Nicholson, John Furrier's in our studio in Palo Alto. Lot of buzz at the show, the Mobile World Daily Today, front page, Netflix chief hits back in fair share row, Greg Peters, the co-CEO of Netflix, talking about how, "Hey, you guys want to tax us, the telcos want to tax us, well, maybe you should help us pay for some of the content. Your margins are higher, you have a monopoly, you know, we're delivering all this value, you're bundling Netflix in, from a lot of ISPs so hold on, you know, pump the brakes on that tax," so that's the big news. Lockheed Martin, FOSS issues, AI guidelines, says, "AI's not going to take over your job anytime soon." Although I would say, your job's going to be AI-powered for the next five years. We're going to talk about data, we've been talking about the disaggregation of the telco stack, part of that stack is a data layer. John Kreisa is here, the CMO of Couchbase, John, you know, we've talked about all week, the disaggregation of the telco stacks, they got, you know, Silicon and operating systems that are, you know, real time OS, highly reliable, you know, compute infrastructure all the way up through a telemetry stack, et cetera. And that's a proprietary block that's really exploding, it's like the big bang, like we saw in the enterprise 20 years ago and we haven't had much discussion about that data layer, sort of that horizontal data layer, that's the market you play in. You know, Couchbase obviously has a lot of telco customers- >> John: That's right. >> We've seen, you know, Snowflake and others launch telco businesses. What are you seeing when you talk to customers at the show? What are they doing with that data layer? >> Yeah, so they're building applications to drive and power unique experiences for their users, but of course, it all starts with where the data is. So they're building mobile applications where they're stretching it out to the edge and you have to move the data to the edge, you have to have that capability to deliver that highly interactive experience to their customers or for their own internal use cases out to that edge, so seeing a lot of that with Couchbase and with our customers in telco. >> So what do the telcos want to do with data? I mean, they've got the telemetry data- >> John: Yeah. >> Now they frequently complain about the over-the-top providers that have used that data, again like Netflix, to identify customer demand for content and they're mopping that up in a big way, you know, certainly Amazon and shopping Google and ads, you know, they're all using that network. But what do the telcos do today and what do they want to do in the future? They're all talking about monetization, how do they monetize that data? >> Yeah, well, by taking that data, there's insight to be had, right? So by usage patterns and what's happening, just as you said, so they can deliver a better experience. It's all about getting that edge, if you will, on their competition and so taking that data, using it in a smart way, gives them that edge to deliver a better service and then grow their business. >> We're seeing a lot of action at the edge and, you know, the edge can be a Home Depot or a Lowe's store, but it also could be the far edge, could be a, you know, an oil drilling, an oil rig, it could be a racetrack, you know, certainly hospitals and certain, you know, situations. So let's think about that edge, where there's maybe not a lot of connectivity, there might be private networks going in, in the future- >> John: That's right. >> Private 5G networks. What's the data flow look like there? Do you guys have any customers doing those types of use cases? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> And what are they doing with the data? >> Yeah, absolutely, we've got customers all across, so telco and transportation, all kinds of service delivery and healthcare, for example, we've got customers who are delivering healthcare out at the edge where they have a remote location, they're able to deliver healthcare, but as you said, there's not always connectivity, so they need to have the applications, need to continue to run and then sync back once they have that connectivity. So it's really having the ability to deliver a service, reliably and then know that that will be synced back to some central server when they have connectivity- >> So the processing might occur where the data- >> Compute at the edge. >> How do you sync back? What is that technology? >> Yeah, so there's, so within, so Couchbase and Couchbase's case, we have an autonomous sync capability that brings it back to the cloud once they get back to whether it's a private network that they want to run over, or if they're doing it over a public, you know, wifi network, once it determines that there's connectivity and, it can be peer-to-peer sync, so different edge apps communicating with each other and then ultimately communicating back to a central server. >> I mean, the other theme here, of course, I call it the software-defined telco, right? But you got to have, you got to run on something, got to have hardware. So you see companies like AWS putting Outposts, out to the edge, Outposts, you know, doesn't really run a lot of database to mind, I mean, it runs RDS, you know, maybe they're going to eventually work with companies like... I mean, you're a partner of AWS- >> John: We are. >> Right? So do you see that kind of cloud infrastructure that's moving to the edge? Do you see that as an opportunity for companies like Couchbase? >> Yeah, we do. We see customers wanting to push more and more of that compute out to the edge and so partnering with AWS gives us that opportunity and we are certified on Outpost and- >> Oh, you are? >> We are, yeah. >> Okay. >> Absolutely. >> When did that, go down? >> That was last year, but probably early last year- >> So I can run Couchbase at the edge, on Outpost? >> Yeah, that's right. >> I mean, you know, Outpost adoption has been slow, we've reported on that, but are you seeing any traction there? Are you seeing any nibbles? >> Starting to see some interest, yeah, absolutely. And again, it has to be for the right use case, but again, for service delivery, things like healthcare and in transportation, you know, they're starting to see where they want to have that compute, be very close to where the actions happen. >> And you can run on, in the data center, right? >> That's right. >> You can run in the cloud, you know, you see HPE with GreenLake, you see Dell with Apex, that's essentially their Outposts. >> Yeah. >> They're saying, "Hey, we're going to take our whole infrastructure and make it as a service." >> Yeah, yeah. >> Right? And so you can participate in those environments- >> We do. >> And then so you've got now, you know, we call it supercloud, you've got the on-prem, you've got the, you can run in the public cloud, you can run at the edge and you want that consistent experience- >> That's right. >> You know, from a data layer- >> That's right. >> So is that really the strategy for a data company is taking or should be taking, that horizontal layer across all those use cases? >> You do need to think holistically about it, because you need to be able to deliver as a, you know, as a provider, wherever the customer wants to be able to consume that application. So you do have to think about any of the public clouds or private networks and all the way to the edge. >> What's different John, about the telco business versus the traditional enterprise? >> Well, I mean, there's scale, I mean, one thing they're dealing with, particularly for end user-facing apps, you're dealing at a very very high scale and the expectation that you're going to deliver a very interactive experience. So I'd say one thing in particular that we are focusing on, is making sure we deliver that highly interactive experience but it's the scale of the number of users and customers that they have, and the expectation that your application's always going to work. >> Speaking of applications, I mean, it seems like that's where the innovation is going to come from. We saw yesterday, GSMA announced, I think eight APIs telco APIs, you know, we were talking on theCUBE, one of the analysts was like, "Eight, that's nothing," you know, "What do these guys know about developers?" But you know, as Daniel Royston said, "Eight's better than zero." >> Right? >> So okay, so we're starting there, but the point being, it's all about the apps, that's where the innovation's going to come from- >> That's right. >> So what are you seeing there, in terms of building on top of the data app? >> Right, well you have to provide, I mean, have to provide the APIs and the access because it is really, the rubber meets the road, with the developers and giving them the ability to create those really rich applications where they want and create the experiences and innovate and change the way that they're giving those experiences. >> Yeah, so what's your relationship with developers at Couchbase? >> John: Yeah. >> I mean, talk about that a little bit- >> Yeah, yeah, so we have a great relationship with developers, something we've been investing more and more in, in terms of things like developer relations teams and community, Couchbase started in open source, continue to be based on open source projects and of course, those are very developer centric. So we provide all the consistent APIs for developers to create those applications, whether it's something on Couchbase Lite, which is our kind of edge-based database, or how they can sync that data back and we actually automate a lot of that syncing which is a very difficult developer task which lends them to one of the developer- >> What I'm trying to figure out is, what's the telco developer look like? Is that a developer that comes from the enterprise and somebody comes from the blockchain world, or AI or, you know, there really doesn't seem to be a lot of developer talk here, but there's a huge opportunity. >> Yeah, yeah. >> And, you know, I feel like, the telcos kind of remind me of, you know, a traditional legacy company trying to get into the developer world, you know, even Oracle, okay, they bought Sun, they got Java, so I guess they have developers, but you know, IBM for years tried with Bluemix, they had to end up buying Red Hat, really, and that gave them the developer community. >> Yep. >> EMC used to have a thing called EMC Code, which was a, you know, good effort, but eh. And then, you know, VMware always trying to do that, but, so as you move up the stack obviously, you have greater developer affinity. Where do you think the telco developer's going to come from? How's that going to evolve? >> Yeah, it's interesting, and I think they're... To kind of get to your first question, I think they're fairly traditional enterprise developers and when we break that down, we look at it in terms of what the developer persona is, are they a front-end developer? Like they're writing that front-end app, they don't care so much about the infrastructure behind or are they a full stack developer and they're really involved in the entire application development lifecycle? Or are they living at the backend and they're really wanting to just focus in on that data layer? So we lend towards all of those different personas and we think about them in terms of the APIs that we create, so that's really what the developers are for telcos is, there's a combination of those front-end and full stack developers and so for them to continue to innovate they need to appeal to those developers and that's technology, like Couchbase, is what helps them do that. >> Yeah and you think about the Apples, you know, the app store model or Apple sort of says, "Okay, here's a developer kit, go create." >> John: Yeah. >> "And then if it's successful, you're going to be successful and we're going to take a vig," okay, good model. >> John: Yeah. >> I think I'm hearing, and maybe I misunderstood this, but I think it was the CEO or chairman of Ericsson on the day one keynotes, was saying, "We are going to monetize the, essentially the telemetry data, you know, through APIs, we're going to charge for that," you know, maybe that's not the best approach, I don't know, I think there's got to be some innovation on top. >> John: Yeah. >> Now maybe some of these greenfield telcos are going to do like, you take like a dish networks, what they're doing, they're really trying to drive development layers. So I think it's like this wild west open, you know, community that's got to be formed and right now it's very unclear to me, do you have any insights there? >> I think it is more, like you said, Wild West, I think there's no emerging standard per se for across those different company types and sort of different pieces of the industry. So consequently, it does need to form some more standards in order to really help it grow and I think you're right, you have to have the right APIs and the right access in order to properly monetize, you have to attract those developers or you're not going to be able to monetize properly. >> Do you think that if, in thinking about your business and you know, you've always sold to telcos, but now it's like there's this transformation going on in telcos, will that become an increasingly larger piece of your business or maybe even a more important piece of your business? Or it's kind of be steady state because it's such a slow moving industry? >> No, it is a big and increasing piece of our business, I think telcos like other enterprises, want to continue to innovate and so they look to, you know, technologies like, Couchbase document database that allows them to have more flexibility and deliver the speed that they need to deliver those kinds of applications. So we see a lot of migration off of traditional legacy infrastructure in order to build that new age interface and new age experience that they want to deliver. >> A lot of buzz in Silicon Valley about open AI and Chat GPT- >> Yeah. >> You know, what's your take on all that? >> Yeah, we're looking at it, I think it's exciting technology, I think there's a lot of applications that are kind of, a little, sort of innovate traditional interfaces, so for example, you can train Chat GPT to create code, sample code for Couchbase, right? You can go and get it to give you that sample app which gets you a headstart or you can actually get it to do a better job of, you know, sorting through your documentation, like Chat GPT can do a better job of helping you get access. So it improves the experience overall for developers, so we're excited about, you know, what the prospect of that is. >> So you're playing around with it, like everybody is- >> Yeah. >> And potentially- >> Looking at use cases- >> Ways tO integrate, yeah. >> Hundred percent. >> So are we. John, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Always great to see you, my friend. >> Great, thanks very much. >> All right, you're welcome. All right, keep it right there, theCUBE will be back live from Barcelona at the theater. SiliconANGLE's continuous coverage of MWC23. Go to siliconangle.com for all the news, theCUBE.net is where all the videos are, keep it right there. (cheerful upbeat music outro)

>> Announcer: theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies. Creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> Hi everybody. Welcome back to Barcelona. We're here at the Fira Live, theCUBE's ongoing coverage of day two of MWC 23. Back in 2021 was my first Mobile World Congress. And you know what? It was actually quite an experience because there was nobody there. I talked to my friend, who's now my co-host, Chris Lewis about what to expect. He said, Dave, I don't think a lot of people are going to be there, but Danielle Royston is here and she's the CEO of Totoge. And that year when Erickson tapped out of its space she took out 60,000 square feet and built out Cloud City. If it weren't for Cloud City, there would've been no Mobile World Congress in June and July of 2021. DR is back. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> It's great to see you. >> Chris. Awesome to see you. >> Yeah, Chris. Yep. >> Good to be back. Yep. >> You guys remember the narrative back then. There was this lady running around this crazy lady that I met at at Google Cloud next saying >> Yeah. Yeah. >> the cloud's going to take over Telco. And everybody's like, well, this lady's nuts. The cloud's been leaning in, you know? >> Yeah. >> So what do you think, I mean, what's changed since since you first caused all those ripples? >> I mean, I have to say that I think that I caused a lot of change in the industry. I was talking to leaders over at AWS yesterday and they were like, we've never seen someone push like you have and change so much in a short period of time. And Telco moves slow. It's known for that. And they're like, you are pushing buttons and you're getting people to change and thank you and keep going. And so it's been great. It's awesome. >> Yeah. I mean, it was interesting, Chris, we heard on the keynotes we had Microsoft, Satya came in, Thomas Curian came in. There was no AWS. And now I asked CMO of GSMA about that. She goes, hey, we got a great relationship with it, AWS. >> Danielle: Yeah. >> But why do you think they weren't here? >> Well, they, I mean, they are here. >> Mean, not here. Why do you think they weren't profiled? >> They weren't on the keynote stage. >> But, you know, at AWS, a lot of the times they want to be the main thing. They want to be the main part of the show. They don't like sharing the limelight. I think they just didn't want be on the stage with the Google CLoud guys and the these other guys, what they're doing they're building out, they're doing so much stuff. As Danielle said, with Telcos change in the ecosystem which is what's happening with cloud. Cloud's making the Telcos think about what the next move is, how they fit in with the way other people do business. Right? So Telcos never used to have to listen to anybody. They only listened to themselves and they dictated the way things were done. They're very successful and made a lot of money but they're now having to open up they're having to leverage the cloud they're having to leverage the services that (indistinct words) and people out provide and they're changing the way they work. >> So, okay in 2021, we talked a lot about the cloud as a potential disruptor, and your whole premise was, look you got to lean into the cloud, or you're screwed. >> Danielle: Yeah. >> But the flip side of that is, if they lean into the cloud too much, they might be screwed. >> Danielle: Yeah. >> So what's that equilibrium? Have they been able to find it? Are you working with just the disruptors or how's that? >> No I think they're finding it right. So my talk at MWC 21 was all about the cloud is a double-edged sword, right? There's two sides to it, and you definitely need to proceed through it with caution, but also I don't know that you have a choice, right? I mean, the multicloud, you know is there another industry that spends more on CapEx than Telco? >> No. >> Right. The hyperscalers are doing it right. They spend, you know, easily approaching over a $100 billion in CapEx that rivals this industry. And so when you have a player like that an industry driving, you know and investing so much Telco, you're always complaining how everyone's riding your coattails. This is the opportunity to write someone else's coattails. So jump on, right? I think you don't have a choice especially if other Telco competitors are using hyperscalers and you don't, they're going to be left behind. >> So you advise these companies all the time, but >> I mean, the issue is they're all they're all using all the hyperscalers, right? So they're the multi, the multiple relationships. And as Danielle said, the multi-layer of relationship they're using the hyperscalers to change their own internal operational environments to become more IT-centric to move to that software centric Telco. And they're also then with the hyperscalers going to market in different ways sometimes with them, sometimes competing with them. What what it means from an analyst point of view is you're suddenly changing the dynamic of a market where we used to have nicely well defined markets previously. Now they're, everyone's in it together, you know, it's great. And, and it's making people change the way they think about services. What I, what I really hope it changes more than anything else is the way the customers at the end of the, at the end of the supply, the value chain think this is what we can get hold of this stuff. Now we can go into the network through the cloud and we can get those APIs. We can draw on the mechanisms we need to to run our personal lives, to run our business lives. And frankly, society as a whole. It's really exciting. >> Then your premise is basically you were saying they should ride on the top over the top of the cloud vendor. >> Yeah. Right? >> No. Okay. But don't they lose the, all the data if they do that? >> I don't know. I mean, I think the hyperscalers are not going to take their data, right? I mean, that would be a really really bad business move if Google Cloud and Azure and and AWS start to take over that, that data. >> But they can't take it. >> They can't. >> From regulate, from sovereignty and regulation. >> They can't because of regulation, but also just like business, right? If they started taking their data and like no enterprises would use them. So I think, I think the data is safe. I think you, obviously every country is different. You got to understand the different rules and regulations for data privacy and, and how you keep it. But I think as we look at the long term, right and we always talk about 10 and 20 years there's going to be a hyperscaler region in every country right? And there will be a way for every Telco to use it. I think their data will be safe. And I think it just, you're going to be able to stand on on the shoulders of someone else for once and use the building blocks of software that these guys provide to make better experiences for subscribers. >> You guys got to explain this to me because when I say data I'm not talking about, you know, personal information. I'm talking about all the telemetry, you know, all the all the, you know the plumbing. >> Danielle: Yeah. >> Data, which is- >> It will increasingly be shared because you need to share it in order to deliver the services in the streamline efficient way that needs to be deliver. >> Did I hear the CEO of Ericsson Wright where basically he said, we're going to charge developers for access to that data through APIs. >> What the Ericsson have done, obviously with the Vage acquisition is they want to get into APIs. So the idea is you're exposing features, quality policy on demand type features for example, or even pulling we still use that a lot of SMS, right? So pulling those out using those APIs. So it will be charged in some way. Whether- >> Man: Like Twitter's charging me for APIs, now I API calls, you >> Know what it is? I think it's Twilio. >> Man: Oh, okay. >> Right. >> Man: No, no, that's sure. >> There's no reason why telcos couldn't provide a Twilio like service itself. >> It's a horizontal play though right? >> Danielle: Correct because developers need to be charged by the API. >> But doesn't there need to be an industry standard to do that as- >> Well. I think that's what they just announced. >> Industry standard. >> Danielle: I think they just announced that. Yeah. Right now I haven't looked at that API set, right? >> There's like eight of them. >> There's eight of them. Twilio has, it's a start you got to start somewhere Dave. (crosstalk) >> And there's all, the TM forum is all the other standard >> Right? Eight is better than zero- >> Right? >> Haven't got plenty. >> I mean for an industry that didn't really understand APIs as a feature, as a product as a service, right? For Mats Granryd, the deputy general of GSMA to stand on the keynote stage and say we partnered and we're unveiling, right. Pay by the use APIs. I was for it. I was like, that is insane. >> I liked his keynote actually, because I thought he was going to talk about how many attendees and how much economic benefiting >> Danielle: We're super diverse. >> He said, I would usually talk about that and you know greening in the network by what you did talk about a little bit. But, but that's, that surprised me. >> Yeah. >> But I've seen in the enterprise this is not my space as, you know, you guys don't live this but I've seen Oracle try to get developers. IBM had to pay $35 billion trying to get for Red Hat to get developers, right? EMC used to have a thing called EMC code, failed. >> I mean they got to do something, right? So 4G they didn't really make the business case the ROI on the investment in the network. Here we are with 5G, same discussion is having where's the use case? How are we going to monetize and make the ROI on this massive investment? And now they're starting to talk about 6G. Same fricking problem is going to happen again. And so I think they need to start experimenting with new ideas. I don't know if it's going to work. I don't know if this new a API network gateway theme that Mats talked about yesterday will work. But they need to start unbundling that unlimited plan. They need to start charging people who are using the network more, more money. Those who are using it less, less. They need to figure this out. This is a crisis for them. >> Yeah our own CEO, I mean she basically said, Hey, I'm for net neutrality, but I want to be able to charge the people that are using it more and more >> To make a return on, on a capital. >> I mean it costs billions of dollars to build these networks, right? And they're valuable. We use them and we talked about this in Cloud City 21, right? The ability to start building better metaverses. And I know that's a buzzword and everyone hates it, but it's true. Like we're working from home. We need- there's got to be a better experience in Zoom in 2D, right? And you need a great network for that metaverse to be awesome. >> You do. But Danielle, you don't need cellular for doing that, do you? So the fixed network is as important. >> Sure. >> And we're at mobile worlds. But actually what we beginning to hear and Crystal Bren did say this exactly, it's about the comp the access is sort of irrelevant. Fixed is better because it's more the cost the return on investment is better from fiber. Mobile we're going to change every so many years because we're a new generation. But we need to get the mechanism in place to deliver that. I actually don't agree that we should everyone should pay differently for what they use. It's a universal service. We need it as individuals. We need to make it sustainable for every user. Let's just not go for the biggest user. It's not, it's not the way to build it. It won't work if you do that you'll crash the system if you do that. And, and the other thing which I disagree on it's not about standing on the shoulders and benefiting from what- It's about cooperating across all levels. The hyperscalers want to work with the telcos as much as the telcos want to work with the hyperscalers. There's a lot of synergy there. There's a lot of ways they can work together. It's not one or the other. >> But I think you're saying let the cloud guys do the heavy lifting and I'm - >> Yeah. >> Not at all. >> And so you don't think so because I feel like the telcos are really good at pipes. They've always been good at pipes. They're engineers. >> Danielle: Yeah. >> Are they hanging on to the to the connectivity or should they let that go and well and go toward the developer. >> I mean AWS had two announcements on the 21st a week before MWC. And one was that telco network builder. This is literally being able to deploy a network capability at AWS with keystrokes. >> As a managed service. >> Danielle: Correct. >> Yeah. >> And so I don't know how the telco world I felt the shock waves, right? I was like, whoa, that seems really big. Because they're taking something that previously was like bread and butter. This is what differentiates each telco and now they've standardized it and made it super easy so anyone can do it. Now do I think the five nines of super crazy hardcore network criteria will be built on AWS this way? Probably not, but no >> It's not, it's not end twin. So you can't, no. >> Right. But private networks could be built with this pretty easily, right? And so telcos that don't have as much funding, right. Smaller, more experiments. I think it's going to change the way we think about building networks in telcos >> And those smaller telcos I think are going to be more developer friendly. >> Danielle: Yeah. >> They're going to have business models that invite those developers in. And that's, it's the disruption's going to come from the ISVs and the workloads that are on top of that. >> Well certainly what Dish is trying to do, right? Dish is trying to build a- they launched it reinvent a developer experience. >> Dave: Yeah. >> Right. Built around their network and you know, again I don't know, they were not part of this group that designed these eight APIs but I'm sure they're looking with great intent on what does this mean for them. They'll probably adopt them because they want people to consume the network as APIs. That's their whole thing that Mark Roanne is trying to do. >> Okay, and then they're doing open ran. But is it- they're not really cons- They're not as concerned as Rakuten with the reliability and is that the right play? >> In this discussion? Open RAN is not an issue. It really is irrelevant. It's relevant for the longer term future of the industry by dis aggregating and being able to share, especially ran sharing, for example, in the short term in rural environments. But we'll see some of that happening and it will change, but it will also influence the way the other, the existing ran providers build their services and offer their value. Look you got to remember in the relationship between the equipment providers and the telcos are very dramatically. Whether it's Ericson, NOKIA, Samsung, Huawei, whoever. So those relations really, and the managed services element to that depends on what skills people have in-house within the telco and what service they're trying to deliver. So there's never one size fits all in this industry. >> You're very balanced in your analysis and I appreciate that. >> I try to be. >> But I am not. (chuckles) >> So when Dr went off, this is my question. When Dr went off a couple years ago on the cloud's going to take over the world, you were skeptical. You gave a approach. Have you? >> I still am. >> Have you moderated your thoughts on that or- >> I believe the telecom industry is is a very strong industry. It's my industry of course I love it. But the relationship it is developing much different relationships with the ecosystem players around it. You mentioned developers, you mentioned the cloud players the equipment guys are changing there's so many moving parts to build the telco of the future that every country needs a very strong telco environment to be able to support the site as a whole. People individuals so- >> Well I think two years ago we were talking about should they or shouldn't they, and now it's an inevitability. >> I don't think we were Danielle. >> All using the hyperscalers. >> We were always going to need to transform the telcos from the conservative environments in which they developed. And they've had control of everything in order to reduce if they get no extra revenue at all, reducing the cost they've got to go on a cloud migration path to do that. >> Amenable. >> Has it been harder than you thought? >> It's been easier than I thought. >> You think it's gone faster than >> It's gone way faster than I thought. I mean pushing on this flywheel I thought for sure it would take five to 10 years it is moving. I mean the maths comp thing the AWS announcements last week they're putting in hyperscalers in Saudi Arabia which is probably one of the most sort of data private places in the world. It's happening really fast. >> What Azure's doing? >> I feel like I can't even go to sleep. Because I got to keep up with it. It's crazy. >> Guys. >> This is awesome. >> So awesome having you back on. >> Yeah. >> Chris, thanks for co-hosting. Appreciate you stay here. >> Yep. >> Danielle, amazing. We'll see you. >> See you soon. >> A lot of action here. We're going to come out >> Great. >> Check out your venue. >> Yeah the Togi buses that are outside. >> The big buses. You got a great setup there. We're going to see you on Wednesday. Thanks again. >> Awesome. Thanks. >> All right. Keep it right there. We'll be back to wrap up day two from MWC 23 on theCUBE. (upbeat music)

(soft music) >> Announcer: TheCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies. Creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to Spain, everybody. We're here at the Fira in MWC23. Is just an amazing day. This place is packed. They said 80,000 people. I think it might even be a few more walk-ins. I'm Dave Vellante, Lisa Martin is here, David Nicholson. But right now we have the Analyst Hot Takes with three friends of theCUBE. Chris Lewis is back again with me in the co-host seat. Zeus Kerravala, analyst extraordinaire. Great to see you, Z. and Sarbjeet SJ Johal. Good to see you again, theCUBE contributor. And that's my new name for him. He says that is his nickname. Guys, thanks for coming back on. We got the all male panel, sorry, but it is what it is. So Z, is this the first time you've been on it at MWC. Take aways from the show, Hot Takes. What are you seeing? Same wine, new bottle? >> In a lot of ways, yeah. I mean, I was talking to somebody this earlier that if you had come from like MWC five years ago to this year, a lot of the themes are the same. Telco transformation, cloud. I mean, 5G is a little new. Sustainability is certainly a newer theme here. But I think it highlights just the difficulty I think the telcos have in making this transformation. And I think, in some ways, I've been unfair to them in some degree 'cause I've picked on them in the past for not moving fast enough. These are, you know, I think these kind of big transformations almost take like a perfect storm of things that come together to happen, right? And so, in the past, we had technologies that maybe might have lowered opex, but they're hard to deploy. They're vertically integrated. We didn't have the software stacks. But it appears today that between the cloudification of, you know, going to cloud native, the software stacks, the APIs, the ecosystems, I think we're actually in a position to see this industry finally move forward. >> Yeah, and Chris, I mean, you have served this industry for a long time. And you know, when you, when you do that, you get briefed as an analyst, you actually realize, wow, there's a lot of really smart people here, and they're actually, they have challenges, they're working through it. So Zeus was saying he's been tough on the industry. You know, what do you think about how the telcos have evolved in the last five years? >> I think they've changed enormously. I think the problem we have is we're always looking for the great change, the big step change, and there is no big step change in a way. What telcos deliver to us as individuals, businesses, society, the connectivity piece, that's changed. We get better and better and more reliable connectivity. We're shunting a load more capacity through. What I think has really changed is their attitude to their suppliers, their attitude to their partners, and their attitude to the ecosystem in which they play. Understanding that connectivity is not the end game. Connectivity is part of the emerging end game where it will include storage, compute, connect, and analytics and everything else. So I think the realization that they are not playing their own game anymore, it's a much more open game. And some things they will continue to do, some things they'll stop doing. We've seen them withdraw from moving into adjacent markets as much as we used to see. So a lot of them in the past went off to try and do movies, media, and a lot went way way into business IT stuff. They've mainly pulled back from that, and they're focusing on, and let's face it, it's not just a 5G show. The fixed environment is unbelievably important. We saw that during the pandemic. Having that fixed broadband connection using wifi, combining with cellular. We love it. But the problem as an industry is that the users often don't even know the connectivity's there. They only know when it doesn't work, right? >> If it's not media and it's not business services, what is it? >> Well, in my view, it will be enabling third parties to deliver the services that will include media, that will include business services. So embedding the connectivity all the way into the application that gets delivered or embedding it so the quality mechanism deliver the gaming much more accurately or, I'm not a gamer, so I can't comment on that. But no, the video quality if you want to have a high quality video will come through better. >> And those cohorts will pay for that value? >> Somebody will pay somewhere along the line. >> Seems fuzzy to me. >> Me too. >> I do think it's use case dependent. Like you look at all the work Verizon did at the Super Bowl this year, that's a perfect case where they could have upsold. >> Explain that. I'm not familiar with it. >> So Verizon provided all the 5G in the Super Bowl. They provided a lot of, they provided private connectivity for the coaches to talk to the sidelines. And that's a mission critical application, right? In the NFL, if one side can't talk, the other side gets shut down. You can't communicate with the quarterback or the coaches. There's a lot of risk at that. So, but you know, there's a case there, though, I think where they could have even made that fan facing. Right? And if you're paying 2000 bucks to go to a game, would you pay 50 bucks more to have a higher tier of bandwidth so you can post things on social? People that go there, they want people to know they were there. >> Every football game you go to, you can't use your cell. >> Analyst: Yeah, I know, right? >> All right, let's talk about developers because we saw the eight APIs come out. I think ISVs are going to be a big part of this. But it's like Dee Arthur said. Hey, eight's better than zero, I guess. Okay, so, but so the innovation is going to come from ISVs and developers, but what are your hot takes from this show and now day two, we're a day and a half in, almost two days in. >> Yeah, yeah. There's a thing that we have talked, I mentioned many times is skills gravity, right? Skills have gravity, and also, to outcompete, you have to also educate. That's another theme actually of my talks is, or my research is that to puts your technology out there to the practitioners, you have to educate them. And that's the only way to democratize your technology. What telcos have been doing is they have been stuck to the proprietary software and proprietary hardware for too long, from Nokia's of the world and other vendors like that. So now with the open sourcing of some of the components and a few others, right? And they're open source space and antenna, you know? Antennas are becoming software now. So with the invent of these things, which is open source, it helps us democratize that to the other sort of skirts of the practitioners, if you will. And that will bring in more applications first into the IOT space, and then maybe into the core sort of California, if you will. >> So what does a telco developer look like? I mean, all the blockchain developers and crypto developers are moving into generative AI, right? So maybe those worlds come together. >> You'd like to think though that the developers would understand everything's network centric today. So you'd like to think they'd understand that how the network responds, you know, you'd take a simple app like Zoom or something. If it notices the bandwidth changes, it should knock down the resolution. If it goes up it, then you can add different features and things and you can make apps a lot smarter that way. >> Well, G2 was saying today that they did a deal with Mercedes, you know this probably better than I do, where they're going to embed WebEx in the car. And if you're driving, it'll shut off the camera. >> Of course. >> I'm like, okay. >> I'll give you a better example though. >> But that's my point. Like, isn't there more that we can do? >> You noticed down on the SKT stand the little helicopter. That's a vertical lift helicopter. So it's an electric vertical lift helicopter. Just think of that for a second. And then think of the connectivity to control that, to securely control that. And then I was recently at an event with Zeus actually where we saw an air traffic control system where there was no people manning the tower. It was managed by someone remotely with all the cameras around them. So managing all of those different elements, we call it IOT, but actually it's way more than what we thought of as IOT. All those components connecting, communicating securely and safely. 'Cause I don't want that helicopter to come down on my head, do you? (men laugh) >> Especially if you're in there. (men laugh) >> Okay, so you mentioned sustainability. Everybody's talking about power. I don't know if you guys have a lot of experience around TCO, but I'm trying to get to, well, is this just because energy costs are so high, and then when the energy becomes cheap again, nobody's going to pay any attention to it? Or is this the real deal? >> So one of the issues around the, if we want to experience all that connectivity locally or that helicopter wants to have that connectivity, we have to ultimately build denser, more reliable networks. So there's a CapEx, we're going to put more base stations in place. We need more fiber in the ground to support them. Therefore, the energy consumption will go up. So we need to be more efficient in the use of energy. Simple as that. >> How much of the operating expense is energy? Like what percent of it? Is it 10%? Is it 20%? Is it, does anybody know? >> It depends who you ask and it depends on the- >> I can't get an answer to that. I mean, in the enterprise- >> Analyst: The data centers? >> Yeah, the data centers. >> We have the numbers. I think 10 to 15%. >> It's 10 to 12%, something like that. Is it much higher? >> I've got feeling it's 30%. >> Okay, so if it's 30%, that's pretty good. >> I do think we have to get better at understanding how to measure too. You know, like I was talking with John Davidson at Sysco about this that every rev of silicon they come out with uses more power, but it's a lot more dense. So at the surface, you go, well, that's using a lot more power. But you can consolidate 10 switches down to two switches. >> Well, Intel was on early and talking about how they can intelligently control the cores. >> But it's based off workload, right? That's the thing. So what are you running over it? You know, and so, I don't think our industry measures that very well. I think we look at things kind of boxed by box versus look at total consumption. >> Well, somebody else in theCUBE was saying they go full throttle. That the networks just say just full throttle everything. And that obviously has to change from the power consumption standpoint. >> Obviously sustainability and sensory or sensors from IOT side, they go hand in hand. Just simple examples like, you know, lights in the restrooms, like in public areas. Somebody goes in there and just only then turns. The same concept is being applied to servers and compute and storage and every aspects and to networks as well. >> Cell tower. >> Yeah. >> Cut 'em off, right? >> Like the serverless telco? (crosstalk) >> Cell towers. >> Well, no, I'm saying, right, but like serverless, you're not paying for the compute when you're not using it, you know? >> It is serverless from the economics point of view. Yes, it's like that, you know? It goes to the lowest level almost like sleep on our laptops, sleep level when you need more power, more compute. >> I mean, some of that stuff's been in networking equipment for a long time, it just never really got turned on. >> I want to ask you about private networks. You wrote a piece, Athenet was acquired by HPE right after Dell announced a relationship with Athenet, which was kind of, that was kind of funny. And so a good move, good judo move by by HP. I asked Dell about it, and they said, look, we're open. They said the right things. We'll see, but I think it's up to HP. >> Well, and the network inside Dell is. >> Yeah, okay, so. Okay, cool. So, but you said something in that article you wrote on Silicon Angle that a lot of people feel like P5G is going to basically replace wireless or cannibalize wireless. You said you didn't agree with that. Explain why? >> Analyst: Wifi. >> Wifi, sorry, I said wireless. >> No, that's, I mean that's ridiculous. Pat Gelsinger said that in his last VMware, which I thought was completely irresponsible. >> That it was going to cannibalize? >> Cannibalize wifi globally is what he said, right? Now he had Verizon on stage with him, so. >> Analyst: Wifi's too inexpensive and flexible. >> Wifi's cheap- >> Analyst: It's going to embed really well. Embedded in that. >> It's reached near ubiquity. It's unlicensed. So a lot of businesses don't want to manage their own spectrum, right? And it's great for this, right? >> Analyst: It does the job. >> For casual connectivity. >> Not today. >> Well, it does for the most part. Right now- >> For the most part. But never at these events. >> If it's engineered correctly, it will. Right? Where you need private 5G is when reliability is an absolute must. So, Chris, you and I visited the Port of Rotterdam, right? So they're putting 5G, private 5G there, but there's metal containers everywhere, right? And that's going to disrupt it. And so there are certain use cases where it makes sense. >> I've been in your basement, and you got some pretty intense equipment in there. You have private 5G in there. >> But for carpeted offices, it does not make sense to bring private. The economics don't make any sense. And you know, it runs hot. >> So where's it going to be used? Give us some examples of where we should be looking for. >> The early ones are obviously in mining, and you say in ports, in airports. It broadens cities because you've got so many moving parts in there, and always think about it, very expensive moving parts. The cranes in the port are normally expensive piece of kits. You're moving that, all that logistics around. So managing that over a distance where the wifi won't work over the distance. And in mining, we're going to see enormous expensive trucks moving around trying to- >> I think a great new use case though, so the Cleveland Browns actually the first NFL team to use it for facial recognition to enter the stadium. So instead of having to even pull your phone out, it says, hey Dave Vellante. You've got four tickets, can we check you all in? And you just walk through. You could apply that to airports. You could do put that in a hotel. You could walk up and check in. >> Analyst: Retail. >> Yeah, retail. And so I think video, realtime video analytics, I think it's a perfect use case for that. >> But you don't need 5G to do that. You could do that through another mechanism, couldn't you? >> You could do wire depending on how mobile you want to do it. Like in a stadium, you're pulling those things in and out all the time. You're moving 'em around and things, so. >> Yeah, but you're coming in at a static point. >> I'll take the contrary view here. >> See, we can't even agree on that. (men laugh) >> Yeah, I love it. Let's go. >> I believe the reliability of connection is very important, right? And the moving parts. What are the moving parts in wifi? We have the NIC card, you know, the wifi card in these suckers, right? In a machine, you know? They're bigger in size, and the radios for 5G are smaller in size. So neutralization is important part of the whole sort of progress to future, right? >> I think 5G costs as well. Yes, cost as well. But cost, we know that it goes down with time, right? We're already talking about 60, and the 5G stuff will be good. >> Actually, sorry, so one of the big boom areas at the moment is 4G LTE because the component price has come down so much, so it is affordable, you can afford to bring it all together. People don't, because we're still on 5G, if 5G standalone everywhere, you're not going to get a consistent service. So those components are unbelievably important. The skillsets of the people doing integration to bring them all together, unbelievably important. And the business case within the business. So I was talking to one of the heads of one of the big retail outlets in the UK, and I said, when are you going to do 5G in the stores? He said, well, why would I tear out all the wifi? I've got perfectly functioning wifi. >> Yeah, that's true. It's already there. But I think the technology which disappears in front of you, that's the best technology. Like you don't worry about it. You don't think it's there. Wifi, we think we think about that like it's there. >> And I do think wifi 5G switching's got to get easier too. Like for most users, you don't know which is better. You don't even know how to test it. And to your point, it does need to be invisible where the user doesn't need to think about it, right? >> Invisible. See, we came back to invisible. We talked about that yesterday. Telecom should be invisible. >> And it should be, you know? You don't want to be thinking about telecom, but at the same time, telecoms want to be more visible. They want to be visible like Netflix, don't they? I still don't see the path. It's fuzzy to me the path of how they're not going to repeat what happened with the over the top providers if they're invisible. >> Well, if you think about what telcos delivers to consumers, to businesses, then extending that connectivity into your home to help you support secure and extend your connection into Zeus's basement, whatever it is. Obviously that's- >> His awesome setup down there. >> And then in the business environment, there's a big change going on from the old NPLS networks, the old rigid structures of networks to SD1 where the control point is moved outside, which can be under control of the telco, could be under the control of a third party integrator. So there's a lot changing. I think we obsess about the relative role of the telco. The demand is phenomenal for connectivity. So address that, fulfill that. And if they do that, then they'll start to build trust in other areas. >> But don't you think they're going to address that and fulfill that? I mean, they're good at it. That's their wheelhouse. >> And it's a 1.6 trillion market, right? So it's not to be sniffed at. That's fixed on mobile together, obviously. But no, it's a big market. And do we keep changing? As long as the service is good, we don't move away from it. >> So back to the APIs, the eight APIs, right? >> I mean- >> Eight APIs is a joke actually almost. I think they released it too early. The release release on the main stage, you know? Like, what? What is this, right? But of course they will grow into hundreds and thousands of APIs. But they have to spend a lot of time and effort in that sort of context. >> I'd actually like to see the GSMA work with like AWS and Microsoft and VMware and software companies and create some standardization across their APIs. >> Yeah. >> I spoke to them yes- >> We're trying to reinvent them. >> Is that not what they're doing? >> No, they said we are not in the business of a defining standards. And they used a different term, not standard. I mean, seriously. I was like, are you kidding me? >> Let's face it, there aren't just eight APIs out there. There's so many of them. The TM forum's been defining when it's open data architecture. You know, the telcos themselves are defining them. The standards we talked about too earlier with Danielle. There's a lot of APIs out there, but the consistency of APIs, so we can bring them together, to bring all the different services together that will support us in our different lives is really important. I think telcos will do it, it's in their interest to do it. >> All right, guys, we got to wrap. Let's go around the horn here, starting with Chris, Zeus, and then Sarbjeet, just bring us home. Number one hot take from Mobile World Congress MWC23 day two. >> My favorite hot take is the willingness of all the participants who have been traditional telco players who looked inwardly at the industry looking outside for help for partnerships, and to build an ecosystem, a more open ecosystem, which will address our requirements. >> Zeus? >> Yeah, I was going to talk about ecosystem. I think for the first time ever, when I've met with the telcos here, I think they're actually, I don't think they know how to get there yet, but they're at least aware of the fact that they need to understand how to build a big ecosystem around them. So if you think back like 50 years ago, IBM and compute was the center of everything in your company, and then the ecosystem surrounded it. I think today with digital transformation being network centric, the telcos actually have the opportunity to be that center of excellence, and then build an ecosystem around them. I think the SIs are actually in a really interesting place to help them do that 'cause they understand everything top to bottom that I, you know, pre pandemic, I'm not sure the telcos were really understand. I think they understand it today, I'm just not sure they know how to get there. . >> Sarbjeet? >> I've seen the lot of RN demos and testing companies and I'm amazed by it. Everything is turning into software, almost everything. The parts which are not turned into software. I mean every, they will soon. But everybody says that we need the hardware to run something, right? But that hardware, in my view, is getting miniaturized, and it's becoming smaller and smaller. The antennas are becoming smaller. The equipment is getting smaller. That means the cost on the physicality of the assets is going down. But the cost on the software side will go up for telcos in future. And telco is a messy business. Not everybody can do it. So only few will survive, I believe. So that's what- >> Software defined telco. So I'm on a mission. I'm looking for the monetization path. And what I haven't seen yet is, you know, you want to follow the money, follow the data, I say. So next two days, I'm going to be looking for that data play, that potential, the way in which this industry is going to break down the data silos I think there's potential goldmine there, but I haven't figured out yet. >> That's a subject for another day. >> Guys, thanks so much for coming on. You guys are extraordinary partners of theCUBE friends, and great analysts and congratulations and thank you for all you do. Really appreciate it. >> Analyst: Thank you. >> Thanks a lot. >> All right, this is a wrap on day two MWC 23. Go to siliconangle.com for all the news. Where Rob Hope and team are just covering all the news. John Furrier is in the Palo Alto studio. We're rocking all that news, taking all that news and putting it on video. Go to theCUBE.net, you'll see everything on demand. Thanks for watching. This is a wrap on day two. We'll see you tomorrow. (soft music)

>> Narrator: theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to the Fira in Barcelona. This is Dave Vellante with David Nicholson. Lisa Martin is also here. This is day two of our coverage of MWC 23 on theCUBE. We're super excited. We're in between hall four and five. Stop by if you're here. Dennis Hoffman is here. He's the senior vice president and general manager of the Telecom systems business at Dell Technologies, and he's joined by Yousef Khalidi, who's the corporate vice president of Azure for Operators from Microsoft. Gents, Welcome. >> Thanks, Dave. >> Thank you. >> So we saw Satya in the keynote. He wired in. We saw T.K. came in. No AWS. I don't know. They're maybe not part of the show, but maybe next year they'll figure it out. >> Indeed, indeed. >> Lots of stuff happened in the Telecom, but the Azure operator distributed service is the big news, you guys got here. What's that all about? >> Oh, first of all, we changed the name. >> Oh, you did? >> You did? >> Oh, yeah. We have a real name now. It's called the Azure Operator Nexus. >> Oh, I like Nexus better than that. >> David: That's much better, much better. >> Dave: The engineers named it first time around. >> I wish, long story, but thank you for our marketing team. But seriously, not only did we rename the platform, we expanded the platform. >> Dave: Yeah. >> So it now covers the whole spectrum from the far-edge to the public cloud as well, including the near-edge as well. So essentially, it's a hybrid platform that can also run network functions. So all these operators around you, they now have a platform which combines cloud technologies with the choice where they want to run, optimized for the network. >> Okay and so, you know, we've talked about the disaggregation of the network and how you're bringing kind of engineered systems to the table. We've seen this movie before, but Dennis, there are differences, right? I mean, you didn't really have engineered systems in the 90s. You didn't have those integration points. You really didn't have the public cloud, you didn't have AI. >> Right. >> So you have all those new powers that you can tap, so give us the update from your perspective, having now spent a day and a half here. What's the vibe, what's the buzz, and what's your take on everything? >> Yeah, I think to build on what Yousef said, there's a lot going on with people still trying to figure out exactly how to architect the Telecom network of the future. They know it's got to have a lot to do with cloud. It does have some pretty significant differences, one of those being, there's definitely got to be a hybrid component because there are pieces of the Telecom network that even when modernized will not end up centralized, right? They're going to be highly distributed. I would say though, you know, we took away two things, yesterday, from all the meetings. One, people are done, I think the network operators are done, questioning technology readiness. They're now beginning to wrestle with operationalization of it all, right? So it's like, okay, it's here. I can in fact build a modern network in a very cloud native way, but I've got to figure out how to do that all. And another big part of it is the ecosystem and certainly the partnership long standing between Dell and Microsoft which we're extending into this space is part of that, making it easier on people to actually acquire, deploy, and importantly, support these new technologies. >> So a lot of the traditional carriers, like you said, they're sort of beyond the technology readiness. Jose Maria Alvarez in the keynote said there are three pillars to the future Telecom network. He said low latency, programmable networks, and then cloud and edge, kind of threw that in. You agree with that, Yousef? (Dave and Yousef speaking altogether) >> I mean, we've been for years talking about the cloud and edge. >> Yeah. >> Satya for years had the same graphic. We still have it. Today, we have expanded the graphic a bit to include the network as one, because you can have a cloud without connectivity as well but this is very, very, very, very much true. >> And so the question then, Dennis, is okay, you've got disruptors, we had Dish on yesterday. >> Oh, did you? Good. >> Yeah, yeah, and they're talking about what they're doing with, you know, ORAN and all the applications, really taking account of it. What I see is a developer friendly, you know, environment. You got the carriers talking about how they're going to charge developers for APIs. I think they've published eight APIs which is nowhere near enough. So you've got that sort of, you know, inertia and yet, you have the disruptors that are going to potentially be a catalyst to, you know, cross the chasm, if you will. So, you know, put on your strategy hat. >> Yeah. >> Dave: How do you see that playing out? >> Well, they're trying to tap into three things, the disruptors. You know, I think the thesis is, "If I get to a truly cloud native, communications network first, I ought to have greater agility so that I can launch more services and create more revenue streams. I ought to be lower cost in terms of both acquisition cost and operating cost, right, and I ought to be able to create scale between my IT organization, everything I know how to do there and my Telecom network." You know, classic, right? Better, faster, cheaper if I embrace cloud early on. And people like Dish, you know, they have a clean sheet of paper with which to do that. So innovation and rate of innovation is huge for them. >> So what would you do? We put your Clay Christensen hat on, now. What if you were at a traditional Telco who's like, complaining about- >> You're going to get me in trouble. >> Dave: Come on, come on. >> Don't do it. >> Dave: Help him out. Help him out, help him out. So if, you know, they're complaining about CapEx, they're highly regulated, right, they want net neutrality but they want to be able to sort of dial up the cost of those using the network. So what would you do? Would you try to disrupt yourself? Would you create a skunkworks? Would you kind of spin off a disruptor? That's a real dilemma for those guys. >> Well for mobile network operators, the beauty of 5G is it's the first cloud native cellular standard. So I don't know if anybody's throwing these terms around, but 5G SA is standalone, right? >> Dave: Yeah, yeah. >> So a lot of 'em, it's not a skunkworks. They're just literally saying, "I've got to have a 5G network." And some of 'em are deciding, "I'm going to stand it up all by itself." Now, that's duplicative expense in a lot of ways, but it creates isolation from the two networks. Others are saying, "No, it's got to be NSA. I've got to be able to combine 4G and 5G." And then you're into the brownfield thing. >> That's the hybrid. >> Not hybrid as in cloud, but hybrid as in, you know. >> Yeah, yeah. >> It's a converge network. >> Dave: Yeah, yeah. >> So, you know, I would say for a lot of them, they're adopting, probably rightly so, a wait and see attitude. One thing we haven't talked about and you got to get on the table, their high order bit is resilience. >> Dave: Yeah, totally. >> David: Yeah. >> Right? Can't go down. It's national, secure infrastructure, first responder. >> Indeed. >> Anytime you ask them to embrace any new technology, the first thing that they have to work through in their minds is, you know, "Is the juice worth the squeeze? Like, can I handle the risk?" >> But you're saying they're not questioning the technology. Aren't they questioning ORAN in terms of the quality of service, or are they beyond that? >> Dennis: They're questioning the timing, not the inevitability. >> Okay, so they agree that ORAN is going to be open over time. >> At some point, RAN will be cloud native, whether it's ORAN the spec, open RAN the concept, (Yousef speaking indistinctly) >> Yeah. >> Virtual RAN. But yeah, I mean I think it seems pretty evident at this point that the mainframe will give way to open systems once again. >> Dave: Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> ERAN, ecosystem RAN. >> Any RAN. (Dave laughing) >> You don't have to start with the ORAN where they're inside the house. So as you probably know, our partner AT&T started with the core. >> Dennis: They almost all have. >> And they've been on the virtualization path since 2014 and 15. And what we are working with them on is the hybrid cloud model to expand all the way, if you will, as I mentioned to the far-edge or the public cloud. So there's a way to be in the brownfield environment, yet jump on the new bandwagon of technology without necessarily taking too much risk, because you're quite right. I mean, resiliency, security, service assurance, I mean, for example, AT&T runs the first responder network for the US on their network, on our platform, and I'm personally very familiar of how high the bar is. So it's doable, but you need to go in stages, of course. >> And they've got to do that integration. >> Yes. >> They do. >> And Yousef made a great point. Like, out of the top 30 largest Telcos by CapEx outside of China, three quarters of them have virtualized their core. So the cloudification, if you will, software definition run on industry standard hardware, embraced cloud native principles, containerized apps, that's happened in the core. It's well accepted. Now it's just a ripple-down through the network which will happen as and when things are faster, better, cheaper. >> Right. >> So as implemented, what does this look like? Is it essentially what we used to loosely refer to as Azure stacked software, running with Dell optimized Telecom infrastructure together, sometimes within a BBU, out in a hybrid cloud model communicating back to Azure locations in some cases? Is that what we're looking at? >> Approximately. So you start with the near-edge, okay? So the near-edge lives in the operator's data centers, edges, whatever the case may be, built out of off the shelf hardware. Dell is our great partner there but in principle, it could be different mix and match. So once you have that true near-edge, then you can think of, "Okay, how can I make sure this environment is as uniform, same APIs, same everything, regardless what the physical location is?" And this is key, key for the network function providers and the NEPs because they need to be able to port once, run everywhere, and it's key for the operator to reduce their costs. You want to teach your workforce, your operations folks, if you will, how to manage this system one time, to automation and so forth. So, and that is actually an expansion of the Azure capabilities that people are familiar with in a public cloud, projected into different locations. And we have technology called Arc which basically models everything. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So if you have trained your IT side, you are halfway there, how to manage your new network. Even though of course the network is carrier graded, there's different gear. So yes, what you said, a lot of it is true but the actual components, whatever they might be running, are carrier grade, highly optimized, the next images and our solution is not a DIY solution, okay? I know you cater to a wide spectrum here but for us, we don't believe in the TCO. The proper TCO can be achieved by just putting stuff by yourself. We just published a report with Analysys Mason that shows that our approach will save 36 percent of the cost compared to a DIY approach. >> Dave: What percent? >> 36 percent. >> Dave: Of the cost? >> Of, compared to DIY, which is already cheaper than classical models. >> And there's a long history of fairly failed DIY, right, >> Yeah. >> That preceded this. As in the early days of public cloud, the network operators wrestled with, "Do I have to become one to survive?" >> Dave: Yeah. Right. >> So they all ended up having cloud projects and by and large, they've all dematerialized in favor of this. >> Yeah, and it's hard for them to really invest at scale. Let me give you an example. So, your biggest tier one operator, without naming anybody, okay, how many developers do they have that can build and maintain an OS image, or can keep track of container technology, or build monitoring at scale? In our company, we have literally thousands of developers doing it already for the cloud and all we're doing for the operator segment is customizing it and focusing it at the carrier grade aspects of it. But so, I don't have half a dozen exterior experts. I literally have a building of developers who can do that and I'm being literal, here. So it's a scale thing. Once you have a product that you can give to multiple people, everybody benefits. >> Dave: Yeah, and the carriers are largely, they're equipment engineers in a large setting. >> Oh, they have a tough job. I always have total respect what they do. >> Oh totally, and a lot of the work happens, you know, kind of underground and here they are. >> They are network operators. >> They don't touch. >> It's their business. >> Right, absolutely, and they're good at it. They're really good at it. That's right. You know, you think about it, we love to, you know, poke fun at the big carriers, but think about what happened during the pandemic. When they had us shift everything to remote work, >> Dennis: Yes. >> Landline traffic went through the roof. You didn't even notice. >> Yep. That's very true. >> I mean, that's the example. >> That's very true. >> However, in the future where there's innovation and it's going to be driven by developers, right, that's where the open ecosystem comes in. >> Yousef: Indeed. >> And that's the hard transition for a lot of these folks because the developers are going to win that with new workloads, new applications that we can't even think of. >> Dennis: Right. And a lot of it is because if you look at it, there's the fundamental back strategy hat back on, fundamental dynamics of the industry, forced investment, flat revenues. >> Dave: Yeah. Right. >> Very true. >> Right? Every few years, a new G comes out. "Man, I got to retool this massive thing and where I can't do towers, I'm dropping fiber or vice a versa." And meanwhile, most diversification efforts into media have failed. They've had to unwind them and resell them. There's a lot of debt in the industry. >> Yousef: Yeah. >> Dennis: And so, they're looking for that next big, adjacent revenue stream and increasingly deciding, "If I don't modernize my network, I can't get it." >> Can't do it. >> Right, and again, what I heard from some of the carriers in the keynote was, "We're going to charge for API access 'cause we have data in the network." Okay, but I feel like there's a lot more innovation beyond that that's going to come from the disruptors. >> Dennis: Oh yeah. >> Yousef: Yes. >> You know, that's going to blow that away, right? And then that may not be the right model. We'll see, you know? I mean, what would Microsoft do? They would say, "Here, here's a platform. Go develop." >> No, I'll tell you. We are actually working with CAMARA and GSMA on the whole API layer. We actually announced a service as well as (indistinct). >> Dave: Yeah, yeah, right. >> And the key there, frankly, in my opinion, are not the disruptors as in operators. It's the ISV community. You want to get developers that can write to a global set of APIs, not per Telco APIs, such that they can do the innovation. I mean, this is what we've seen in other industries, >> Absolutely. >> That I critically can think of. >> This is the way they get a slice of that pie, right? The recent history of this industry is one where 4G LTE begot the smartphone and app store era, a bevy of consumer services, and almost every single profit stream went somewhere other than the operator, right? >> Yousef: Someone else. So they're looking at this saying, "Okay, 5G is the enterprise G and there's going to be a bevy of applications that are business service related, based on 5G capability and I can't let the OTT, over the top, thing happen again." >> Right. >> They'll say that. "We cannot let this happen." >> "We can't let this happen again." >> Okay, but how do they, >> Yeah, how do they make that not happen? >> Not let it happen again? >> Eight APIs, Dave. The answer is eight APIs. No, I mean, it's this approach. They need to make it easy to work with people like Yousef and more importantly, the developer community that people like Yousef and his company have found a way to harness. And by the way, they need to be part of that developer community themselves. >> And they're not, today. They're not speaking that developer language. >> Right. >> It's hard. You know, hey. >> Dennis: Hey, what's the fastest way to sell an enterprise, a business service? Resell Azure, Teams, something, right? But that's a resale. >> Yeah, that's a resale thing. >> See, >> That's not their service. >> They also need to free their resources from all the plumbing they do and leave it to us. We are plumbers, okay? >> Dennis: We are proud plumbers. >> We are proud plumbers. I'm a plumber. I keep telling people this thing. We had the same discussion with banks and enterprises 10 years ago, by the way. Don't do the plumbing. Go add value on the top. Retool your workforce to do applications and work with ISVs to the verticals, as opposed to either reselling, which many do, or do the plumbing. You'd be surprised. Traditionally, many operators do around, "I want to plumb this thing to get this small interrupt per second." Like, who cares? >> Well, 'cause they made money on connectivity. >> Yes. >> And we've seen this before. >> And in a world without telephone poles and your cables- >> Hey, if what you have is a hammer, everything's a nail, right? And we sell connectivity services and that's what we know how to do, and that both build and sell. And if that's no longer driving a revenue stream sufficient to cover this forced investment march, not to mention Huawei rip and government initiatives to pull infrastructure out and accelerate investment, they got to find new ways. >> I mean, the regulations have been tough, right? They don't go forward and ask for permission. They really can't, right? They have to be much more careful. >> Dennis: It is tough. >> So, we don't mean to sound like it's easy for these guys. >> Dennis: No, it's not. >> But it does require a new mindset, new skillsets, and I think some of 'em are going to figure it out and then pff, the wave, and you guys are going to be riding that wave. >> We're going to try. >> Definitely. Definitely. >> As a veteran of working with both Dell and Microsoft, specifically Azure on things, I am struck by how you're very well positioned in this with Microsoft in particular. Because of Azure's history, coming out of the on-premises world that Microsoft knows so well, there's a natural affinity to the hybrid nature of Telecom. We talk about edge, we talk about hybrid, this is it, absolutely the center of it. So it seems like a- >> Yousef: Indeed. Actually, if you look at the history of Azure, from day one, and I was there from day one, we always spoke of the hybrid model. >> Yeah. >> The third point, we came from the on-premises world. >> David: Right. >> And don't get me wrong, I want people to use the public cloud, but I also know due to physics, regulation, geopolitical boundaries, there's something called on-prem, something called an edge here. I want to add something else. Remember our deal on how we are partner-centric? We're applying the same playbook, here. So, you know, for every dollar we make, so many of it's been done by the ecosystem. Same applies here. So we have announced partnerships with Ericson, Nokia, (indistinct), all the names, and of course with Dell and many others. The ecosystem has to come together and customers must retain their optionality to drum up whatever they are on. So it's the same playbook, with this. >> And enterprise technology companies are, actually, really good at, you know, decoding the customer, figuring out specific requirements, making some mistakes the first time through and then eventually getting it right. And as these trends unfold, you know, you're in a good position, I think, as are others and it's an exciting time for enterprise tech in this industry, you know? >> It really is. >> Indeed. >> Dave: Guys, thanks so much for coming on. >> Thank you. >> Dave: It's great to see you. Have a great rest of the show. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, Dave. Thank you, Dave. >> All right, keep it right there. John Furrier is live in our studio. He's breaking down all the news. Go to siliconangle.com to go to theCUBE.net. Dave Vellante, David Nicholson and Lisa Martin, we'll be right back from the theater in Barcelona, MWC 23 right after this short break. (relaxing music)

>> Announcer: theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> Hey everyone, welcome back to theCube's first day of coverage of MWC 23 from Barcelona, Spain. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante and Dave Nicholson. I'm literally in between two Daves. We've had a great first day of coverage of the event. There's been lots of conversations, Dave, on disaggregation, on the change of mobility. I want to be able to get your perspectives from both of you on what you saw on the show floor, what you saw and heard from our guests today. So we'll start with you, Dave V. What were some of the things that were our takeaways from day one for you? >> Well, the big takeaway is the event itself. On day one, you get a feel for what this show is like. Now that we're back, face-to-face kind of pretty much full face-to-face. A lot of excitement here. 2000 plus exhibitors, I mean, planes, trains, automobiles, VR, AI, servers, software, I mean everything. I mean, everybody is here. So it's a really comprehensive show. It's not just about mobile. That's why they changed the name from Mobile World Congress. I think the other thing is from the keynotes this morning, I mean, you heard, there's a lot of, you know, action around the telcos and the transformation, but in a lot of ways they're sort of protecting their existing past from the future. And so they have to be careful about how fast they move. But at the same time if they don't move fast, they're going to get disrupted. We heard some complaints, essentially, you know, veiled complaints that the over the top guys aren't paying their fair share and Telco should be able to charge them more. We heard the chairman of Ericsson talk about how we can't let the OTTs do that again. We're going to charge directly for access through APIs to our network, to our data. We heard from Chris Lewis. Yeah. They've only got, or maybe it was San Ji Choha, how they've only got eight APIs. So, you know the developers are the ones who are going to actually build out the innovation at the edge. The telcos are going to provide the connectivity and the infrastructure companies like Dell as well. But it's really to me all about the developers. And that's where the action's going to be. And it's going to be interesting to see how the developers respond to, you know, the gun to the head. If you want access, you're going to have to pay for it. Now maybe there's so much money to be made that they'll go for it, but I feel like there's maybe a different model. And I think some of the emerging telcos are going to say, you know what, here developers, here's a platform, have at it. We're not going to charge you for all the data until you succeed. Then we're going to figure out a monetization model. >> Right. A lot of opportunity for the developer. That skillset is certainly one that's in demand here. And certainly the transformation of the telecom industry is, there's a lot of conundrums that I was hearing going on today, kind of chicken and egg scenarios. But Dave, you had a chance to walk around the show floor. We were here interviewing all day. What were some of the things that you saw that really stuck out to you? >> I think I was struck by how much attention was being paid to private 5G networks. You sort of read between the lines and it appears as though people kind of accept that the big incumbent telecom players are going to be slower to move. And this idea of things like open RAN where you're leveraging open protocols in a stack to deliver more agility and more value. So it sort of goes back to the generalized IT discussion of moving to cloud for agility. It appears as though a lot of players realize that the wild wild west, the real opportunity, is in the private sphere. So it's really interesting to see how that works, how 5G implemented into an environment with wifi how that actually works. It's really interesting. >> So it's, obviously when you talk to companies like Dell, I haven't hit HPE yet. I'm going to go over there and check out their booth. They got an analyst thing going on but it's really early days for them. I mean, they started in this business by taking an X86 box, putting a name on it, you know, that sounded like it was edged, throwing it over, you know, the wall. That's sort of how they all started in this business. And now they're, you know, but they knew they had to form partnerships. They had to build purpose-built systems. Now with 16 G out, you're seeing that. And so it's still really early days, talking about O RAN, open RAN, the open RAN alliance. You know, it's just, I mean, not even, the game hasn't even barely started yet but we heard from Dish today. They're trying to roll out a massive 5G network. Rakuten is really focused on sort of open RAN that's more reliable, you know, or as reliable as the existing networks but not as nearly as huge a scale as Dish. So it's going to take a decade for this to evolve. >> Which is surprising to the average consumer to hear that. Because as far as we know 5G has been around for a long time. We've been talking about 5G, implementing 5G, you sort of assume it's ubiquitous but the reality is it is just the beginning. >> Yeah. And you know, it's got a fake 5G too, right? I mean you see it on your phone and you're like, what's the difference here? And it's, you know, just, >> Dave N.: What does it really mean? >> Right. And so I think your point about private is interesting, the conversation Dave that we had earlier, I had throughout, hey I don't think it's a replacement for wifi. And you said, "well, why not?" I guess it comes down to economics. I mean if you can get the private network priced close enough then you're right. Why wouldn't it replace wifi? Now you got wifi six coming in. So that's a, you know, and WiFi's flexible, it's cheap, it's good for homes, good for offices, but these private networks are going to be like kickass, right? They're going to be designed to run whatever, warehouses and robots, and energy drilling facilities. And so, you know the economics I don't think are there today but maybe they can be at volume. >> Maybe at some point you sort of think of today's science experiment becoming the enterprise-grade solution in the future. I had a chance to have some conversations with folks around the show. And I think, and what I was surprised by was I was reminded, frankly, I wasn't surprised. I was reminded that when we start talking about 5G, we're talking about spectrum that is managed by government entities. Of course all broadcast, all spectrum, is managed in one way or another. But in particular, you can't simply put a SIM in every device now because there are a lot of regulatory hurdles that have to take place. So typically what these things look like today is 5G backhaul to the network, communication from that box to wifi. That's a huge improvement already. So yeah, my question about whether, you know, why not put a SIM in everything? Maybe eventually, but I think, but there are other things that I was not aware of that are standing in the way. >> Your point about spectrum's an interesting one though because private networks, you're going to be able to leverage that spectrum in different ways, and tune it essentially, use different parts of the spectrum, make it programmable so that you can apply it to that specific use case, right? So it's going to be a lot more flexible, you know, because I presume the needs spectrum needs of a hospital are going to be different than, you know, an agribusiness are going to be different than a drilling, you know, unit, offshore drilling unit. And so the ability to have the flexibility to use the spectrum in different ways and apply it to that use case, I think is going to be powerful. But I suspect it's going to be expensive initially. I think the other thing we talked about is public policy and regulation, and it's San Ji Choha brought up the point, is telcos have been highly regulated. They don't just do something and ask for permission, you know, they have to work within the confines of that regulated environment. And there's a lot of these greenfield companies and private networks that don't necessarily have to follow those rules. So that's a potential disruptive force. So at the same time, the telcos are spending what'd we hear, a billion, a trillion and a half over the next seven years? Building out 5G networks. So they got to figure out, you know how to get a payback on that. They'll get it I think on connectivity, 'cause they have a monopoly but they want more. They're greedy. They see the over, they see the Netflixes of the world and the Googles and the Amazons mopping up services and they want a piece of that action but they've never really been good at it. >> Well, I've got a question for both of you. I mean, what do you think the odds are that by the time the Shangri La of fully deployed 5G happens that we have so much data going through it that effectively it feels exactly the same as 3G? What are the odds? >> That's a good point. Well, the thing that gets me about 5G is there's so much of it on, if I go to the consumer side when we're all consumers in our daily lives so much of it's marketing hype. And, you know all the messaging about that, when it's really early innings yet they're talking about 6G. What does actual fully deployed 5G look like? What is that going to enable a hospital to achieve or an oil refinery out in the middle of the ocean? That's something that interests me is what's next for that? Are we going to hear that at this event? >> I mean, walking around, you see a fair amount of discussion of, you know, the internet of things. Edge devices, the increase in connectivity. And again, what I was surprised by was that there's very little talk about a sim card in every one of those devices at this point. It's like, no, no, no, we got wifi to handle all that but aggregating it back into a central network that's leveraging 5G. That's really interesting. That's really interesting. >> I think you, the odds of your, to go back to your question, I think the odds are even money, that by the time it's all built out there's going to be so much data and so much new capability it's going to work similarly at similar speeds as we see in the networks today. You're just going to be able to do so many more things. You know, and your video's going to look better, the graphics are going to look better. But I think over the course of history, this is what's happening. I mean, even when you go back to dial up, if you were in an AOL chat room in 1996, it was, you know, yeah it took a while. You're like, (screeches) (Lisa laughs) the modem and everything else, but once you were in there- >> Once you're there, 2400 baud. >> It was basically real time. And so you could talk to your friends and, you know, little chat room but that's all you could do. You know, if you wanted to watch a video, forget it, right? And then, you know, early days of streaming video, stop, start, stop, start, you know, look at Amazon Prime when it first started, Prime Video was not that great. It's sort of catching up to Netflix. But, so I think your point, that question is really prescient because more data, more capability, more apps means same speed. >> Well, you know, you've used the phrase over the top. And so just just so we're clear so we're talking about the same thing. Typically we're talking about, you've got, you have network providers. Outside of that, you know, Netflix, internet connection, I don't need Comcast, right? Perfect example. Well, what about the over the top that's coming from direct satellite communications with devices. There are times when I don't have a signal on my, happens to be an Apple iPhone, when I get a little SOS satellite logo because I can communicate under very limited circumstances now directly to the satellite for very limited text messaging purposes. Here at the show, I think it might be a Motorola device. It's a dongle that allows any mobile device to leverage direct satellite communication. Again, for texting back to the 2,400 baud modem, you know, days, 1200 even, 300 even, go back far enough. What's that going to look like? Is that too far in the future to think that eventually it's all going to be over the top? It's all going to be handset to satellite and we don't need these RANs anymore. It's all going to be satellite networks. >> Dave V.: I think you're going to see- >> Little too science fiction-y? (laughs) >> No, I, no, I think it's a good question and I think you're going to see fragments. I think you're going to see fragmentation of private networks. I think you're going to see fragmentation of satellites. I think you're going to see legacy incumbents kind of hanging on, you know, the cable companies. I think that's coming. I think by 2030 it'll, the picture will be much more clear. The question is, and I think it's come down to the innovation on top, which platform is going to be the most developer friendly? Right, and you know, I've not heard anything from the big carriers that they're going to be developer friendly. I've heard "we have proprietary data that we're going to charge access for and developers are going to have to pay for that." But I haven't heard them saying "Developers, developers, developers!" You know, Steve Bomber running around, like bend over backwards for developers, they're asking the developers to bend over. And so if a network can, let's say the satellite network is more developer friendly, you know, you're going to see more innovation there potentially. You know, or if a dish network says, "You know what? We're going after developers, we're going after innovation. We're not going to gouge them for all this network data. Rather we're going to make the platform open or maybe we're going to do an app store-like model where we take a piece of the action after they succeed." You know, take it out of the backend, like a Silicon Valley VC as opposed to an East Coast VC. They're not going to get you in the front end. (Lisa laughs) >> Well, you can see the sort of disruptive forces at play between open RAN and the legacy, call it proprietary stack, right? But what is the, you know, if that's sort of a horizontal disruptive model, what's the vertically disruptive model? Is it private networks coming in? Is it a private 5G network that comes in that says, "We're starting from the ground up, everything is containerized. We're going to go find people at KubeCon who are, who understand how to orchestrate with Kubernetes and use containers in microservices, and we're going to have this little 5G network that's going to deliver capabilities that you can't get from the big boys." Is there a way to monetize that? Is there a way for them to be disrupted, be disruptive, or are these private 5G networks that everybody's talking about just relegated to industrial use cases where you're just squeezing better economics out of wireless communication amongst all your devices in your factory? >> That's an interesting question. I mean, there are a lot of those smart factory industrial use cases. I mean, it's basically industry 4.0 use cases. But yeah, I don't count the cloud guys out. You know, everybody says, "oh, the narrative is, well, the latency of the cloud." Well, not if the cloud is at the edge. If you take a local zone and put storage, compute, and data right next to each other and the cloud model with the cloud APIs, and then you got an asynchronous, you know, connection back. I think that's a reasonable model. I think the cloud guys figured out developers, right? Pretty well. Certainly Microsoft and, and Amazon and Google, they know developers. I don't see any reason why they can't bring their model to the edge. So, and that's really disruptive to the legacy telco guys, you know? So they have to be careful. >> One step closer to my dream of eliminating the word "cloud" from IT lexicon. (Lisa laughs) I contend that it has always been IT, and it will always be IT. And this whole idea of cloud, what is cloud? If AWS, for example, is delivering hardware to the edge where it needs to be, is that cloud? Do we go back to the idea that cloud is an operational model and not a question of physical location? I hope we get to that point. >> Well, what's Apex and GreenLake? Apex is, you know, Dell's as a service. GreenLake is- >> HPE. >> HPE's as a service. That's outposts. >> Dave N.: Right. >> Yeah. >> That's their outpost. >> Yeah. >> Well AWS's position used to be, you know, to use them as a proxy for hyperscale cloud. We'll just, we'll grow in a very straight trajectory forever on the back of net new stuff. Forget about the old stuff. As James T. Kirk said of the Klingons, "let them die." (Lisa laughs) As far as the cloud providers were concerned just, yeah, let, let that old stuff go away. Well then they found out, there came a point in time where they realized there's a lot of friction and stickiness associated with that. So they had to deal with the reality of hybridity, if that's the word, the hybrid nature of things. So what are they doing? They're pushing stuff out to the edge, so... >> With the same operating model. >> With the same operating model. >> Similar. I mean, it's limited, right? >> So you see- >> You can't run a lot of database on outpost, you can run RES- >> You see this clash of Titans where some may have written off traditional IT infrastructure vendors, might have been written off as part of the past. Whereas hyperscale cloud providers represent the future. It seems here at this show they're coming head to head and competing evenly. >> And this is where I think a company like Dell or HPE or Cisco has some advantages in that they're not going to compete with the telcos, but the hyperscalers will. >> Lisa: Right. >> Right. You know, and they're already, Google's, how much undersea cable does Google own? A lot. Probably more than anybody. >> Well, we heard from Google and Microsoft this morning in the keynote. It'd be interesting to see if we hear from AWS and then over the next couple of days. But guys, clearly there is, this is a great wrap of day one. And the crazy thing is this is only day one. We've got three more days of coverage, more news, more information to break down and unpack on theCUBE. Look forward to doing that with you guys over the next three days. Thank you for sharing what you saw on the show floor, what you heard from our guests today as we had about 10 interviews. Appreciate your insights and your perspectives and can't wait for tomorrow. >> Right on. >> All right. For Dave Vellante and Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's day one wrap from MWC 23. We'll see you tomorrow. (relaxing music)

(light music) >> Narrator: theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies. Creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to Spain everyone. Lisa Martin here with theCUBE Dave Vellante, my co-host for the next four days. We're live in Barcelona, covering MWC23. This is only day one, but I'll tell you the theme of this conference this year is velocity. And I don't know about you Dave, but this day is flying by already. This is ecosystem day. We're going to have a great discussion on the ecosystem next. >> Well we're seeing the disaggregation of the hardened telco stack, and that necessitates an ecosystem open- we're going to talk about Open RAN, we've been talking about even leading up to the show. It's a critical technology enabler and it's compulsory to have an ecosystem to support that. >> Absolutely compulsory. We've got two guests here joining us, Gautam Bhagra, Vice President partnerships at Dell, and Scott Walker, Vice President of global Telco ecosystem at Wind River. Guys, welcome to the program. >> Nice to be here. >> Thanks For having us. >> Thanks for having us. >> So you've got some news, this is day one of the conference, there's some news, Gautam, and let's start with you, unpack it. >> Yeah, well there's a lot of news, as you know, on Dell World. One of the things we are very excited to announce today is the launch of the Open Telecom Ecosystems Community. I think Dave, as you mentioned, getting into an Open RAN world is a challenge. And we know some of the challenges that our customers face. To help solve for those challenges, Dell wants to work with like-minded partners and customers to build innovative solutions, and join go-to-market. So we are launching that today. Wind River is one of our flagship partners for that, and I'm excited to be here to talk about that as well. >> Can you guys talk a little bit about the partnership, maybe a little bit about Wind River so the audience gets that context? >> Sure, absolutely, and the theme of the show, Velocity, is what this partnership is all about. We create velocity for operators if they want to adopt Open RAN, right? We simplify it. Wind River as a company has been around for 40 years. We were part of Intel at one point, and now we're independent, owned by a company called Aptiv. And with that we get another round of investment to help continue our acceleration into this market. So, the Dell partnership is about, like I said, velocity, accelerating the adoption. When we talk to operators, they have told us there are many roadblocks that they face, right? Like systems integration, operating at scale. 'Cause when you buy a traditional radio access network solution from a single supplier, it's very easy. It's works, it's been tested. When you break these components apart and disaggregate 'em, as we talked about David, it creates integration points and support issues, right? And what Dell and Wind River have done together is created a cloud infrastructure solution that could host a variety of RAN workloads, and essentially create a two layer cake. What we're, overall, what we're trying to do is create a traditional RAN experience, with the innovation agility and flexibility of Open RAN. And that's really what this partnership does. >> So these work, this workload innovation is interesting to me because you've got now developers, you know, the, you know, what's the telco developer look like, you know, is to be defined, right? I mean it's like this white sheet of paper that can create all this innovation. And to do that, you've got to have, as I said earlier, an ecosystem. But you've got now, I'm interested in your Open RAN agenda and how you see that sort of maturity model taking place. 'Cause today, you got disruptors that are going to lean right in say "Hey, yeah, that's great." The traditional carriers, they have to have a, you know, they have to migrate, they have to have a hybrid world. We know that takes time. So what's that look like in the marketplace today? >> Yeah, so I mean, I can start, right? So from a Dell's perspective, what we see in the market is yes, there is a drive towards, everyone understands the benefits of being open, right? There's the agility piece, the innovation piece. That's a no-brainer. The question is how do we get there? And I think that's where partnerships become critical to get there, right? So we've been working with partners like Wind River to build solutions that make it easier for customers to start adopting some of the foundational elements of an open network. The, one of the purposes in the agenda of building this community is to bring like-minded developers, like you said like we want those guys to come and work with the customers to create new solutions, and come up with something creative, which no one's even thought about, that accelerates your option even quicker, right? So that's exactly what we want to do as well. And that's one of the reasons why we launched the community. >> Yeah, and what we find with a lot of carriers, they are used to buying, like I said, traditional RAN solutions which are provided from a single provider like Erickson or Nokia and others, right? And we break this apart, and you cloudify that network infrastructure, there's usually a skills gap we see at the operator level, right? And so from a developer standpoint, they struggle with having the expertise in order to execute on that. Wind River helps them, working with companies like Dell, simplify that bottom portion of the stack, the infrastructure stack. So, and we lifecycle manage it, we test- we're continually testing it, and integrating it, so that the operator doesn't have to do that. In addition to that, wind River also has a history and legacy of working with different RAN vendors, both disruptors like Mavenir and Parallel Wireless, as well as traditional RAN providers like Samsung, Erickson, and others soon to be announced. So what we're doing on the northbound side is making it easy by integrating that, and on the southbound side with Dell, so that again, instead of four or five solutions that you need to put together, it's simply two. >> And you think about today how we- how you consume telco services are like there's these fixed blocks of services that you can buy, that has to change. It's more like the, the app stores. It's got to be an open marketplace, and that's where the innovation's going to come in, you know, from the developers, you know, top down maybe. I don't know, how do you see that maturity model evolving? People want to know how long it's going to take. So many questions, when will Open RAN be as reliable. Does it even have to be? You know, so many interesting dynamics going on. >> Yeah, and I think that's something we at Dell are also trying to find out, right? So we have been doing a lot of good work here to help our customers move in that direction. The work with Dish is an example of that. But I think we do understand the challenges as well in terms of getting, adopting the technologies, and adopting the innovation that's being driven by Open. So one of the agendas that we have as a company this year is to work with the community to drive this a lot further, right? We want to have customers adopt the technology more broadly with the tier one, tier two telcos globally. And our sales organizations are going to be working together with Wind Rivers to figure out who's the right set of customers to have these conversations with, so we can drop, drive, start driving this agenda a lot quicker than what we've seen historically. >> And where are you having those customer conversations? Is that at the operator level, is it higher, is it both? >> Well, all operators are deploying 5G in preparation for 6G, right? And we're all looking for those killer use cases which will drive top line revenue and not just make it a TCO discussion. And that starts at a very basic level today by doing things like integrating with Juniper, for their cloud router. So instead of at the far edge cell site, having a separate device that's doing the routing function, right? We take that and we cloudify that application, run it on the same server that's hosting the RAN applications, so you eliminate a device and reduce TCO. Now with Aptiv, which is primarily known as an automotive company, we're having lots of conversations, including with Dell and Intel and others about vehicle to vehicle communication, vehicle to anything communication. And although that's a little bit futuristic, there are shorter term use cases that, like, vehicle to vehicle accident avoidance, which are going to be much nearer term than autonomous driving, for example, which will help drive traffic and new revenue streams for operators. >> So, oh, that's, wow. So many other things (Scott laughs) that's just opened up there too. But I want to come back to, sort of, the Open RAN adoption. And I think you're right, there's a lot of questions that that still have to be determined. But my question is this, based on your knowledge so far does it have to be as hardened and reliable, obviously has to be low latency as existing networks, or can flexibility, like the cloud when it first came out, wasn't better than enterprise IT, it was just more flexible and faster, and you could rent it. And, is there a similar dynamic here where it doesn't have to replicate the hardened stack, it can bring in new benefits that drive adoption, what are your thoughts on that? >> Well there's a couple of things on that, because Wind River, as you know, where our legacy and history is in embedded devices like F-15 fighter jets, right? Or the Mars Rover or the James Web telescope, all run Wind River software. So, we know about can't fail ultra reliable systems, and operators are not letting us off the hook whatsoever. It has to be as hardened and locked down, as secure as a traditional RAN environment. Otherwise they will (indistinct). >> That's table stakes. >> That's table stakes that gets us there. And when River, with our legacy and history, and having operator experience running live commercial networks with a disaggregated stack in the tens of thousands of nodes, understand what this is like because they're running live commercial traffic with live customers. So we can't fail, right? And with that, they want their cake and eat it too, right? Which is, I want ultra reliable, I want what I have today, but I want the agility and flexibility to onboard third party apps. Like for example, this JCNR, this Juniper Cloud-Native Router. You cannot do something as simple as that on a traditional RAN Appliance. In an open ecosystem you can take that workload and onboard it because it is an open ecosystem, and that's really one of the true benefits. >> So they want the mainframe, but they want (Scott laughs) the flexibility of the developer cloud, right? >> That's right. >> They want their, have their cake eat it too and not gain weight. (group laughs) >> Yeah I mean David, I come from the public cloud world. >> We all don't want to do that. >> I used to work with a public cloud company, and nine years ago, public cloud was in the same stage, where you would go to a bank, and they would be like, we don't trust the cloud. It's not secure, it's not safe. It was the digital natives that adopted it, and that that drove the industry forward, right? And that's where the enterprises that realized that they're losing business because of all these innovative new companies that came out. That's what I saw over the last nine years in the cloud space. I think in the telco space also, something similar might happen, right? So a lot of this, I mean a lot of the new age telcos are understanding the value, are looking to innovate are adopting the open technologies, but there's still some inertia and hesitancy, for the reasons as Scott mentioned, to go there so quickly. So we just have to work through and balance between both sides. >> Yeah, well with that said, if there's still some inertia, but there's a theme of velocity, how do you help organizations balance that so they trust evolving? >> Yeah, and I think this is where our solution, like infrastructure block, is a foundational pillar to make that happen, right? So if we can take away the concerns that the organizations have in terms of security, reliability from the fundamental elements that build their infrastructure, by working with partners like Wind River, but Dell takes the ownership end-to-end to make sure that service works and we have those telco grade SLAs, then the telcos can start focusing on what's next. The applications and the customer services on the top. >> Customer service customer experience. >> You know, that's an interesting point Gautam brings up, too, because support is an issue too. We all talk about when you break these things apart, it creates integration points that you need to manage, right? But there's also, so the support aspect of it. So imagine if you will, you had one vendor, you have an outage, you call that one vendor, one necktie to choke, right, for accountability for the network. Now you have four or five vendors that you have to work. You get a lot of finger pointing. So at least at the infrastructure layer, right? Dell takes first call support for both the hardware infrastructure and the Wind River cloud infrastructure for both. And we are training and spinning them up to support, but we're always behind them of course as well. >> Can you give us a favorite customer example of- that really articulates the value of the partnership and the technologies that it's delivering to customers? >> Well, Infra Block- >> (indistinct) >> Is quite new, and we do have our first customer which is LG U plus, which was announced yesterday. Out of Korea, small customer, but a very important one. Okay, and I think they saw the value of the integrated system. They don't have the (indistinct) expertise and they're leveraging Dell and Wind River in order to make that happen. But I always also say historically before this new offering was Vodafone, right? Vodafone is a leader in Europe in terms of Open RAN, been very- Yago and Paco have been very vocal about what they're doing in Open RAN, and Dell and Wind River have been there with them every step of the way. And that's what I would say, kind of, led up to where we are today. We learned from engagements like Vodafone and I think KDDI as well. And it got us where we are today and understanding what the operators need and what the impediments are. And this directly addresses that. >> Those are two very different examples. You were talking about TCO before. I mean, so the earlier example is, that's an example to me of a disruptor. They'll take some chances, you know, maybe not as focused on TCO, of course they're concerned about it. Vodafone I would think very concerned about TCO. But I'm inferring from your comments that you're trying to get the industry, you're trying to check the TCO box, get there. And then move on to higher levels of value monetization. The TCO is going to come down to how many humans it takes to run the network, is it not, is that- >> Well a lot of, okay- >> Or is it devices- >> So the big one now, particularly with Vodafone, is energy cost, right? >> Of course, greening the network. >> Two-thirds of the energy consumption in RAN is the the Radio Access Network. Okay, the OPEX, right? So any reductions, even if they're 5% or 10%, can save tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. So we do things creatively with Dell to understand if there's a lot of traffic at the cell site and if it's not, we will change the C state or P state of the server, which basically spins it down, so it's not consuming power. But that's just at the infrastructure layer. Where this gets really powerful is working with the RAN vendors like Samsung and Ericson and others, and taking data from the traffic information there, applying algorithms to that in AI to shut it down and spin it back up as needed. 'Cause the idea is you don't want that thing powered up if there's no traffic on it. >> Well there's a sustainability, ESG, benefit to that, right? >> Yes. >> And, and it's very compute intensive. >> A hundred percent. >> Which is great for Dell. But at the same time, if you're not able to manage that power consumption, the whole thing fails. I mean it's, because there's going to be so much data, and such a intense requirement. So this is a huge issue. Okay, so Scott, you're saying that in the TCO equation, a big chunk is energy consumption? >> On the OPEX piece. Now there's also the CapEx, right? And Open RAN solutions are now, what we've heard from our customers today, are they're roughly at parity. 'Cause you can do things like repurpose servers after the useful life for a lower demand application which helps the TCO, right? Then you have situations like Juniper, where you can take, now software that runs on the same device, eliminating at a whole other device at the cell site. So we're not just taking a server and software point of view, we're taking a whole cell site point of view as it relates to both CapEx and OPEX. >> And then once that infrastructure it really gets adopted, that's when the innovation occurs. The ecosystem comes in. Developers now start to think of new applications that we haven't thought of yet. >> Gautam: Exactly. >> And that's where, that's going to force the traditional carriers to respond. They're responding, but they're doing so very carefully right now, it's understandable why. >> Yeah, and I think you're already seeing some news in the, I mean Nokia's announcement yesterday with the rebranding, et cetera. That's all positive momentum in my opinion, right? >> What'd you think of the logo? >> I love the logo. >> I liked it too. (group laughs) >> It was beautiful. >> I thought it was good. You had the connectivity down below, You need pipes, right? >> Exactly. >> But you had this sort of cool letters, and then the the pink horizon or pinkish, it was like (Scott laughs) endless opportunity. It was good, I thought it was well thought out. >> Exactly. >> Well, you pick up on an interesting point there, and what we're seeing, like advanced carriers like Dish, who has one of the true Open RAN networks, publishing APIs for programmers to build in their 5G network as part of the application. But we're also seeing the network equipment providers also enable carriers do that, 'cause carriers historically have not been advanced in that way. So there is a real recognition that in order for these networks to monetize new use cases, they need to be programmable, and they need to publish standard APIs, so you can access the 5G network capabilities through software. >> Yeah, and the problem from the carriers, there's not enough APIs that the carriers have produced yet. So that's where the ecosystem comes in, is going to >> A hundred percent >> I think there's eight APIs that are published out of the traditional carriers, which is, I mean there's got to be 8,000 for a marketplace. So that's where the open ecosystem really has the advantage. >> That's right. >> That's right. >> That's right. >> Yeah. >> So it all makes sense on paper, now you just, you got a lot of work to do. >> We got to deliver. Yeah, we launched it today. We got to get some like-minded partners and customers to come together. You'll start seeing results coming out of this hopefully soon, and we'll talk more about it over time. >> Dave: Great Awesome, thanks for sharing with us. >> Excellent. Guys, thank you for sharing, stopping by, sharing what's going on with Dell and Wind River, and why the opportunity's in it for customers and the technological evolution. We appreciate it, you'll have to come back, give us an update. >> Our pleasure, thanks for having us. (Group talks over each other) >> All right, thanks guys >> Appreciate it. >> For our guests and for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, Live from MWC23 in Barcelona. theCUBE is the leader in live tech coverage. (upbeat music)

(upbeat instrumental music) >> TheCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. (uplifting instrumental music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome to Barcelona, Spain. It's theCUBE Live at MWC '23. I'm Lisa Martin, Dave Vellante, our co-founder, our co-CEO of theCUBE, you know him, you love him. He's here as my co-host. Dave, we have a great couple of guests here to break down day one keynote. Lots of meat. I can't wait to be part of this conversation. Chris Lewis joins us, the founder and MD of Lewis Insight. And Sarbjeet Johal, one of you know him as well. He's a Cube contributor, cloud architect. Guys, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for joining Dave and me today. >> Lovely to be here. >> Thank you. >> Chris, I want to start with you. You have covered all aspects of global telecoms industries over 30 years working as an analyst. Talk about the evolution of the telecom industry that you've witnessed, and what were some of the things you heard in the keynote that excite you about the direction it's going? >> Well, as ever, MWC, there's no lack of glitz and glamour, but it's the underlying issues of the industry that are really at stake here. There's not a lot of new revenue coming into the telecom providers, but there's a lot of adjustment, readjustment of the underlying operational environment. And also, really importantly, what came out of the keynotes is the willingness and the necessity to really engage with the API community, with the developer community, people who traditionally, telecoms would never have even touched. So they're sorting out their own house, they're cleaning their own stables, getting the cost base down, but they're also now realizing they've got to engage with all the other parties. There's a lot of cloud providers here, there's a lot of other people from outside so they're realizing they cannot do it all themselves. It's quite a tough lesson for a very conservative, inward looking industry, right? So should we be spending all this money and all this glitz and glamour of MWC and all be here, or should would be out there really building for the future and making sure the services are right for yours and my needs in a business and personal lives? So a lot of new changes, a lot of realization of what's going on outside, but underlying it, we've just got to get this right this time. >> And it feels like that monetization is front and center. You mentioned developers, we've got to work with developers, but I'm hearing the latest keynote from the Ericsson CEOs, we're going to monetize through those APIs, we're going to charge the developers. I mean, first of all, Chris, am I getting that right? And Sarbjeet, as somebody who's close to the developer community, is that the right way to build bridges? But Chris, are we getting that right? >> Well, let's take the first steps first. So, Ericsson, of course, acquired Vonage, which is a massive API business so they want to make money. They expect to make money by bringing that into the mainstream telecom community. Now, whether it's the developers who pay for it, or let's face it, we are moving into a situation as the telco moves into a techco model where the techco means they're going to be selling bits of the technology to developer guys and to other application developers. So when he says he needs to charge other people for it, it's the way in which people reach in and will take going through those open APIs like the open gateway announced today, but also the way they'll reach in and take things like network slicing. So we're opening up the telecom community, the treasure chest, if you like, where developers' applications and other third parties can come in and take those chunks of technology and build them into their services. This is a complete change from the old telecom industry where everybody used to come and you say, "all right, this is my product, you've got to buy it and you're going to pay me a lot of money for it." So we are looking at a more flexible environment where the other parties can take those chunks. And we know we want collectivity built into our financial applications, into our government applications, everything, into the future of the metaverse, whatever it may be. But it requires that change in attitude of the telcos. And they do need more money 'cause they've said, the baseline of revenue is pretty static, there's not a lot of growth in there so they're looking for new revenues. It's in a B2B2X time model. And it's probably the middle man's going to pay for it rather than the customer. >> But the techco model, Sarbjeet, it looks like the telcos are getting their money on their way in. The techco company model's to get them on their way out like the app store. Go build something of value, build some kind of app or data product, and then when it takes off, we'll take a piece of the action. What are your thoughts from a developer perspective about how the telcos are approaching it? >> Yeah, I think before we came here, like I said, I did some tweets on this, that we talk about all kind of developers, like there's game developers and front end, back end, and they're all talking about like what they're building on top of cloud, but nowhere you will hear the term "telco developer," there's no API from telcos given to the developers to build IoT solutions on top of it because telco as an IoT, I think is a good sort of hand in hand there. And edge computing as well. The glimmer of hope, if you will, for telcos is the edge computing, I believe. And even in edge, I predicted, I said that many times that cloud players will dominate that market with the private 5G. You know that story, right? >> We're going to talk about that. (laughs) >> The key is this, that if you see in general where the population lives, in metros, right? That's where the world population is like flocking to and we have cloud providers covering the local zones with local like heavy duty presence from the big cloud providers and then these telcos are getting sidetracked by that. Even the V2X in cars moving the autonomous cars and all that, even in that space, telcos are getting sidetracked in many ways. What telcos have to do is to join the forces, build some standards, if not standards, some consortium sort of. They're trying to do that with the open gateway here, they have only eight APIs. And it's 2023, eight APIs is nothing, right? (laughs) So they should have started this 10 years back, I think. So, yeah, I think to entice the developers, developers need the employability, we need to train them, we need to show them some light that hey, you can build a lot on top of it. If you tell developers they can develop two things or five things, nobody will come. >> So, Chris, the cloud will dominate the edge. So A, do you buy it? B, the telcos obviously are acting like that might happen. >> Do you know I love people when they've got their heads in the clouds. (all laugh) And you're right in so many ways, but if you flip it around and think about how the customers think about this, business customers and consumers, they don't care about all this background shenanigans going on, do they? >> Lisa: No. >> So I think one of the problems we have is that this is a new territory and whether you call it the edge or whatever you call it, what we need there is we need connectivity, we need security, we need storage, we need compute, we need analytics, and we need applications. And are any of those more important than the others? It's the collective that actually drives the real value there. So we need all those things together. And of course, the people who represented at this show, whether it's the cloud guys, the telcos, the Nokia, the Ericssons of this world, they all own little bits of that. So that's why they're all talking partnerships because they need the combination, they cannot do it on their own. The cloud guys can't do it on their own. >> Well, the cloud guys own all of those things that you just talked about though. (all laugh) >> Well, they don't own the last bit of connectivity, do they? They don't own the access. >> Right, exactly. That's the one thing they don't own. So, okay, we're back to pipes, right? We're back to charging for connectivity- >> Pipes are very valuable things, right? >> Yeah, for sure. >> Never underestimate pipes. I don't know about where you live, plumbers make a lot of money where I live- >> I don't underestimate them but I'm saying can the telcos charge for more than that or are the cloud guys going to mop up the storage, the analytics, the compute, and the apps? >> They may mop it up, but I think what the telcos are doing and we've seen a lot of it here already, is they are working with all those major cloud guys already. So is it an unequal relationship? The cloud guys are global, massive global scale, the telcos are fundamentally national operators. >> Yep. >> Some have a little bit of regional, nobody has global scale. So who stitches it all together? >> Dave: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. >> Absolutely. >> I know that saying never gets old. It's true. Well, Sarbjeet, one of the things that you tweeted about, I didn't get to see the keynote but I was looking at your tweets. 46% of telcos think they won't make it to the next decade. That's a big number. Did that surprise you? >> No, actually it didn't surprise me because the competition is like closing in on them and the telcos are competing with telcos as well and the telcos are competing with cloud providers on the other side, right? So the smaller ones are getting squeezed. It's the bigger players, they can hook up the newer platforms, I think they will survive. It's like that part is like any other industry, if you will. But the key is here, I think why the pain points were sort of described on the main stage is that they're crying out loud to tell the big tech cloud providers that "hey, you pay your fair share," like we talked, right? You are not paying, you're generating so much content which reverses our networks and you are not paying for it. So they are not able to recoup the cost of laying down their networks. By the way, one thing actually I want to mention is that they said the cloud needs earth. The cloud and earth, it's like there's no physical need to cloud, you know that, right? So like, I think it's the other way around. I think the earth needs the cloud because I'm a cloud guy. (Sarbjeet and Lisa laugh) >> I think you need each other, right? >> I think so too. >> They need each other. When they said cloud needs earth, right? I think they're still in denial that the cloud is a big force. They have to partner. When you can't compete with somebody, what do you do? Partner with them. >> Chris, this is your world. Are they in denial? >> No, I think they're waking up to the pragmatism of the situation. >> Yeah. >> They're building... As we said, most of the telcos, you find have relationships with the cloud guys, I think you're right about the industry. I mean, do you think what's happened since US was '96, the big telecom act when we started breaking up all the big telcos and we had lots of competition came in, we're seeing the signs that we might start to aggregate them back up together again. So it's been an interesting experiment for like 30 years, hasn't it too? >> It made the US less competitive, I would argue, but carry on. >> Yes, I think it's true. And Europe is maybe too competitive and therefore, it's not driven the investment needed. And by the way, it's not just mobile, it's fixed as well. You saw the Orange CEO was talking about the her investment and the massive fiber investments way ahead of many other countries, way ahead of the UK or Germany. We need that fiber in the ground to carry all your cloud traffic to do this. So there is a scale issue, there is a competition issue, but the telcos are very much aware of it. They need the cloud, by the way, to improve their operational environments as well, to change that whole old IT environment to deliver you and I better service. So no, it absolutely is changing. And they're getting scale, but they're fundamentally offering the basic product, you call it pipes, I'll just say they're offering broadband to you and I and the business community. But they're stepping on dangerous ground, I think, when saying they want to charge the over the top guys for all the traffic they use. Those over the top guys now build a lot of the global networks, the backbone submarine network. They're putting a lot of money into it, and by giving us endless data for our individual usage, that cat is out the bag, I think to a large extent. >> Yeah. And Orange CEO basically said that, that they're not paying their fair share. I'm for net neutrality but the governments are going to have to fund this unless you let us charge the OTT. >> Well, I mean, we could of course renationalize. Where would that take us? (Dave laughs) That would make MWC very interesting next year, wouldn't it? To renationalize it. So, no, I think you've got to be careful what we wish for here. Creating the absolute clear product that is required to underpin all of these activities, whether it's IoT or whether it's cloud delivery or whether it's just our own communication stuff, delivering that absolutely ubiquitously high quality for business and for consumer is what we have to do. And telcos have been too conservative in the past. >> I think they need to get together and create standards around... I think they have a big opportunity. We know that the clouds are being built in silos, right? So there's Azure stack, there's AWS and there's Google. And those are three main ones and a few others, right? So that we are fighting... On the cloud side, what we are fighting is the multicloud. How do we consume that multicloud without having standards? So if these people get together and create some standards around IoT and edge computing sort of area, people will flock to them to say, "we will use you guys, your API, we don't care behind the scenes if you use AWS or Google Cloud or Azure, we will come to you." So market, actually is looking for that solution. I think it's an opportunity for these guys, for telcos. But the problem with telcos is they're nationalized, as you said Chris versus the cloud guys are still kind of national in a way, but they're global corporations. And some of the telcos are global corporations as well, BT covers so many countries and TD covers so many... DT is in US as well, so they're all over the place. >> But you know what's interesting is that the TM forum, which is one of the industry associations, they've had an open digital architecture framework for quite some years now. Google had joined that some years ago, Azure in there, AWS just joined it a couple of weeks ago. So when people said this morning, why isn't AWS on the keynote? They don't like sharing the limelight, do they? But they're getting very much in bed with the telco. So I think you'll see the marriage. And in fact, there's a really interesting statement, if you look at the IoT you mentioned, Bosch and Nokia have been working together 'cause they said, the problem we've got, you've got a connectivity network on one hand, you've got the sensor network on the other hand, you're trying to merge them together, it's a nightmare. So we are finally seeing those sort of groups talking to each other. So I think the standards are coming, the cooperation is coming, partnerships are coming, but it means that the telco can't dominate the sector like it used to. It's got to play ball with everybody else. >> I think they have to work with the regulators as well to loosen the regulation. Or you said before we started this segment, you used Chris, the analogy of sports, right? In sports, when you're playing fiercely, you commit the fouls and then ask for ref to blow the whistle. You're now looking at the ref all the time. The telcos are looking at the ref all the time. >> Dave: Yeah, can I do this? Can I do that? Is this a fair move? >> They should be looking for the space in front of the opposition. >> Yeah, they should be just on attack mode and commit these fouls, if you will, and then ask for forgiveness then- >> What do you make of that AWS not you there- >> Well, Chris just made a great point that they don't like to share the limelight 'cause I thought it was very obvious that we had Google Cloud, we had Microsoft there on day one of this 80,000 person event. A lot of people back from COVID and they weren't there. But Chris, you brought up a great point that kind of made me think, maybe you're right. Maybe they're in the afternoon keynote, they want their own time- >> You think GSMA invited them? >> I imagine so. You'd have to ask GSMA. >> I would think so. >> Get Max on here and ask that. >> I'm going to ask them, I will. >> But no, and they don't like it because I think the misconception, by the way, is that everyone says, "oh, it's AWS, it's Google Cloud and it's Azure." They're not all the same business by any stretch of the imagination. AWS has been doing loads of great work, they've been launching private network stuff over the last couple of weeks. Really interesting. Google's been playing catch up. We know that they came in readily late to the market. And Azure, they've all got slightly different angles on it. So perhaps it just wasn't right for AWS and the way they wanted to pitch things so they don't have to be there, do they? >> That's a good point. >> But the industry needs them there, that's the number one cloud. >> Dave, they're there working with the industry. >> Yeah, of course. >> They don't have to be on the keynote stage. And in fact, you think about this show and you mentioned the 80,000 people, the activity going on around in all these massive areas they're in, it's fantastic. That's where the business is done. The business isn't done up on the keynote stage. >> That's why there's the glitz and the glamour, Chris. (all laugh) >> Yeah. It's not glitz, it's espresso. It's not glamour anymore, it's just espresso. >> We need the espresso. >> Yeah. >> I think another thing is that it's interesting how an average European sees the tech market and an average North American, especially you from US, you have to see the market. Here, people are more like process oriented and they want the rules of the road already established before they can take a step- >> Chris: That's because it's your pension in the North American- >> Exactly. So unions are there and the more employee rights and everything, you can't fire people easily here or in Germany or most of the Europe is like that with the exception of UK. >> Well, but it's like I said, that Silicone Valley gets their money on the way out, you know? And that's how they do it, that's how they think it. And they don't... They ask for forgiveness. I think the east coast is more close to Europe, but in the EU, highly regulated, really focused on lifetime employment, things like that. >> But Dave, the issue is the telecom industry is brilliant, right? We keep paying every month whatever we do with it. >> It's a great business, to your point- >> It's a brilliant business model. >> Dave: It's fantastic. >> So it's about then getting the structure right behind it. And you know, we've seen a lot of stratification where people are selling off towers, Orange haven't sold their towers off, they made a big point about that. Others are selling their towers off. Some people are selling off their underlying network, Telecom Italia talking about KKR buying the whole underlying network. It's like what do you want to be in control of? It's a great business. >> But that's why they complain so much is that they're having to sell their assets because of the onerous CapEx requirements, right? >> Yeah, they've had it good, right? And dare I say, perhaps they've not planned well enough for the future. >> They're trying to protect their past from the future. I mean, that's... >> Actually, look at the... Every "n" number of years, there's a new faster network. They have to dig the ground, they have to put the fiber, they have to put this. Now, there are so many booths showing 6G now, we are not even done with 5G yet, now the next 6G you know, like then- >> 10G's coming- >> 10G, that's a different market. (Dave laughs) >> Actually, they're bogged down by the innovation, I think. >> And the generational thing is really important because we're planning for 6G in all sorts of good ways but actually what we use in our daily lives, we've gone through the barrier, we've got enough to do that. So 4G gives us enough, the fiber in the ground or even old copper gives us enough. So the question is, what are we willing to pay for more than that basic connectivity? And the answer to your point, Dave, is not a lot, right? So therefore, that's why the emphasis is on the business market on that B2B and B2B2X. >> But we'll pay for Netflix all day long. >> All day long. (all laugh) >> The one thing Chris, I don't know, I want to know your viewpoints and we have talked in the past as well, there's absence of think tanks in tech, right? So we have think tanks on the foreign policy and economic policy in every country, and we have global think tanks, but tech is becoming a huge part of the economy, global economy as well as national economies, right? But we don't have think tanks on like policy around tech. For example, this 4G is good for a lot of use cases. Then 5G is good for smaller number of use cases. And then 6G will be like, fewer people need 6G for example. Why can't we have sort of those kind of entities dictating those kind of like, okay, is this a wiser way to go about it? >> Lina Khan wants to. She wants to break up big tech- >> You're too young to remember but the IT used to have a show every four years in Geneva, there were standards around there. So I think there are bodies. I think the balance of power obviously has gone from the telecom to the west coast to the IT markets. And it's changing the balance about, it moves more quickly, right? Telecoms has never moved quickly enough. I think there is hope by the way, that telecoms now that we are moving to more softwarized environment, and God forbid, we're moving into CICD in the telecom world, right? Which is a massive change, but I think there's hopes for it to change. The mentality is changing, the culture is changing, but to change those old structured organizations from the British telecom or the France telecom into the modern world, it's a hell of a long journey. It's not an overnight journey at all. >> Well, of course the theme of the event is velocity. >> Yeah, I know that. >> And it's been interesting sitting here with the three of you talking about from a historic perspective, how slow and molasseslike telecom has been. They don't have a choice anymore. As consumers, we have this expectation we're going to get anything we want on our mobile device, 24 by seven. We don't care about how the sausage is made, we just want the end result. So do you really think, and we're only on day one guys... And Chris we'll start with you. Is the theme really velocity? Is it disruption? Are they able to move faster? >> Actually, I think invisibility is the real answer. (Lisa laughs) We want communication to be invisible, right? >> Absolutely. >> We want it to work. When we switch our phones on, we want it to work and we want to... Well, they're not even phones anymore, are they really? I mean that's the... So no, velocity, we've got... There is momentum in the industry, there's no doubt about that. The cloud guys coming in, making telecoms think about the way they run their own business, where they meet, that collision point on the edges you talked about Sarbjeet. We do have velocity, we've got momentum. There's so many interested parties. The way I think of this is that the telecom industry used to be inward looking, just design its own technology and then expect everyone else to dance to our tune. We're now flipping that 180 degrees and we are now having to work with all the different outside forces shaping us. Whether it's devices, whether it's smart cities, governments, the hosting guys, the Equinoxis, all these things. So everyone wants a piece of this telecom world so we've got to make ourselves more open. That's why you get in a more open environment. >> But you did... I just want to bring back a point you made during COVID, which was when everybody switched to work from home, started using their landlines again, telcos had to respond and nothing broke. I mean, it was pretty amazing. >> Chris: It did a good job. >> It was kind of invisible. So, props to the telcos for making that happen. >> They did a great job. >> So it really did. Now, okay, what have you done for me lately? So now they've got to deal with the future and they're talking monetization. But to me, monetization is all about data and not necessarily just the network data. Yeah, they can sell that 'cause they own that but what kind of incremental value are they going to create for the consumers that... >> Yeah, actually that's a problem. I think the problem is that they have been strangled by the regulation for a long time and they cannot look at their data. It's a lot more similar to the FinTech world, right? I used to work at Visa. And then Visa, we did trillion dollars in transactions in '96. Like we moved so much money around, but we couldn't look at these things, right? So yeah, I think regulation is a problem that holds you back, it's the antithesis of velocity, it slows you down. >> But data means everything, doesn't it? I mean, it means everything and nothing. So I think the challenge here is what data do the telcos have that is useful, valuable to me, right? So in the home environment, the fact that my broadband provider says, oh, by the way, you've got 20 gadgets on that network and 20 on that one... That's great, tell me what's on there. I probably don't know what's taking all my valuable bandwidth up. So I think there's security wrapped around that, telling me the way I'm using it if I'm getting the best out of my service. >> You pay for that? >> No, I'm saying they don't do it yet. I think- >> But would you pay for that? >> I think I would, yeah. >> Would you pay a lot for that? I would expect it to be there as part of my dashboard for my monthly fee. They're already charging me enough. >> Well, that's fine, but you pay a lot more in North America than I do in Europe, right? >> Yeah, no, that's true. >> You're really overpaying over there, right? >> Way overpaying. >> So, actually everybody's looking at these devices, right? So this is a radio operated device basically, right? And then why couldn't they benefit from this? This is like we need to like double click on this like 10 times to find out why telcos failed to leverage this device, right? But I think the problem is their reliance on regulations and their being close to the national sort of governments and local bodies and authorities, right? And in some countries, these telcos are totally controlled in very authoritarian ways, right? It's not like open, like in the west, most of the west. Like the world is bigger than five, six countries and we know that, right? But we end up talking about the major economies most of the time. >> Dave: Always. >> Chris: We have a topic we want to hit on. >> We do have a topic. Our last topic, Chris, it's for you. You guys have done an amazing job for the last 25 minutes talking about the industry, where it's going, the evolution. But Chris, you're registered blind throughout your career. You're a leading user of assertive technologies. Talk about diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, some of the things you're doing there. >> Well, we should have had 25 minutes on that and five minutes on- (all laugh) >> Lisa: You'll have to come back. >> Really interesting. So I've been looking at it. You're quite right, I've been using accessible technology on my iPhone and on my laptop for 10, 20 years now. It's amazing. And what I'm trying to get across to the industry is to think about inclusive design from day one. When you're designing an app or you're designing a service, make sure you... And telecom's a great example. In fact, there's quite a lot of sign language around here this week. If you look at all the events written, good to see that coming in. Obviously, no use to me whatsoever, but good for the hearing impaired, which by the way is the biggest category of disability in the world. Biggest chunk is hearing impaired, then vision impaired, and then cognitive and then physical. And therefore, whenever you're designing any service, my call to arms to people is think about how that's going to be used and how a blind person might use it or how a deaf person or someone with physical issues or any cognitive issues might use it. And a great example, the GSMA and I have been talking about the app they use for getting into the venue here. I downloaded it. I got the app downloaded and I'm calling my guys going, where's my badge? And he said, "it's top left." And because I work with a screen reader, they hadn't tagged it properly so I couldn't actually open my badge on my own. Now, they changed it overnight so it worked this morning, which is fantastic work by Trevor and the team. But it's those things that if you don't build it in from scratch, you really frustrate a whole group of users. And if you think about it, people with disabilities are excluded from so many services if they can't see the screen or they can't hear it. But it's also the elderly community who don't find it easy to get access to things. Smart speakers have been a real blessing in that respect 'cause you can now talk to that thing and it starts talking back to you. And then there's the people who can't afford it so we need to come down market. This event is about launching these thousand dollars plus devices. Come on, we need below a hundred dollars devices to get to the real mass market and get the next billion people in and then to educate people how to use it. And I think to go back to your previous point, I think governments are starting to realize how important this is about building the community within the countries. You've got some massive projects like NEOM in Saudi Arabia. If you have a look at that, if you get a chance, a fantastic development in the desert where they're building a new city from scratch and they're building it so anyone and everyone can get access to it. So in the past, it was all done very much by individual disability. So I used to use some very expensive, clunky blind tech stuff. I'm now using mostly mainstream. But my call to answer to say is, make sure when you develop an app, it's accessible, anyone can use it, you can talk to it, you can get whatever access you need and it will make all of our lives better. So as we age and hearing starts to go and sight starts to go and dexterity starts to go, then those things become very useful for everybody. >> That's a great point and what a great champion they have in you. Chris, Sarbjeet, Dave, thank you so much for kicking things off, analyzing day one keynote, the ecosystem day, talking about what velocity actually means, where we really are. We're going to have to have you guys back 'cause as you know, we can keep going, but we are out of time. But thank you. >> Pleasure. >> We had a very spirited, lively conversation. >> Thanks, Dave. >> Thank you very much. >> For our guests and for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live in Barcelona, Spain at MWC '23. We'll be back after a short break. See you soon. (uplifting instrumental music)

(inspirational music) (music ends) >> Okay, so now that we've heard Scott talk about smart data fabrics, it's time to see this in action. Right now we're joined by Jess Jowdy, who's the manager of Healthcare Field Engineering at InterSystems. She's going to give a demo of how smart data fabrics actually work, and she's going to show how embedding a wide range of analytics capabilities, including data exploration business intelligence, natural language processing and machine learning directly within the fabric makes it faster and easier for organizations to gain new insights and power intelligence predictive and prescriptive services and applications. Now, according to InterSystems, smart data fabrics are applicable across many industries from financial services to supply chain to healthcare and more. Jess today is going to be speaking through the lens of a healthcare focused demo. Don't worry, Joe Lichtenberg will get into some of the other use cases that you're probably interested in hearing about. That will be in our third segment, but for now let's turn it over to Jess. Jess, good to see you. >> Hi, yeah, thank you so much for having me. And so for this demo, we're really going to be bucketing these features of a smart data fabric into four different segments. We're going to be dealing with connections, collections, refinements, and analysis. And so we'll see that throughout the demo as we go. So without further ado, let's just go ahead and jump into this demo, and you'll see my screen pop up here. I actually like to start at the end of the demo. So I like to begin by illustrating what an end user's going to see, and don't mind the screen 'cause I gave you a little sneak peek of what's about to happen. But essentially what I'm going to be doing is using Postman to simulate a call from an external application. So we talked about being in the healthcare industry. This could be, for instance, a mobile application that a patient is using to view an aggregated summary of information across that patient's continuity of care or some other kind of application. So we might be pulling information in this case from an electronic medical record. We might be grabbing clinical history from that. We might be grabbing clinical notes from a medical transcription software, or adverse reaction warnings from a clinical risk grouping application, and so much more. So I'm really going to be simulating a patient logging in on their phone and retrieving this information through this Postman call. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to hit send, I've already preloaded everything here, and I'm going to be looking for information where the last name of this patient is Simmons, and their medical record number or their patient identifier in the system is 32345. And so as you can see, I have this single JSON payload that showed up here of, just, relevant clinical information for my patient whose last name is Simmons, all within a single response. So fantastic, right? Typically though, when we see responses that look like this there is an assumption that this service is interacting with a single backend system, and that single backend system is in charge of packaging that information up and returning it back to this caller. But in a smart data fabric architecture, we're able to expand the scope to handle information across different, in this case, clinical applications. So how did this actually happen? Let's peel back another layer and really take a look at what happened in the background. What you're looking at here is our mission control center for our smart data fabric. On the left we have our APIs that allow users to interact with particular services. On the right we have our connections to our different data silos. And in the middle here, we have our data fabric coordinator which is going to be in charge of this refinement and analysis, those key pieces of our smart data fabric. So let's look back and think about the example we just showed. I received an inbound request for information for a patient whose last name is Simmons. My end user is requesting to connect to that service, and that's happening here at my patient data retrieval API location. Users can define any number of different services and APIs depending on their use cases. And to that end, we do also support full life cycle API management within this platform. When you're dealing with APIs, I always like to make a little shout out on this, that you really want to make sure you have enough, like a granular enough security model to handle and limit which APIs and which services a consumer can interact with. In this IRIS platform, which we're talking about today we have a very granular role-based security model that allows you to handle that, but it's really important in a smart data fabric to consider who's accessing your data and in what context. >> Can I just interrupt you for a second, Jess? >> Yeah, please. >> So you were showing on the left hand side of the demo a couple of APIs. I presume that can be a very long list. I mean, what do you see as typical? >> I mean you could have hundreds of these APIs depending on what services an organization is serving up for their consumers. So yeah, we've seen hundreds of these services listed here. >> So my question is, obviously security is critical in the healthcare industry, and API securities are like, really hot topic these days. How do you deal with that? >> Yeah, and I think API security is interesting 'cause it can happen at so many layers. So, there's interactions with the API itself. So can I even see this API and leverage it? And then within an API call, you then have to deal with all right, which end points or what kind of interactions within that API am I allowed to do? What data am I getting back? And with healthcare data, the whole idea of consent to see certain pieces of data is critical. So, the way that we handle that is, like I said, same thing at different layers. There is access to a particular API, which can happen within the IRIS product, and also we see it happening with an API management layer, which has become a really hot topic with a lot of organizations. And then when it comes to data security, that really happens under the hood within your smart data fabric. So, that role-based access control becomes very important in assigning, you know, roles and permissions to certain pieces of information. Getting that granular becomes the cornerstone of the security. >> And that's been designed in, it's not a bolt on as they like to say. >> Absolutely. >> Okay, can we get into collect now? >> Of course, we're going to move on to the collection piece at this point in time, which involves pulling information from each of my different data silos to create an overall aggregated record. So commonly, each data source requires a different method for establishing connections and collecting this information. So for instance, interactions with an EMR may require leveraging a standard healthcare messaging format like Fire. Interactions with a homegrown enterprise data warehouse for instance, may use SQL. For a cloud-based solutions managed by a vendor, they may only allow you to use web service calls to pull data. So it's really important that your data fabric platform that you're using has the flexibility to connect to all of these different systems and applications. And I'm about to log out, so I'm going to (chuckles) keep my session going here. So therefore it's incredibly important that your data fabric has the flexibility to connect to all these different kinds of applications and data sources, and all these different kinds of formats and over all of these different kinds of protocols. So let's think back on our example here. I had four different applications that I was requesting information for to create that payload that we saw initially. Those are listed here under this operations section. So these are going out and connecting to downstream systems to pull information into my smart data fabric. What's great about the IRIS platform is, it has an embedded interoperability platform. So there's all of these native adapters that can support these common connections that we see for different kinds of applications. So using REST, or SOAP, or SQL, or FTP, regardless of that protocol, there's an adapter to help you work with that. And we also think of the types of formats that we typically see data coming in as in healthcare we have HL7, we have Fire, we have CCDs, across the industry, JSON is, you know, really hitting a market strong now, and XML payloads, flat files. We need to be able to handle all of these different kinds of formats over these different kinds of protocols. So to illustrate that, if I click through these when I select a particular connection on the right side panel, I'm going to see the different settings that are associated with that particular connection that allows me to collect information back into my smart data fabric. In this scenario, my connection to my chart script application in this example, communicates over a SOAP connection. When I'm grabbing information from my clinical risk grouping application I'm using a SQL based connection. When I'm connecting to my EMR, I'm leveraging a standard healthcare messaging format known as Fire, which is a REST based protocol. And then when I'm working with my health record management system, I'm leveraging a standard HTTP adapter. So you can see how we can be flexible when dealing with these different kinds of applications and systems. And then it becomes important to be able to validate that you've established those connections correctly, and be able to do it in a reliable and quick way. Because if you think about it, you could have hundreds of these different kinds of applications built out and you want to make sure that you're maintaining and understanding those connections. So I can actually go ahead and test one of these applications and put in, for instance my patient's last name and their MRN, and make sure that I'm actually getting data back from that system. So it's a nice little sanity check as we're building out that data fabric to ensure that we're able to establish these connections appropriately. So turnkey adapters are fantastic, as you can see we're leveraging them all here, but sometimes these connections are going to require going one step further and building something really specific for an application. So why don't we go one step further here and talk about doing something custom or doing something innovative. And so it's important for users to have the ability to develop and go beyond what's an out-of-the box or black box approach to be able to develop things that are specific to their data fabric, or specific to their particular connection. In this scenario, the IRIS data platform gives users access to the entire underlying code base. So you not only get an opportunity to view how we're establishing these connections or how we're building out these processes, but you have the opportunity to inject your own kind of processing, your own kinds of pipelines into this. So as an example, you can leverage any number of different programming languages right within this pipeline. And so I went ahead and I injected Python. So Python is a very up and coming language, right? We see more and more developers turning towards Python to do their development. So it's important that your data fabric supports those kinds of developers and users that have standardized on these kinds of programming languages. This particular script here, as you can see actually calls out to our turnkey adapters. So we see a combination of out-of-the-box code that is provided in this data fabric platform from IRIS, combined with organization specific or user specific customizations that are included in this Python method. So it's a nice little combination of how do we bring the developer experience in and mix it with out-of-the-box capabilities that we can provide in a smart data fabric. >> Wow. >> Yeah, I'll pause. (laughs) >> It's a lot here. You know, actually- >> I can pause. >> If I could, if we just want to sort of play that back. So we went to the connect and the collect phase. >> Yes, we're going into refine. So it's a good place to stop. >> So before we get there, so we heard a lot about fine grain security, which is crucial. We heard a lot about different data types, multiple formats. You've got, you know, the ability to bring in different dev tools. We heard about Fire, which of course big in healthcare. And that's the standard, and then SQL for traditional kind of structured data, and then web services like HTTP you mentioned. And so you have a rich collection of capabilities within this single platform. >> Absolutely. And I think that's really important when you're dealing with a smart data fabric because what you're effectively doing is you're consolidating all of your processing, all of your collection, into a single platform. So that platform needs to be able to handle any number of different kinds of scenarios and technical challenges. So you've got to pack that platform with as many of these features as you can to consolidate that processing. >> All right, so now we're going into refinement. >> We're going into refinement. Exciting. (chuckles) So how do we actually do refinement? Where does refinement happen? And how does this whole thing end up being performant? Well the key to all of that is this SDF coordinator, or stands for Smart Data Fabric coordinator. And what this particular process is doing is essentially orchestrating all of these calls to all of these different downstream systems. It's aggregating, it's collecting that information, it's aggregating it, and it's refining it into that single payload that we saw get returned to the user. So really this coordinator is the main event when it comes to our data fabric. And in the IRIS platform we actually allow users to build these coordinators using web-based tool sets to make it intuitive. So we can take a sneak peek at what that looks like. And as you can see, it follows a flow chart like structure. So there's a start, there is an end, and then there are these different arrows that point to different activities throughout the business process. And so there's all these different actions that are being taken within our coordinator. You can see an action for each of the calls to each of our different data sources to go retrieve information. And then we also have the sync call at the end that is in charge of essentially making sure that all of those responses come back before we package them together and send them out. So this becomes really crucial when we're creating that data fabric. And you know, this is a very simple data fabric example where we're just grabbing data and we're consolidating it together. But you can have really complex orchestrators and coordinators that do any number of different things. So for instance, I could inject SQL logic into this or SQL code, I can have conditional logic, I can do looping, I can do error trapping and handling. So we're talking about a whole number of different features that can be included in this coordinator. So like I said, we have a really very simple process here that's just calling out, grabbing all those different data elements from all those different data sources and consolidating it. We'll look back at this coordinator in a second when we introduce, or we make this data fabric a bit smarter, and we start introducing that analytics piece to it. So this is in charge of the refinement. And so at this point in time we've looked at connections, collections, and refinements. And just to summarize what we've seen 'cause I always like to go back and take a look at everything that we've seen. We have our initial API connection, we have our connections to our individual data sources and we have our coordinators there in the middle that are in charge of collecting the data and refining it into a single payload. As you can imagine, there's a lot going on behind the scenes of a smart data fabric, right? There's all these different processes that are interacting. So it's really important that your smart data fabric platform has really good traceability, really good logging, 'cause you need to be able to know, you know, if there was an issue, where did that issue happen in which connected process, and how did it affect the other processes that are related to it? In IRIS, we have this concept called a visual trace. And what our clients use this for is basically to be able to step through the entire history of a request from when it initially came into the smart data fabric, to when data was sent back out from that smart data fabric. So I didn't record the time, but I bet if you recorded the time it was this time that we sent that request in and you can see my patient's name and their medical record number here, and you can see that that instigated four different calls to four different systems, and they're represented by these arrows going out. So we sent something to chart script, to our health record management system, to our clinical risk grouping application, into my EMR through their Fire server. So every request, every outbound application gets a request and we pull back all of those individual pieces of information from all of those different systems, and we bundle them together. And from my Fire lovers, here's our Fire bundle that we got back from our Fire server. So this is a really good way of being able to validate that I am appropriately grabbing the data from all these different applications and then ultimately consolidating it into one payload. Now we change this into a JSON format before we deliver it, but this is those data elements brought together. And this screen would also be used for being able to see things like error trapping, or errors that were thrown, alerts, warnings, developers might put log statements in just to validate that certain pieces of code are executing. So this really becomes the one stop shop for understanding what's happening behind the scenes with your data fabric. >> Sure, who did what when where, what did the machine do what went wrong, and where did that go wrong? Right at your fingertips. >> Right. And I'm a visual person so a bunch of log files to me is not the most helpful. While being able to see this happened at this time in this location, gives me that understanding I need to actually troubleshoot a problem. >> This business orchestration piece, can you say a little bit more about that? How people are using it? What's the business impact of the business orchestration? >> The business orchestration, especially in the smart data fabric, is really that crucial part of being able to create a smart data fabric. So think of your business orchestrator as doing the heavy lifting of any kind of processing that involves data, right? It's bringing data in, it's analyzing that information it's transforming that data, in a format that your consumer's not going to understand. It's doing any additional injection of custom logic. So really your coordinator or that orchestrator that sits in the middle is the brains behind your smart data fabric. >> And this is available today? It all works? >> It's all available today. Yeah, it all works. And we have a number of clients that are using this technology to support these kinds of use cases. >> Awesome demo. Anything else you want to show us? >> Well, we can keep going. I have a lot to say, but really this is our data fabric. The core competency of IRIS is making it smart, right? So I won't spend too much time on this, but essentially if we go back to our coordinator here, we can see here's that original, that pipeline that we saw where we're pulling data from all these different systems and we're collecting it and we're sending it out. But then we see two more at the end here, which involves getting a readmission prediction and then returning a prediction. So we can not only deliver data back as part of a smart data fabric, but we can also deliver insights back to users and consumers based on data that we've aggregated as part of a smart data fabric. So in this scenario, we're actually taking all that data that we just looked at, and we're running it through a machine learning model that exists within the smart data fabric pipeline, and producing a readmission score to determine if this particular patient is at risk for readmission within the next 30 days. Which is a typical problem that we see in the healthcare space. So what's really exciting about what we're doing in the IRIS world, is we're bringing analytics close to the data with integrated ML. So in this scenario we're actually creating the model, training the model, and then executing the model directly within the IRIS platform. So there's no shuffling of data, there's no external connections to make this happen. And it doesn't really require having a PhD in data science to understand how to do that. It leverages all really basic SQL-like syntax to be able to construct and execute these predictions. So, it's going one step further than the traditional data fabric example to introduce this ability to define actionable insights to our users based on the data that we've brought together. >> Well that readmission probability is huge, right? Because it directly affects the cost for the provider and the patient, you know. So if you can anticipate the probability of readmission and either do things at that moment, or, you know, as an outpatient perhaps, to minimize the probability then that's huge. That drops right to the bottom line. >> Absolutely. And that really brings us from that data fabric to that smart data fabric at the end of the day, which is what makes this so exciting. >> Awesome demo. >> Thank you! >> Jess, are you cool if people want to get in touch with you? Can they do that? >> Oh yes, absolutely. So you can find me on LinkedIn, Jessica Jowdy, and we'd love to hear from you. I always love talking about this topic so we'd be happy to engage on that. >> Great stuff. Thank you Jessica, appreciate it. >> Thank you so much. >> Okay, don't go away because in the next segment, we're going to dig into the use cases where data fabric is driving business value. Stay right there. (inspirational music) (music fades)

>> Okay, so now that we've heard Scott talk about smart data fabrics, it's time to see this in action. Right now we're joined by Jess Jowdy, who's the manager of Healthcare Field Engineering at InterSystems. She's going to give a demo of how smart data fabrics actually work, and she's going to show how embedding a wide range of analytics capabilities including data exploration, business intelligence natural language processing, and machine learning directly within the fabric, makes it faster and easier for organizations to gain new insights and power intelligence, predictive and prescriptive services and applications. Now, according to InterSystems, smart data fabrics are applicable across many industries from financial services to supply chain to healthcare and more. Jess today is going to be speaking through the lens of a healthcare focused demo. Don't worry, Joe Lichtenberg will get into some of the other use cases that you're probably interested in hearing about. That will be in our third segment, but for now let's turn it over to Jess. Jess, good to see you. >> Hi. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. And so for this demo we're really going to be bucketing these features of a smart data fabric into four different segments. We're going to be dealing with connections, collections, refinements and analysis. And so we'll see that throughout the demo as we go. So without further ado, let's just go ahead and jump into this demo and you'll see my screen pop up here. I actually like to start at the end of the demo. So I like to begin by illustrating what an end user's going to see and don't mind the screen 'cause I gave you a little sneak peek of what's about to happen. But essentially what I'm going to be doing is using Postman to simulate a call from an external application. So we talked about being in the healthcare industry. This could be for instance, a mobile application that a patient is using to view an aggregated summary of information across that patient's continuity of care or some other kind of application. So we might be pulling information in this case from an electronic medical record. We might be grabbing clinical history from that. We might be grabbing clinical notes from a medical transcription software or adverse reaction warnings from a clinical risk grouping application and so much more. So I'm really going to be assimilating a patient logging on in on their phone and retrieving this information through this Postman call. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to hit send, I've already preloaded everything here and I'm going to be looking for information where the last name of this patient is Simmons and their medical record number their patient identifier in the system is 32345. And so as you can see I have this single JSON payload that showed up here of just relevant clinical information for my patient whose last name is Simmons all within a single response. So fantastic, right? Typically though when we see responses that look like this there is an assumption that this service is interacting with a single backend system and that single backend system is in charge of packaging that information up and returning it back to this caller. But in a smart data fabric architecture we're able to expand the scope to handle information across different, in this case, clinical applications. So how did this actually happen? Let's peel back another layer and really take a look at what happened in the background. What you're looking at here is our mission control center for our smart data fabric. On the left we have our APIs that allow users to interact with particular services. On the right we have our connections to our different data silos. And in the middle here we have our data fabric coordinator which is going to be in charge of this refinement and analysis those key pieces of our smart data fabric. So let's look back and think about the example we just showed. I received an inbound request for information for a patient whose last name is Simmons. My end user is requesting to connect to that service and that's happening here at my patient data retrieval API location. Users can define any number of different services and APIs depending on their use cases. And to that end we do also support full lifecycle API management within this platform. When you're dealing with APIs I always like to make a little shout out on this that you really want to make sure you have enough like a granular enough security model to handle and limit which APIs and which services a consumer can interact with. In this IRIS platform, which we're talking about today we have a very granular role-based security model that allows you to handle that, but it's really important in a smart data fabric to consider who's accessing your data and in what contact. >> Can I just interrupt you for a second? >> Yeah, please. >> So you were showing on the left hand side of the demo a couple of APIs. I presume that can be a very long list. I mean, what do you see as typical? >> I mean you can have hundreds of these APIs depending on what services an organization is serving up for their consumers. So yeah, we've seen hundreds of these services listed here. >> So my question is, obviously security is critical in the healthcare industry and API securities are really hot topic these days. How do you deal with that? >> Yeah, and I think API security is interesting 'cause it can happen at so many layers. So there's interactions with the API itself. So can I even see this API and leverage it? And then within an API call, you then have to deal with all right, which end points or what kind of interactions within that API am I allowed to do? What data am I getting back? And with healthcare data, the whole idea of consent to see certain pieces of data is critical. So the way that we handle that is, like I said, same thing at different layers. There is access to a particular API, which can happen within the IRIS product and also we see it happening with an API management layer, which has become a really hot topic with a lot of organizations. And then when it comes to data security, that really happens under the hood within your smart data fabric. So that role-based access control becomes very important in assigning, you know, roles and permissions to certain pieces of information. Getting that granular becomes the cornerstone of security. >> And that's been designed in, >> Absolutely, yes. it's not a bolt-on as they like to say. Okay, can we get into collect now? >> Of course, we're going to move on to the collection piece at this point in time, which involves pulling information from each of my different data silos to create an overall aggregated record. So commonly each data source requires a different method for establishing connections and collecting this information. So for instance, interactions with an EMR may require leveraging a standard healthcare messaging format like FIRE, interactions with a homegrown enterprise data warehouse for instance may use SQL for a cloud-based solutions managed by a vendor. They may only allow you to use web service calls to pull data. So it's really important that your data fabric platform that you're using has the flexibility to connect to all of these different systems and and applications. And I'm about to log out so I'm going to keep my session going here. So therefore it's incredibly important that your data fabric has the flexibility to connect to all these different kinds of applications and data sources and all these different kinds of formats and over all of these different kinds of protocols. So let's think back on our example here. I had four different applications that I was requesting information for to create that payload that we saw initially. Those are listed here under this operations section. So these are going out and connecting to downstream systems to pull information into my smart data fabric. What's great about the IRIS platform is it has an embedded interoperability platform. So there's all of these native adapters that can support these common connections that we see for different kinds of applications. So using REST or SOAP or SQL or FTP regardless of that protocol there's an adapter to help you work with that. And we also think of the types of formats that we typically see data coming in as, in healthcare we have H7, we have FIRE we have CCDs across the industry. JSON is, you know, really hitting a market strong now and XML, payloads, flat files. We need to be able to handle all of these different kinds of formats over these different kinds of protocols. So to illustrate that, if I click through these when I select a particular connection on the right side panel I'm going to see the different settings that are associated with that particular connection that allows me to collect information back into my smart data fabric. In this scenario, my connection to my chart script application in this example communicates over a SOAP connection. When I'm grabbing information from my clinical risk grouping application I'm using a SQL based connection. When I'm connecting to my EMR I'm leveraging a standard healthcare messaging format known as FIRE, which is a rest based protocol. And then when I'm working with my health record management system I'm leveraging a standard HTTP adapter. So you can see how we can be flexible when dealing with these different kinds of applications and systems. And then it becomes important to be able to validate that you've established those connections correctly and be able to do it in a reliable and quick way. Because if you think about it, you could have hundreds of these different kinds of applications built out and you want to make sure that you're maintaining and understanding those connections. So I can actually go ahead and test one of these applications and put in, for instance my patient's last name and their MRN and make sure that I'm actually getting data back from that system. So it's a nice little sanity check as we're building out that data fabric to ensure that we're able to establish these connections appropriately. So turnkey adapters are fantastic, as you can see we're leveraging them all here, but sometimes these connections are going to require going one step further and building something really specific for an application. So let's, why don't we go one step further here and talk about doing something custom or doing something innovative. And so it's important for users to have the ability to develop and go beyond what's an out of the box or black box approach to be able to develop things that are specific to their data fabric or specific to their particular connection. In this scenario, the IRIS data platform gives users access to the entire underlying code base. So you cannot, you not only get an opportunity to view how we're establishing these connections or how we're building out these processes but you have the opportunity to inject your own kind of processing your own kinds of pipelines into this. So as an example, you can leverage any number of different programming languages right within this pipeline. And so I went ahead and I injected Python. So Python is a very up and coming language, right? We see more and more developers turning towards Python to do their development. So it's important that your data fabric supports those kinds of developers and users that have standardized on these kinds of programming languages. This particular script here, as you can see actually calls out to our turnkey adapters. So we see a combination of out of the box code that is provided in this data fabric platform from IRIS combined with organization specific or user specific customizations that are included in this Python method. So it's a nice little combination of how do we bring the developer experience in and mix it with out of the box capabilities that we can provide in a smart data fabric. >> Wow. >> Yeah, I'll pause. >> It's a lot here. You know, actually, if I could >> I can pause. >> If I just want to sort of play that back. So we went through the connect and the collect phase. >> And the collect, yes, we're going into refine. So it's a good place to stop. >> Yeah, so before we get there, so we heard a lot about fine grain security, which is crucial. We heard a lot about different data types, multiple formats. You've got, you know the ability to bring in different dev tools. We heard about FIRE, which of course big in healthcare. >> Absolutely. >> And that's the standard and then SQL for traditional kind of structured data and then web services like HTTP you mentioned. And so you have a rich collection of capabilities within this single platform. >> Absolutely, and I think that's really important when you're dealing with a smart data fabric because what you're effectively doing is you're consolidating all of your processing, all of your collection into a single platform. So that platform needs to be able to handle any number of different kinds of scenarios and technical challenges. So you've got to pack that platform with as many of these features as you can to consolidate that processing. >> All right, so now we're going into refine. >> We're going into refinement, exciting. So how do we actually do refinement? Where does refinement happen and how does this whole thing end up being performant? Well the key to all of that is this SDF coordinator or stands for smart data fabric coordinator. And what this particular process is doing is essentially orchestrating all of these calls to all of these different downstream systems. It's aggregating, it's collecting that information it's aggregating it and it's refining it into that single payload that we saw get returned to the user. So really this coordinator is the main event when it comes to our data fabric. And in the IRIS platform we actually allow users to build these coordinators using web-based tool sets to make it intuitive. So we can take a sneak peek at what that looks like and as you can see it follows a flow chart like structure. So there's a start, there is an end and then there are these different arrows that point to different activities throughout the business process. And so there's all these different actions that are being taken within our coordinator. You can see an action for each of the calls to each of our different data sources to go retrieve information. And then we also have the sync call at the end that is in charge of essentially making sure that all of those responses come back before we package them together and send them out. So this becomes really crucial when we're creating that data fabric. And you know, this is a very simple data fabric example where we're just grabbing data and we're consolidating it together. But you can have really complex orchestrators and coordinators that do any number of different things. So for instance, I could inject SQL Logic into this or SQL code, I can have conditional logic, I can do looping, I can do error trapping and handling. So we're talking about a whole number of different features that can be included in this coordinator. So like I said, we have a really very simple process here that's just calling out, grabbing all those different data elements from all those different data sources and consolidating it. We'll look back at this coordinator in a second when we introduce or we make this data fabric a bit smarter and we start introducing that analytics piece to it. So this is in charge of the refinement. And so at this point in time we've looked at connections, collections, and refinements. And just to summarize what we've seen 'cause I always like to go back and take a look at everything that we've seen. We have our initial API connection we have our connections to our individual data sources and we have our coordinators there in the middle that are in charge of collecting the data and refining it into a single payload. As you can imagine, there's a lot going on behind the scenes of a smart data fabric, right? There's all these different processes that are interacting. So it's really important that your smart data fabric platform has really good traceability, really good logging 'cause you need to be able to know, you know, if there was an issue, where did that issue happen, in which connected process and how did it affect the other processes that are related to it. In IRIS, we have this concept called a visual trace. And what our clients use this for is basically to be able to step through the entire history of a request from when it initially came into the smart data fabric to when data was sent back out from that smart data fabric. So I didn't record the time but I bet if you recorded the time it was this time that we sent that request in. And you can see my patient's name and their medical record number here and you can see that that instigated four different calls to four different systems and they're represented by these arrows going out. So we sent something to chart script to our health record management system, to our clinical risk grouping application into my EMR through their FIRE server. So every request, every outbound application gets a request and we pull back all of those individual pieces of information from all of those different systems and we bundle them together. And for my FIRE lovers, here's our FIRE bundle that we got back from our FIRE server. So this is a really good way of being able to validate that I am appropriately grabbing the data from all these different applications and then ultimately consolidating it into one payload. Now we change this into a JSON format before we deliver it, but this is those data elements brought together. And this screen would also be used for being able to see things like error trapping or errors that were thrown alerts, warnings, developers might put log statements in just to validate that certain pieces of code are executing. So this really becomes the one stop shop for understanding what's happening behind the scenes with your data fabric. >> Etcher, who did what, when, where what did the machine do? What went wrong and where did that go wrong? >> Exactly. >> Right in your fingertips. >> Right, and I'm a visual person so a bunch of log files to me is not the most helpful. Well, being able to see this happened at this time in this location gives me that understanding I need to actually troubleshoot a problem. >> This business orchestration piece, can you say a little bit more about that? How people are using it? What's the business impact of the business orchestration? >> The business orchestration, especially in the smart data fabric is really that crucial part of being able to create a smart data fabric. So think of your business orchestrator as doing the heavy lifting of any kind of processing that involves data, right? It's bringing data in, it's analyzing that information, it's transforming that data, in a format that your consumer's not going to understand it's doing any additional injection of custom logic. So really your coordinator or that orchestrator that sits in the middle is the brains behind your smart data fabric. >> And this is available today? This all works? >> It's all available today. Yeah, it all works. And we have a number of clients that are using this technology to support these kinds of use cases. >> Awesome demo. Anything else you want to show us? >> Well we can keep going. 'Cause right now, I mean we can, oh, we're at 18 minutes. God help us. You can cut some of this. (laughs) I have a lot to say, but really this is our data fabric. The core competency of IRIS is making it smart, right? So I won't spend too much time on this but essentially if we go back to our coordinator here we can see here's that original that pipeline that we saw where we're pulling data from all these different systems and we're collecting it and we're sending it out. But then we see two more at the end here which involves getting a readmission prediction and then returning a prediction. So we can not only deliver data back as part of a smart data fabric but we can also deliver insights back to users and consumers based on data that we've aggregated as part of a smart data fabric. So in this scenario, we're actually taking all that data that we just looked at and we're running it through a machine learning model that exists within the smart data fabric pipeline and producing a readmission score to determine if this particular patient is at risk for readmission within the next 30 days. Which is a typical problem that we see in the healthcare space. So what's really exciting about what we're doing in the IRIS world is we're bringing analytics close to the data with integrated ML. So in this scenario we're actually creating the model, training the model, and then executing the model directly within the IRIS platform. So there's no shuffling of data, there's no external connections to make this happen. And it doesn't really require having a PhD in data science to understand how to do that. It leverages all really basic SQL like syntax to be able to construct and execute these predictions. So it's going one step further than the traditional data fabric example to introduce this ability to define actionable insights to our users based on the data that we've brought together. >> Well that readmission probability is huge. >> Yes. >> Right, because it directly affects the cost of for the provider and the patient, you know. So if you can anticipate the probability of readmission and either do things at that moment or you know, as an outpatient perhaps to minimize the probability then that's huge. That drops right to the bottom line. >> Absolutely, absolutely. And that really brings us from that data fabric to that smart data fabric at the end of the day which is what makes this so exciting. >> Awesome demo. >> Thank you. >> Fantastic people, are you cool? If people want to get in touch with you? >> Oh yes, absolutely. So you can find me on LinkedIn, Jessica Jowdy and we'd love to hear from you. I always love talking about this topic, so would be happy to engage on that. >> Great stuff, thank you Jess, appreciate it. >> Thank you so much. >> Okay, don't go away because in the next segment we're going to dig into the use cases where data fabric is driving business value. Stay right there.

(electronic music) >> Hi everybody, welcome back to Supercloud 2. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host John Furrier. We're here at our tricked out Palo Alto studio. We're going live wall to wall all day. We're inserting a number of pre-recorded interviews, folks like Walmart. We just heard from Nir Zuk of Palo Alto Networks, and I'm really pleased to welcome in David Flynn. David Flynn, you may know as one of the people behind Fusion-io, completely changed the way in which people think about storing data, accessing data. David Flynn now the founder and CEO of a company called Hammerspace. David, good to see you, thanks for coming on. >> David: Good to see you too. >> And Dr. Nelu Mihai is the CEO and founder of Cloud of Clouds. He's actually built a Supercloud. We're going to get into that. Nelu, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, Happy New Year. >> Yeah, Happy New Year. So I'm going to start right off with a little debate that's going on in the community if you guys would bring out this slide. So Bob Muglia early today, he gave a definition of Supercloud. He felt like we had to tighten ours up a little bit. He said a Supercloud is a platform, underscoring platform, that provides programmatically consistent services hosted on heterogeneous cloud providers. Now, Nelu, we have this shared doc, and you've been in there. You responded, you said, well, hold on. Supercloud really needs to be an architecture, or else we're going to have this stove pipe of stove pipes, really. And then you went on with more detail, what's the information model? What's the execution model? How are users going to interact with Supercloud? So I start with you, why architecture? The inference is that a platform, the platform provider's responsible for the architecture? Why does that not work in your view? >> No, the, it's a very interesting question. So whenever I think about platform, what's the connotation, you think about monolithic system? Yeah, I mean, I don't know whether it's true or or not, but there is this connotation of of monolithic. On the other hand, if you look at what's a problem right now with HyperClouds, from the customer perspective, they're very complex. There is a heterogeneous world where actually every single one of this HyperClouds has their own architecture. You need rocket scientists to build a cloud applications. Always there is this contradiction between cost and performance. They fight each other. And I'm quoting here a former friend of mine from Bell Labs who work at AWS who used to say "Cloud is cheap as long as you don't use it too much." (group chuckles) So clearly we need something that kind of plays from the principle point of view the role of an operating system, that seats on top of this heterogeneous HyperCloud, and there's nothing wrong by having these proprietary HyperClouds, think about processors, think about operating system and so on, so forth. But in order to build a system that is simple enough, I think we need to go deeper and understand. >> So the argument, the counterargument to that, David, is you'll never get there. You need a proprietary system to get to market sooner, to solve today's problem. Now I don't know where you stand on this platform versus architecture. I haven't asked you, but. >> I think there are aspects of both for sure. I mean it needs to be an architecture in the sense that it's broad based and open and so forth. But you know, platform, you could say as long as people can instantiate it themselves, on their own infrastructure, as long as it's something that can be deployed as, you know, software defined, you don't want the concept of platform being the monolith, you know, combined hardware and software. So it really depends on what you're focused on when you're saying platform, you know, I'd say as long as they software defined thing, to where it can literally run anywhere. I mean, because I really think what we're talking about here is the original concept of cloud computing. The ability to run anything anywhere, without having to care about the physical infrastructure. And what we have today is not that, the cloud today is a big mainframe in the sky, that just happens to be large enough that once you select which region, generally you have enough resources. But, you know, nowadays you don't even necessarily have enough resources in one region. and then you're kind of stuck. So we haven't really gotten to that utility model of computing. And you're also asked to rewrite your application, you know, to abandon the conveniences of high performance file access. You got to rewrite it to use object storage stuff. We have to get away from that. >> Okay, I want to just drill on that, 'cause I think I like that point about, there's not enough availability, but on the developer cloud, the original AWS premise was targeting developers, 'cause at that time, you have to provision a Sun box get a Cisco DSU/CSU, now you get on the cloud. But I think you're giving up the scale question, 'cause I think right now, scale is huge, enterprise grade versus cloud for developers. >> That's Right. >> Because I mean look at, Amazon, Azure, they got compute, they got storage, they got queuing, and some stuff. If you're doing a startup, you throw your app up there, localhost to cloud, no big deal. It's the scale thing that gets me- >> And you can tell by the fact that, in regions that are under high demand, right, like in London or LA, at least with the clients we work with in the median entertainment space, it costs twice as much for the exact same cloud instances that do the exact same amount of work, as somewhere out in rural Canada. So why is it you have such a cost differential, it has to do with that supply and demand, and the fact that the clouds aren't really the ability to run anything anywhere. Even within the same cloud vendor, you're stuck in a specific region. >> And that was never the original promise, right? I mean it was, we turned it into that. But the original promise was get rid of the heavy lifting of IT. >> Not have to run your own, yeah, exactly. >> And then it became, wow, okay I can run anywhere. And then you know, it's like web 2.0. You know people say why Supercloud, you and I talked about this, why do you need a name for Supercloud? It's like web 2.0. >> It's what Cloud was supposed to be. >> It's what cloud was supposed to be, (group laughing and talking) exactly, right. >> Cloud was supposed to be run anything anywhere, or at least that's what we took it as. But you're right, originally it was just, oh don't have to run your own infrastructure, and you can choose somebody else's infrastructure. >> And you did that >> But you're still bound to that. >> Dave: And People said I want more, right? >> But how do we go from here? >> That's, that's actually, that's a very good point, because indeed when the first HyperClouds were designed, were designed really focus on customers. I think Supercloud is an opportunity to design in the right way. Also having in mind the computer science rigor. And we should take advantage of that, because in fact actually, if cloud would've been designed properly from the beginning, probably wouldn't have needed Supercloud. >> David: You wouldn't have to have been asked to rewrite your application. >> That's correct. (group laughs) >> To use REST interfaces to your storage. >> Revisist history is always a good one. But look, cloud is great. I mean your point is cloud is a good thing. Don't hold it back. >> It is a very good thing. >> Let it continue. >> Let it go as as it is. >> Yeah, let that thing continue to grow. Don't impose restrictions on the cloud. Just refactor what you need to for scale or enterprise grade or availability. >> And you would agree with that, is that true or is it problem you're solving? >> Well yeah, I mean it, what the cloud is doing is absolutely necessary. What the public cloud vendors are doing is absolutely necessary. But what's been missing is how to provide a consistent interface, especially to persistent data. And have it be available across different regions, and across different clouds. 'cause data is a highly localized thing in current architecture. It only exists as rendered by the storage system that you put it in. Whether that's a legacy thing like a NetApp or an Isilon or even a cloud data service. It's localized to a specific region of the cloud in which you put that. We have to delocalize data, and provide a consistent interface to it across all sites. That's high performance, local access, but to global data. >> And so Walmart earlier today described their, what we call Supercloud, they call it the Walmart cloud native platform. And they use this triplet model. They have AWS and Azure, no, oh sorry, no AWS. They have Azure and GCP and then on-prem, where all the VMs live. When you, you know, probe, it turns out that it's only stateless in the cloud. (John laughs) So, the state stuff- >> Well let's just admit it, there is no such thing as stateless, because even the application binaries and libraries are state. >> Well I'm happy that I'm hearing that. >> Yeah, okay. >> Because actually I have a lot of debate (indistinct). If you think about no software running on a (indistinct) machine is stateless. >> David: Exactly. >> This is something that was- >> David: And that's data that needs to be distributed and provided consistently >> (indistinct) >> Across all the clouds, >> And actually, it's a nonsense, but- >> Dave: So it's an illusion, okay. (group talks over each other) >> (indistinct) you guys talk about stateless. >> Well, see, people make the confusion between state and persistent state, okay. Persistent state it's a different thing. State is a different thing. So, but anyway, I want to go back to your point, because there's a lot of debate here. People are talking about data, some people are talking about logic, some people are talking about networking. In my opinion is this triplet, which is data logic and connectivity, that has equal importance. And actually depending on the application, can have the center of gravity moving towards data, moving towards what I call execution units or workloads. And connectivity is actually the most important part of it. >> David: (indistinct). >> Some people are saying move the logic towards the data, some other people, and you are saying actually, that no, you have to build a distributed data mesh. What I'm saying is actually, you have to consider all these three variables, all these vector in order to decide, based on application, what's the most important. Because sometimes- >> John: So the application chooses >> That's correct. >> Well it it's what operating systems were in the past, was principally the thing that runs and manages the jobs, the job scheduler, and the thing that provides your persistent data (indistinct). >> Okay. So we finally got operating system into the equation, thank you. (group laughs) >> Nelu: I actually have a PhD in operating system. >> Cause what we're talking about is an operating system. So forget platform or architecture, it's an operating environment. Let's use it as a general term. >> All right. I think that's about it for me. >> All right, let's take (indistinct). Nelu, I want ask you quick, 'cause I want to give a, 'cause I believe it's an operating system. I think it's going to be a reset, refactored. You wrote to me, "The model of Supercloud has to be open theoretical, has to satisfy the rigors of computer science, and customer requirements." So unique to today, if the OS is going to be refactored, it's not going to be, may or may not be Red Hat or somebody else. This new OS, obviously requirements are for customers too but is what's the computer science that is needed? Where are we, what's the missing? Where's the science in this shift? It's not your standard OS it's not like an- (group talks over each other) >> I would beg to differ. >> (indistinct) truly an operation environment. But the, if you think about, and make analogies, what you need when you design a distributed system, well you need an information model, yeah. You need to figure out how the data is located and distributed. You need a model for the execution units, and you need a way to describe the interactions between all these objects. And it is my opinion that we need to go deeper and formalize these operations in order to make a step forward. And when we design Supercloud, and design something that is better than the current HyperClouds. And actually that is when we design something better, you make a system more efficient and it's going to be better from the cost point of view, from the performance point of view. But we need to add some math into all this customer focus centering and I really admire AWS and their executive team focusing on the customer. But now it's time to go back and see, if we apply some computer science, if you try to formalize to build a theoretical model of cloud, can we build a system that is better than existing ones? >> So David, how do you- >> this is what I'm saying. >> That's a good question >> How do You see the operating system of a, or operating environment of a decentralized cloud? >> Well I think it's layered. I mean we have operating systems that can run systems quite efficiently. Linux has sort of one in the data center, but we're talking about a layer on top of that. And I think we're seeing the emergence of that. For example, on the job scheduling side of things, Kubernetes makes a really good example. You know, you break the workload into the most granular units of compute, the containerized microservice, and then you use a declarative model to state what is needed and give the system the degrees of freedom that it can choose how to instantiate it. Because the thing about these distributed systems, is that the complexity explodes, right? Running a piece of hardware, running a single server is not a problem, even with all the many cores and everything like that. It's when you start adding in the networking, and making it so that you have many of them. And then when it's going across whole different data centers, you know, so, at that level the way you solve this is not manually (group laughs) and not procedurally. You have to change the language so it's intent based, it's a declarative model, and what you're stating is what is intended, and you're leaving it to more advanced techniques, like machine learning to decide how to instantiate that service across the cluster, which is what Kubernetes does, or how to instantiate the data across the diverse storage infrastructure. And that's what we do. >> So that's a very good point because actually what has been neglected with HyperClouds is really optimization and automation. But in order to be able to do both of these things, you need, I'm going back and I'm stubborn, you need to have a mathematical model, a theoretical model because what does automation mean? It means that we have to put machines to do the work instead of us, and machines work with what? Formula, with algorithms, they don't work with services. So I think Supercloud is an opportunity to underscore the importance of optimization and automation- >> Totally agree. >> In HyperCloud, and actually by doing that, we can also have an interesting connotation. We are also contributing to save our planet, because if you think right now. we're consuming a lot of energy on this HyperClouds and also all this AI applications, and I think we can do better and build the same kind of application using less energy. >> So yeah, great point, love that call out, the- you know, Dave and I always joke about the old, 'cause we're old, we talk about, you know, (Nelu Laughs) old history, OS/2 versus DOS, okay, OS's, OS/2 is silly better, first threaded OS, DOS never went away. So how does legacy play into this conversation? Because I buy the theoretical, I love the conversation. Okay, I think it's an OS, totally see it that way myself. What's the blocker? Is there a legacy that drags it back? Is the anchor dragging from legacy? Is there a DOS OS/2 moment? Is there an opportunity to flip the script? This is- >> I think that's a perfect example of why we need to support the existing interfaces, Operating Systems, real operating systems like Linux, understands how to present data, it's called a file system, block devices, things that that plumb in there. And by, you know, going to a REST interface and S3 and telling people they have to rewrite their applications, you can't even consume your application binaries that way, the OS doesn't know how to pull that sort of thing. So we, to get to cloud, to get to the ability to host massive numbers of tenants within a centralized infrastructure, you know, we abandoned these lower level interfaces to the OS and we have to go back to that. It's the reason why DOS ultimately won, is it had the momentum of the install base. We're seeing the same thing here. Whatever it is, it has to be a real file system and not a come down file system >> Nelu, what's your reaction, 'cause you're in the theoretical bandwagon. Let's get your reaction. >> No, I think it's a good, I'll give, you made a good analogy between OS/2 and DOS, but I'll go even farther saying, if you think about the evolution operating system didn't stop the evolution of underlying microprocessors, hardware, and so on and so forth. On the contrary, it was a catalyst for that. So because everybody could develop their own hardware, without worrying that the applications on top of operating system are going to modify. The same thing is going to happen with Supercloud. You're going to have the AWSs, you're going to have the Azure and the the GCP continue to evolve in their own way proprietary. But if we create on top of it the right interface >> The open, this is why open is important. >> That's correct, because actually you're going to see sometime ago, everybody was saying, remember venture capitals were saying, "AWS killed the world, nobody's going to come." Now you see what Oracle is doing, and then you're going to see other players. >> It's funny, Amazon's trying to be more like Microsoft. Microsoft's trying to be more like Amazon and Google- Oracle's just trying to say they have cloud. >> That's, that's correct, (group laughs) so, my point is, you're going to see a multiplication of this HyperClouds and cloud technology. So, the system has to be open in order to accommodate what it is and what is going to come. Okay, so it's open. >> So the the legacy- so legacy is an opportunity, not a blocker in your mind. And you see- >> That's correct, I think we should allow them to continue to to to be their own actually. But maybe you're going to find a way to connect with it. >> Amazon's the processor, and they're on the 80 80 80 right? >> That's correct. >> You're saying you love people trying to get put to work. >> That's a good analogy. >> But, performance levels you say good luck, right? >> Well yeah, we have to be able to take traditional applications, high performance applications, those that consume file system and persistent data. Those things have to be able to run anywhere. You need to be able to put, put them onto, you know, more elastic infrastructure. So, we have to actually get cloud to where it lives up to its billing. >> And that's what you're solving for, with Hammerspace, >> That's what we're solving for, making it possible- >> Give me the bumper sticker. >> Solving for how do you have massive quantities of unstructured file data? At the end of the day, all data ultimately is unstructured data. Have that persistent data available, across any data center, within any cloud, within any region on-prem, at the edge. And have not just the same APIs, but have the exact same data sets, and not sucked over a straw remote, but at extreme high performance, local access. So how do you have local access to globally shared distributed data? And that's what we're doing. We are orchestrating data globally across all different forms of storage infrastructure, so you have a consistent access at the highest performance levels, at the lowest level innate built into the OS, how to consume it as (indistinct) >> So are you going into the- all the clouds and natively building in there, or are you off cloud? >> So This is software that can run on cloud instances and provide high performance file within the cloud. It can take file data that's on-prem. Again, it's software, it can run in virtual or on physical servers. And it abstracts the data from the existing storage infrastructure, and makes the data visible and consumable and orchestratable across any of it. >> And what's the elevator pitch for Cloud of Cloud, give that too. >> Well, Cloud of Clouds creates a theoretical model of cloud, and it describes every single object in the cloud. Where is data, execution units, and connectivity, with one single class of very simple object. And I can, I can give you (indistinct) >> And the problem that solves is what? >> The problem that solves is, it creates this mathematical model that is necessary in order to do other interesting things, such as optimization, using sata engines, using automation, applying ML for instance. Or deep learning to automate all this clouds, if you think about in the industrial field, we know how to manage and automate huge plants. Why wouldn't it do the same thing in cloud? It's the same thing you- >> That's what you mean by theoretical model. >> Nelu: That's correct. >> Lay out the architecture, almost the bones of skeleton or something, or, and then- >> That's correct, and then on top of it you can actually build a platform, You can create your services, >> when you say math, you mean you put numbers to it, you kind of index it. >> You quantify this thing and you apply mathematical- It's really about, I can disclose this thing. It's really about describing the cloud as a knowledge graph for every single object in the graph for node, an edge is a vector. And then once you have this model, then you can apply the field theory, and linear algebra to do operation with these vectors. And it's, this creates a very interesting opportunity to let the math do this thing for us. >> Okay, so what happens with hyperscale, or it's like AWS in your model. >> So in, in my model actually, >> Are they happy with this, or they >> I'm very happy with that. >> Will they be happy with you? >> We create an interface to every single HyperCloud. We actually, we don't need to interface with the thousands of APIs, but you know, if we have the 80 20 rule, and we map these APIs into this graph, and then every single operation that is done in this graph is done from the beginning, in an optimized manner and also automation ready. >> That's going to be great. David, I want us to go back to you before we close real quick. You've had a lot of experience, multiple ventures on the front end. You talked to a lot of customers who've been innovating. Where are the classic (indistinct)? Cause you, you used to sell and invent product around the old school enterprises with storage, you know that that trajectory storage is still critical to store the data. Where's the classic enterprise grade mindset right now? Those customers that were buying, that are buying storage, they're in the cloud, they're lifting and shifting. They not yet put the throttle on DevOps. When they look at this Supercloud thing, Are they like a deer in the headlights, or are they like getting it? What's the, what's the classic enterprise look like? >> You're seeing people at different stages of adoption. Some folks are trying to get to the cloud, some folks are trying to repatriate from the cloud, because they've realized it's better to own than to rent when you use a lot of it. And so people are at very different stages of the journey. But the one thing that's constant is that there's always change. And the change here has to do with being able to change the location where you're doing your computing. So being able to support traditional workloads in the cloud, being able to run things at the edge, and being able to rationalize where the data ought to exist, and with a declarative model, intent-based, business objective-based, be able to swipe a mouse and have the data get redistributed and positioned across different vendors, across different clouds, that, we're seeing that as really top of mind right now, because everybody's at some point on this journey, trying to go somewhere, and it involves taking their data with them. (John laughs) >> Guys, great conversation. Thanks so much for coming on, for John, Dave. Stay tuned, we got a great analyst power panel coming right up. More from Palo Alto, Supercloud 2. Be right back. (bouncy music)

>>Welcome back to the Cube, as a continued coverage here from AWS Reinvent 22. It's day three of our coverage here at the Venetian in Las Vegas, and we're part of the AWS Global Startup Showcase. With me to talk about what Kong's to in that regard is Marco Palladino, who's the, the CTO and the co-founder of Con Marco. Good >>To see you. Well, thanks for having me >>Here. Yeah, I was gonna say, by the way, I, I, you've got a beautiful exhibit down on the show floor. How's the week been for you so far as an exhibitor here? >>It's been very busy. You know, to this year we made a big investment at the WS reinvent. You know, I think this is one of the best conferences in the industry. There is technology developers, but it's also business oriented. So you can learn about all the business outcomes that our, you know, customers or, you know, people are trying to make when, when adopting these new technologies. So it's very good so far. >>Good, good, good to hear. Alright, so in your world, the API world, you know, it used to be we had this, you know, giant elephant. Now we're cutting down the little pieces, right? That's right. We're all going micro now these days. That's right. Talk about that trend a little bit, what you're seeing, and we'll jump in a little deeper as to how you're addressing that. >>Well, I think the industry learned a long time ago that running large code bases is actually quite problematic when it comes to scaling the organization and capturing new opportunities. And so, you know, we're transitioning to microservices because we want to get more opportunities in our business. We want to be able to create new products, fasters, we want to be able to leverage existing services or data that we have built, like an assembly line of software, you know, picking up APIs that other developers are building, and then assemble them together to create new experiences or new products, enter new markets. And so microservices are fantastic for that, except microservices. They also introduce significant concerns on the networking layer, on the API layer. And so this is where Kong specializes by providing API infrastructure to our customers. >>Right. So more about the problems, more about the challenges there, because you're right, it, opportunities always create, you know, big upside and, and I, I don't wanna say downside, but they do introduce new complexities. >>That's right. And introducing new complexity. It's a little bit the biggest enemy of any large organization, right? We want to reduce complexity, we want to move faster, we want to be more agile, and, and we need an API vision to be able to do that. Our teams, you know, I'm speaking with customers here at Reinvent, they're telling me that in the next five years, the organization is going to be creating more APIs than all the APIs they've created up until now. Right? So how do you >>Support, that's a mind boggling number, right? >>It's mind boggling. Yeah, exactly. How do you support that type of growth? And things have been moving so fast. I feel like there is a big dilemma in, you know, with certain organizations where, you know, we have not taught a long term strategy for APIs, whereas we do have a long term strategy for our business, but APIs are running the business. We must have a long term strategy for our APIs, otherwise we're not gonna be able to execute. And that's a big dilemma right now. Yeah. >>So, so how do we get the horse back in front of the cart then? Because it's like you said, it's almost as if we've, we're, we're reprioritizing, you know, incorrectly or inaccurately, right? You're, you're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. >>Well, so, you know, whenever we have a long-term strategy for pretty much anything in the organization, right? We know what we want to do. We know the outcome that we want to achieve. We work backwards to, you know, determine what are the steps that are gonna bring us there. And, and the responsibility for thinking long term in, in every organization, including for APIs at the end of the day, always falls on the leaders and the should on the shoulders of the leadership and, and to see executives of the organization, right? And so we're seeing, you know, look at aws by the way. Look at Amazon. This conference would not have been possible without a very strong API vision from Amazon. And the CEO himself, Jeff Bezos, everybody talks about wanting to become an API first organization. And Amazon did that with the famous Jeff Bezos mandate today, aws, it's a hundred billion revenue for Amazon. You see, Amazon was not the first organization with, with an e-commerce, but if it was the first one that married a very strong e-commerce business execution with a very strong API vision, and here we are. >>So yeah, here we are putting you squarely in, in, in a pretty good position, right? In terms of what you're offering to the marketplace who has this high demand, you see this trend starting to explode. The hockey sticks headed up a little bit, right? You know, how are you answering that call specifically at how, how are you looking at your client's needs and, and trying to address what they need and when they need it, and how they need it. Because everybody's in a kind of a different place right now. >>Right? That's exactly right. And so you have multiple teams at different stages of their journey, right? With technology, some of them are still working on legacy, some of them are moving to the cloud. Yep. Some of them are working in containers and in microservices and Kubernetes. And so how do you, how do we provide an API vision that can fulfill the needs of the entire organization in such a way that we reduce that type of fragmentation and we don't introduce too much complexity? Well, so at con, we do it by essentially splitting the API platform in three different components. Okay. One is API management. When, whenever we want to expose APIs internally or to an ecosystem of partners, right? Or to mobile, DRA is a service mesh. You know, as we're splitting these microservices into smaller parts, we have a lot of connectivity, all, you know, across all the services that the teams are building that we need to, to manage. >>You know, the network is unreliable. It's by default, not secure, not observable. There is nothing that that works in there. And so how do we make that network reliable without asking our teams to go and build these cross-cut concerns whenever they create a new service. And so we need a service match for that, right? And then finally, we could have the best AP infrastructure in the world, millions of APIs and millions of microservices. Everything is working great. And with no API consumption, all of that would be useless. The value of our APIs and the value of our infrastructure is being driven by the consumption that we're able to drive to all of these APIs. And so there is a whole area of API productivity and discovery and design and testing and mocking that enables the application teams to be successful with APIs, even when they do have a, the proper API infrastructure in place that's made of meshes and management products and so on and so forth. Right. >>Can you gimme some examples? I mean, at least with people that you've been working with in terms of addressing maybe unique needs. Cuz again, as you've addressed, journeys are in different stages now. Some people are on level one, some people are on level five. So maybe just a couple of examples Yeah. Of clients with whom you've been working. Yeah, >>So listen, I I was talking with many organizations here at AWS Reinvent that are of course trying to migrate to the cloud. That's a very common common transformation that pretty much everybody's doing in the world. And, and how do you transition to the cloud by de-risking the migration while at the same time being able to get all the benefits of, of running in the cloud? Well, we think that, you know, we can do that in two, two ways. One, by containerizing our workloads so that we can make them portable. But then we also need to lift and shift the API connectivity in such a way that we can determine how much traffic goes to the legacy and how much traffic goes to the new cloud infrastructure. And by doing that, we're able to deal with some of these transformations that can be quite complex. And then finally, API infrastructure must support every team in the organization. >>And so being able to run on a single cloud, multi-cloud, single cluster, multi cluster VMs containers, that's important and essential because we want the entire organization to be on board. Because whenever we do not do that, then the developers will make short term decisions that are not going to be fitting into the organizational outcomes that we want to achieve. And we look at any outcome that your organization wants to achieve the cloud transformation, improving customer retention, creating new products, being more agile. At the end of the day, there is an API that's powering that outcome. >>Right? Right. Well, and, and there's always a security component, right? That you have to be concerned about. So how are you raising that specter with your clients to make them aware? Because sometimes it, I wouldn't say it's an afterthought, but sometimes it's not the first thought. And, and obviously with APIs and with their integral place, you know, in, in the system now security's gotta be included in that, right? >>API security is perhaps the biggest, biggest request that we're hearing from customers. You know, 83% of the world's internet traffic at the end of the day runs on APIs, right? That's a lot of traffic. As a matter of fact, APIs are the first attack vector for any, you know, malicious store party. Whenever there is a breach, APIs must be secured. And we can secure APIs on different layers of our infrastructure. We can secure APIs at the L four mesh layer by implementing zero trust security, for example, encrypting all the traffic, assigning an identity to every service, removing the concept of trust from our systems because trust is exploitable, right? And so we need to remove the cut zero trust, remove the concept of trust, and then once we have that underlying networking that's being secure and encrypted, we want to secure access to our APIs. >>And so this is the typical authentication, authorization concerns. You know, we can use patterns like op, op or opa open policy agent to create a security layer that does not rely on the team's writing code every time they're creating a new service. But the infrastructure is enforcing the type of layer. So for example, last week I was in Sweden, as a matter of fact speaking with the largest bank in Sweden while our customers, and they were telling us that they are implementing GDPR validation in the service mesh on the OPPA layer across every service that anybody's building. Why? Well, because you can embed the GDPR settings of the consumer into a claim in a gel token, and then you can use OPPA to validate in a blanket way that Jo Token across every service in the mesh, developers don't have to do that. It just comes out of the box like that. And then finally, so networking, security, API security for access and, and management of those APIs. And then finally we have deep inspection of our API traffic. And here you will see more exotic solutions for API security, where we essentially take a subset of our API traffic and we try to inspect it to see if there is anybody doing anything that they shouldn't be doing and, and perhaps block them or, you know, raise, raise, raise the flag, so to speak. >>Well, the answer is probably yes, they are. Somebody's trying to, somebody's trying to, yeah, you're trying to block 'em out. Before I let you go, you've had some announcements leading up here to the show that's just to hit a few of those highlights, if you would. >>Well, you know, Kong is an organization that you know, is very proud of the technology that we create. Of course, we started with a, with the API gateway Con Gateway, which was our first product, the most adopted gateway in the world. But then we've expanded our platform with service mesh. We just announced D B P F support in the service mesh. For example, we made our con gateway, which was already one of the fastest gateway, if not the fastest gateway out there, 30% faster with Con Gateway 3.0. We have shipped an official con operator for Kubernetes, both community and enterprise. And then finally we're doubling down on insomnia, insomnia's, our API productivity application that essentially connects the developers with the APIs that are creating and allows them to create a discovery mechanism for testing, mocking the bagging, those APIs, all of this, we of course ship it OnPrem, but then also on the cloud. And you know, in a cloud conference right now, of course, cloud, right? Right. Is a very important part of our corporate strategy. And our customers are asking us that. Why? Because they don't wanna manage the software, they want the API platform, they don't, don't wanna manage it. >>Well, no, nobody does. And there are a few stragglers, >>A few, a few. And for them there is the on-prem >>Platform. Fine, let 'em go. Right? Exactly. But if you wanna make it a little quick and dirty, hand it off, right? Oh, >>That's exactly right. Yes. >>Let Con do the heavy lifting for you. Hey Marco, thanks for the time. Yeah, thank you so much. We appreciate, and again, congratulations on what appears to be a pretty good show for you guys. Yeah, thank you. Well done. All right, we continue our discussions here at aws. Reinvent 22. You're watching the Cube, the leader in high tech coverage. >>Okay.

foreign welcome to thecube's coverage of AWS re invent 2022. this is a part of our AWS executive Summit AT AWS re invent sponsored by Accenture I'm your host Lisa Martin I've got three guests here with me Christoph schulteis head of devops and infrastructure at Vodafone Germany joins us as well as IMAP baldasare the Accenture AWS business group Europe delivery lead attic Center and Philip schmuckel senior manager at Accenture technology we're going to be talking about what Vodafone Germany is doing in terms of its agile transformation the business and I.T gentlemen it's great to have you on thecube Welcome to the program thank you thanks for having us my pleasure Kristoff let's go ahead and start with you talk to us about what Vodafone Germany is doing in its transformation project with Accenture and with AWS certainly these are but let me first start with explaining what Vodafone does in general so Vodafone is one of the leading telephone and Technology service providers in Germany half of all German citizens are Vodafone customers using Vodafone technology to access the internet make calls and watch TV in the economic sector we provide connectivity for office farms and factories so this is vodafone's largest business and I.T transformation and we're happy to have several Partners on this journey with more than a thousand people working in scaled agile framework with eight Agile Release strings and one of the largest safe implementations in Europe why are we doing this transformation well not only since the recent uncertainties the Telco Market is highly volatile and there are a few challenges that Vodafone was facing in the last years as there are Market changes caused by disruptions from technological advances in competitors or changing customer customer expectations who for example use more of the top services like Netflix or Amazon Prime video what is coming up in the next wave is unknown so Technologies evolve continual disruption from non-tel causes to be expected and being able to innovate fast is the key Focus for everyone in order to be able to react to that we need to cope with that and do so in different aspects to become the leading digital technology company therefore Vodafone Germany is highly simplifying its products as well as processes for example introducing free product upgrades for customers we're driving the change from a business perspective and modernize the it landscape which we call the technology transformation so simply business-led but it driven for that Accenture is our integration partner and AWS provides the services for our platforms got it thank you for the background on the Vodafone the impact that it's making you mentioned the volatility in the Telecom market and also setting the context for what Vodafone Germany is doing with Accenture and AWS email I want to bring you into the conversation now talk to us about the partnership between Accenture and Vodafone in AWS and how is it set up to provide maximum value for customers yeah that's a great question actually well I mean working in Partnership allows obviously to bring in transparency and trust and these are key starting points for a program of this magnitude and a program like this comes out of strong willingness to change the game both internally and on the market so as you can imagine particular attention is required that's top level alignment in general when you implement a program like this you also need to couple the long-term vision of how you want to manage your customers what are the new products that you want to bring to the market with the long-term technology roadmap because the thing that you don't want to happen is that you invest many years and a lot of efforts and then when it comes the end of the journey you figure out that you have to restart a New Journey and then you enter in the NeverEnding Loop so obviously all these things must come together and they come together in what we call the power of three and it consists in AWS Vodafone and Accenture having a strategic Vision alignment and constant updates and most importantly the best of breed in terms of technology and also people so what we do in practice is uh we bring together Market understanding business Vision technical expertise energy collaboration and what is even more important we work as a unique team everybody succeeds here and this is a true win-win partnership more specifically Vodafone leads the Strategic Direction obviously they understand the market they are close to their customers AWS provides all the expertise around the cloud infrastructure insights on the roadmap and this is a key element elasticity both technical but also Financial and the then Accenture comes with its ability to deliver with the strong industry expertise flexibility and when you combine all these ingredients together obviously you understand it's easy to succeed together the power of three it sounds quite compelling it sounds like a very partnership that has a lot of flexibility elasticity as you mentioned and obviously the customer at the end of the day benefits tremendously from that Kristoff I'd like to bring you back into the conversation talk to us about the unified unified platform approach how is walk us through how Vodafone is implementing it with AWS and with Accenture so the applications that form the basis for the transformation program were originally pursuing all kinds of approaches for deployment and use of AWS services in order to support faster adoption and optimize the usage that I mentioned before and we have provided the Vodafone Cloud framework that has been The Trusted platform for several projects within the it in Germany as a side effect the framework facilitates the compliance with Vodafone security requirements and the unified approach also has the benefit that someone who is moving from one team to another will find a structure that looks familiar the best part of the framework though is the operative rights deployment process that helps us reducing the time from implementing for example a new stage from a few weeks to me hours and that together with improvements of the cicd pipeline greatly helped us reducing the time to speed up something and deploy the software on it in order to reach our Target kpis the unified platform provides all kinds of setups like AWS eks and the ecosystem that is commonly used with coping dentists like service mesh monitoring logging and tracing but it can also be used for non-continental erased applications that we have and provide the integration with security monitoring and other tools at the moment we are in contact with other markets of Vodafone to globally share our experience in our code which makes introducing a similar system into other markets straightforward we are also continuously improving our approach and the completely new version of the framework is currently being introduced into the program Germany is doing is really kind of setting the stage as you mentioned Christopher other parts of the business who want to learn from so that's a great thing there that that what you're building is really going to spread throughout the organization and make a positive impact Philip let's bring you into the conversation now let's talk about how you're using AWS specifically to build the new Vodafone Cloud integration platform talk to us about that as part of this overall transformation program sure and let's make it even more specific let's talk API management so looking at the program and from a technology point of view what it really is it is a bold step for Vodafone it's rebuilding huge parts of the infrastructure of their business ID infrastructure on AWS it's Greenfield it's new it's a bold step I would say and then if you put the perspective of API management or integration architecture what I call it it's a unique opportunity at the same time so what it what it gives you is the the opportunity to build the API management layer or an API platform with standardized apis right from the get-go so from the beginning you can build the API platform on top which is in contrast what we see throughout the industry where we see huge problems at our clients at other engagements that try to build these layers as well but they're building them on Legacy so that really makes it unique here for Vodafone and a unique opportunity to we have this API first platform built as part of the transformation program so what we have been built is exactly this platform and as of today there is more than 50 standardized apis throughout the application landscape already available to give you a few examples there is an API where I can change customer data for instance I can change the payment method of a customer straight from an API or I can reboot a customer equipment right from it from an API to fix a network issue other than that of course I can submit an order to order one of vodafone's gigabit internet offerings so on top of the platform there's a developer portal which gives me the option to explore all of the apis yeah in a convenient way in a portal and that's yeah that's developer experience meaning I can log into this portal look through the apis understand what I what I need and just try it out directly from the portal I see the response of an API live in the portal and this is it is really in contrast to what what we've seen before where you would have a long word document a cumbersome spreadsheet a long lasting process to get your hands on and this really gives you the opportunity to just go in try out an API and see how it works so it's really developer experience and a big step forward here then yeah how have we built this platform of course it's running on AWS it's Cloud native it's using eks but what I want to point out here is three principles that that we applied where the first one is of course the cloud native principle meaning we using AKs we are using containers we have infrastructure scales so we aim for every component being Cloud native being meant to be run in the cloud so our infrastructure will sleep at night to save Vodafone cost and it will wake up for the Christmas business where Vodafone intends to do the biggest business and scale of its platform second there is the uh the aim for open API specifications what we aim for is event non-vendor-specific apis so it should not matter whether there's an mdocs backend there's a net tracker back end or an sap Behind These apis it is really meant to decouple the different Business Systems of of a Vodafone by these apis that can be applied by a new custom front-end or by a new business to business application to integrate these apis last but not least there's the automate everything so there's infrastructure as code all around our platform where where I would say the biggest magic of cloud is if we were to lose our production environment lose all apis today it will take us just a few minutes to get everything back and whatever everything I mean redeploy the platform redeploy all apis all services do the configuration again and it will be back in a few minutes that's impressive as downtime is so costly for so many different reasons I think we're gonna know when the vision of this transformation project when it's been achieved how are you going to know that okay so it's kind of flipping the perspective a bit uh maybe uh when I joined Vodafone in in late 2019 I would say the vision for Vodafone was already set and it was really well well put out there it was lived in in the organization it was for Vodafone to become a digital company to become a digital service provider to to get the engineering culture into the company and I would say this Vision has not changed until today maybe now call it a North star and maybe pointing out two big Milestones that have been achieved with this transformation program so we've talked about the safe framework already so with this program we wrote out the one of the biggest safe implementations in the industry which is a big step for Vodafone in its agile Journey as of today there's the safe framework supporting more than 1 000 FTE or 1000 colleagues working and providing value in the transformation program second example or second big milestone was the first go-life of the program so moving stuff to production really proving it works showcasing to the business that it it is actually working there is actually a value provided or constant value provided with a platform and then of course you're asking for next steps right uh talking next steps there is a renewed focus on value and A Renewed focus on value between Accenture and Vodafone means focus on what really provides the most value to Vodafone and I would like to point out two things here the first being migrate more customers scale the platform really prove the the the the the cloud native platform by migrating more customers to it and then second it enables you to decommission the Legacy Stacks decommissioning Legacy Stacks is why we are doing it right so it's migrating to the new migrating to the new platform so last but not least maybe you can hear it we will continue this journey together with with Vodafone to become a digital company or to say that their own words from Telco to TECO I love that from Telco to technology gentlemen thank you so much for joining us on thecube today talking about the power of three Accenture AWS Vodafone how you're really enabling Vodafone to transform into that digital technology company that consumers at the end of the day that demanding consumers want we appreciate your insights and your time thank you so much thank you for having us my pleasure for my guests I'm Lisa Martin you're watching thecube's coverage of the AWS executive Summit AT AWS re invent sponsored by Accenture thanks for watching

>>Hello, and welcome to the cubes presentation of the AWS startup showcase. This is season two, episode four, the ongoing series covering exciting startups from the AWS ecosystem to talk about cyber security. I'm your host, John feer. And today we're excited to join by a Mediatel Walker, CEO of Quin security and sub IER, vice president of product management of sequence security gentlemen, thanks for joining us today on this showcase. >>Thank you, John PRAs. >>So the title of this session is continuous API protection life cycle to discover, detect, and defend security. APIs are part of it. They're hardened, everyone's using them, but they're they're target for malicious behavior. This is the focus of this segment. You guys are in the leading edge of this. What are the biggest challenges for organizations right now in assessing their security risks? Because you're seeing APIs all over the place in the news, just even this week, Twitter had a whistleblower come out from the security group, talking about their security plans, misleading the FTC on the bots and some of the malicious behavior inside the API interface of Twitter. This is really a mainstream Washington post is reporting on it. New York times, all the global outlets are talking about this story. This is the risk. I mean, yeah, this is what you guys do protect against this. >>Yeah, this is absolutely top of mind for a lot of security folks today. So obviously in the media and the type of attack that that is being discussed with this whistleblower coming out is called reputation bombing. This is not new. This has been going on since I would say at least eight to 10 years where the, the bad actors are using bots or automation and ultimately using APIs on these large social media platforms, whether it's Facebook, whether it's Twitter or some other social media platform and messing with the reputation system of those large platforms. And what I mean by that is they will do fake likes, fake commenting, fake retweeting in the case of Twitter. And what that means is that things that are, should not be very popular, all of a sudden become popular. That that way they're able to influence things like elections, shopping habits, personnel. >>We, we work with similar profile companies and we see this all the time. We, we mostly work on some of the secondary platforms like dating and other sort of social media platforms around music sharing and things like video sharing. And we see this all the time. These, these bots are bad. Actors are using bots, but ultimately it's an API problem. It's not just a bot problem. And that's what we've been trying to sort of preach to the world, which is your bot problem is subset of your API security challenges that you deal as an organization. >>You know, IMIA, we talked about this in the past on a previous conversation, but this really is front and center mainstream for the whole world to see around the challenges. All companies face, every CSO, every CIO, every board member organizations out there looking at this security posture that spans not just information technology, but physical and now social engineering. You have all kinds of new payloads of malicious behavior that are being compromised through, through things like APIs. This is not just about CSO, chief information security officer. This is chief security officer issues. What's your reaction >>Very much so I think the, this is a security problem, but it's also a reputation problem. In some cases, it's a data governance problem. We work with several companies which have very restrictive data governance and data regulations or data residency regulations there to conform to those regulations. And they have to look at that. It's not just a CSO problem anymore. In case of the, the news of the day to day, this is a platform problem. This goes all the way to the, that time CTO of Twitter. And now the CEO of Twitter, who was in charge of dealing with these problems. We see as just to give you an example, we, we work, we work with a similar sort of social media platform that allows Oop based login to their platform that is using tokens. You can sort of sign in with Facebook, sign in with Twitter, sign in with Google. These are API keys that are generated and trusted by these social media platforms. When we saw that Facebook leaked about 50 million of these login credentials or API keys, this was about three, four years ago. I wrote a blog about it. We saw a huge spike in those API keys being used to log to other social media platforms. So although one social platform might be taking care of its, you know, API or what problem, if something else gets reached somewhere else, it has a cascading impact on a variety of platforms. >>You know, that's a really interesting dynamic. And if you think about just the token piece that you mentioned, that's kind of under the coverage, that's a technology challenge, but also you get in the business logic. So let's go back and, and unpack that, okay, they discontinue the tokens. Now they're being reused here. In the case of Twitter, I was talking to an executive here in Silicon valley and they said, yeah, it's a cautionary tale, for sure. Although Twitter's a unique situation, but they abstract out the business value and say, Hey, they had an M and a deal on the table. And so if someone wants to unwind that deal, all I gotta say is, Hey, there's a bot problem. And now you have essentially new kinds of risk in the business have nothing to do with some sign the technology, okay. They got a security breach, but here with Twitter, you have an, an, an M and a deal, an acquisition that's being contested because of the, the APIs. So, so if you're in business, you gotta think to yourself, what am I risking with my API? So every organization should be assessing their security risks, tied to their APIs. This is a huge awakening for them. Where should they start? And that's the, that's the core question. Okay. You got my attention risks with the API. What do I do? >>So when I talked to you in my previous interview, the start is basically knowing what to, in most cases, you see these that are hitting the wire much. Every now there is a major in cases you'll find these APIs are targeted, that are not poorly protected. They're absolutely just not protected at all, which means the security team or any sort of team that is responsible for protecting these APIs are just completely unaware of these APIs being there in the first place. And this is where we talk about the shadow it or shadow API problem. Large enterprises have teams that are geo distributed, and this problem is escalated after the pandemic even more because now you have teams that are completely distributed. They do M and a. So they acquire new companies and have no visibility into their API or security practices. And so there are a lot of driving factors why these APIs are just not protected and, and just unknown even more to the security team. So the first step has to be discover your API attack surface, and then prioritize which APIs you wanna target in terms of runtime protection. >>Yeah. I wanna dig into that API kind of attack surface area management, runtime monitoring capability in a second, but so I wanna get you in here too, because we're talking about APIs, we're talking about attacks. What does an API attack look like? >>Yeah, that's a very good question, John, there are really two different forms of attacks of APIs, one type of attack, exploits, APIs that have known vulnerabilities or some form of vulnerabilities. For instance, APIs that may use a weak form of authentication or are really built with no authentication at all, or have some sort of vulnerability that makes them very good targets for an attacker to target. And the second form of attack is a more subtle one. It's called business logic abuse. It's, it's utilizing APIs in completely legitimate manner manners, but exploiting those APIs to exfiltrate information or key sensitive information that was probably not thought through by the developer or the designers or those APIs. And really when we do API protection, we really need to be able to handle both of those scenarios, protect against abuse of APIs, such as broken authentication, or broken object level authorization APIs with that problem, as well as protecting APIs from business logic abuse. And that's really how we, you know, differentiate against other vendors in this >>Market. So just what are the, those key differentiated ways to identify the, in the malicious intents with APIs? Can you, can you just summarize that real quick, the three ways? >>Sure. Yeah, absolutely. There are three key ways that we differentiate against our competition. One is in the, we have built out a, in the ability to actually detect such traffic. We have built out a very sophisticated threat intelligence network built over the entire lifetime of the company where we have very well curated information about malicious infrastructures, malicious operators around the world, including not just it address ranges, but also which infrastructures do they operate on and stuff like that, which actually helps a lot in, in many environments in especially B2C environments, that alone accounts for a lot of efficacy for us in detecting our weed out bad traffic. The second aspect is in analyzing the request that are coming in the API traffic that is coming in and from the request itself, being able to tell if there is credential abuse going on or credential stuffing going on or known patterns that the traffic is exhibiting, that looks like it is clearly trying to attack the attack, the APM. >>And the third one is, is really more sophisticated as they go farther and farther. It gets more sophisticated where sequence actually has a lot of machine learning models built in which actually profile the traffic that is coming in and separate. So the legitimate or learns the legitimate traffic from the anomalous or suspicious traffic. So as the traffic, as the API requests are coming in, it automatically can tell that this traffic does not look like legitimate traffic does not look like the traffic that this API typically gets and automatically uses that to figure out, okay, where is this traffic coming from? And automatically takes action to prevent that attack? >>You know, it's interesting APIs have been part of the goodness of cloud and cloud scale. And it reminds me of the old Andy Grove quote, founder of, in one of the founders of Intel, you know, let chaos, let, let the chaos happen, then reign it in it's APIs. You know, a lot of people have been creating them and you've got a lot of different stakeholders involved in creating them. And so now securing them and now manage them. So a lot of creation now you're starting to secure them and now you gotta manage 'em. This all is now big focus. As you pointed out, what are some of the dynamics that customers who have to deal with on the product side and, and organization, let, let chaos rain, and then rain in the chaos, as, as the saying goes, what, what do companies do? >>Yeah. Typically companies start off with like, like a mayor talked about earlier. Discovery is really the key thing to start with, like figuring out what your API attack surfaces and really getting your arms around that problem. And typically we are finding customers start that off from the security organization, the CSO organization to really go after that problem. And in some cases, in some customers, we even find like dedicated centers of excellence that are created for API security, which go after that problem to be able to get their arms around the whole API attack surface and the API protection problem statement. So that's where usually that problem starts to get addressed. >>I mean, organizations and your customers have to stop the attacks. A lot of different techniques, you know, run time. You mentioned that earlier, the surface area monitoring, what's the choice. What's the, where are, where are, where is everybody? Is everyone in the, in the boiling water, like the frog and boiling water or they do, they know it's happening? Like what did they do? What's their opportunity to get in >>Position? Yeah. So I, I think let's take a step back a little bit, right? What has happened is if you draw the cloud security market, if you will, right. Which is the journey to the cloud, the security of these applications or APIs at a container level, in terms of vulnerabilities and, and other things that market grew with the journey to the cloud, pretty much locked in lockstep. What has happened in the API side is the API space has kind of lacked behind the growth and explosion in the API space. So what that means is APIs are getting published way faster than the security teams are able to sort of control and secure them. APIs are getting published in environments that the security completely unaware of. We talked about in the past about the parameter, the parameter, as we know, it doesn't exist anymore. It used to be the case that you hit a CDN, you terminate your SSL, you stop your layer three and four DDoS. >>And then you go into the application and do the business logic. That parameter is just gone because it's now could be living in multi-cloud environment. It could be living in the on-prem environment, which is PubNet is friendly. And so security teams that are used to protecting apps, using a perimeter defense plus changes, it's gone. You need to figure out where your perimeter is. And therefore we sort of recommend an approach, which is have a uniform view across all your APIs, wherever they could be distributed and have a single point of control across those with a solution like sequence. And there are others also in this space, which is giving you that uniform view, which is first giving you that, you know, outside and looking view of what APIs to protect. And then let's, you sort of take the journey of securing the API life cycle. >>So I would say that every company now hear me out on this indulges me for a second. Every company in the world will be non perimeter based, except for maybe 5% because of maybe unique reason, proprietary lockdown, information, whatever. But for most, most companies, everyone will be in the cloud or some cloud native, non perimeter based security posture. So the question is, how does your platform fit into that trajectory? And specifically, why are you guys in the position in your mind to help customers solve this API problem? Because again, APIs have been the greatest thing about the cloud, right? Yeah. So the goodness is there because of APS. Now you gotta reign it in reign in the chaos. Yeah. What, what about your platform share? What is it, why is it win? Why should customers care about this? >>Absolutely. So if you think about it, you're right, the parameter doesn't exist. People have APIs deployed in multiple environments, multicloud hybrid, you name it sequence is uniquely positioned in a way that we can work with your environment. No matter what that environment is. We're the only player in this space that can protect your APIs purely as a SA solution or purely as an on-prem deployment. And that could be a SaaS platform. It doesn't need to be RackN, but we also support that and we could be a hybrid deployment. We have some deployments which are on your prem and the rest of this solution is in our SA. If you think about it, customers have secured their APIs with sequence with 15 minutes, you know, going live from zero to life and getting that protection instantaneously. We have customers that are processing a billion API calls per day, across variety of different cloud environments in sort of six different brands. And so that scale, that flexibility of where we can plug into your infrastructure or be completely off of your infrastructure is something unique to sequence that we offer that nobody else is offering >>Today. Okay. So I'll be, I'll be a naysayer. Yeah, look, it, we are perfectly coded APIs. We are the best in the business. We're locked down. Our APIs are as tight as a drum. Why do I need you? >>So that goes back to who's answer. Of course, >>Everyone's say that that's, that's great, but that's my argument. >>There are two types of API attacks. One is a tactic problem, which is exploiting a vulnerability in an API, right? So what you're saying is my APIs are secure. It does not have any vulnerability I've taken care of all vulnerabilities. The second type of attack that targets APIs is the business logic. Use this stuff in the news this week, which is the whistleblower problem, which is, if you think APIs that Twitter is publishing for users are perfectly secure. They are taking care of all the vulnerabilities and patching them when they find new ones. But it's the business logic of, you know, REWE liking or commenting that the bots are targeting, which they have no against. Right. And then none of the other social networks too. Yeah. So there are many examples. Uber wrote a program to impersonate users in different geo locations to find lifts, pricing, and driver information and passenger information, completely legitimate use of APIs for illegitimate, illegitimate purpose using bots. So you don't need bots by the way, don't, don't make this about bot versus not. Yeah. You can use APIs sort of for the, the purpose that they're not designed for sort of exploiting their business logic, either using a human interacting, a human farm, interacting with those APIs or a bot form targeting those APIs, I think. But that's the problem when you have, even when you've secured all your problem, all your APIs, you still have to worry about these of challenges. >>I think that's the big one. I think the business logic one, certainly the Twitter highlights that the Uber example is a good one. That is basically almost the, the backlash of having a simplistic API, which people design to. Right. Yeah. You know, as you point out, Twitter is very simple API, hardened, very strong security, but they're using it to maliciously manipulate what's inside. So in a way that perimeter's dead too. Right. So how do you stop that business logic? What's the, what's the solution what's the customer do about that? Because their goal is to create simple, scalable APIs. >>Yeah. I'll, I'll give you a little bit, and then I think Subaru should maybe go into a little bit of the depth of the problem, but what I think that the answer lies in what Subaru spoke earlier, which is our ML. AI is, is good at profiling plus split between the API users, are these legitimate users, humans versus bots. That's the first split we do. The split second split we do is even when these, these are classified users as bots, we will say there are some good bots that are necessary for the business and bad bots. So we are able to split this across three types of users, legitimate humans, good bots and bad bots. And just to give you an example of good bots is there are in the financial work, there are aggregators that are scraping your data and aggregating for end users to consume, right? Your, your, and other type of financial aggregators FinTech companies like MX. These are good bots and you wanna allow them to, you know, use your APIs, whereas you wanna stop the bad bots from using your APIs super, if you wanna add so, >>So good bots versus bad bots, that's the focus. Go ahead. Weigh in, weigh in on your thought on this >>Really breaks down into three key areas that we talk about here, sequence, right? One is you start by discovering all your APIs. How many APIs do I have in my environment that ly immediately highlight and say, Hey, you have, you know, 10,000 APIs. And that usually is an eye opener to many customers where they go, wow. I thought we had a 10th of that number. That usually is an eyeopener for them to, to at least know where they're at. The second thing is to tell them detection information. So discover, detect, and defend detect will tell them, Hey, your APIs are getting traffic from. So and so it addresses so and so infrastructure. So and so countries and so on that usually is another eye opener for them. They then get to see where their API traffic is coming from. Let's say, if you are a, if you're running a pizza delivery service out of California and your traffic is coming from Eastern Europe to go, wait a minute, nobody's trying, I'm not, I'm not, I don't deliver pizzas in Eastern Europe. Why am I getting traffic from that part of the world? So that sort of traffic immediately comes up and it will tell you that it is hitting your unauthenticated API. It is hitting your API. That has, that is vulnerable to a broken object level, that authorization, vulnerable be and so on. >>Yeah, I think, and >>Then comes the different aspect. Yeah. The different aspect is where you can take action and say, I wanna block certain types of traffic, or I wanna rate limit certain types of traffic. If, if you're seeing spikes there or you could maybe insert header so that it passes on to the end application and the application team can use that bit to essentially take a, a conscious response. And so, so the platform is very flexible in allowing them to take an action that suits their needs. >>Yeah. And I think this is the big trend. This is why I like what you guys are doing. One APIs we're built for the goodness of cloud. They're now the plumbing, you know, anytime you see plumbing involved, connection points, you know, that's pretty important. People are building it out and it has made the cloud what it is. Now, you got a security challenge. You gotta add more intelligence, more smarts to it. This is where I think platform versus tools matter. Can you guys just quickly share your thoughts on that? Cuz a lot of your customers and, and future customers have dealt with the sprawls of all these different tools. Right? I got a tool for this. I got a tool for that, but people are gravitating towards platforms, but how many platforms can a customer have? So again, this brings up the point point around how you guys are engaging with customers. Can you share your thoughts on tooling platforms? Your customers are constantly inundated with the same tsunami. Isn't new thing. Why, what, how should they look at this? >>Yeah, I mean, we don't wanna be, we don't wanna add to that alert fatigue problem that affects much of the cybersecurity industry by generating a whole bunch of alerts and so on. So what we do is we actually integrate very well with S IEM systems or so systems and allow customers to integrate the information that we are detecting or mitigating and feed them onto enterprise systems like a Splunk or a Datadog where they may have sophisticated processes built in to monitor, you know, spikes in anomalous traffic or actions that are taken by sequence. And that can be their dashboard where a whole bunch of alerting and reporting actually happens. So we play in the security ecosystem very well by integrating with other products and integrate very tightly with them, right outta the box. >>Okay. Mia, this is a wrap up now for the showcase. Really appreciate you guys sharing your awesome technology and very relevant product for your customers and where we are right now in this we call Supercloud or now multi-cloud or hybrid world of cloud. Share a, a little bit about the company, how people can get involved in your solution, how they can consume it and things they should know about, about sequence security. >>Yeah, we've been on this journey, an exciting journey it's been for, for about eight years. We have very large fortune 100 global 500 customers that use our platform on a daily basis. We have some amazing logos, both in Europe and, and, and in us customers are, this is basically not the shelf product customers not only use it, but depend on sequence. Several retailers. We are sitting in front of them handling, you know, black Friday, cyber, Monday, Christmas shopping, or any sort of holiday seasonality shopping. And we have handled that the journey starts by, by just simply looking at your API attack surface, just to a discover call with sequence, figure out where your APIs are posted work with you to prioritize how to protect them in a sort of a particular order and take the whole life cycle with sequence. This is, this is an exciting phase exciting sort of stage in the company's life. We just raised a very sort of large CDC round of funding in December from Menlo ventures. And we are excited to see, you know, what's next in, in, in the next, you know, 12 to 18 months. It certainly is the, you know, one of the top two or three items on the CSOs, you know, budget list for next year. So we are extremely busy, but we are looking for, for what the next 12 to 18 months are, are in store for us. >>Well, congratulations to all the success. So will you run the roadmap? You know, APIs are the plumbing. If you will, you know, they connection points, you know, you want to kind of keep 'em simple, as they say, keep the pipes dumb and make the intelligence around it. You seem to see more and more intelligence coming around, not just securing it, but does, where does this go in your mind? Where, where do we go beyond once we secure everything and manage it properly, APRs, aren't going away, they're only gonna get better and smarter. Where's the intelligence coming share a little bit. >>Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, there's not a dull moment in the space. As digital transformation happens to most enterprise systems, many applications are getting transformed. We are seeing an absolute explosion in the volume of APIs and the types of APIs as well. So the applications that were predominantly limited to data centers sort of deployments are now splintered across multiple different cloud environments are completely microservices based APIs, deep inside a Kubernetes cluster, for instance, and so on. So very exciting stuff in terms of proliferation of volume of APIs, as well as types of APIs, there's nature of APIs. And we are building very sophisticated machine learning models that can analyze traffic patterns of such APIs and automatically tell legitimate behavior from anomalous or suspicious behavior and so on. So very exciting sort of breadth of capabilities that we are looking at. >>Okay. I mean, yeah. I'll give you the final words since you're the CEO for the CSOs out there, the chief information security officers and the chief security officers, what do you want to tell them? If you could give them a quick shout out? What would you say to them? >>My shout out is just do an assessment with sequence. I think this is a repeating thing here, but really get to know your APIs first, before you decide what and where to protect them. That's the one simple thing I can mention for thes >>Am. Thank you so much for, for joining me today. Really appreciate it. >>Thank you. >>Thank you. Okay. That is the end of this segment of the eight of his startup showcase. Season two, episode four, I'm John for your host and we're here with sequin security. Thanks for watching.

>>Hey, welcome back everyone. Through the cubes coverage of VMware Explorer, 22, I'm John Fett, Dave ante, formerly world, our 12th year extracting the signal from the noise. A lot of great guests. It's very vibrant right here. The floor's great. The expo halls booming, the keynotes went great. We just had a keynote announce. So our next first guest here on day one is car Capor C co-founder and COO min IO. Welcome to the cube. Thanks for joining us. >>Thank you for having >>Me. You're also angel investor of variety of companies of Q alumnis and been in the valley for a long time. Thanks for coming on sharing. What's going on. So, first of all, obviously VMware still on the wave. They've always been relevant and they've always been part of it. Yes. But as that's changing a lot's going on security data's big conversation. Yeah. And now with their multi-cloud we call super cloud. But their multi-cloud it's it's about hyperscaler participation. Yes. Yes. Cloud universal. Yes. It's clear that VMware has to be successful in every cloud. Okay. And that's really important. And storage is one of it. You guys do that? So talk about how you guys relate with min IO, the vision, how that connects with what's happening here. >>Yeah. So like you already said, right? Most of the enterprises are become data enterprises in itself and storage is a foundation layer of how, and you do need a system that is simple, scalable, and high perform it at scale. Right? So that's where min IO fits into the picture. And we are software defined, open source. So, you know, like VMware has traditionally been focused on enterprise it, but that world is fast changing. They are making a move in terms, developer first approach and min IO, because it's open source. It's simple enough to start, get, start deploying object storage and cloud native applications on top. So that's where we come in. We have around 1.3 million DACA downloads a day. So we own the developer market overall. And that is where I feel the partnership with VMware as they are coming into multi-cloud on their own min IO is a foundational layer. >>So just to elaborate on it, whenever you talk about multi-cloud, there are two pieces to it. One is the compute side and one is on the storage side. So compute Kubernetes takes care of the compute sites. Once you containerize an application, you can deploy it any cloud, but the data has gravity and all the clouds that you see AWS, your Google cloud, they're inherently incompatible with each other. So you need a consistent storage layer with industry standard APIs that you can just deploy it around with your application without a single line of code change. So that's what we >>Do. Oh, so you got a great value proposition, love the story. So just kind of connect on something. So we heard the keynote today. We gotta win the developers. They didn't say that, but they said, they said that they have the ops lockdown, but DevOps is now the new developer. Yes. We've been covering a lot of the poop coupon as you know, and shifting left everyone's in the C I C D pipeline. So developers are driving all the action and it has to be self-service. Absolutely. It has to be high velocity. Can't be slow. Yes. Gotta be fast. So that sounds like you're winning that piece. >>Yes. Yes. And I think more than that, what is most important is it needs to be simple. It needs to get your job done in a very simple and efficient way. And I think that is very important to the developers overall. They don't like complex appliances or complex piece of software. They just want to get their job done and move on the next thing in order to build their application and deploy it successfully. So whatever you do, it needs to be very simple. And of course, you know, it needs to be feature rich and high performant and whatnot that comes with the, with the flow in itself. But I think simplicity is what wins, the developers, hearts and minds overall. >>So object storage always been simple, get put right. Pretty simple, you know, paradigm. Yes. But it was sort of the backwater before, you know, Amazon, you know, launched. Yes. You know, it's cloud. How have you seen object evolve? You mentioned performance. So I presume yes. Yes. You're not just for cheap and deep you're for cheap bin performance. So you could describe that a little bit if you would, >>For, for sure. Like you mentioned, right. When AWS was launched, S3 was the foundation layer. They launched S3 first and then came everything else around it. So object storage is the foundation of any cloud that you go with. And over a period of time, when we started the company back in 20 end of 2014, beginning 2015, it was all about cheap and deep storage. You know, you just get, put it into one basket, but over years, if you see, because the scale of data has increased quite a bit, new applications have emerged as well. That require high performance. That is where we partnered very closely with Intel early on. And I have to give it to them. Intel was the one who convinced us that you need to do high performance. You need to optimize your software with all the AVX five, 12 instruction set and so on. >>So we partnered very closely with them and we were the first one to come up with, you know, you need high performance, object storage and that in collaboration with Intel. So that's something that we take a lot of pride in, in terms of being the leader in that direction of bringing high performance object storage to the market, especially for big data workloads, AI ML, workloads, they're all object first, like even, you know, new age applications like snowflake and data bricks, they are not built on sand or file system. Right. They're all built on object storage rates. So that's where the, you need >>Performance. And I think the, I think the data bricks, snowflake examples. Good. And then you mentioned in 2014, when you started yes. At that time, big data was Hudu and you know, data, legs, data swamp. Yes. Yes. But the ones that were successful, the ones who optimize had the right bets, like you guys. Yeah. Now we're in an era. Okay. I gotta deploy this. So you got great downloads and update from developers. Now we see ops struggling to keep up yes. With the velocity of the development cycle. Yes. And with DevOps driving the cloud native yeah. Security data ops becomes important. Okay. Exactly. Security and data. A lot with storage going on there. Yes. How do you guys see that emerging? Cuz that becomes a lot of the conversations now in the architecture of the ops teams. I want to be supportive in enablement of dev. Yes. Yes. Do you guys target that world too? Or >>Yeah, we, we do target that. So the good thing about object storage is that if you look at the architecture in itself, it's very granular in terms of the controls that it can give to the end user. Right? So you can really customize in terms of, you know, what objects need to be accessible to whom what kind of policies you need to implement on the bucket level, what kind of access controls and provisions that you need to do. And especially like with ransomware attacks and what not, you can enable immutability and so on, so forth. So that's an important part of it. Especially I think the ransomware threats have increased quite a bit, especially with, you know, the macro, you know, situation with war and stuff. So we see that come up quite a bit. And that's where I think, you know, the data IU immutability, the data governance and compliance becomes extremely, extremely important for organizations. So we, we are partnering very closely with a lot of big organizations just for this use case itself. >>So how's it work if I want to build some kind of multi-cloud whatever X, right. Okay. I, I can use S three APIs or Azure blah. Okay. And I, and are all different. Yes. But if I want to use min IO, what's the experience like describe how I go about doing >>So if you've had any experience working with AWS, you don't need to even change a single line of code with us. You can just bring your applications directly onto min IO and it just behaves and act same way transparently what you would've experienced in AWS. Now you can just lift and shift that application and deploy it wherever you need it to be. Whether it is Azure, blah, whether it is Google cloud or even on edge. Like what we are seeing is that data is getting generated outside of public cloud. And most of the data that, you know, the emerging trend is that we see that data gets generated on edge quite a bit, whether it is autonomous cars, whether it is IOT, manufacturing units and so on. And you cannot push all that data back in the central cloud, it's extremely expensive for bandwidth and latency reasons. >>So you need to have an environment that looks and feels exactly what you have experienced at the central cloud on the edge itself. So a lot of our use cases are also getting deployed with Mani on the edge itself, whether it is on top of VMware because of the footprint of that VMware has within all these organizations itself. So we see that emerging quite a bit as well. And then you can tier the data off to any cloud, whether it is mid IO cloud, whether it is AWS, Azure, Google cloud, and so on. So you can have like a true multi-cloud environment. >>So you would follow VMware to the edge and be the object store there, or not necessarily if it's not VMware Kubernetes or whatever. >>Exactly. Exactly. Depending on the skill set that the organization has within, within their setup, if their DevOps savvy Kubernetes is becomes a very natural choice. If they are traditional enterprise, it, VMware is an ideal choice. So yeah. >>So you're seeing a lot of edge action you're saying, and we, >>We, we have seen starting it increasing yes. And >>Are customers. So they're persisting data at the edge. Yes. Yes they >>Are. Okay. >>It's not just the femoral and >>No, they are not because what the cost of putting all the data through bandwidth is extremely expansive to push all the data in central cloud and then process it and then store it. So we see that the data gets persisted on edge cloud as well in terms of processing and only the data that you need for, for the processing through whatever application systems that you, whether it is snowflake or data, bricks and whatnot, you know, you choose what applications from compute side, you want to bring on top of storage. And that can just seamlessly and transparently work. Yeah. >>Maria, you were saying that multi-cloud yeah. Games around Kubernetes. You, yes. That Kubernetes is all about multi-cloud that's the game. >>Yes. >>Yes. Can you explain what you mean by that? Why is multi-cloud a Kubernetes game? >>So multi-cloud has two foundations to it. One is the compute side. Another one is the storage side. Compute Kubernetes makes it extremely simple to deploy any application that is containerized. Once you containerize an application, it's no longer tied to the underlying infrastructure. You can actually deploy it no matter where you go. So Kubernetes makes that task extremely easy. And from storage standpoint, you know, the state of applications need to be held somewhere. You know, it's it, people say it's cloud, but it's computer somewhere. Right? So >>Exactly it's the >>Container. It needs, it needs to be stored somewhere. So that's where, you know, storage systems like man IO come into play where you can just take the storage and deploy it wherever you go. So it gets tightly bound with application itself, just like Kubernetes is for compute. Mano is for storage. >>I saw Scott Johnson, the CEO of Docker in Palo Alto last week did yeah. The spring to his step. So to speak Dockers doing pretty well as a result, they got, you know, starting to see certifications. Yes. So people are really rallying around containers in a more open way. Yes. But that's open source, but it's the Kubernetes, that's the action. Absolutely. That the container's really there now Docker's got a great business. Yes. Right now going yes. With how they're handling. I thought they did a great job. Yeah. But the Docker's now lingua Franco, right? Yes. That's the standard. It >>Is. It is. And I think where Kubernetes really makes it easy is in terms of when the scale is involved. Right. If there are, if the scale is small, it's okay. You can, you can work around it. But Kubernetes makes it extremely simple. If you have the right Kubernetes skill, I just need to put a disclaimer around there because not lot of people are Kubernetes expert, at least not yet. So if you have the expertise, Kubernetes makes the task extremely simple, predictable and automate and automated scale. I think that is what is >>The, so take me through a use case, cuz I've talked to a lot of enterprises, multiple versions, we're lifting and shifting to the cloud, that's kind of the, you know, get started, get your feet wet. Yes. Then there's like, okay, now we're refactoring really doing some native development and they're like, we don't have a staff on Kubernetes. We do a managed service. Yeah. So how does, how do you see that evolution piece taking place? Cause that's a critical adoption component as they start figuring out their Kubernetes relationship yes. To compute yes. How they roll it out. Yes. How do you see that playing out as a big part of this growth for a customer? >>Yeah. So we see a mix, you know, we see organizations that are born within cloud. Like they have just been in mono cloud like AWS. Now they are thinking about two things, right. With the economy being, you know, and the state that it is, they're getting hurt on the margin. Some of the SaaS companies that were born in cloud. So they are now actively thinking in terms of what mode they can do to bring the cost down. So they are partnering with min IO either to, you know, be in a colocation at Equinix, like data centers or go to other clouds to optimize for the compute modes and so on. So that's one thing that we see increasingly amongst enterprise. Second thing that we see is that because you know of that whole multi-cloud and cloud does go down, it's not like it, you know, and it's been evident over the last year or so that, you know, we've seen instances where Amazon was down or Google cloud was down. So they want to make sure that the data is available across the clouds in a consistent way. So with man IO, with the active, active application and so on, you can make the data available across the cloud. So your applications, even if one cloud is down for Dr. Purposes and so on, you can, you know, transparently, move the applications to another cloud and make sure that your business is not affected. So from business continuity reasons as well, the customers are partnering with us. So like I said, it's a mix. >>So the Tansu, you know, 1.3, the application development platform that we heard in the keynotes this morning, critical, you have to have that for cross cloud services. If you don't have a consistent experience, absolutely forget it. I mean it's table stake. Absolutely. But there's a lot of chatter on Twitter. A lot of skepticism that VMware can appeal to developers, some folk John as well chimed in saying, well, you know, it's, don't forget about the op side of the equation as well. They need security and consistency. Yes. What are you seeing in the marketplace in terms of VMware, specifically their customers and, and what do you, what do you, how do you rate their chances in terms of them being able to track the developer crowd, your, your peeps? >>Yeah. So VMware has a very strong hold on enterprise. It, you know, you have to give it to them. I don't come across any organization that does not have VMware, you know, for, with 500,000 customers. Right. Right. So they have done something really right for themselves. And if you have such a strong hold on the customers, it's not that hard to make the transition over to the developer mindset as well. And that is where with VMware partnership with partners like us, they can make, make that jump happen. So we partnered with them very closely for the data persistence layer and they wanted to bring Kubernetes the VMware tan natively to the VSAN interface itself. So we partnered with them, you know, we were their design partner and in, I think, 2020 or something, and we were their launch partner for that platform service. So now through the vCenter itself, you can provision object storage as a service for the developers. So I think they are working in terms of bridging the gap and they have the right mindset. It's all about execution like this. Right. >>They gotta get it >>Justed >>And it's the execution and timing. Exactly. And if they overshoot and the, it shifts over here, you know, this comes up a lot in our conversations. I want to get your reaction to this because I think that's a really great point. You guys are a nice foundational element. Yes. For VMware that plugs into them. That makes everything kind of float for them. Yes. Now we would, we were comparing OpenStack back in the day, how that had so much promise. Yes it did. If you remember, and storage was a big part of that conversation. It, it did. But the one thing that a lot of people didn't factor in on those industry discussions was Amazon was just ramping. Yes. So assuming that the hyper scales aren't stopping, innovating. Yeah. How does the multi-cloud fit with the constant struggles? Cuz abs is not rah multi-cloud cause they're there for the cloud, but customers are using Azure for yeah. Say office productivity teams or whatever, and then they have apps over here and then I'll see on private, private. Right. So hybrids there we get hybrid. Yeah. The clouds aren't changing. Yes. How does that change the dynamics in the market? Because it's a moving train. Some say, >>You know, it is, I would not characterize it like that because you know, AWS strength is that it is AWS, but also that it is not outside of AWS. Right. So it comes with the strengths and weaknesses and same goes for Azure. And same goes for Google cloud where VMware strength lies is the enterprise customers that it has. And I think if they can bridge the gap between the developers, enterprise customers and also the cloud, I think they have a really fair shot at, you know, making sure that the organizations and enterprise have the right experiences in terms of, you know, everyone needs to innovate. There is just no nothing that you can just sit back and relax. Everyone needs to innovate. And I think the good part about VMware is the partnership ecosystem that they have developed over the years and also making sure that their partners are successful along with them. And I think that is, that is going to be a key determining factor in terms of how well and how fast they can execute because nobody can do it alone in, in the enterprise world. So I think that that would be the >>Key, well, gua you're a great guest. Thanks for coming on and sharing you for having perspective on the cube. And obviously you've been on a, this from day 1, 20 15. Yes. I mean that's early and you guys made some great moves. Thank you. In a great position with VMware. Thank you. I like how you're the connective tissue and bridge to developers without a lot of disruption. Right? Real enablement. I think the question is can the VMware customers get there? So congratulations. No, thank you. And we got a couple minutes left. Take a minute to explain what's going on with the company that you co-founded, the team what's going on. Any updates funding very well, well funded. Yeah. How many people do you have? What's new. Are you gonna hire where take a minute to give the plug, give the commercial real quick >>For sure. So we started in 24 15, so it has been like seven, eight years now that we are at it. And I think we've been just very focused with the S3 compatible object storage, being AWS S3 for rest of the world. Like we get characterized at and over the years we've been like now we, we are used 60% in fortune 500 companies in some shape or format. So in terms of the scale and growth, we couldn't be more happier. We are about to touch a billion dollar billion Docker downloads in September. So that's something that we, we are very excited about. And in terms of the funding, we closed the, our series B sometime I think end of December last year and it's a billion dollar valuation and we have great partners in Intel capital and Dell ventures and soft bank. So we couldn't be in a more happier >>Spot. You're a unicorn soon to be decor. Right. >>What's next? Yes. I think, I think what is exciting for us is that the market, we could not be more happier with how the market is coming together with our vision, what we saw in 2015 and how everything is coming together nicely with, from the, the organization, realizing that multi-cloud is the core foundation and strategy of whatever they do next and lot has been accelerated due to COVID as well. Yeah. So in those terms, I think from market and product alignment, we just couldn't be more happier. >>Yeah. We think multi-cloud hybrids here. Steady state multi-cloud is gonna be a reality. Yeah. It becomes super cloud with the new dynamics. And again, David and I were talking last night, storage, networking, compute never goes away, never goes the operating. System's still gonna be out there. Just gonna be looked different and that >>Differently. Yes. I mean, yeah. And like, you know, in 10 years from now, Kubernetes might or might not be there as the foundation for, you know, compute, but storage is something that is always going to be there. People still need to persist the data. People still need a performance data store. People still need something that can scale to hundreds and hundreds of petabytes. So we are here. You bet against data >>As indie gross head once, you know, let chaos rain, rain in the chaos. There you go. Chaos cloud is gonna be simplified. Yeah. That's what innovation looks like. That's, >>That's what it is. >>Thanks for coming on the queue. Appreciate thank you for having me more coverage here. I'm John furrier with Dave Alane. Thanks for watching. More coverage. Three days just getting started. We'll be right back.

from the cube studios in palo alto in boston bringing you data driven insights from the cube and etr this is breaking analysis with dave vellante at our inaugural super cloud 22 event we further refined the concept of a super cloud iterating on the definition the salient attributes and some examples of what is and what is not a super cloud welcome to this week's wikibon cube insights powered by etr you know snowflake has always been what we feel is one of the strongest examples of a super cloud and in this breaking analysis from our studios in palo alto we unpack our interview with benoit de javille co-founder and president of products at snowflake and we test our super cloud definition on the company's data cloud platform and we're really looking forward to your feedback first let's examine how we defl find super cloudant very importantly one of the goals of super cloud 22 was to get the community's input on the definition and iterate on previous work super cloud is an emerging computing architecture that comprises a set of services which are abstracted from the underlying primitives of hyperscale clouds we're talking about services such as compute storage networking security and other native tooling like machine learning and developer tools to create a global system that spans more than one cloud super cloud as shown on this slide has five essential properties x number of deployment models and y number of service models we're looking for community input on x and y and on the first point as well so please weigh in and contribute now we've identified these five essential elements of a super cloud let's talk about these first the super cloud has to run its services on more than one cloud leveraging the cloud native tools offered by each of the cloud providers the builder of the super cloud platform is responsible for optimizing the underlying primitives of each cloud and optimizing for the specific needs be it cost or performance or latency or governance data sharing security etc but those primitives must be abstracted such that a common experience is delivered across the clouds for both users and developers the super cloud has a metadata intelligence layer that can maximize efficiency for the specific purpose of the super cloud i.e the purpose that the super cloud is intended for and it does so in a federated model and it includes what we call a super pass this is a prerequisite that is a purpose-built component and enables ecosystem partners to customize and monetize incremental services while at the same time ensuring that the common experiences exist across clouds now in terms of deployment models we'd really like to get more feedback on this piece but here's where we are so far based on the feedback we got at super cloud 22. we see three deployment models the first is one where a control plane may run on one cloud but supports data plane interactions with more than one other cloud the second model instantiates the super cloud services on each individual cloud and within regions and can support interactions across more than one cloud with a unified interface connecting those instantiations those instances to create a common experience and the third model superimposes its services as a layer or in the case of snowflake they call it a mesh on top of the cloud on top of the cloud providers region or regions with a single global instantiation a single global instantiation of those services which spans multiple cloud providers this is our understanding from a comfort the conversation with benoit dejaville as to how snowflake approaches its solutions and for now we're going to park the service models we need to more time to flesh that out and we'll propose something shortly for you to comment on now we peppered benoit dejaville at super cloud 22 to test how the snowflake data cloud aligns to our concepts and our definition let me also say that snowflake doesn't use the term data cloud they really want to respect and they want to denigrate the importance of their hyperscale partners nor do we but we do think the hyperscalers today anyway are building or not building what we call super clouds but they are but but people who bar are building super clouds are building on top of hyperscale clouds that is a prerequisite so here are the questions that we tested with snowflake first question how does snowflake architect its data cloud and what is its deployment model listen to deja ville talk about how snowflake has architected a single system play the clip there are several ways to do this you know uh super cloud as as you name them the way we we we picked is is to create you know one single system and that's very important right the the the um [Music] there are several ways right you can instantiate you know your solution uh in every region of a cloud and and you know potentially that region could be a ws that region could be gcp so you are indeed a multi-cloud solution but snowflake we did it differently we are really creating cloud regions which are superposed on top of the cloud provider you know region infrastructure region so we are building our regions but but where where it's very different is that each region of snowflake is not one in instantiation of our service our service is global by nature we can move data from one region to the other when you land in snowflake you land into one region but but you can grow from there and you can you know exist in multiple clouds at the same time and that's very important right it's not one single i mean different instantiation of a system is one single instantiation which covers many cloud regions and many cloud providers snowflake chose the most advanced level of our three deployment models dodgeville talked about too presumably so it could maintain maximum control and ensure that common experience like the iphone model next we probed about the technical enablers of the data cloud listen to deja ville talk about snow grid he uses the term mesh and then this can get confusing with the jamaicani's data mesh concept but listen to benoit's explanation well as i said you know first we start by building you know snowflake regions we have today furry region that spawn you know the world so it's a worldwide worldwide system with many regions but all these regions are connected together they are you know meshed together with our technology we name it snow grid and that makes it hard because you know regions you know azure region can talk to a ws region or gcp regions and and as a as a user of our cloud you you don't see really these regional differences that you know regions are in different you know potentially clown when you use snowflake you can exist your your presence as an organization can be in several regions several clouds if you want geographic and and and both geographic and cloud provider so i can share data irrespective of the the cloud and i'm in the snowflake data cloud is that correct i can do that today exactly and and that's very critical right what we wanted is to remove data silos and and when you instantiate a system in one single region and that system is locked in that region you cannot communicate with other parts of the world you are locking the data in one region right and we didn't want to do that we wanted you know data to be distributed the way customer wants it to be distributed across the world and potentially sharing data at world scale now maybe there are many ways to skin the other cat meaning perhaps if a platform does instantiate in multiple places there are ways to share data but this is how snowflake chose to approach the problem next question how do you deal with latency in this big global system this is really important to us because while snowflake has some really smart people working as engineers and and the like we don't think they've solved for the speed of light problem the best people working on it as we often joke listen to benoit deja ville's comments on this topic so yes and no the the way we do it it's very expensive to do that because generally if you want to join you know data which is in which are in different regions and different cloud it's going to be very expensive because you need to move you know data every time you join it so the way we do it is that you replicate the subset of data that you want to access from one region from other regions so you can create this data mesh but data is replicated to make it very cheap and very performant too and is the snow grid does that have the metadata intelligence yes to actually can you describe that a little bit yeah snow grid is both uh a way to to exchange you know metadata about so each region of snowflake knows about all the other regions of snowflake every time we create a new region diary you know the metadata is distributed over our data cloud not only you know region knows all the regions but knows you know every organization that exists in our clouds where this organization is where data can be replicated by this organization and then of course it's it's also used as a way to uh uh exchange data right so you can exchange you know beta by scale of data size and we just had i was just receiving an email from one of our customers who moved more than four petabytes of data cross-region cross you know cloud providers in you know few days and you know it's a lot of data so it takes you know some time to move but they were able to do that online completely online and and switch over you know to the diff to the other region which is failover is very important also so yes and no probably means typically no he says yes and no probably means no so it sounds like snowflake is selectively pulling small amounts of data and replicating it where necessary but you also heard him talk about the metadata layer which is one of the essential aspects of super cloud okay next we dug into security it's one of the most important issues and we think one of the hardest parts related to deploying super cloud so we've talked about how the cloud has become the first line of defense for the cso but now with multi-cloud you have multiple first lines of defense and that means multiple shared responsibility models and multiple tool sets from different cloud providers and an expanded threat surface so listen to benoit's explanation here please play the clip this is a great question uh security has always been the most important aspect of snowflake since day one right this is the question that every customer of ours has you know how you can you guarantee the security of my data and so we secure data really tightly in region we have several layers of security it starts by by encrypting it every data at rest and that's very important a lot of customers are not doing that right you hear these attacks for example on on cloud you know where someone left you know their buckets uh uh open and then you know you can access the data because it's a non-encrypted uh so we are encrypting everything at rest we are encrypting everything in transit so a region is very secure now you know you never from one region you never access data from another region in snowflake that's why also we replicate data now the replication of that data across region or the metadata for that matter is is really highly secure so snow grits ensure that everything is encrypted everything is you know we have multiple you know encryption keys and it's you know stored in hardware you know secure modules so we we we built you know snow grids such that it's secure and it allows very secure movement of data so when we heard this explanation we immediately went to the lowest common denominator question meaning when you think about how aws for instance deals with data in motion or data and rest it might be different from how another cloud provider deals with it so how does aws uh uh uh differences for example in the aws maturity model for various you know cloud capabilities you know let's say they've got a faster nitro or graviton does it do do you have to how does snowflake deal with that do they have to slow everything else down like imagine a caravan cruising you know across the desert so you know every truck can keep up let's listen it's a great question i mean of course our software is abstracting you know all the cloud providers you know infrastructure so that when you run in one region let's say aws or azure it doesn't make any difference as far as the applications are concerned and and this abstraction of course is a lot of work i mean really really a lot of work because it needs to be secure it needs to be performance and you know every cloud and it has you know to expose apis which are uniform and and you know cloud providers even though they have potentially the same concept let's say blob storage apis are completely different the way you know these systems are secure it's completely different the errors that you can get and and the retry you know mechanism is very different from one cloud to the other performance is also different we discovered that when we were starting to port our software and and and you know we had to completely rethink how to leverage blob storage in that cloud versus that cloud because just of performance too so we had you know for example to you know stripe data so all this work is work that's you know you don't need as an application because our vision really is that applications which are running in our data cloud can you know be abstracted of all this difference and and we provide all the services all the workload that this application need whether it's transactional access to data analytical access to data you know managing you know logs managing you know metrics all of these is abstracted too such that they are not you know tied to one you know particular service of one cloud and and distributing this application across you know many regions many cloud is very seamless so from that answer we know that snowflake takes care of everything but we really don't understand the performance implications in you know in that specific case but we feel pretty certain that the promises that snowflake makes around governance and security within their data sharing construct construct will be kept now another criterion that we've proposed for super cloud is a super pass layer to create a common developer experience and an enabler for ecosystem partners to monetize please play the clip let's listen we build it you know a custom build because because as you said you know what exists in one cloud might not exist in another cloud provider right so so we have to build you know on this all these this components that modern application mode and that application need and and and and that you know goes to machine learning as i say transactional uh analytical system and the entire thing so such that they can run in isolation basically and the objective is the developer experience will be identical across those clouds yes right the developers doesn't need to worry about cloud provider and actually our system we have we didn't talk about it but the marketplace that we have which allows actually to deliver we're getting there yeah okay now we're not going to go deep into ecosystem today we've talked about snowflakes strengths in this regard but snowflake they pretty much ticked all the boxes on our super cloud attributes and definition we asked benoit dejaville to confirm that this is all shipping and available today and he also gave us a glimpse of the future play the clip and we are still developing it you know the transactional you know unistore as we call it was announced in last summit so so they are still you know working properly but but but that's the vision right and and and that's important because we talk about the infrastructure right you mentioned a lot about storage and compute but it's not only that right when you think about application they need to use the transactional database they need to use an analytical system they need to use you know machine learning so you need to provide also all these services which are consistent across all the cloud providers so you can hear deja ville talking about expanding beyond taking advantage of the core infrastructure storage and networking et cetera and bringing intelligence to the data through machine learning and ai so of course there's more to come and there better be at this company's valuation despite the recent sharp pullback in a tightening fed environment okay so i know it's cliche but everyone's comparing snowflakes and data bricks databricks has been pretty vocal about its open source posture compared to snowflakes and it just so happens that we had aligotsy on at super cloud 22 as well he wasn't in studio he had to do remote because i guess he's presenting at an investor conference this week so we had to bring him in remotely now i didn't get to do this interview john furrier did but i listened to it and captured this clip about how data bricks sees super cloud and the importance of open source take a listen to goatzee yeah i mean let me start by saying we just we're big fans of open source we think that open source is a force in software that's going to continue for you know decades hundreds of years and it's going to slowly replace all proprietary code in its way we saw that you know it could do that with the most advanced technology windows you know proprietary operating system very complicated got replaced with linux so open source can pretty much do anything and what we're seeing with the data lake house is that slowly the open source community is building a replacement for the proprietary data warehouse you know data lake machine learning real-time stack in open source and we're excited to be part of it for us delta lake is a very important project that really helps you standardize how you lay out your data in the cloud and with it comes a really important protocol called delta sharing that enables you in an open way actually for the first time ever share large data sets between organizations but it uses an open protocol so the great thing about that is you don't need to be a database customer you don't even like databricks you just need to use this open source project and you can now securely share data sets between organizations across clouds and it actually does so really efficiently just one copy of the data so you don't have to copy it if you're within the same cloud so the implication of ellie gotzi's comments is that databricks with delta sharing as john implied is playing a long game now i don't know if enough about the databricks architecture to comment in detail i got to do more research there so i reached out to my two analyst friends tony bear and sanji mohan to see what they thought because they cover these companies pretty closely here's what tony bear said quote i've viewed the divergent lake house strategies of data bricks and snowflake in the context of their roots prior to delta lake databrick's prime focus was the compute not the storage layer and more specifically they were a compute engine not a database snowflake approached from the opposite end of the pool as they originally fit the mold of the classic database company rather than a specific compute engine per se the lake house pushes both companies outside of their original comfort zones data bricks to storage snowflake to compute engine so it makes perfect sense for databricks to embrace the open source narrative at the storage layer and for snowflake to continue its walled garden approach but in the long run their strategies are already overlapping databricks is not a 100 open source company its practitioner experience has always been proprietary and now so is its sql query engine likewise snowflake has had to open up with the support of iceberg for open data lake format the question really becomes how serious snowflake will be in making iceberg a first-class citizen in its environment that is not necessarily officially branding a lake house but effectively is and likewise can databricks deliver the service levels associated with walled gardens through a more brute force approach that relies heavily on the query engine at the end of the day those are the key requirements that will matter to data bricks and snowflake customers end quote that was some deep thought by by tony thank you for that sanjay mohan added the following quote open source is a slippery slope people buy mobile phones based on open source android but it's not fully open similarly databricks delta lake was not originally fully open source and even today its photon execution engine is not we are always going to live in a hybrid world snowflake and databricks will support whatever model works best for them and their customers the big question is do customers care as deeply about which vendor has a higher degree of openness as we technology people do i believe customers evaluation criteria is far more nuanced than just to decipher each vendor's open source claims end quote okay so i had to ask dodgeville about their so-called wall garden approach and what their strategy is with apache iceberg here's what he said iceberg is is very important so just to to give some context iceberg is an open you know table format right which was you know first you know developed by netflix and netflix you know put it open source in the apache community so we embrace that's that open source standard because because it's widely used by by many um many you know companies and also many companies have you know really invested a lot of effort in building you know big data hadoop solution or data like solution and they want to use snowflake and they couldn't really use snowflake because all their data were in open you know formats so we are embracing icebergs to help these companies move through the cloud but why we have been relentless with direct access to data direct access to data is a little bit of a problem for us and and the reason is when you direct access to data now you have direct access to storage now you have to understand for example the specificity of one cloud versus the other so as soon as you start to have direct access to data you lose your you know your cloud diagnostic layer you don't access data with api when you have direct access to data it's very hard to secure data because you need to grant access direct access to tools which are not you know protected and you see a lot of you know hacking of of data you know because of that so so that was not you know direct access to data is not serving well our customers and that's why we have been relented to do that because it's it's cr it's it's not cloud diagnostic it's it's you you have to code that you have to you you you need a lot of intelligence while apis access so we want open apis that's that's i guess the way we embrace you know openness is is by open api versus you know you access directly data here's my take snowflake is hedging its bets because enough people care about open source that they have to have some open data format options and it's good optics and you heard benoit deja ville talk about the risks of directly accessing the data and the complexities it brings now is that maybe a little fud against databricks maybe but same can be said for ollie's comments maybe flooding the proprietaryness of snowflake but as both analysts pointed out open is a spectrum hey i remember unix used to equal open systems okay let's end with some etr spending data and why not compare snowflake and data bricks spending profiles this is an xy graph with net score or spending momentum on the y-axis and pervasiveness or overlap in the data set on the x-axis this is data from the january survey when snowflake was holding above 80 percent net score off the charts databricks was also very strong in the upper 60s now let's fast forward to this next chart and show you the july etr survey data and you can see snowflake has come back down to earth now remember anything above 40 net score is highly elevated so both companies are doing well but snowflake is well off its highs and data bricks has come down somewhat as well databricks is inching to the right snowflake rocketed to the right post its ipo and as we know databricks wasn't able to get to ipo during the covet bubble ali gotzi is at the morgan stanley ceo conference this week they got plenty of cash to withstand a long-term recession i'm told and they've started the message that they're a billion dollars in annualized revenue i'm not sure exactly what that means i've seen some numbers on their gross margins i'm not sure what that means i've seen some numbers on their net retention revenue or net revenue retention again i'll reserve judgment until we see an s1 but it's clear both of these companies have momentum and they're out competing in the market well as always be the ultimate arbiter different philosophies perhaps is it like democrats and republicans well it could be but they're both going after a solving data problem both companies are trying to help customers get more value out of their data and both companies are highly valued so they have to perform for their investors to paraphrase ralph nader the similarities may be greater than the differences okay that's it for today thanks to the team from palo alto for this awesome super cloud studio build alex myerson and ken shiffman are on production in the palo alto studios today kristin martin and sheryl knight get the word out to our community rob hoff is our editor-in-chief over at siliconangle thanks to all please check out etr.ai for all the survey data remember these episodes are all available as podcasts wherever you listen just search breaking analysis podcasts i publish each week on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com and you can email me at david.vellante at siliconangle.com or dm me at devellante or comment on my linkedin posts and please as i say etr has got some of the best survey data in the business we track it every quarter and really excited to be partners with them this is dave vellante for the cube insights powered by etr thanks for watching and we'll see you next time on breaking analysis [Music] you