>> From Gillette Stadium, in Foxborough, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2019, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Hi I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE at VTUG Winter Warmer 2019 at Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots, AFC Champions week out from going to Super Bowl 53. Joining me is a user from the great state of Maine, Dawnna Pease, who is the Director of Computing Infrastructure and Services for the state of Maine, thank you for joining us. >> Yes, thank you. >> Alright so Dawnna, you've been to a few VTUGs, of course the Summer Fest, which is, you know it might not be quite as big, as the winter one, but it is known even broader, I've known people come from out of the country because there's a giant lobster bake at the end of the day. I've been a few times, but you know tell us, you've been to VTUG before, yes? >> We have, so I have been to many, especially in Maine. And this is probably our fourth or fifth one that I've broughten the team from the state of Maine here and I feel it's really crucial and important because it allows them to network, to talk with their peers and to look at the technologies of how we can provide services for the constituents of the state of Maine and for our services that we offer within our office. >> Yeah so we always love talking to the users, we love to be able to help you share with your peers what you've been learning and actually I've had lots of great government discussions over the last few years, even attended, I attended a public sector show in the cloud space last year, and it's always fascinating because people have a misconception when it comes to what it's like to be IT in government, so let's dig into that a little bit. Tell us a little bit about your role, your group, what's kind of under your purview. >> Sure, I've been in state government going on 33 years as a public servant, very proud of that. I have a great group and I am the Director of Computing Infrastructure Services and it's really directory services, Microsoft stack. We have VMWare environment that we been probably nine years now and we're just implementing SimpliVity our hyperconverged, and after extensive research on that, we really solidified and selected HPE SimpliVity because in state government we had a lot of aging servers that needed to be replaced as well as our VM environment which was 44 nodes and it was a huge investment so not only on the licensing, hardware, storage, the compute part as well. So lookin' at the hyperconverged that was just one of many of our technologies that we looked at. >> So Dawnna take us back, how long ago did you start looking at that initiative? >> Oh 18 months. >> Okay, and was it a single location, multiple locations, can you give us any, how many you know servers or VMs or locations that this solution was going to span? >> For me it was actually spannin' and takin' on many of our on-prem solutions that we have. Like our SQL environment, our application hostin', the one offs, we're bringin' into that. As well as upgrading our existing VM cluster. So it's really taken on and morphed even more. We have a lot of net new as that want to participate in this environment so for us it is literally like a cloud solution, but it's for within our own private cloud solution on that. >> And these were critical business productivity applications that you're talking about? >> Absolutely >> This wasn't a new project to do, you know, early days of hyper converged, it was like oh I'm doing desktop virtualization, let me roll this out. I mean you're talking about databases and applications. >> Absolutely so we run close to, little over 600 servers for virtual and physical, so when all said and done within our hyperconverged our goal is to really be under 60 physicals left within state government. And currently today we have probably over 400 in our virtual environment today. So we're really expanding that more and bringing the services all into one knowing that we're going to have compute network and everything in our storage will all be in this environment. Plus we have a legacy storage environment, so when you're thinking of your legacy storage environment and you're looking at your refreshment of hardware and all the licenses around that our return on investment was huge for the state of Maine. So it was literally the wise choice for us to do within state government for tax payers, saving money. Also for the state as a whole. >> I have to imagine in addition to kind of the Capex piece if you're saying going from 900 to 400 and looking to get down to 60, operationally hopefully it makes the jobs of you know you and your team, a little bit easier once things are up and running. And that's one of the promises of hyperconverged, is it should be that cloud layer, it should be almost invisible when you talk about, it's just a pool that my virtualization lives on but I don't need to touch and rack and stack stuff the way that I might have in the past. >> Exactly, exactly, good point on that. Also on that we've really taken a broad look at how we can leverage the cloud so from a disaster recovery aspect and not only havin' the site resilience between two data centers, but how we can leverage the cloud for that continuity aspect. So we're really broadening that and the team's doing a fabulous, excellent job at that. >> Are you doing the Cloud DR today or is that a future plan? >> That is future. >> Okay, going to leverage a public cloud as that Are you far enough down? >> Government. So we have Azure today and we have a government tenant on that so we will use that aspect within the government tenant as well. >> Great so primarily Microsoft applications, you've moved into hyperconverged and you leveraged the Azure government certified cloud pieces. >> Correct >> Okay, awesome, when you started going down this path did you have in your mind hyperconverged or is that, how did you end up on that type of solution? >> So no, we didn't. Doin' the research on that and lookin' at all options, and really doin' the research with that, hyperconverged was more of makin' sense from the return on investment and also from a ... I want to say the simplified fashion, like you said it's simple you want to make it not so complex, it provided everything within that environment, and it was really based on how we were structured today, the investment that we would need to do if didn't go down this path. And taking in, so we did go with the hyperconverged. >> In your previous environment were you using HPE for the servers or the storage? >> So we were HPE, we are an HPE shop. And we have VMC, we have Pure Storage, we have different aspects of our storage today that exist so lookin' at that as well, we had an investment that we either needed to upgrade, replace, and, or invest. >> What I was poking at a little bit is were you HPE before, was that part of the decision to buy SimpliVity which is part of the HPE family or was that not a major factor? >> It was not a major factor, I mean we were ... We have always been a HPE shop, however we had criteria we were lookin' at, so you know after doing the research and we had 15, we were lookin' at 15 vendors at the time. We narrowed it down to like eight, and out of that we really narrowed it down to two that were in the quadrant, in the Gartner quadrant. And in doing our own research and study and bringin' all the vendors in and everything and what we had already invested what we currently had, it really came out to SimpliVity as the choice. >> And your 18 months into this, you've got some Cloud DR in the future, how are things going? What have you learned so far, is there anything you would have done differently or any advice you'd give to your peers if they're starting to go down this path? >> Do the research, do the research, be very thorough in what you're lookin' at for your requirements. And you know not only the research but look at what you've already invested in and take that into consideration and what your return on investment, what you're looking for your return on investment because you need to look just past not only your hosting environment but it really goes into can your network support that environment? Do you need to upgrade your network, your storage aspects, licensing aspects of that as well? So it's a huge investment, however look at the money they already pay in. >> Yeah licensing, one of those things when you talk about that great reduction of servers, are you today or do you expect in the future some of those licensing costs from the database, the virtualization, will those actually be able to be scaled down? >> Absolutely, and that was part of our ROI as well. By a lot, you know and that is one of the benefits of the hyperconverged as well. Once you set that up and purchase the proper licenses, I mean like data center licenses, you can put in as many VMs as you need within that environment and that's important. So you're really just looking at your compute at that, what you need for storage and compute. >> Yeah, I'm curious just spoke, cause we have, we've worked with clients for years on that and often times I've got a ELA or I've got a multi-year contract there and I have to renegotiate it, has that gone smoothly? Have there been any bumps along the road or is it pretty straightforward that licensing can be a huge chunk of your budget and like oh great, I'm two years later and I'm going to save myself a lot of money. >> So I actually am the administrator of our enterprise agreement with Microsoft, had been for many years, so I know what we have. And so I work very closely with that and I as far as the licensing and what we have, so for the renewals, I will say it gets easier. I found that being consolidated because when the agencies own their IT, at the time, we had many enterprise agreements and that was more complex so if you can actually consolidate and go into one, we have one enterprise agreement, or under the three I would say, it's much more manageable on that. So I don't find that that's a show stopper on that, it's gotten easier over the years. Simplified, it's more simplified. >> It's great to hear that and actually Microsoft has made great strides, Microsoft today is not the Microsoft of fives years ago or 10 years ago. >> Correct, I would agree. >> So, Dawnna Pease, pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences and be sure to check out thecube.net for all the recordings from the VTUG Winter Warmer 2019 as well as all of the other shows. I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching theCUBE.

>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, if the queue covering Vita Winter warmer, twenty nineteen brought to you by Silicon Angle media. >> I'm stupid. And this is the cubes coverage of the V tug Winter warmer twenty nineteen here at Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots, and is my distinct pleasure to welcome to the program. Two time Super Bowl champion number fifty Patriots alumnae Rob Ninkovich. Rob may think you are doing great. Thanks for having awesome. You know, the team's a little bit of flutter. We brought, you know, one of the people here that help support the Patriots. The last two rings the Patriots had and you were on those teams, So yeah, >> it was, uh, you know, privileged and blessed to be on a couple Super Bowl winning teams. So >> did I hear right? Was the last one actually on your birthday to know that was the first >> one? That was really, really, really, really nice. >> Capable ring on your palm. My birthday. So your birthday's coming up here on February first, so >> I'll be the Big thirty five. Yeah, we'll have to sell me. I can't believe it. I'm almost seventy after seventy. >> Congratulations. Looking good and thank you. Feel good. Probably look out >> running climbing mountains. I'm gonna climb Mount Kilimanjaro with Chris Long here pretty soon in a month off. So I'll be in Africa raising money for water boys. So we'll be drilling for clean water, so it'll be cool. >> That's great. Yeah. I mean, let's hit on that. You know, you were you were drafted by the same. Believe you met your wife. Yeah. They're Southern Southern girls. Both of you are, you know, giving back to the community. Do a lot of charitable work. Would love to hear a little bit about that. >> Yeah. I mean, I think that the platform that athletes have is is tremendous. So if you can give back to your community, you know, that's that's one of the best things that I think an athlete can give back. And that's, you know, people that are in need and people that aren't as fortunate. So you know, for me, I work with Matt Light and the Light Foundation. So him on his board of directors and that basically brings kids in from troubled areas and backgrounds and they go into a camp and it's a four year program. So they start. And then they graduate, so to speak. When they get through high school and they're going into their college years, but it's a great program for trying to develop your skills. And you know, a lot of kids that don't have, you know, maybe a great family background that you know is a healthy background to where it's trying to bring kids together and show them some different things that could help them moving forward. And, you know, life skills that everyone needs. >> Yeah, this conference actually talk a lot about skills in career because and the technology field things were changing a lot. Now I've watched football. Most of my career were actually my season tickets. I can see across the field here and, you know, in your career, your eleven year career in the NFL changed a lot. I think you came into the NFL as an outside linebacker. And when you're here in the Patriots who switched the defensive end? No, you know what kind of things do you learn? And you know, how do you kind of have the mindset to say, like, Okay, well, this is the job and the skills and the things I'm looking to do. And now, like a weight, I need toe, you know, have a hand down and be facing off against some really big guys. >> Yes. So, I mean, I think the Toby the chameleon, so to speak and be able to change and adapt to your environment. I mean, that's what makes not just an athlete, but, you know, every every business person that can change with time and in with the trends of technology and how things were adapting over overtime, that's what's gonna continue your success. So if you stay, if you just one thing and you never want to change and you never adapt, you're goingto be overtaken by somebody else. So you have to have that mindset. When I arrived here with the Patriots, I knew that you had to be multiple. He had to continue toe, do different things with your career in position or else, you know, really, you don't stick around as long. So you know, for me, I was a defensive lineman, linebacker, special teams. You do it all, and it helps Not only your team, but it helps your career and, you know, have a long career that, >> yeah, not only do your job, but when you're called to do multiple jobs, you you're going to step in and do that. It kind of seems to be the Patriot. >> You have to. You have to. If you can't do the multiple job thing, it's This might not be the place. >> Yeah, So, you know, we just had, you know, one of the most amazing games and Patriot history that I think I've seen. I'm curious us now, an observer rather than player. You know what your thought looking at a game like that? You know, I know heart rates were a little bit high for those of us in New England, but, you know, it's really amazing win like that. >> Yeah. I mean, it goes to show you that the mental toughness and the that just never quit mentality is one of the main characteristics of this team this year in their story, you can't look at previous years or just you can't look att history. When it comes to football, it comes down. Who's going to play the best football in that particular day? And, you know, you look at what the defense has done so far. It's been tremendous going against the Chargers, who are a great team and you know, everyone was making the excuse of, you know, they travelled a lot in the time change was tough, but then them going on >> the road, >> which hadn't been a strong point form this year and getting a win and shutting out a team in the first half. The Chiefs that were really powerful and really explosive in one of the best in the NFL. It just goes to show you that, you know, in the playoffs, it's a completely different season. It's a new season. You've gotto just forget about what happened in the regular season. You know, moving on to this next game. I think that they just need to continue that high momentum and playing the way that they are playing, which is running the football, being tough and playing physical for four quarters. Being physical. That's that's what's going to win in this next one >> sixty minutes. And if it goes in over time, a little bit longer, >> you got it. Whatever it takes. >> Rob Ninkovich really appreciate you spending some time with that. Well, best of luck on Kilimanjaro this year. Exciting. Yeah, I know you do some social media. They're so sure people can follow along >> Yeah, I'll be on there. I got Instagram Nick five o. So And then I'm Niko. Five o for Twitter. So I'm out there. All right, all right. >> Thank you so much. And we, of course, are out there all the time. Go to the cube dot net to catch all the videos. Find me on Twitter. I'm just stew s to you and, uh, super pleasure to be able to have Rob Ninkovich. And thanks so much for the veto >> booth.

>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, it's the CUBE. Covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBE's coverage of the VTUG Winter Warmer 2019. Just had Rob Ninkovich from the New England Patriots on the program. And, happy to bring on the program, one of the co-leaders of this VTUG event, Chris Williams. Whose day job is as a cloud architect with GreenPages, but is co-leader here at VTUG, does some user groups, and many other things, and actually a CUBE alum, even. Back four years ago, the first year-- >> That's right. >> -that we did this, we had you on the program, but a few things have changed, you know... You have a little less hair. >> This got a little longer. A little less here. >> More gray hair. Things like that. We were talking, >> Funny how that works out. you know, Rob was, you know, talking about how he's 35, and we were, like, yeah, yeah, 35, I remember 35. >> A child. (laughing) >> Things like that. Just wait til you hit your 40's and stuff starts breaking. >> Oh, so much to look forward to. >> So, Chris, first of all, thank you. We love coming to an event like this. I got to talk to a few users on-air, and I talked to, you know, get a, just, great pulse of what's going on in the industry. Virtualization, cloud computing, and beyond. So, you know, we know these, you know, local events are done, you know, a lot of it is the passion of the people that do it, and therefore we know a lot goes into it. >> I appreciate it, thanks for having me on. >> Alright, so bring people up to speed. What's your life like today? What do you do for work? What do you do for, you know, the passion projects? >> Ah, so the passion projects recently have been a lot of, we're doing a Python for DevOp series on vBrownBag. For the AWS Portsmouth User Group, we're also doing a machine learning and robotics autonomous car driving project, using Python as well. And for VTUG, we're looking at a couple of different tracks, also with the autonomous driving, and some more of the traditional, like, VMware to CAS Cloud Hybrid training kind of things. >> Excellent, so in the near future, the robots will be replacing the users here, and we'll have those running around. >> I have my Skynet t-shirt on underneath here. >> Ah, yes, Skynet. (laughing) You know if you Tweet that out, anything about Skynet, there's bots that respond to you with, like, things from The Terminator movies. >> I built one of them. >> Did you? (laughter) Well, thank you. They always make me laugh, and if there's not a place for snark on Twitter, then, you know, all we have left is kind of horrible politics, so. >> That's true, that's true. >> Great, so, yeah, I mean, Cloud AI, robotics, you know, what's the pulse? When you talk to users here, you know, they started out, you know, virtualization. There's lots of people that are, "I'm rolling out my virtualization, "I'm expanding what use-cases I can use it on, "I might be thinking about how cloud fits into that, "I'm looking at, you know, VmMare and Amazon especially, "or Microsoft, how all those fit together." You know, what are you hearing, what drives some of those passion projects other than, you know, you're interested in 'em? >> So, a lot of what my passion projects are driven, it's kind of a confluence of a couple of different events. I'm passionate about the things that I work on, and when I get into a room with customers, or whatever like that, or with the end users, getting together and talking about, you know, what's the next step? So, we as users, as a user group and as a community, we're here to learn about not just what today is... what's happening today, but, what's going to keep us relevant in the future, what are the new things coming down the pipe. And, a lot of that is bending towards the things that I'm interested in, fortuitously. Learning how to take my infrastructure knowledge and parlay that into a DevOps framework. Learning how to take Python and some of the stuff that I'm learning from the devs on the AWS side, and teaching them the infrastructure stuff. So, it's a bi-directional learning thing, where we all come together to that magical DevOps unicorn in the middle, that doesn't really exist, but... >> Yeah, I tell you, we've had this conversation a few times here, and many times over the last few years especially, is that, there's lots of opportunities to learn. And, you know, >> Too many. >> is your job threatened? And, the only reason your job should be threatened, is if you think you can keep doing, year after year, what you were doing before, because chances are either you will be disrupted in the job, or if not, the people you're working for might be disrupted, because if they're not pushing you along those tracks, and the tools and the communities to be able to learn stuff is, I can learn stuff at a fraction of the cost in faster times. >> Yep. >> Might not learn as much, but I'm saying I can pick up new skills, I can start getting into cloud. You know, it's not $1000 and six months to get the first piece of it. >> Exactly. >> It might be 40 to 60 hours online. >> Yep. >> And, you know, cost you 30 to 100 bucks, so, it's... >> Yeah, the lift in training, is a lot easier because, you're basically swiping your credit card, and with AWS, you have a free tier for 12 months, that you can play with and just, you know, doodle around, and then... And figure things out. You don't have to buy a home lab, you don't have to buy NFR license, or get NFR licenses from Vmware. But, the catch to that is, you do have to do it. There's a... remember Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? >> Of course. >> Remember the dad was doing the toothpaste tubes, he was the guys screwing the toothpaste tubes onto the machines. At the end of the story, he got, you know, automated out of a job, because they had a machine screwing the toothpaste tubes on. And then, at the end, he was the guy fixing the machine that was screwing the toothpaste tubes on. >> Right. >> So, in our world, that infrastructure guy, who's been deploying manually virtual machines, there's a piece of code, there's an infrastructure code, that will do that for them now. They've got to know how to modify and refactor that piece of code, and get good. And, get good at that. >> Yeah, you know, I've talked to a couple of people, we talk about, you know, there's big, you know, vendor shows, and then there's, you know, regional user groups and meet-up's, and the like. Give us a little insight into, you know, let's start with VTUG specifically, and, you know, what you're doin' up in the Portland area. Would love to hear some of the dynamics now, you know, it feels like there's just been a ground swell for many years now, to drive those, you know, local, and many times, more specialized events, as opposed to bigger, broader events. >> Yeah, it's interesting, because we like the bigger, broader events, because it gets everybody together to talk about, things across a broad spectrum. So, here we have the infrastructure guys, and we have the DevOps guys, and we have a couple of Developers, and stuff like that. And so, getting that group think, that mind share, into one room together, gets everybody's creative juices flowing. So, people are starting to learn from each other, that the Dev's, are getting some ideas about how infrastructure works, the infrastructure guys are getting some ideas about, you know, how to, how to automate a certain piece of their job. To make that, you know, minimize and maximize a thousand times, you know, go away. So, I love... I love the larger groups because of that. The smaller groups are more specialized, more niche. So, like, when you get into a smaller version, then, it's mostly infrastructure guys, or mostly Dev's, or some mixture thereof. So, they both definitely have their place, and that's why I love doing both of them. >> Yeah, and, you know, what can you share, kind of, speeds and feeds of this show here. I know, it's usually over a thousand people >> Yep. >> You know, had, you know, bunch of keynotes going on. You know, we talked about The Patriots, in, you know, quite a number of, you know, technology companies, people that are the, kind of, SI's or VAR's in the mix. >> Yeah, so, we had, I think, 35 sponsers. We had, six different keynotes, or six general sessions. We talked about everything from Azure to AWS, to Vmware. We covered the gamate of the things that the users are interested in. >> You had... don't undersell the general sessions there. (laughing) There was one that was on, like, you know, Blockchain and Quantum computing, I heard. >> Yep, yep. >> There was, an Amazon session, that was just, geekin' out on the database stuff, I think, there. >> Yes, yeah, Graph tier, yep. >> So, I mean, you know, it's not just marketing slideware up there, I saw a bunch of code in many of the sessions. >> Oh yeah, yeah. >> You know, this definitely is, you know, I was talkin' with the Amazon... Randell earlier, here on the program, and said that-- >> The Amazon Randall. (laughing) >> Yeah, yeah, sorry, Randall from Amazon, here. >> He's a very large weber. >> Gettin' at the end of the day, I've done a few of these, but, you know, remember like, four years ago, the first, like, cloud 101 session here? >> Yeah, yep. >> And, I was like, you know, I probably could have given that session, but, everybody here was like, "Oh, my gosh", you know, I just found out about that electricity. >> Right. >> You know, that, this is amazing. And, today, most people, understand a little bit more of... We've gotten the 101, so, you know, I'm getting into more of the pieces of it, but. >> Yeah, it was really gratifiying because, the one that he gave was, all of the service, all of the new services, of which, there were like, more than 100, in 50 minutes or less. And, he talks really, really fast. And, everybody was riveted, we... I mean, people were coming in, even up until the last minute. And, they all got it. It wasn't like, what am I do... what am I going to do with this? It's, this is what I need to know, and this is valuable information. >> Yeah, we were having a lunch conversation, about, like, when you listen to a Podcast, what speed do you listen on? So, I tend to listen at about one and a half speed, normally. >> Me too, yep. >> You know, Frappe was sayin', he listens at 2x, normally. >> Does he really? >> Somebody like, Randall, I think I would, put the video up, and you can actually go into YouTube, and things like that, and adjust the speed settings, I might hit, put him down to 0.75, or something like that, >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Because absolutely, you know, otherwise, you can listen to it at full speed, and just like, pause and rewind, and then things like that. But, definitely, someone... I respect that, I'm from New Jersey, originally, I tend to talk a little faster, on camera I try to keep a steady pace, so that, people can keep up with my excitement. >> I do, I speed up too. He actually, does this everyday. He flies to a new city, does it once a day. So, he's, he's gotten... This is like rapid fire now. >> Alright, want to give you the final word, you know, VTUG, you know, I think, people that don't know it, you go to VTUG.com, A Big Winter Warmer, here. There's The Big Summer one, >> The Summer Slam. >> With the world famous, you know, Lobster Bake Fest, there, I've been to that one a few times. I know people that fly from other countries, to come to that one. What else should we know about? >> So, we're about to revamp the website, we've got some new and interesting stuff coming up on there. Now that, we also have our slack channel, everybody communicates on the backhand through that. We're going to start having some user content, for the website. So, people can start posting blog articles, and things of that nature, there. I'm going to start doing, like a little, AW... like learn AWS, on the VTUG blog, so, people can start, you know, ramping up on some of the basics and everything. And, and if, that gains traction, then, we'll maybe get into some more advanced topics, from Azure, and AwS, and Vmware of course, Vmware is always going to be there, that's... Some of the stuff that Cody is doing, Cody Jarklin is doing, over at Vmware, like the CAS stuff, where it's the shim layer, and the management of all the different clouds. That's some really, really cool stuff. So, I'm excited to showcase some of that on the website. >> Alright, wow. Chris Williams, really appreciate you coming. And, as always, appreaciate the partnership with the VTUG, to have us here. >> Thanks for havin' me. >> Alright, and thank you as always for watching. We always love to bring you the best community content, we go out to all the shows, help extract the signal for the noise. I'm Stu Miniman, thanks for watchin' The CUBE. (energetic music) (energetic music) (energetic music)

>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, if the queue recovering Vita Winter warmer, twenty nineteen Brought to you by Silicon Angle media. >> Hi. I'm stupid men. And this is the cubes coverage of V tug Winter warmer. Twenty nineteen here. A Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots. Happy to welcome to the program. A community member, Someone I've known for many years at this point. Jonathan Frappe here. Who's with V Brown bag? Thanks so much for joining us from >> Thanks for having me. >> All right, so, you know, I watched this event, and when it started, it was, you know, originally the V mug for New England. And then it became vey tug And one, there's some of the politics stuff which we don't need to go into, but part of it was virtual ization and cloud. And what's the interaction there and what will users have to do? Different. And part of that is jobs. And one of the reasons I really wanted to bring you on is, you know, you started out heavy in that virtual ization base and you've been going through those machinations. So maybe just give our audience a little bit about, you know, your background, some of the things skill sets. You've got lots of acronyms on your on your you know, resume as it is for certification. You've done. So let's start there. >> Sure. So my background. I started this help desk. I did Windows two thousand Active Directory, administration and Exchange Administration all on site and moved into Mohr server administration. And when the empire started to become a thing, I was like, Wow, this is This is a game changer and I need to sort of shift my skill set. I understand the applications of music. I've been supporting him. But virtualization is going to change change That so started to shift there and saw a similar thing with Public Cloud and automation a cz, That same sort of next step beyond infrastructure management. >> All right. And you've had a bunch of certification. The real off a few. You know what? Where are you today? What? What have you added gives a little bit of a timeline. >> My first certification was a plus which come to you seemingly has come around and joined the ranks of posting toe linked in for everybody. So a plus was my first one. EMC PM, CSC on Windows two thousand. Took a little bit of a break in back into it. Bcp five era so four, five years ago. Cem Cem. Other of'em were Certs NSX Cloud see Emma and most recently, the solution's architect associate for a Ws. >> OK, great, in when you look at the kind of virtual ization and cloud, it's not like you thirst, which one day and said, Okay, I no longer need the VM were stuff. I'm going to do the cloud tell us a little bit about you know what led you to start doing the cloud and you know how you you know how your roles that you've had and you know the skill set that you want to have for your career. You know how you look at those. >> So for me, it is about being able to support what my business is doing. And sometimes the right answer's going to be VM, where sometimes it's going to be physical. Sometimes it's going to be containers or public cloud, or, you know, new fancy buzzwords like server lists. And I've always in my career tried to support what where, what application we're delivering to get the business, the information they need. So for me to do that properly, I need to be well versed across all of that infrastructure so that when when it's time to deliver something in public cloud or time to deliver something in the container, I'm ready to go when you do that. >> Yeah. What? What? What's the push and pull for some of the training bin? Is this something that you've seen? You said, like Veum, where you saw it, like, Oh, my gosh, I need to hop on that. You know, I remember back to those early days I remember engineers I worked with that were just like, this thing is amazing. That was like preview motion, even. Yeah, but you know, just what? That that impact we've seen over the last, you know, ten to fifteen years of that growth has there been times where the business is coming said, Hey, can you go learn this? Kaixian orders have been you driving most about yourself. Uh, >> it's it's been both. There are times when the business has come and said, Hey, we would really like to take advantage of virtual ization or public cloud. And it from a technology perspective, there may have been other factors that would impact the ability to do that. So that's why for me. I tried to sort of stay ahead of it when, you know virtual ization was taking off and everything I had was on physical servers. I knew I needed to have the VM where peace in my pocket so that when the business was ready and when other things like compliance, we're ready for it. We could move forward and sort of advanced that same thing with Public Cloud. Now that that's Mohr prevalent and sort of accepted in the industry a lot more cos they're moving in that direction. >> Yeah, and you know, what tips would you give your Pierre if they're a virtual ization person? You know, how are the waters in the cloud world is there are a lot of similarities. Is it? You know, do I have to go relearn and, oh, my gosh, I need to go learn coding for two years before I understand how to do any of this stuff. >> I think it's helpful. Tto learn some level of coding, but do it in an environment that you're comfortable in today. So if you're of'em were admin today, you know there's power, see Ally and be realized orchestrator and and even if you're on via Mars Cloud platform there's there's some basic power shell on bass scripting you could do in the cloud Automation. Get comfortable with the environment, you know. And then as that comfort grows when you move Oh, look, there's power shell commandments for a ws. If that's the route, you go so oh, already understand the format and how I how I glue those things together so you could get comfortable in the environment you're in today and sort of get ready for whatever that next step is. >> Yeah, I've always found I find it interesting. Look at these ecosystems and see where the overlaps and where two things come together. You know, I actually worked with Lennox for about twenty years. So I you know, back when I worked at Emcee the storage company and I supported the Lenox Group and Lennox was kind of this side thing. And then you kind of saw that grow over time and Lennox and virtual ization. We're kind of parallel, but didn't overlap is much. And then when we get to the cloud, it feels like everybody ended up in that space and there were certain skill sets that clinics people had that made it easy to do cloud in certain things that the fertilization people had that made it easy do there. But we're kind of all swimming in the same pools. We see that now in the, you know, core bernetti space. Now I see people I know from all of those communities on, but it's kind of interesting. Curious if you have anything you've seen in kind of the different domains and overlapping careers. >> Yes, you. For me. I think what's help is focusing on how the applications the business uses consumed, what some of the trends are around, how you know whether finance or marketing teams are interacting with those applications. If I know how the application works and what I need to do something to support it, the concepts aren't going to be vastly different. If I know how Exchange's install their sequel servers install, there's some custom application is insult. I could do that across the VM, where environment native US environment and should it supported into Docker by leveraging Cooper Netease. >> All right, so you've mentioned about the time the application, can you? How has it changed your relationship with kind of the application owners as you go from, you know, physical, virtual, the cloud. >> I don't think it should change much. The problem probably the biggest shift that you have is that at some point now, things are out of your control. So when I've got a server sitting in my data center that I can walk down the hallway to if something's not working, I have access to it. If there's an application down in the public cloud, or there's an A Ws outage or any public cloud provider outage, I have to wait. And that sort of I think the thing that I've seen business struggle with the most like, well, it's down, go fix it. It's like, I can't get to it right now, and I'm probably not driving to Virginia, Oregon to go reboot that server for Amazon. >> Whoever absolutely big shift we've seen right is, you know a lot of what I is. It I am managing is now things that aren't in my environment. You know, there was my data centers. My might have had hosted data centers where I'd call somebody up, you know, you know, tell the Rex paper person to reboot the servers or it's right, it's in the public cloud. In which case it's like, OK, what tools. What can I trouble shoot myself? Or is there some, you know, out of that I'm not aware of, you know, is affecting me. Yeah, >> it's Ah, it's a good shift to have for a infrastructure person because we're really getting to the point now. I think the tails, the scales have tipped to focusing more on delivering business value versus delivering infrastructure. The CFO doesn't necessarily think or care that spinning up a new V m faster is cool. They care about getting their application to their team so that they could do their work. So I think taking, you know, going to public cloud or going to other platforms where that's removed it sort of forces you to move to supporting supporting those business applications. >> So I'm curious it every time we have one of these generational shift time. Time is like, Oh, my gosh, I'm going to be out of a job on the server ID men Virtualization is going to get rid of me. I'm a virtual ization Had been cloud's going to get rid of me. This whole server listing will probably just get rid of all the infrastructure people I've read article yesterday was called the Creeping Apocalypse a CZ what they called it. But, you know, you know what you saying is there general fear in your peers or, you know, do you just, you know, dive in and understand it and learn it? If you could stay, you know, up with or a little bit ahead of the curve, you know you're going to keep employed. >> I would say that there's a mix there. Some people, even just a few months ago, some some folks I talked to and they were just sort of breaking into automation and like how they can automate deploying their applications in their legitimate concern, was I won't have a job anymore and sort of the way I looked at that was my job's going to change. I don't spend my entire day administering Windows two thousand active directory boxes any more. So I need Yes, I need to shift that and start thinking about what's next. If I can automate the routine task, you know, deploying an application, patching and application, bringing things up and down when there's some sort of failure than I, uh, I'm going to naturally grow my career in that way by getting rid of the boring stuff. >> Yeah, and I've been here in this argument against automation for decades now, and the question I always put two people is like, Look, if I could give you an extra hour a day or an extra day a week, do you have other projects that you could be doing or things that the business is asking for? That would be better. And I've yet to find somebody that didn't say, Yeah, of course, on DH. What are the things that you're doing that it would be nice to get rid of, You know, other people is like I love the serenity of racking and stacking cabling stuff. And nothing gets people more excited than beautiful cables in Iraq. I thought yesterday I saw people like going off about here's this data center with these beautiful, you know, rack, you know? So with the cable ties and everything, but I'm like, really, you know, there's more value you can add absolutely out there. So >> automate yourself into your next job. It is sort of the way I think I like to think about it. It's not a meeting, >> so let's you know, just look forward a little bit, you know? There's all these waves, you know, Cloud been a decade data was talking to keep downs in this morning on the Cube on we said, you know, when he talks to users, it's their data that super important applications absolutely is what drives, uh, you know, my infrastructure, but it's the data that's the super important piece. So you know, whether it be, you know, you're a I or, you know, you figure various buzz word of the day I ot You know, data is in the center. So what do you looking forward to is? Are there new search or new training that that are exciting? You are areas that you think you're Pierre should be poking out to help try to stay ahead of the curve. >> Yeah, and back to my earlier point about leveraging the thing you know today and how to sort of grow your career. And that next skill set is how I can look at data and make. I understand what's going on around that. So maybe maybe today that's taking some stats from any SX. I hosted an application and correlating that data together on help. You underst Yes. And you know what that means for the applicator action before or use their calls in. And that's going to help you grow into sort of this new realm of like, machine learning and big data. And in analytics, which I think is really the next thing that we're going to need to start doing as Mohr and more of that infrastructure shifted away into surveillance platforms and things that were not worried about How can I understand? How can I take that data? Transform it, use it, correlated together to, you know, help make decisions. >> Alright, on final thing, give us update on our friends at V Brown bag. So, you know, we talked Well, I always say, you know, when we go to V m world, it's like we're there. I'm trying to help kind of balance between the business and the technology. You want to go a little deeper and really geek out and understand some of these things. That's where you know the V brown bag. You know, people are going to be able to dig in with the community in the ecosystem. There was the V and V brown bag for virtual ization. But he brown bags doing much more than just traditional virtualization today. You know what? What? What's on the docket? >> Eso upcoming This year, we're gonna have some episodes around Python so helping add men's get to know Python start to get comfortable with it, Which would be a great language to a automate things that maybe you're doing today in your application, but also to be able to take data and and use Python, too. Manage that data extract value out of that data so that you can help make decisions. So look for the throughout this year and, you know, learn new things. >> All right, Jonathan, from pure pleasure to talk with you on camera after talking to off camera for many years. Thanks so much for joining us. All right. And we appreciate you joining us at this virtual ization and cloud user event. Ve tug Winter warmer. Twenty nineteen on student a minute. Thanks for watching the cue

>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts It's theCUBE, covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE media. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's coverage of the VTUG Winter Warmer 2019. We talk about virtualization, we talk about cloud computing. In this segment, we're going to talk about cyber security. Absolutely a hugely important to every user out there and if it's not hugely important to them today, I don't know I want to do business with 'em. Helping me to dig into this conversation-- >> (laughs) >> Is Matt Kozloski who's the Vice President of Professional Services at Winslow Technology Group. Matt, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having me. >> Alright, so I set it up. >> You did. >> Cyber security. >> Yeah. >> You know, what I said, Matt, in my career, I remember back, you know, 15, 20 years ago, security would be top of mind, kind of bottom of budget. >> Yep. >> It got great lip service, but when you looked at the project, if you look what's going off, it was like, I didn't do it. Now, that security project that I've been putting off for years, it's a board level discussion, you know, everybody needs to be paying attention to it, so, there's got to be no better time to be in the cyber security business than today, right? >> Well, you would think. So I would say a lot of organizations are taking the right steps that they need to in their budgeting and preparing for, you know, incidents or protecting themselves, but a lot of organizations, still, are just not taking the right steps to protect themselves and their, you know, patients or just their organization's information. >> Yeah, it's challenging, 'cause they say while it gets more attention, there's huge-- >> Mhmm. >> Emphasis on it, many companies are doing it, boards do care about it. Dave Vellante, one of our hosts of theCUBE, something he said many times, he said, okay, do I feel more secure now than I did last year and, you know, we've been doing this program for nine years and every year it's like, oh my god, it seems scarier now than ever. >> Yeah, that's a great, yeah. I mean-- >> So, you know, how are we doing as an industry? >> Yeah, I think technology continues to get more complicated, which is part of it. Another part is just the way that technology's integrated into everyone's lives, whether it's their smartphone, their smartwatch, their, you know, smart everything now. And the software behind the scenes is just incredibly complicated, too. So, things are getting more complicated. We rely on it a lot more and it just gives more opportunity for, you know, hackers to do bad things. >> Yeah, so my background is in network-- >> Mhmm. >> And virtualization technology and it used to be, you know, you talk about security products. >> Yeah. >> It was like, oh well, I've got the firewall-- >> Yeah, the thing. >> Or I've got something in, you know, the virtualization layer-- >> Yeah. >> That does things. I heard, the line that I hear that resonates with me is security is everyone's responsibility. >> Sure. >> And where does it go? The answer is yes, everywhere. >> Yeah. >> And everything from, it can go down to the chip level to absolutely at the application level and everywhere in between, but boy, that sounds complicated. >> It is. >> So, is it, you know, I need to have a security practice more than buying security products and security mindset. Is that what you hear and what you recommend to clients? >> Yeah, it's a practice or program. So you have to think of cyber security as that, like a program. It's about people, policies, the technology in place. I mean, one of the, you know, most common ways that malware gets into organizations is through a phishing attack. That's all social engineering. That's not exactly the most high tech thing around, right? So, there's an example of it on the people angle. >> Okay, so Matt, tell us a little bit about your background, you know, what you've been doing and maybe explain, so Winslow Technology Group, we're familiar, hopefully people have watched some of the videos we've done because they, you know, offer products that are made by other people-- >> Yes, yes, yeah. >> So you know, Dell, VMware and the like, Nutanix-- >> Yep. >> And things like that. So tell us your background and what, say how security fits into that. >> Sure, so my background is in supporting enterprise, you know, environments in the past and then I became, you know, a consultant and now at Winslow. Winslow, yes, is a reseller of products, but we also do services, which is kind of my role there too. So, in a way, the services is Winslow's product. >> Right. Yeah, absolutely. So, is it consulting, is it, you know, helping to bring in various products? >> Yeah. >> Is it doing, you know, a comprehensive analysis? >> It's all of those things. >> Yeah. >> So it's the comprehensive analyis, that's usually where things start, where we do a gap assessment and we figure out, like, hey, even if you're not HIPAA regulated or fall under PCI complaince, maybe you just want to look at NIST as a framework to start with. That's a government standard for cyber security, right? So we can do a gap assessment against that and then figure out, well you're deficit in awareness training or, you know, that firewall is not effective for what you need it to do, things along those lines. >> Okay, so you know, I mentioned earlier, security can be lots of places. Is this a holistic approach do you have? Are you, you know, data center, SAS, public cloud, all of the above, everything in between? >> I think all of the above. >> Yeah. >> It really starts with security as a philosophy and a way of doing things and then figuring out how that pipes down to the individual app components and infrastructure component. >> So, you know, I hear statements sometimes that it's, you know, it's not a question of if you will be hacked, but it's usually how soon you'll find out that you have been hacked. >> (laughs) Yeah. >> Is it that dire, I mean, I feel like the weather is, you know, appropriate for what we have today. There's fog rolling in, the rain is pouring, there's no sunshine here, you know, give us some sunlight in-- >> Yeah. >> How we can disinfect, you know, some of these challenges. You know, what are we doing well-- >> Yeah, people are doing well in that they're actually talking about it now. I do see a lot of people doing things like awareness training and it's actually really become part of what people consider, even in, like, mergers and acquisitions, right up front, people are asking, like, are they secure? How about we don't just connect their networks together and hope for the best, right? There's firewalls put in and even here today at VTUG, you see a lot about microsegmentation and what we're doing to containerize apps and secure, you know, software and applications from each other and, you know, have like, almost a zero trust policy on the inside of the network too, not just on the perimeter. >> Well, that's great, 'cause yeah. You know, I think back, you know, five years ago it was, the general conversation was, oh wait, I shouldn't do public cloud because it's not secure and now it's like, look, we understand. In many cases, public cloud is more secure-- >> Way more secure, sure. >> And many times just 'cause they update things. >> Yeah. >> You know, much more often. They have thousands of people focused and working on it as opposed to, how many people do you have-- >> Exactly. >> Maintaining and watching your environment. >> Yep, mhmm. >> So yeah, maybe, what are some of the hot segments? You brought up, you know, containerization-- >> Yeah. >> You know I remember, you know, can containers be secure? I have gone to, you know, the Docker Kan show, the group entities show and it seems like it's still a major issue, just shove it all into the-- >> Yes, yeah. In some ways too, I wonder if we're creating a problem in certain circumstances that way too because now we're giving more power and more scale in different ways that, and it just could be used in different ways that we didn't intend, I guess, right? I think in terms of segments, though, where we see, like, the cloud adoption. One example is in medical space, right? So medical records are incredibly important. When you think back to, you know, there's a server in the closet that the private practice I go to, my PCP's office, you're like, how are you securing that? Like, you're doctors, you know, you're good at keeping me alive, but what's going on there? A lot of private practices, just an an example, have actually migrated to cloud-based systems for patient management and I personally feel like that's more secure because doctors, in that case, can focus on what they're good at and they've offloaded, not necessarily all the risk, but a lot of the care and feeding and like, all of the security to people who know what they're doing and they're good at it, so that's like, an example. >> Matt, Matt, have you talked to doctors? They know how to do this. >> (laughs) >> Absolutely. They totally understand and have taken every, you know, thing to make sure that that absolutely is true-- >> (laughs) >> But, yeah maybe sometimes they understand that bringing in an expert that focuses on that more than the, you know, one hour every couple of months. >> (laughs) >> Would be there. >> Yeah. >> So, good to hear. What then, what would you like to see from the vendor ecosystem out there to, you know, is there more training, is it, you know, improvement of the products? >> I'd like to see some standardizations around the way products work with each other a little bit more. I mean, I think like, you know, you have vendor A, vendor B, vendor C, creating all these really great products and there's a lot going on from, you know, network monitoring and like, deep analysis to different technologies on the endpoints themselves, so like, traditional malware isn't, I mean it's a thing, but we're talking about more advanced protection, but really, like a framework for all of these products to talk to each other, 'cause that would, you know, allow, you know, cyber security consultants and engineers to really see all of this without being locked in to some proprietary system as well. >> Yeah, ransomware's been, you know, a hot topic the last couple of years. Are we getting a good handle on that? >> The studies that I've read recently say that it's relatively leveling off. So it's not necessarily getting any worse, but it's not getting an better either, so yeah. >> Excellent, so what you're saying is, you will not be put out of a job anytime soon, right? >> No. (laughs) >> Alright, want to give you the final word, Matt, you know, 2019, you know, what's interesting you, what are some of the, you know, top initiatives that your customers are going to have going forward? >> Yeah, so just in cyber security in general, just putting these programs together, doing the assessments they need. Enterprise customers are really interested in containers, we talked about that a little bit. So, me this year, I want to do a little more, you know, investigation and figuring out, like, cyber security as it relates to containers and how enterprise environments can secure the containerized apps. >> Alright well, Matt, really appreciate you-- >> Thank you. >> Helping bring us up to speed on some of the state of cyber security here at 2019 and you're watching theCUBE's coverage of VTUG Winter Warmer 2019 here from Gillette Stadium, home of the AFC Championship New England Pariots, going off to Super Bowl LIII in just a week. Thank you for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, if the queue covering Vita Winter warmer, twenty nineteen brought to you by Silicon Angle media. Hi. >> I'm Jackie Sampson here with stew Minutemen wrapping up the show today. Ah, we're here. Gillette. >> So to this's the fifty year Vito, what's changed? >> Yeah, Jackie, so much has changed. So I've actually been coming to show for about >> eight years, and it was known as the >> New England V Mug back then. So when it switched for the tug, number one is a little bit more independent than a V M, where users group >> itself so broader on virtual >> station. But they actually made a conscious effort to expand beyond >> virtualization and talk about cloud computing. And four years ago, cloud computing while it had been gone, gone for about five years, most people coming to this show really didn't understand much beyond. I'd heard a cloud computing. I might have seen it on, like commercials from Microsoft, you know, to the cloud or some stuff like that. But they really didn't understand it. So I loved an event like this that brought in. They brought an >> Amazon. Microsoft had them give presentations, and they were breaking out from the ecosystem. This ecosystems >> gone through a maturation. Most of the vendors, I believe there's about >> five vendors here have a basic organization but have grown in decline. So we see in the users the ecosystem of the show. Make sure it's still over a thousand people here every year, and it's one that I was loved. >> That's awesome. So I was wondering. >> There are a lot of interesting guests that were on the Cube today. So what were the calm >> Dan's in virtualization >> space that you think company should >> start paying closer attention to twenty nineteen? >> Eso a common thing when I look back to twenty eighteen and continue here in twenty nineteen share >> really defines our industry today. So when we talk about going from virtual ization to cloud, we understand that that's gonna have to some disruption. We're at a user conference here, love talking to these users, and I talkto one user talked about the their hyper converge roll out, and they're going to be extending that for d R to the >> clouds I had a guest >> on today. Actually, the first one I've done it, Vito. He used to do virtualization, but in his day job today, all he does is a ws, and he does coding with PHP and he helps build out. Actually, Jackie, you gotta listen to this one because they're company does hair in massage, but for senior citizens on Lee. So it's really interesting based out of Cleveland. He's based locally. But you know, it's a nice niche and understanding the technology underneath that helps them at all of their location to do that. So you know, the common theme is, you know, it's a great time to be in technology. There's a lot of change going on, and there's great opportunities at events like this and training material for people tto learn and grow and keep themselves relevant and keep their business moving. >> That's pretty cool. So, >> speaking of relevance, who are some >> of the key players in >> space over some of the key players and talk? Teo? >> Yeah, so, >> you know, look, my first two guests were probably >> the two that have >> the biggest market share in the most relevant. So that >> is somewhere, you know, dominant in the virtual ization place and Amazon. Think clear Leader came for stuffed services going beyond actually supposed to have a guest on from microphone >> soft. Unfortunately, she was sick today. And look, it is not a winner. Take all. There is broad ecosystem and a lot of diversity out there in the ecosystem. So look, there's lots of virtual ization that isn't VM, where there's lots of cloud activity that's happening, both of them. What they've done really well in our balancing is their ecosystem. So a lot of change going on there. Neither of those companies is nearly as >> don't say the New England Patriots were going to their third Super Bowl in a row on DH talking. Did you know I'm a little excited about being here? A. Gillette? I wore my season ticket pin here. They just turned the lights on for us. Behind here, I >> can see my season ticket here. I was here. >> Wade. Rob Ninkovich on the program so way didn't talk to rob about too much. But, you know, even he was talking about the charitable works it does on new technologies. >> The underpinning he was actually telling me off camera, he's like, you know, Helen, I'm not doing football is like I should be in tech. You know, text. There's a lot going on. It's really interesting. And you know, that's the analogy we always have with the Cube is you know, one of the earliest clients said, where the pen attack. Let's give independent coverage, you know, help understand. Watch those waves and change justice in sports. If you want them long enough, things do change. You know, the NFL today. There's a very past happy league, and I think backto, when I was much younger, it was like, you know, defense running wins game today, you know, I mean, cloud computing is all the rage and rightly so, and there's still a lot of growth there. But, you know, virtual ization >> important. And there's >> so many different areas for people to be able to dig in. And that keeps >> us hopping from show to show on Keeps me excited. Teo. Find ofthe community people on technologists, users that >> will share their experiences. >> That's pretty cool. So did you have any favorite interview today? Or interviews? Plural. >> Yeah, you know, Jackie, >> it's always tough for me to, you know, choose a choose a favorite. >> So no right way has taught leadership pieces. You know where you talked about it? We talked about >> career with some computer people we talked to use, or so >> I hate to say it always liked to be like, Yeah, yeah, thiss one. But you know, overall, it was really good. I'm really happy to be able, Teo, participate. Even It's tough when I look back. In the years >> that I've been doing this, >> it's just the diversity of the new things that we get to learn your aunt and that keep >> me excited. You know, from year to year, >> it's awesome. So, Stew, thank you so much for wrapping up the show today. >> And, Jackie, I really appreciate you helping me. You know, wrap this up. You know, you're No, >> you know that. Love to say that. Thank you, everyone. I'm Jackie with student. Thanks >> for watching.

>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, if the queue covering Vita Winter warmer, twenty nineteen brought to you by Silicon Angle media. >> Hi. I'm stupid women. And this is the cubes coverage of V tug. Winter warmer twenty nineteen, where we see the emergency connections between virtual ization and cloud computing happened have on the program A user at the event Con Rebates. Who is a senior integration engineer with P s lifestyle. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Nice to be here. >> All right, So, PS lifestyle, let's start there. Tell us a little bit about that in your role as a senior integration engineer and what that means. >> Okay, So, PS lifestyle, we're national Hair Salon were in thirty seven states, and we have, Ah, super niche angle. All of our salons are in senior assisted living communities as we focus exclusively on seniors and, you know, well, twenty mics in your life more enjoyable. >> Okay, well, that's that's excellent. We always talk about, you know, jobs of the future and where there is growth. Ueno the boo birds generation is, you know, creating lots of people, you know, in health care. And, you know, part of health is making sure you're feeling happy about how you look. So I don't need to worry too much about my hair. These days, but we do, other than just head say, the older generation >> way do some of that, like massage services. Just just Yeah, well, being >> very, very cool is, you know, definitely not something we've talked about on our program. And after nine years and thousands of interviews, it's nice to have some interesting angles talk about. So you're a senior integration engineer? My understanding from some of the prep is you're really working on cloud related activity primarily. >> Yeah. So I came on board about a year ago. I switched out of our operations, roll into a development role and P s lifestyle are looking too, uh, bring the internal systems forward. I've been doing a lot of work, a lot of writing the stylist in the field when I end up writing out their services that they perform everyday, which doesn't really scale. So yeah, they're trying. Teo, bring the services into the present. Um, get get away from having to write everything down. So we're building out like a It's not quite a point of sale. System is somewhere between point of sail on, like, an Internet s so that everyone in the field automate what they're doing? Our accounting team doesn't have tio re input everything that comes in. Andi, just make things flow smoother. >> Okay? So frigates inside a little bit, You know what cloud services are using, and there's there's coating that you're doing is is part of that also. >> So right now we're developing in a PHP framework called Larry Gill. And we're playing to both elastic being stalking a w s and s, um, and we're building. So we have off front ends our old Larry Gill in Elastic Beanstalk. Not back in. We're building a P. I's in Lumen and the micro services are in T. C s. So we could have been scaling. >> Yeah, and, you know, Cloud seems an obvious solution for, you know, a a highly distributed in environment, like as retail too often is. And you know your locations are Is that How long could you bring us? A little bit, as you've been on for a year. But how long has that car journey been going on? >> Actually, a year. Okay. Came in just as just a CZ. The company started developing. Thiss has been on the on the horizon for about two years. And as the study of ramping up. They brought on additional people such myself. Just a stuff up so that we could actually walk through it. >> Okay. And I was there, you know, eight of us, Obviously the leader in the spaces. It was there some consideration as Teo, which cloud they'd be using. There's >> no things they were already using a ws to some capacity for Like what? Press hosting. It was just a natural continuation of that with me coming on board I've been looking at Well, what if we do want redundancy? Do we do we try Multi cloud, You know that's now on option. You know, maybe we start exploring technologies like Tara forms so that we can actually duplicate environments just in case. On the very rare instance that eight of us does go down. Yeah, well, so >> is that a concern? When you know, people say, you know, a ws going down, does an availability zone sometimes have issues shore, But can't you architect around this, or, you know, >> you know, I mean, we've had issues where a w s has been unavailable to us for, like, non technical reasons. In that case is like we were we were trapped. Unfortunately, we were not in production at the time, But it's, you know, that's a little look, a lesson you learn once, and then you think, Well, all right, I need a backup, just in case something does happen. And I know it's, like, very unlikely to happen, so that that then informs, you know, what is my back up? You know how much how much dough I invest in the back of >> great? Yeah, because, you know, multi cloud is one of those things that people talk about when you dig down, It's like, Okay, we understand. Why is that something you're doing? Because, you know, I want tohave price leverage of one against the other. Is it? Is there a service that I wanted one that, you know that might not be available other? Or is it it's kind of insurance. And in your case that saying, you know, in the case that you are, Are you saying I think from an architectural standpoint, I'm not looking to run in both clouds all the time. But if I have an outage, I should be able to kind of fail over almost on spin, something up relatively fast. And another environment. >> Eggs. Exactly. So it's like way we're talking about, you know, possibly looking in Asia. Maybe that's a little overkill. Maybe we could just do with, like, a droplet on on digital Ocean Does our entire environment we develop in Dhaka. That's pretty easy just to pick up and leave, pick up and move somewhere else on DH. You know, maybe far standby environment is nowhere near as powerful, at least still running. >> Yeah, and so, so great. You know, you've got that containers is kind of the base level for free. How are you developing? You know what one of the challenges out there is, you know, digital ocean, great for developers. Work for the containers, but, uh, you know, please correct me if I'm not getting this right, you know, You know, Cloud today isn't a utility, so I can't just say, Oh, I'm running on a day of us and let me just take everything and throw it in azure throat. Indio, You know, we're like, there's usually, you know, some work and prepped to make sure that I've got what I need. >> There is there is so it's like, so right now, it's like we're focused on us so we can work with the tooling. And then, as as we start getting more comfortable, we can start looking at extending that tolling toe, be a little flexible toe with multiple providers >> and cloudy. And if some people you know, concern is Tio, you know, how do how do I make sure that my costs just don't kind of spiral out of control is you know, how does kind of the internal control, you know, is there budgeting process in place? Do you have? Do you have a good understanding around what you have today? You know, is there much growth going on and what you have? And you know what? I'll be down. >> We've been actually very surprising. That resource is that we get on our tier of VWs. It's like we're not even scratching the surface. So we keep looking at, you know, we need toe. Everyone says, Oh, you need to worry about scaling. You need to worry about this and that way Haven't even touched what we have s so we were right. Now our focus is more on just making sure things run and then start scaling us as we run into that issue. >> All right, Candy. Last thing. What will What brings you to this event? So obviously it's it's been doing more than virtual ization and canoeing cloud for about five years now. You know what? What? What? What brings you to this show? >> The community is fantastic. So I have been working with in a previous life I worked with somewhere, which is how I got it in tow. Vey tug. And the community around Socialization is just incredible, Very supportive. So it's like I try and give back, so come back. And >> so so just going to follow up on that. I know virtualization community, you know, very welcoming. And the like do you find in the cloud world similar types of communities? >> Yeah, so it's I've actually just started up, eh? Of'em will use a group and then a WS user group on both of those communities have been fantastic so far. I walk in also with PHP, as I said, and that's an entirely different community. I'm not saying it's not friendly, but it's a different style. >> Yeah, absolutely. You find different cultures and these various ecosystems. And yeah, it's very different. You know, the early VV number one, you've had people. It's like, Oh, I'm used to being about have to do a little bit of, you know, building on top of it. A Ws is definitely builders, you know, and what they're doing. And you know on that. So can we really appreciate you joining? Sharing your experiences on what's happened the cloud and the community's involved in? Yeah. Thanks for running user groups. Those air always super helpful, and it's usually done out of the passion and doing it. It's It's not like that. That's your day job, you know? All right. Candy Bates. Thanks so much for joining. Uh, I'm still Minutemen, and thanks so much >> for watching the cue.

>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, if the queue covering Vita Winter warmer, twenty nineteen brought to you by Silicon Angle media. >> Hi, I'm stew Minutemen. And this is the Cube Worldwide Leader and live tech coverage. >> We're on the ground here at the V Tug winter warmer, and it is twenty nineteen. It's actually, the thirteenth year of this event was one of the original, if not the original Veum, where user groups covers virtual ization, cloud computing and even Mohr, always great to be able to get back to the community, get some good interviews and no better person helped me start with my first interview at a show of the year. But good friend of the program, Keith Towns and he is the CTO advisor. And he's also now a slew front architect with the M. Where Keith. Thanks for joining >> us. Thanks for having me on the cute. >> Yeah. So, Keith, I mean, you were host of our program for a number of years. You're now, you know, back working on the vendor side. But you know, you know this community. You know what I always say in my career, There, certain communities, an ecosystem where there's just love to be a part of it. And the virtual ization group. You know, I've been part of it for a long time. You know, Veum, wear and beyond, though, you know people that you know, they get excited, They geek out on the technology and they love to share. And that's why we come to events like this. >> Yeah, it is amazing. Just, you know, the every every show is getting smaller, but maybe with the session of a Ws re event, but I don't think the intensity has shrunk at all. You get around friends, you know, we're just at a desk and one of the ten days, actually, how did I get a job doing X? And the community was like, Oh, you just talk to the people at this table. So it is. It is a great, great commute. >> Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic you talk about. You know, we've seen the huge growth in Meetups in user groups and regional shows. You know, vm Where does Veum World but the VM world being where forums around the globe. I'm sure you probably have to go for a few of those they've been doing well. I'm right back in my emcee Daisy M. C. Did a number of those. So we see you. Amazon Reinvent is growing, but oh, my God, they're regional shows are ridiculous. I I've said some of those regional shows either different communities or different localities can actually be even better than some of the big shows on. You know, we love Keith. We're happy to welcome you here to the home of the NFC Championship. New England Patriots ur >> First off, Congratulations. The wait went a little better for you to bare sand and say, You know what? Tom Brady won't play forever, so enjoy it. This is amazing backdrop through him. Little finish that you've not involved. Invited me to a veto before now. >> Oh. Oh, I'm sorry, Keith. It's It's a community thing that absolutely got to come. Absolutely. I've had friends. Most of them. It is local. I'm talking to users from Maine and Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut and like so you gave a keynote this morning and you didn't True fashion. You did a block post about reality check leading in, and I thought it was a great way for us to start is, You know, there's so much change in the industry, uh, those of us that are technologies that you know, we're super excited because there's so much new stuff. It's not like Oh, jeez, you know, twenty nineteen is probably going to be just like twenty eighteen. It's like, Oh, my gosh, what did I do in twenty eighteen? What do I have to change? How do I keep up? How do I manage it? I would love to get your viewpoint. You know what's going on with Keith? And you're talking about a lot of users, so you know how help share, You know, what is the reality? Check that everybody's going >> to know. We're talking about a pre recording in the banter. Just, you know, whether it's, you know, Vienna where we're hip Theo and all the stuff that Casey Kelsey Hightower is going out with Cooper Netease. Then as you spent spent out to serve earless, uh, infrastructures Cole scripting it centre. There's much to learn that you're a bit overwhelmed and we're seeing this out. You know, as I'm talking to executive CTO CEOs, VP of infrastructure, they're filling the same kind of excitement at the same time. Overwhelmed this Like what? What's what's really You know, we had the big cloud movements over a few years ago where I think we're at the height cycle where organizations are starting to understand that. You know, Cloud isn't the destination is part of a strategy, and everyone seems to be in the throes of figuring out what that means for us. We're just on the crowd chat, talking about multi Cloud and the drivers around. Multi Cloud. You guys did a great job hosting that cloud shit chat, nothing. We saw the gambit off where people are. You know, uh, there's not really a business rationality people who are really in the throes of trying to figure it out. >> Yeah, actually, I love to comment friend of ours that we've had on the program before, Bobby Allen from Cloud General said when he's working with companies, if they ask for a three year strategy plan, he said, I will not do it unless we guarantee that we will go revisit it every six months because I looked back. You know, Clay Christensen, you no way talks about strategy is strategy is a point in time thing, not something that you write it in stone. I've been saying for a couple of years cloud strategies that companies today is, they wrote it in ink and the ink still drying. And, you know, you're probably going to need toe, you know, go through it and change it because it is changing fast and therefore, you know, huge. Out I started Deploy something. Oh, wait, what about the next thing? Or there's some new practice or something to do it. So it is challenging because I need to run my business. Today. I got to set my budget for the year, usually, um and it's I need to be agile. But, you know, I can't constantly be tearing everything up and you're not going to be throwing it out or re training and skills. I mean, there's so many challenges. >> So still, you might remember when when I was on the other side of the the table. I, uh it was meant at somewhat of a D that Veum where moves at the speed of the aisle, and it was picked up as Maury compliment. But >> it was a >> big I'll be honest that it was a dig. And what I've learned the past few months is that Veum, where has to move at the speed of the CIA, is no longer and It's not just being wherever the community has and the CIA always faced with that we could do a few years ago. A cloud strategy, and that thing can sit on the desk for a year, and it would still be valid. But the bobbies point, if you're going to do a strategy and three year strategy, got to revisit that every six months and this agility that were not accustomed to previously in the industry, we have to now become super agile and figure out how do we keep the lights on and innovate at the pace That business, these witches? Pretty good chance. >> Yeah, it's attorney were beginning the year I made a comment personally said, You know, I'm not a big believer in, you know, setting. You know, Resolutions. Mohr. You know, let's set goals Your runner, I do some biking and it's like, Okay, you know, I've got a big race I want to do this year. I'm gonna work myself, you know, towards that goal and raise the money. You've got a certain target and something that you could do over the year. It's and there's no way that you do that, cos you know they've got goals that they need to accomplish and business. And it's great to say, Oh, well, we need to be more efficient. We need to do some down something different. But, you know, reality is, you know, it's not just digital transformation of modernizing. It was, you know. Oh, okay. Do I need to transform my backup? You know, data protection, you know, huge activity going on in the marketplace right now, you know? So, what >> is sixty million noon investment in one >> week? Exactly. You know, the wave of hyper convergence is one that really changed a lot of architectures and had people change. You know, we've talked cloud computing. They're what are some of the, You know, some of the big, you know, movements that you see, you know, will you? Tracking the industry? It was kind of the the intel refunds for a cycle, and, you know, Oh, well, it's the next version of Microsoft or, you know, Veum, where operating system would be one of those big, you know, kind of ticked. Talks of what? What are some of the big commonalities that you're seeing Al? So they're actually moving people to >> new things without a doubt. There is one conversation that customers cannot get the enough of. And I had Ah, on my little vlog. I had game being from Vienna, where V P off the Storch and Business availability unit and I challenged her on the via Where? Vision around this. But customers cannot get enough of having a conversation around data. What they What do they do with data? And how does a move data? How did they get compute closest to data? How did we get data they're closest to? They're re sources. We talked about it on the multi cloud conversation, but by far conversations are around. Howto they extract value from data had really protect data, and howto they make sure their compliant with the data is something that that's driving a lot of innovation and a lot of conversation. A lot of interest. >> Yeah, Keith, it's a great one. When I look at you know, our research team, that wicked bond data is that the center of everything. In many ways, the failings of big data was talking about, You know, the challenges. I have infrastructure. No, the growth and the variety and blah, blah, blah and everything that's not what important to the business they don't care about, You know, it's like, Oh, well, there's a storage problem in a network problem. It's the business says there's data, you know? Do I protect my bird business to make sure that I'm not a risk? You know, all the things like DDP are coming And can I livered value? Do I Can I get new lines of business? Can I generate revenue out of that? And I've seen early signs that we've learned this whole, You know, a I m l movement. You know, data, Really? At the center. All right, we've seen enough storage. We went from talking about storing data to about, you know, that data ecosystem, Andi, even computing and I ot data where data needs to be, how I work it. Absolutely a center. So, yeah, it's great to hear that. Customers are identifying that. We've been doing like, chief data officer events for many years. You know, where does data live? Is that a CEO Thing? Is that a different part of the business? I don't know if you've got anything you're seeing from, you know, your customers is Tau, >> who owns the Data initiative, So it's really interesting. I had a conversation with a major bank, and it was a one on one with the CDO and what I thought was the most tricky part of the conversation is that here, Not only does he report directly into the CIA, which you know is to be expected, but he meets regularly with the board of directors. So data were seen. I've seen these seedy old rolls being popped up, and it's not just about the technology as you mentioned. It's about the whole approach about this asset that we have. It's so critical that worth creating a sea level position that today might reporting to the CEO but is most definitely accountable to the border director. >> Well, yeah, Keith, it's that the trend we've been watching for a while, as it used to be, it was a cost center. And, you know, it's kind of, you know, that's what it was considered today. If it isn't in, you know, direct relationship, working with the business, the business will go find somebody else to do it. The whole stealthy movement. You know, I can go find an answer for what I'm doing. I think about project I've worked on in my career and been like, I wish it was easy. You know, fifteen years ago, it was today to do those. But we see security's a board level discussion data as a board level discussion is excellent. And all of those things that traditionally you would think that own them. Having awareness and visibility and information communication flow between the board in the C suite is great progress. You >> know, it's interesting. I was a big proponent of this prior to coming on The vendor side is that vendors have to start having conversations outside of it. So traditional infrastructure of injustice, his goal. Hurry, right saw and where the whole the Dale emcee Dale Technologies they have to skill up and have conversations with CIA moles. Seo's CEO Ole's H R directors because the these buying centers now have power to go out and buy solutions. You know, talked about in my no keynote this morning. You know how many people have worked day? How many people have salesforce applications? They had nothing to do when I had no nothing to do with the procurement of off these solutions. The ball is moving outside of just traditional for court technology is starting to get to the point where regular users can consume business users can consume these massive, massive solutions based on technology and just happens to be a label. The technology, whether sales Force worked in >> Sochi, thought on this this whole point there want to ask you, In my career, there's often been groups inside a business that didn't get along. And we, you know, built silos. You know, the storage in the network team don't get along cloud and traditional I t You know what we're fighting? You know who owns it? Turf wars Managing that, You know, have we built silos in multi cloud today? Is everybody holding hands and, you know, pointing the business in the same direction, you could kind of give us the good the bad. So what? We need to work on going forward. >> I think the good is that you know that the umbrella of infrastructure starting to work as a single. Uh, you So you have storage, compu networking, even configuration man groups that were kind of confrontational before and territorial. Those groups are starting. Tio. Come on. Their one senior manager or one senior executive looking at? How do you provide services as a group and providing those services? I think we're we're starting to see Silos is actually the developer versus the infrastructure group is developers just wantto FBI, too. A set of services. They want infrastructure to get away. Developers themselves. Haven't you know, kind of katende enough of the scars from heaven have to do operations, So there's a different view off the world. And, uh, today I think developers haven't yet getting the budget power off operations. But the business wants solutions, and they're going out there competing with traditional Teo get the dollars to run the services in the cloud or or wherever, however they consumed them, whether it's, you know, just saw Chick fil a's deploying two thousand ten points to run six thousand containers at the edge. Is that something that's run by tears? That something wrong? Run by developers? I don't know. Check feeling well enough to know about. This is what we're seeing in >> industry. Yeah. All right. Well, keep towns. And always a pleasure to catch up with you. Thanks so much for joining us. Be sure to check him out see Teo advisor on Twitter, check out his blogged. And of course, thank you so much for watching. We'll be back. Uh, lots more coverage here at V tug. Winter warmer, twenty nineteen. Thanks for watching.

from Gillette Stadium in Foxborough Massachusetts it's the cube covering Vita winter warmer 2019 brought to you by silicon angle media hi I'm Stu minimun and this is the cube at V tug winter warmer 2019 at Gillette Stadium home of the New England Patriots the AFC Championship team going to the Super Bowl third year in a row yet again Randall right yeah paying it's my Los Angeles Rams oh so happy to welcome to the program Randall hunt who's a software engineer with AWS did a keynote this morning I believe it was a hundred AWS features in 50 minutes and felt like you we added a couple more than 100 and went a little over 50 minutes but I think we probably hit 57 minutes that was what the slide counter said but yeah I added a couple of the updates since reinvent you know reinvent is not the end of our innovation we continued releasing new stuff after that all right so our program we're not going to be showing JavaScript we're gonna take a deep breath and slow down a little bit because you know our audience absolutely knows Amazon I tell you this show remember like four years ago first time AWS presented me at Microsoft and AWS here and people heard cloud 101 and I was like come on I could have given this presentation and they were walking around like oh my god I just you know found out that you know who you know horseless carriages and I can do that do them and things like this so you know cloud we've been there for a decade but we're still I believe you know day zero day one is what Amazon always likes this is day one it's always day one so there's no way we can shove the entire reinventing keynote into this discussion so you know want to start first Tulsa rent a little bit about yourself your role what you work on and what customers you talk to sure so I studied physics and then I found out physicists don't really make any money so I became a software engineer and I worked at NASA I worked at SpaceX and worked with this company called MongoDB back then it was called Tianjin and then I am an Amazon I was my second time around in Amazon I'm a software engineer there but I'm also a Technical Evangelist and what that means is I get to travel around the world and make make all of the demos and chat with all of our customers and kind of solicit feedback from them and then kind of try to act as the voice of the customer for the service teams whenever I can get them to listen yeah so probably not going to go into open source versus software licensing of things with you because we want to make sure that we can publish I tell you space is one of those things I love it when I've interviewed people that have been in space I've talked to lots of companies that have our code in space Amazon you have I loved you know robotics and space are hard and we make it easy and I kind of laugh cuz I was an engineer as an undergrad I mean I studied a little bit of you know what it takes to break gravity and understand I always love watching you know all the shows about space and track SpaceX would you work for and things like that give me a break you haven't made space easy well I think space as a whole is getting easier this industry is becoming more approachable one of the things that we launched to reinvent this year was a ground station and this is something where if you have an S band or UHF you know satellite and leo which is low Earth orbit or mio which is medium Earth orbit you can basically down stream that data to one of these ground stations which is you know essentially attach to a region you know in this case us East 2 which is in a like Ohio area and you can go and say hey just stream this data into s3 for me or you know let me access this from my V PC which is pretty gnarly if you think about it you know you have a you have an IP address which is a satellite in space yeah I love I worked on replication technology 15 years ago and it was like okay can the application take the ping off the satellite or you know how do we do this so look we're leveraging satellites a little bit more I understand it's a great tagline to make those useful and more readily just you know it's amazing you think about when you think about my availability zones and regions it's now you know that things aren't just on the Terra Firma well I'm looking forward to the first availability zone on the on the moon or on Mars that that'll be you know when we have utopia planitia 1a that'll be the really cool AZ alright we heard the first blue origins working to Mars no well the latency you know if you have 300,000 and fit three hundred fifty thousand kilometers on average between the Earth and the moon so you know you can go around the earth it would speed of light 7.5 times every second to go to the moon is a fool I hang it's like six seven seconds or so so the latency requirements become a little bit harder there I roll more my wrong pin I have I have the Grace Hopper nanosecond which is the wit which is you know curled up and if you follow the white thing it's how long light would take to travel that and it does it in two nanoseconds so you got me I'm a physics lover and love space as does a lot of our audience so bring it down to the thing one of the things that amazon has done really well is I don't need to be a physics geek to be able to use this technology we're having arguments as to you know if I'm starting out or if I want to restart my career today do I go code or heck you know let me just use lambda and all these wonderful things that Amazon have and I might not even need to know traditional coding I mean when I learned programming you know it was you learned logic and wrote lines of code and then when you went to coding it's pulling pieces and modifying things and in the future it's it seems like serverless goes even further along that spectrum I definitely think there's opportunities for folks who have just you know I don't want to say modest coding abilities but people who were kind of you know industry adjacent scientists you know data scientists folks like that who may not necessarily be software engineers or have the they couldn't recite in Big O notation for mergesort and things like that from scratch you know but they know how to write basic code there's a lot of opportunity now for those developers and I'll call them developers to go and write a lambda function and just have it accomplishing a large portion of their business logic for their whole company I think the you know you have a spectrum of compute options you have you know ec2 on the one side and then you have containers and then as you move towards service you get this this you know spectrum between Fargate and lambda and lambda being the the chief level of abstraction but I I think in a couple cases you can you know even go further than that with things like amplify which is a service that well it's an open source project that we launched and it's also a service that we launched and it takes together a bunch of different AWS services things like app sank and kognito and lambda and it merges them all together with one CLI call you can go and say hey spin up a static site for me like a Hugo static site or something and it'll build the code pipeline build all that stuff for you without you having to you know worry about all the stuff and if developers are starting new today you know I remember when I started I really had to go deep on some of the networking stuff you know I had to learn all these different routers and like how to program them and these like the industry router so you know the million dollar ones and having to rack and stack this stuff and the knowledge is not really needed to operate of large-scale enterprise you know if you if you know a Ralph's table and you you you know V pcs you know you can run you know a multi-billion dollar company if you want yeah it's been interesting to watch too and you know I think the last five years the proliferation of services in AWS got to a point where is like oh my gosh if I wanted to kind of configure a server for my datacenter or configure an equivalent something that I wanted at AWS there was more choices in the public cloud than there was there and people like oh my gosh how do I learn it how do I do this but what we start to see is it's more don't need to do that because what do I want to do if there's an application that I can run where services that will help make it easier for me to do that because the whole it's not let me replicate what I was doing here and do it there but I have to kind of start with a clean sheet of paper and say okay well what what's the goal what data do I need what applications do I need to build and start there I'm curious what you see and how do you help companies through that so that this is a really common scenario so I this is a kind of key point here is enterprises and companies have existed since before the cloud was really around so why do we keep seeing so much uptick why do we keep seeing so many customers moving into the cloud and how do we make it easier for customers to get into the cloud with their existing workloads so along that same spectrum if you have greenfield projects if I were running my own company and I were doing everything I would absolutely start in the cloud and I would build everything as kind of cloud native and if you want to migrate these existing workloads that's part of the one of the things that we launched this year in partnership with VMware is VMware kind of interface for AWS so you can use your native vCenter and vSphere kind of control plane to access EBS to access route 53 and ec2 and all the other kind of underlying stuff that you are interested in run it you can even do RDS on VMware in my environment so that line is definitely blurring between my stuff and my stuff somewhere else and when people are talking about migrating workloads right you know you can take the lowest hanging fruit the most orthogonal piece of your infrastructure and you can say hey let me take this piece as an experimental proof of concept workload and what kind of lift and shift it into the cloud and then let me build the accoutrement the glue and all the other stuff that kind of is associated with that workload cloud native and you'll get additional agility your you know 1:1 ops person can manage this whole suite of things across 19 20 regions of AWS and you know there's kind of global availability and all this kind of good stuff that typically comes with the cloud and in addition to that as you keep moving more and more workloads over it's not like it's a static thing you know you can evolve you can adjust the application you can add new features and you can build new stuff as your move these applications over to the cloud yeah and it's interesting because just the dynamics are changing so much so there's been there's still so much movement to the cloud and then oh well some people I'm pulling stuff back and then you see you have a WS outposts so later 2019 we expect to Amazon to have you know footprint in people's environments and then you know Jeff just to make things even more complicated well the whole edge computing IOT and the like which you know everything from snowball and these pieces so the answer is it gets even more complicated but you know your your AWS I know is trying to help simplify this for use right the board I think I can say anything at all about AWS it's that if a customer is asking us to build something we are gonna do our best to make that customer happy we take customer feedback so incredibly seriously in all of our meetings all of our service team meetings you know we that voice of the customer is very strong and so if people are saying hey I want a AWS in my own datacenter you know that's kind of the genesis of outpost and it's this idea that well we have this control plane we have this hardware let's figure out how we can get it to more customers and customers are saying hey I want into my data center I want to just be able to plug in some fiber and plug in some power and I want it to work and that's the idea right we're gonna when I think of every company that I've watched there's usually something that people will gripe about and what I've been very impressed with Amazon Amazon absolutely listens and moves pretty fast to be able to address things and if you see you know if I'm a competitor of Amazon I'm like oh well you know this is the way that we get in there you know where we think we have an advantage chances are that Amazon is addressing it looking to you know move past it and you know absolutely the Amazon of 2019 is sure not the Amazon of 2018 or you know when you thought about it you know 2015 and it's big challenge for people as to because usually I think of something and you never get a second chance to make a first impression but it changes so much right everything changes that you know I need to revisit it it's like oh well this is the way I do things well Amazon has five different ways you can do that now um you know which one fits you best and I think that's important is different applications gonna have different characteristics that you want to be able to pull in and run in different ways yeah you know honestly I'm a huge fan of service I I think service is where a ton of different workloads are going to move into the future and I just see more and more companies migrating their existing you know everything from elastic Beanstalk applications so like vdq you know VMware images into the service environment and I like seeing that kind of uptick and someone recently I I can't remember who it was someone sent me a screenshot of their console with their ec2 instances in 2010 and maybe it was part of this 10-year challenge thing on Twitter where it's 2009 versus 2019 but they sent me you know they're in one large and the screenshot of the console from back then and they sent me a screenshot of 2019 and Wow things really have changed and you don't really notice it as much when you're using it every day but I can imagine you know their their Ops teams where they haven't logged into the console in three years because you know everything is done kind of in an automated fashion they set up their auto scaling group you know three years ago and then the only time they ever log in is to update to new instance types or something for the cost savings and I get messages on Twitter sometimes from people who are like whoa console got an update this is so cool and then sometimes we we get messages from people where you know we changed the EBS volume snapshotting things we had somebody who had it was like 130,000 EBS snapshots or something and they were like hey you removed my ability for me to select multiple snapshots it what it's like well you have a hundred and thirty thousand so we went in into the UI and we added a little icon that works better for large groups of snapshots you know if there's a customer pain point we will do everything we can to address it all right Randall Hunt really appreciate you sharing with us your experience what's going on with customers and absolutely that 10-year challenge we know things change fast we used to measure in decades I say now it's usually more like you know 18 to 24 months before between everything AWS in 2029 it's gonna be crazy and I can't I can't imagine what its gonna look like then all right well the cube we started broadcasting from in 2010 we appreciate you staying with us through 2019 check out the cube net for all of our programming I'm Stu minimun and thanks so much for watching the key

>> Announcer: From Gillette Stadium, in Foxborough, Massachusets, it's theCUBE. Covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2018 presented by siliconANGLE. >> I'm Stu Miniman, and this is siliconANGLE Media's production of theCUBE at the VTUG Winter Warmer 2018. It's the 12th year of the event, the fifth year we've actually had theCUBE here. Dave Vellante, my boss, was here the first year. Every other year, I've been kind of manning it solo. Great community here, I talked to a lot of users and really looking at, you know, some of the transitions that are happening in the industry. This event is all about virtualization and Cloud, and to help me put an exclamation point on everything we've been looking at here, and what's happening in the industry, happen to welcome back to the program Rob Strechay who is the SVP of product at Zerto, someone I've known for longer than I even realize, and you know, been on the program many times, But first time since you've been at Zerto. >> Yeah, first time since I was at Hewlett-Packer Enterprise. So, I'm glad to join you guys here, and great event, glad to be able to get down here today. >> You know, Zerto, company we've known for many years. I happen to know one of the earliest investors in the company, and you know, when I look at two of the biggest industry shows, when you talk about Virtualization and Cloud, it's VMworld and it's Amazon's Reinvent show. >> Right. And, I remember like the first or second year we did Amazon Reinvent, the Zerto booth was like right behind us, and so your company that really spans that gammon, helping customers with that, so I want to get your viewpoint, you talked about why people come here, but what are you hearing from the users? What are some of the big challenges they're facing, and how are they looking to manage some of those transitions? >> Yeah, I think it's really critical to have events like this that are, you know, a lot of different vendors that are here because I think when we see a number of companies going out and looking, and I was with a customer down in New York City yesterday, the software for FinTac. And what they were looking at is, how do we leverage multi-cloud? It becomes very important. They're looking at, it's not going to just be Amazon, it's not just going to be Azure, it's not going to be VMC on AWUS, they're looking at how they're going to have a multi-cloud strategy. And I think that when, what we're hearing from customers is there's a lot of confusion in the market, and I think that's why this program and others are really great at cutting through what is real, what's not real, how do you look for the ability to have that data mobility between clouds but with security. Especially today's like Privacy Day, you know, on the 25th, so, you know, you start to look at it and go, hey, security's a big thing, and a big theme from what people were saying here today too. >> Yeah, and one of the user interviews I really loved today talked about one of the biggest challenges he saw, he said, gosh, security, think about the Intel discussion there, what's that going to mean? And he actually said, performance issue actually doesn't fit, isn't a big deal for him from an architectural standpoint. Security? Oh my gosh, he's in healthcare. (laughs) If he's in violation, or if patient information gets out there, you know, this is the kind of things that put companies out of business. >> Absolutely, yeah, and I think that's what we're hearing. I mean, especially yesterday, it was okay, how do you layer encryption on top of your solution? How do you utilize the different types of secure transfers? How do you make sure the data is secure? There's a lot about that resiliency of the data, and making sure you can get it back, and it's immutable for that matter. >> Yeah, one of the things when we talk to customers, it's funny, in the industry we're always arguing as to what's the right terminology? It's like, I still get to have a company that said they had a convergence problem that they were trying to fix, and also it's like, hyper-cloud, multi-cloud, no, they have a Cloud strategy. And yes, they're using sass, yes, they're using public Cloud, and yes, almost everybody's got something in their data center. How do we get our arms around it? How do I have the services that work with me wherever I am, whether that's data protection, security, replications. So where's Zetro fit in that discussion, and how are customers doing at getting their arms around these challenges? >> So I think a lot of when I'm out talking to the CIO's and the VP's of infrastructure and having those conversations, a lot of what we help them understand is here's where you need to go, and here's the choices you need to make. Are you going to use Azure? Do you have an EA with Microsoft? Because you've probably been paying for Azure credits that you're not using, so start there. It's simple, it cost you nothing extra. Get your feet wet, dip your feet in there. We see a lot of customers of ours that use DR's as a service as the first stepping stone to getting into the Cloud. It's a nice, easy way in, they can get their feet wet, they can test out the performance, the security, they can do user acceptance testing without actually having to go there. They can also get a realistic view of the cost. I think that was talked about earlier today too. With some of the Amazon stuff is that really, you have to understand the cost. It's not the same as owning it on Prime. But then again you're not having the on Prime anymore, so if you can get away with that, when we see people taking strategies, a lot of it is data center consolidation, but maybe now I'm down from six data centers to two. And I still need to have that third copy. Where do I put that third copy? Do I put it at another data center? Do I go to a manage service provider, cloud service provider, or do I go to the public cloud? So, what we try to do is offer them a platform, the Zerto platform, that can actually take them to all those different places. We can take them there and bring them back. Yes, people use use for DR, but really that data mobility and the data flexibility really helps them stay away from the vendor lock-in as well. >> What are you hearing from customers when they talk about vendor lock in? There's very few companies out there that do a good job at being, it's like, oh, the VM ware, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, we can actually help you across the board there. >> Rob: Yeah. >> How much is lock-in a concern, and how do you as a software company stay agnostic and still fit into all of those environments? >> Yeah, the staying agnostic is really tough because some people are nicer than others, you know, to work with, and you know you try to not pick your favorites, but a the same time, we let our customers drive us to where they are going. I think that when we started to look at the bigger picture, people start out, you know, Amazon's the 800 pound gorilla in the space, everyone tries Amazon first. Maybe they didn't like or have the experience they thought they would, it was a lot more work than they thought it was going to be, so they start to look at other options. So when we started out, in 2014 we've been shipping our to Amazon, DR to Amazon part of our platform. Now, over the last year, we've added in the go-to and go-back from Azure, and we'll soon release the next iteration of that next month that will take even further among and across those different platforms. And I think to your point, it's a how can we give our customers choice? If you want to use a manage service provider, such as an IBM where they're based on Cloud foundation from VMWare, you can use that. If you want to then go from there to Amazon, our product will actually enable you to do that. And I think that's what we can do is look at our customers, and they've, luckily enough, driven us to this heterogeneous cloud environment. >> I want to get your comment on something. When people talk about compute moving to a more utility model, but it's not the way utility was where if I'm getting energy, as a consumer, from one place or another, I don't care whether it's wind, solar, or coal, nuclear, because I'm just getting it. When I look at Cloud computing, even infrastructure's a service. There's things that need to happen. When I talk to most software companies, it's yes, I'm going to support across the board, but there's special integration. There's things that I can do to make Amazon better, Azure better, Google better, and it's all a little bit different, and even with things like cooper netties, it's not homonogizing IT. The big problem we see out there is IT is a heterogeneous mess. There's never killing anything, it's all add this and add this, and now we've got a bad episode of Hoarders. >> Yes. (laughing) >> Is what we got, so I'm curious from a customer standpoint and from a product standpoint, maybe you know you could talk a little bit about that. >> I think our customers have been very clear to us that's simplicity, and I think that's what you're getting at is that simplicity is job one for us. If we're not being simple about what we do, and we're not really trying to make it all that one platform, we're not doing our job. We're doing a disservice our customers. So our Azure product looks identical to our AWS looks identical to our IBM looks identical to one of my other cloud service provider's products. Looks the same as your on Prime VMWare to VMWare or VMWare to HyperV for that matter. I think that part of it is that we've taken an approach that, exactly that. We got to be heterogeneous, but we've got to make it all look the same and be the same user experience. So, I think what we as an industry can do better is really focusing on user experience and single platform to help across these because like you said, we have a customer, he uses both AWS and Azure. And he was on of our first customers on AWS and one of our first customers using our Azure product. He said that certain Linux systems actually run better on Azure than they did on Amazon, and that surprised him. But he was able to go up and test them out, put them up there, felt them over, and do them in a test bubble, and see how well they ran, and I think to your exact point it's that was a surprise to him, and I think it's that your mileage will vary with the different clouds, and being able to go there and test on them is very important 'cause you're going to find that, like he did, he's a smaller company, it's a refabrics manufacturer, TenCate, they really focused on having that multicloud strategy because for them, they didn't want to have all their eggs in one basket either, but they found that certain applications ran better on Azure, certain ran better on AWS, so they're going to have that multicloud strategy. >> Alright, Rob, help bring us home. What brings Zerto to an event like this, kind of user groups in general, to VTUG specifically? >> Yeah, so the VTUG, we've been a long term supporter of this, I think since pretty much the founding of the founding of the company, so one of the reasons is a lot of out customers come to... So, we want to support them getting more knowledge out there, obviously we get to reach more customers and more potential customers, but at the same time, it's about the community and building that community. We look for more, in fact, we're starting to do even local user groups of our own. We've seen that the user groups have fallen off, and in particular around disaster recovery, in the IT resiliency, there's really no place to go. You had ISACA, you had different organizations for certifications, but really, that community where I can go and understand what are my peers doing, and get that group learning is so important, and that's why we've been a long term supporter of this. >> Alright, well Rob Strechay, really appreciate you helping me wrap up, put an exclamation point on what's going on here at the show as well as in the industry are all the major changes happening, virtualization and Cloud. Make sure to check out TheCUBE.net for all of our coverage. We have a huge line up of 2018 events. Feel free to reach out to the team. As always, I'm really to get on Twitter, I'm just @stu, @-S-T-U, and thank you so much of watching, I'm Stu Miniman, and you've been watching theCUBE. (techno music)

(electronic music) >> Narrator: From Gillette stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2018 presented by SiliconANGLE. >> I'm Stu Miniman, and we're at the VTUG Winter Warmer 2018. Always love at these user conferences, and we get to talk to a lot of the users, and we've had a bunch. Next user we have on the program is Erik Kurlanska, who's a systems engineer at MMC. Thanks so much for joining us, Erik. >> Thanks. >> Alright, tell us a little bit about your background. You're coming down here from Maine. The people that run this event are also from Maine. >> Yeah, I mean, it's a nice event. I've been for the past four years, and I learn something new every year. It's a good time. It's a good networking moment for a bunch of people, and there's always something new on the horizon. That's what I like. >> So you're a systems engineer. >> Tell us a little bit about what you do in your role, the industry you're in, things like that. >> Yeah, I'm in the healthcare industry in Maine and like you said, what I do is basically one of the lead virtualization people in my group and we're just basically every day working on VMware and new products coming in, new applications, building them up and testing and that kind of great stuff. >> Can you give us just thumbnail sketches to kind of location, number of servers, number of people on your team? >> Erik: Sure, yeah. >> How do you manage it as to number of VMs or however? >> On our team right now there's three of us and that's just the virtualization team. We have a couple thousand VMs, probably 110 servers, Blades, all Cisco Blades nowadays. And that's the extent of what we have, and for storage we have many, many petabytes of storage. >> Okay, tell me. You're in healthcare. You've got virtualization. The good thing is, there's nothing changing in your environment, right? >> (laughs) Right. >> There's not new requirements from the business. I'm sure they're throwing tons of money at you, and the government stays completely out of your way. So what are some of the challenges you're facing? >> Exactly. The challenges there are, again, it's money. What can you do for such a small amount of money? Again, we're trying to find very good tools to monitor our everything, networking, servers, virtualization. That's one piece that we've had trouble in the past with a good tool to monitor everything across the board. We're just having a hard time trying to find that, to be honest, so it's a struggle. >> Yeah, tell me what tools have you worked through and what's the gap? I always love to hear, it's like, "Okay, hey vendors. "You're listening. Here's a user that saying you are failing "To meet the requirements that they have." So come on, give them product requirements. >> We've tried a few big ones, and we want a monitor. So for instance, from VMware, we've just stood up vRealize, We have vRealize Business, vRealize Operations, Log Insight, bringing all that in now and personally I think some of that should have been just part of the product to start. So it is what it is. But that's a whole subset of tools that we need just to manage our virtualization environment. We also have another tool called Turbonomic. We've used that for years, and it's done pretty well for us. But again on the networking side, that's a whole different department. So those guys have their own separate tools. They use WhatsUp Gold. They've had challenges with that, and all along the way, every different vendor, like we have Epic for one of our major EMRs, and they have their own sets of monitoring tools for just Epic, so it's tough to get one straight answer from one company. We also have another product called ControlUp. I don't know if you're familiar with that one. For all of them to give us one concise answer, it's nearly impossible. >> Yeah, unfortunately we have this joke that single pane of glass is spelled P-A-I-N. >> Exactly. >> Because that is what IT feels when they're trying to do this these days. If you were to have the magic wand out there, what are you looking for? Obviously it needs to be free and support everything, but what are some of the big gaps that you see? >> Part of it is, integration with the management interface tools. We have Cisco's UCS Manager. That's one interface. You have to go to manage this. You can't get there from here kind of thing. I'm from Maine, so. (Stu chuckles) You can't manage your Cisco stuff right from VMware, and then you have ControlUp that you need to go to another pane. There's just 10 panes of glass. You can spend all day looking at 10 different things and get eight to ten different answers. >> I thought vCenter should be at the center of a lot of things there. Don't most of the vendors kind of integrate well? I would think especially all the VMware products would have a similar look and feel now. >> They should. They should. >> They're just not meeting up to what they need to. >> I think they're trying with like Lifecycle Manager for instance from VMware. They're trying to get there, but it's not there yet. It really isn't. If you start greenfield, I would say, and you start with Lifecycle Manager, and you bring in all those products in one fell swoop, it'll probably work great, but for us, that hasn't been the case. >> Okay. Talk about what brings you to an event here. What have you seen so far? What interests you in the keynotes? When are you going to go to the breakouts? I'm sure the hallway conversations are of use. >> Sure. The hallway conversations are one of the big things for us because you meet people in the industry, a lot of them are doing the same thing, using the same tools, having the same problems, and it's great to talk about them and come up with solutions between ourselves and converse in that fashion. It's a great experience to come to these. You learn a lot from a lot of people. >> Any specific technologies or areas that you're specifically interested in digging into? >> So Hyper-Converged, we're trying to get into that a little bit more, and there's three or four major players, and we're evaluating all of them now. I've spoken to other people at other hospitals locally that have some Hyper-Converged, and they're happy with one product versus another, so I'm just trying to, pros and cons of that, see what we can. >> Let me ask, is there a certain business challenge just to simplify overall going into Hyper-Converged? Is the economics of it, the management of it, what's kind of the business objective to look at that space? >> We have a couple smaller hospitals, and they have a lot of legacy storage, a lot of legacy servers and Blades, and again, Hyper-Converged is a good fit for them because they can just plop everything in one unit and call it good, and so we're trying to do that for a couple smaller hospitals and kind of bring them into the fold that way. >> How does cloud fit in your overall picture, or does it fit into your discussion today? Cloud, the SaaS application, everybody's using some, public cloud regulations might be hurting you. But what is the cloud scenario for you? >> Right now we have just a few apps that are cloud-based. And that's it. Not a lot in the cloud because we're healthcare so far. >> Alright, Erik, anything else from kind of the hallway conversation that you're hearing, some of the big challenges you're seeing, or what people are excited about these days? >> I think right now the big thing is the Spectre/Meltdown thing. Nobody really knows what it's going to do. UCS, we're still waiting for Cisco to come out with firmware for the Blades and kind of to go through that testing. VMware came out with some patches, they pulled them back. So it's kind of a big mess, and it worries us a bit. However, all of our Blades, everything is RAM-bound basically for us. We even have most of our Blades have 768 gigs of RAM, but CPUs at 20%. The memory's 90% used, so that's what it is. >> So just if I hear you right, if all of a sudden they said, "Hey, you're going to get 30% less "performance there," you'd be like, "Yawn. That really didn't impact us." >> Exactly. >> It's more the security gaps that you need fixed now. >> And we can't fix them because the solution isn't there. So, yeah. >> Stu: Hoo, boy. >> It's tough. It's a new challenge every day. >> (laughs) Yeah, just last thing. How do you keep up with everything that's going on? >> Well that's, again, a great question. I think it's hard. It gets harder and harder, and they want you to do more with less every day. I'm not sure how we keep up, really. Get a tool that can do everything. That just doesn't exist yet. >> Erik Kurlanska, really appreciate you sharing with your peers, which is really a main function of a user group like this. We're thrilled to be able to share this with our community. I'm Stu Miniman. You're watching theCUBE. (electronic music)

(lively techno music) >> Announcer: From Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2018, presented by SiliconANGLE. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBE's coverage of the VTUG Winter Warmer here in 2018. Happy to welcome to the program, first time guest and first time company on the program, Dilip Advani, who's the vice president of marketing at Uila. Great to see you. >> Thank you Stu. Great to be here. >> All right, so Dilip, first, tell us a little bit about your background and what brought you to Uila. >> Yeah. So again, my background has been on the analysis side and the protocol analysis side. I have been, in the past, focused on the wireless aspects of the business. I have led teams on product strategies and product marketing in my past history. What I have done is, the reason I came to Uila, is because of the rich history, from the founders who have great experience on the deep packet inspection and the protocol analysis side. And they decided to bring this to the virtualization world and that's what got me very interested in Uila. >> Okay. So Uila itself, we've worked with a number of the team. Fluke Networks? Was that where... >> This was, yeah this was from the original AirMagnet Fluke Networks team as well. So this is the team that actually built the world's first analyzer product, which was Net XRay from Cinco Networks. >> Okay, great, tell us the why of Uila, why today, what's different, what's the big problem it's helping us solve. >> Yeah, so before I talk about what Uila does, and then, what role it plays in the industry, I wanted to address one question that people frequently ask us, "What does Uila actually mean?" The joke around the office is that, because the founders like to go to Hawaii, a lot, >> Stu: (laughs) >> That's why they came up with the Hawaiian name. It actually means "lightning in the cloud" in Hawaiian. But there's a deeper meaning to that. We, actually, we are the power and the guiding light behind some of the challenges that people have with their cloud environment. So what Uila, If you step back and talk about what Uila as a company does, we are a young and dynamic company based out of the Silicon Valley, and what we do is, we do application-centric infrastructure monitoring. We pinpoint the bottlenecks that may exist on your infrastructure, and we also help users on the hybrid cloud workload migration strategy. >> Yeah, I hear "application-centric," and there's been hardware companies that sometimes use that term, and it really more infrastructure-centric, that applications sit on. So, maybe tell us a little bit about where you sit and what you look at and how much is kind of tied to the application versus the infrastructure. >> Absolutely, right. At the end of the day, everything goes back to the application, all the business service. And obviously, the business service is running on the infrastructure. So we target the IT operations team. We want to make sure that they don't end up being the fall guy, or the team to be blamed for anything and everything that goes wrong with the network. Sometimes it is the infrastructure, but at times it could be the application itself, as well. So, that is where Uila plays a role, to help in that full stack monitoring, to avoid the finger-pointing discussion that takes place between the operations team as well as the application teams, or any other teams within the organization. >> I think that's a great point. It's interesting, when the dev ops wave, some people throw out that term "no ops," it's like, operations is real important. I interviewed Solomon Hykes from Docker, and he said, "The reason we did container wasn't to get away from the operator, it was actually to create tools to help the operator, and it enables the developer and the application side, but ops is still pretty critical." >> Absolutely, absolutely. That's where, I think, everything ends. So that's been our focus, to make sure that we provide a solution for that particular team, so that they can help solve any challenges that you may have in your data center. >> Okay, need to understand where this lives, because, today, customers, especially at an event like this, there's virtualization and there's cloud, and there's a huge spectrum of what cloud means to customer. Some of them, cloud is, I'm a small company, maybe it is mostly public cloud. Everybody's doing SaaS. Most companies have some in their on-premises, whatever you want to call that, and heck, there's even the edge stuff, is becoming majorly important, but it's the, everything, whether you call it multi-cloud or hybrid cloud, how do you put that all together? There's lots of challenges there, where do you fit in this overall puzzle? >> Absolutely. In terms of the private cloud, like I mentioned, our main goal is to help you solve the performance bottleneck, whether it's on the application side or the infrastructure side, and help you solve that problem. But what trends we are seeing, is, a majority of the customers, just like the industry in general, is looking towards the hybrid cloud, or multi-cloud, or whatever you want to call that. We are seeing a lot of customers move towards that strategy, but again, they are struggling with defining that strategy. They're struggling with how you get going on this particular path of taking their applications or their business services, which, traditionally I've stated in the private data center and moving it to the public cloud as such. So that's where we've seen organizations struggle with understanding what their current scenario looks like, what their current applications look like, how they're dependent on each other. Again, documentation, obviously, as you know, is that last thing on IT people's minds. Or, if they have a document ready, it's outdated as soon as it's created. So that's where we've seen a lot of organizations struggle, with getting that visibility into what exists within their environment, as they plan about taking their applications to the hybrid cloud. >> Okay, so Dilip, I just want to make sure I understand. Things like performance management, do you look at both sides of a hybrid, both the public and the private, or is it primarily in the private? >> We look at both sides, on the private side as well as the public side. And on the private side, like I mentioned, not only do we help on the performance monitoring there, but we also help you define your migration strategy. >> Okay, when I think about all those things you were talking about, I'm surprised I haven't heard some mention of machine learning, artificial intelligence, 'cause things are growing, things are changing so fast, there's no way the administrator can do it themselves, what's the secret sauce, where's the software, where do you fit in, or do you just stay away from those buzzwords? >> No, no, no, again, I think everybody likes to use those buzzwords. >> Stu: (Laughs) >> We do the same as well. I think, when you think about artificial intelligence, or machine learning, at the end of the day, it goes back to the predictive analysis capabilities that organizations must have for their data centers, because at the end of the day, it's about being proactive, not just being reactive, to issues that could be occurring on your network. So, mining the data that's being collected on your current environment and using that, by artificial intelligence, or machine learning, to figure out what are the resources that will be needed as they expand their own capacities within their own environment and such. Or, being able to predict that they need to assign certain resources, or they're going to run into a certain issue, if they don't assign certain resources, or they don't do something, which could impact their business performance. >> Okay, Dilip, want to just step back for a second, give us a snapshot of the company. How many people, what can you share about funding, the state of the product, is it, actually GA? >> Yeah, absolutely. Like I mentioned, we are a young and dynamic company located in Silicon Valley. We are founded three or four years ago, we have a product that's shipping, we have lots of customers. In terms of funding, we have gone through Series A round of funding and such. And we have customers across different verticals. Whether it's healthcare, whether it's retail, and whether it's MSB type of customers as well. >> And you're 100 percent a software company, how do people engage? Is there like a free trial demo type thing, or how do people get started? >> Yeah. Again, we're a pure software company, so if you look at how Uila gets installed, we get installed as a guest VM, on top of the hypervisor. So this could be a Hyper-V environment, or it could be a VMware type of an environment. And then what we do is we do deep packet inspection to get the application and the network information. >> You mentioned VMware and Hyper-V, public clouds, which ones? >> Public clouds, AWS, Google cloud, so we are more agnostic on that side. >> Stu: Great. >> So we do deep packet inspection, to get those details, on the application and network side, and then we also talk to vCenter, to get all of the compute and storage statistics. So again, a pure software solution, we do have trials available, we have a 30-day trial available for our software, so in case anybody is interested, they can obviously go to our website, at Uila.com, and then request a trial. We work with the customer to install it, we train the person who's doing the trial, and then, after the trial, we even do data reviews, and show you what issues that may be existing in your network. So like a true performance assessment of your data center. >> Okay, and who's the typical administrator of this? Is this same person using vCenter admin, or doing their public cloud management? And I'm curious what dynamics you're seeing in the company, when they've got both sides of that, and how that plays? >> Yeah. So typically, we're seeing virtualization engineers, or IT architects, who are using the Uila solution. And the trend we are seeing between the private and the public cloud is that many of the people who had the responsibility on the private side, it's the same group of people who are still responsible for managing the environment on the public cloud side. So it's not only important to make sure the availability of the infrastructure continues, as you go from your private to your public cloud, but also the application and user experience continues, so that's why having the same group of people managing and monitoring is the trend that we are seeing with our customers. >> Okay. Dilip, want to give you the final word. What brings Uila to an event like this? >> Again, this is the first time we've come to VTUG, we have been doing many other community events, in other locations. Uila believes in working with the community, so that's why we've been engaged with the vExperts, as well as the community in general. And we think this is one of the premier events where the right people in the community, in terms of the technical professionals, hang out. So that's why we decided to come to the VTUG event. And I'm pretty sure I will be back for the Summer Slam as well. >> Well, Dilip Advani, really appreciate the updates, and telling our audience a little bit about Uila, it's lightning in the cloud. For some reason we haven't had the CUBE yet in Hawaii, maybe we need to re-change >> Instead of water, we'll have mai tais there. (laughing) >> Absolutely. Lots more coverage here, at the VTUG Winter Warmer 2018, I'm Stu Miniman, you're watching theCUBE. (energetic techno music)

>> Announcer: From Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, it's theCube! Covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2018, presented by Silicon Angle. >> Hi I'm Stu Miniman and this is the VTUG Winter Warmer 2018. Happy to welcome to the program a regular here at the VTUG, but no longer a local, so Chris Colotti who's currently the Field CTO at Tintri, great to see you Chris. >> You too Stu, it's been a while. >> And love the attire. >> I know, I think every time I come and do a presentation, I have a Patriots jersey on of some kind. >> Absolutely, I mean there's a few things we know you for, so you love your virtualization, you love your Patriots, and there's usually some workout thing, so are we going to get some fitness tips (mumbles)? >> Not today, actually you don't want to know what I did the other day with a buddy of mine, so you'll see me hobbling around because it was not a good leg day (laughs). >> Okay, so we'll be getting, I always like to hear, I just had a user on of what they weren't like in the industry, so you'll give us the what not to do to make sure that you can keep your fitness goals. >> Yeah, don't hook up with a buddy who has a lot of sandbags in his truck that likes to work out with them. >> So Chris, for those of our audience that haven't been to the event, and give us just a little bit about your background, what you're doing these days. >> Yeah, so I mean VTUG's, man this has been around forever, I think. >> 12 years now. >> 12 years the Harneys have been doing this, and I've been, I think I've been a part of it for a better part of the last decade or so. One being a Patriot's fan, two being a virtualization person, and where I kind of grew my career from sort of being a Sys Admin to where I am now, I just think this is one of the better events because it's all technology, right? I mean we run into people that it's not just virtualization, you got AWS now, you got people of all walks of life that comes to this and honestly, I think you can't beat the venue, right? I mean especially, how many times have we been here where they cover the windows? If the windows are covered, it's a good year. That's what we say. >> As a matter fact, this is the fifth year we've had theCube, and every year the Patriots are still in the playoffs, working towards the Super Bowl, and they're one step away again. >> I think the worst year for me, was I actually had the center stage keynote one year, and they told me while I was presenting they were actually on the field practicing, and it was all I could to not just stop talking and say I'll be right back (laughs). >> As you said, better part of a decade you've been here, you were working for VMWare, when this was a VMUG, but you've been involved, tell us just what you're doing these days for work. >> Yeah, so I left VMWare and moved over to Tintri, which is I'll flash the word partner, I came over there, actually I came over as a cloud evangelist kind of person, and that shifted a little bit, and while that was around how to use our APIs and things like that for automation and private cloud, now there's actually three Field CTOs, I'm one of 'em, and I spend most of my time really talking to customers, doing events, doing roadmap presentations, where were going, what we're doing, I still spend my fair share on the road doing the shows and stuff, VMworld. >> You just threw in a bunch of things there, talk cloud, API, storage, what are you hearing from customers these days? What are they getting right? What are they struggling with, and what are they looking for? >> Yeah it's funny, so for a long time I was a cloud guy, right? I mean I did VCloud Air, I launched VCloud Air DR, and I think what I heard coming over to Tintri is good, folks are still struggling with that whole, "What do I put in the cloud? "What don't I put in the cloud? "Do I bring everything back?" We've got a lot of customers that have brought stuff back on premises, I think a lot of customers are just still struggling with that concept, I mean one of the first presentations I did, probably I think, here it was back in 2010, right around that timeframe, when VCloud Air, or VCloud Director was launched, Chris had me, Harney had me come down and do VCloud Director, and it was deer in the headlights, you know? It was so bleeding edge for VMWare at that point to have this cloud product and this automation stuff, and then fast forward to today, you know eight years later, I still think people are struggling with that. They're just not sure how to deal with it, right? And operationally, I think people come and really figure out it's not about cloud so much as automation, we've got to simplify the way we do things, we got to automate more. We've got to take day to day operations and do something different with 'em. >> Yeah, I mean a line we've used often is cloud is not a destination, it's an operations model. >> Yeah, for sure. Unfortunately I think there's a lot of people that still think it's a destination, the old To the Cloud ads, remember those? >> Microsoft, absolutely, there's lots of jokes on that. Yeah, you gave an interesting keynote this morning, I actually had one of the users that came on our program earlier, and she was like, "I really enjoyed that." So Luigi Danakos, a friend of ours and you, tell me a little more about IT in careers, because we know the only thing that is consistent is that things are going to change, so give our audience a little bit of taste of what you talked about. >> So yeah, it was actually interesting, so we came up with the idea because I've come to these and done technical presentations all the time, but inevitably I always get somebody, or a couple people come up to you and say, "How did you get where you are? "How did you evolve?" And people who know my story, what's interesting about mine is I went to school for architectural engineering, I actually have a degree in architectural engineering, drawing blueprints and designing houses, and they always look at me and say, "How did you "get to here? "You were a System Admin, and I'm a Sys Admin, "and how do I grow my career?" So Luigi and figured why don't we sort of take a little bit of that history 'cause now we're kind of, I hate to say we're the old guys on the porch these days, but back in the day, we were younger, we were faster, as you go forward, how do you stay relevant? And that's what we wanted to kind of talk about, so we talk a concept from an author by the name of John C Maxwell and we kind of took one of his books and we kind of cobbled it down to five different aspects and we just talked about what to think about, how to move, not just always knowing the technology, where do you want to go? What do you want to do? And how to get there, not just to sit and say, "Well it's never going to happen for me." You have to make something out of it yourself, and I think the response was pretty good, it was different, it was the first one in the morning, but it wasn't getting hit at 9:00 a.m. with technicals, it was really just us telling our stories around how we got to where we were going, and one of the big parts about Luigi was having just been let go from HP and now he's done some interviews and I thought it was really great 'cause he came right out and said, "Y'know what? "I'm going to just do my own thing. "I've just decided there's never a good time "to start your own company, so why not do it now?" And that was after he went through four or five interviews, so hopefully it resonated with some people. For me, it's always gotten harder to learn. I think as we get older, I made the joke in the session, I lost my phone first thing this morning. Literally, couldn't remember where I put it, dropped it, I called my best friend, Chris Boyd, who's one of the other CTOs and I said have you seen it? Because I'm going to send the, I was going to have him run around the west side with the buzzer going off, the Find my iPhone to go find this, I can't remember what I did yesterday, so learning gets harder. >> Yeah, well learning's harder, the bar's not that high to kind of get into new stuff. When I walk around the show, two things struck me. Number one is the vendors, every single one of them are hiring SEs, and they can't find enough good quality people, and it's more about the people, then it is, you can train them up. And secondly, some of these new spaces, talk about like the cloud space, if you get your Associate's on like AWS? Like people will call you immediately, and there's so much opportunity out there, we both had lots of friends. There's changes in consolidations in the industry, and therefore there's people that hey, it's time for a change, so-- >> Well I never thought I would work for a storage company. Well I worked for VMWare which was acquired EMC years ago, but we still never, as VMWare employees, we didn't work for a storage company. >> VMWare's a software company. >> We were a software company, and I still actually look at Tintri as a software company, yes we sell an appliance, but the crux of what Tintri does really is the software of the OS itself and that's what makes it different. So yeah, and I mean I've had to learn more about storage then I knew before, and I was telling a guy at the show, one of the things that Luigi and I talk to people, always said just learn something new every day, just as small and as silly as it was, and we've told different stories, and a guy asked me, "So what's the last thing "you learned, technology-wise, outside of storage?" I said I actually learned containers because of my home media server environment. I had to go out and learn Docker because I wanted to run some stuff and I didn't want to stand it up, I just wanted to figure out how containers work, so now Tim Gabett and I, we're on the phone back and forth, alright how'd you get that container run? And what'd you do for the storage, and how'd you deal with this? But that to me is what keeps your brain a little bit sharp, I mean I don't do puzzles and things like that, but those stupid side projects we all do because we're technologists I think help. >> Yeah, and you never know when those side projects and passions could turn into an opportunity from careers standpoint? >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Alright Chris, you've been coming to this event quite a long time, as we said, give us the what's changed and what's stayed the same from your standpoint? >> Aw man, that's a tough one because I think a lot of stuff has essentially stayed the same in the realm of networking and storage, I think there's always a new player, but I look back at the last, I'll probably get myself in trouble here, but what was the last big innovative thing in the IT space when I was a System Admin, and I go back to those easy things, like I remember when I did my first VMotion, and it was like how does that work? And I used to have conversations, and I do that today with engineers, and I say what are we innovating? What are we doing to change the game? And to me, and again this is all my personal opinion, I suppose I'll preface it with that because for most people that know me know I have a pretty strong opinion on stuff, but I think that's the tough part is how do we move forward? How do we evolve to the next, really big, innovative thing that just blows people's minds? And I think AWS definitely did that a little bit when it really started to go mainstream and people realized it was a real thing, it wasn't a book store anymore, they had this other stuff, and we go through these cycles, right? But I think in the standard IT space, I'm still trying to figure out outside of those, what's the next really cool thing that we're going to see from the different vendors? And who's innovating and who's just sort of maintaining? >> Yeah, absolutely, well I can tell you that people here are excited, there's a lot to learn about keynotes this morning, I mean everything from what's happening in the automation space, developers, not a ton of developers at a show like this, but definitely lots of opportunity there, you talked the AWS presentation, he's like, "I'm live-coding and showing you Lambda stuff." Most of the people here aren't quite ready for some serverless world-- >> That was like me doing VCloud Director presentations (laughs). >> And things like that, I remember three years ago, it was like the AWS 101, everybody was like, "Oh my gosh, "this cloud thing sounds really amazing." So it takes some time, we've heard about it. I remember back when I heard about VMotion when it was in development, and still one of those things where you look back at your career and like wow, that was an amazing, it was that magic technology. >> It was almost those conversation, where were you when you did your first VMotion, right (laughs)? >> As a matter of fact, Duncan actually did a blog post about that, "Where you heard about it?" And I pulled in (mumbles) into the thread because I was lucky enough to go to a conference and moderate a session where he explained down to Kernel Zero how it worked, and it was interesting-- >> How he actually did what he did. >> You know what they say, "Any technology that is significantly difficult "to explain might as well be magic." So you're right, interesting stuff to see where innovation's going in the industry, I think most people I know are pretty excited, there's so much going on there, there's no shortage of new things to learn, we just need to reach out and take those opportunities, and I love your advice to keep learning something every day. >> As small as it is, I told these guys this morning that one of my biggest learning experiences was when we moved, I had to learn how to drive a motor home, a house, and deal with stuff that I've never done, right? But it's all learning. I challenged them today to just whether you're going to the sessions or you're just walking around where the vendors are, just understand what those people do and take that away and internalize it and see how you can use it. >> Well Chris, I'm glad to see you're still a true blue Patriots fan there-- >> The tattoo is still real (laughs). >> You haven't picked up the Southern drawl just yet. >> No it's funny, my wife said I pick it up a little bit when I'm around our neighbors, and then when I come back up here, I can really turn on the Boston accent if I tried but (laughs). >> Well, you all come back for lots more coverage here from VTUG Winter Warmer 2018. I'm Stu Miniman, this is theCube. (exciting electronic music)

>> Announcer: From Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. It's theCUBE, covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2018, presented by SiliconANGLE. >> I'm Stu Miniman, and this theCUBE's coverage of VTUG Winter Warmer 2018, in addition to being an Analyst, and the host of this program, I've also been a long-time Patriot's season ticket holder. Real excited to welcome to our program, Logan Mankins, number 70. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having me. >> Yeah so it's interesting. At this show we're talking tech, and a bunch of the IT Admins, they're people that you'd consider in the trenches. You, you know spend a lot of time in there. I wonder, a couple of your guys like Tedy Bruschi, Ty Law, Lawyer Milloy's here today, making interceptions and things like that, sometimes get a little bit more coverage out there, and they're a little bit more well known. Do you ever feel that you were faceless, you know, paying for the Pats? >> No, those guys, they made all the plays, they got all the recognition but, the linemen, we always knew that without us the offense couldn't go, the team couldn't go so... And most linemen, they don't want to be the face out there anyway. Me personally, I'd rather not be known, but it comes with the job. >> Yeah well, seven-time Pro Bowler. As a matter of fact, I was looking back, and there was this great video from Bill Belichick, and he's like, "There's tough players in the NFL, "but when I think of Logan Mankins, "he's super tough out there." When you look at the game now, Rob Gronkowski took a massive hit in the AFC Championship game. How does toughness and injuries, how did you think about that? Did you think about that when you were playing, versus now being out of the game? >> When I was playing no, you don't really think about it, but fortunately for me, I didn't have hits like that to the head, those big concussion-type hits. The stuff I always played with was just body stuff, and there's always a difference between being hurt and injured. If you're hurt you can still play, and if the injury's not too bad you can still play so, it was just a fine line of figuring out what you could do and what you couldn't. >> Patriots have had a phenomenal run. I mean you played for a great team. Bill Belichick, Tom Brady throughout them all, give us a little perspective of somebody that played for the team for awhile. How did you work through the changes, but yet there were some consistency around the core? >> Yeah, that's the main thing, the core, and they've had an unbelievable run. I don't know what's Bill been there, 18 years or something? And it's been unbelievable to see what those guys have accomplished and, it all starts at the top. You have a good owner and the best coach ever, and the best quarterback ever so, as long as you get the right guys that buy into that system, and follow those two guys, you're going to have a good team. >> Last year Deion Branch shared with us some great stories about Tom Brady, his, hyper-competitive type of guy. Give us a little color. What's it like playing in front of TB 12? >> Aw, it's great you know, you know he's always prepared. You never have to worry about him, he's going to play great the majority of the time and, just the way he competes and works. It rubs off on other guys and, he's just so dependable and can make all the right reads, throws, and he's a great guy to be around on top of that so, he's the ultimate teammate, and ultimate competitor, and that's why he's had so much success. >> You said that you didn't take, you played through some injuries, you had some, you played when you were hurt and, we know you had some rough injuries during your career, but concussions weren't a concern. Is it something that you look back now, or look at the game today, and all those things about CTE and concussions, is that, you know...? >> Oh yeah, the more you learn about it, the more you worry about it, because you're aware of it now. I think when I started playing football no one talked about it. There was no worries about it, and towards the end of my career it really started coming out, and more comes out about it every year so... Of course you worry about it. You hope you're one of the guys it's not going to affect, but there are guys that it's really affecting in bad ways, so at this stage of my life, it's too late to go back so it's, we'll see what happens I guess. >> Yeah, would you recommend young people going into football, knowing what you know now? >> I think so there's... It's a lot safer now. You're not taking those big... Well, every once in awhile a guy's just going to take one, you just saw Rob the other day. But for the most part they're trying to prevent that, and via techniques that they're teaching now with the blocking and the tackling, to not use your head as much, so it's a lot safer and look, at the end of the day, it's up to whoever's making that decision to play, and if they want to play, then they have the right to play. >> So we're obviously, everybody locally is super excited, getting ready for another Super Bowl. How does the team stay focused? You know, two weeks leading up to it, there's a lot going on. It's not New Orleans that they're going to, but how does the team stay focused on their job? >> Well, this team with the Patriots, they've been through it so many times, and they know what, they have a big job ahead of them. But they do a good job with what I was hearing when we went to Super Bowls. Like all the tickets and the hotel rooms for family and all that, they do a great job by getting that out of the way the first two days, and get that taken care of so you don't have to worry about that. And then it's on to the opponent that you're playing, and you just focus in on that, and Bill has, he's great at just, he draws a line, and follows that line so he'll have everyone in that line, and everyone will be ready, there won't be any distractions, and they'll be ready to go. >> Speaking of distractions, there's been a lot of noise in the press lately, as the relationships, everything like that. When you were in the locker room, does that hit your radar? Do you just focus and do your job? How does that impact what's going on? >> Yeah most stories, they don't bother you. They got to find stuff to write about but, the last one I guess with those guys, the story coming out that they're feuding, and this and that. I don't know if they are or they're not but, if they're not, I think that would upset me if they said I was feuding with someone that I wasn't, that has been a colleague, and most likely a friend of yours for that long. >> Well, Logan Makin, really appreciate you joining. Patriots has some phenomenal guards. You know, Hannah, in the Hall of Fame. You're definitely up there as one of the greatest guards in Patriot's history. >> I appreciate that. >> I really appreciate you joining me. >> Alright, thank you. >> Alright, so thanks again to the VTUG for bringing Logan Mankins. Love being here at the Intersection Virtualization Technology, and the Patriots. I'm Stu Miniman. Thanks for watching theCUBE. (tech music)

(up-tempo electronic music) >> Announcer: From Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2018, presented by siliconANGLE. (electronic music) >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBE's coverage of VTUG Winter Warmer 2018. Happy to welcome to the program first-time guest Kevin Kotecki, who's the Vice President of Sales at Igneous Systems, Kevin, thanks for joining us. >> Yeah, thanks for having me. >> Alright, so we've been talking to Igneous since really the early days, we've known some of the founders of the team. Before we get into it, tell us a little bit about your background, how long you've been with Igneous, and kind of your day-to-day activities there. >> Yeah, so I've been with Igneous for three years now, so very early stage. Came in pre-product, pre-revenue, been working with our earliest stage prospective customers and our earliest customers from day one. So, I've had the pleasure over the last few months of building out the Sales Organization more broadly, the Marketing Organization growing as well, as we have achieved that product/market fit that every start-up's looking for, and going out and solving those problems at scale across the country and having the feet on the street to help with that. >> Yeah, you know, it's interesting, we talk a lot on this program about these user groups. They're great for the users to get education; it's also a great place for hiring. I've helped lots of friends at this specific event, talked to a number of companies that are like, Oh yeah, we're hiring SEs. Everybody is hiring SEs. >> Yes, indeed. >> And I'm sure you're probably doing some interviews >> We are, yeah. While you're here. But, I love to watch the maturing of start-ups. A number of companies I met here at the first time, Igneous has been supportive of this event for a number of years. What brings Igneous, what are some of the key objectives coming to an event like this? >> Yeah, so with VTUG's Winter Warmer, it's an opportunity to see customers first and foremost, and interact with the local Boston companies that are here, that fit the profile and have the problems that we solve. But it's also an opportunity to see our partners and to have visibility in the community and show that support of the local business community as well. >> Alright, so let's talk about Igneous. At the show, it's the changing dynamics of what's happening in the world of virtualization, what's happening in cloud. Igneous sits in those spaces, and how does it differentiate itself from this massive market of cloud and storage and everything that's going out there? >> Yeah, good question. At a high level, what we do is we help organizations manage their unstructured data wherever it may be, when that unstructured data is at scale and begins to break traditional paradigms for doing so. And, the specific problems that we solve start with data protection, day one. It's a great way to help customers get insight into their full suite of unstructured file data and build an index around that that's extensible and powers their other services like archive, like end-user search and restore, and also feeds into our policy engine that helps customers tier data to the public cloud, and specifically to cost-appropriate cloud products, like Amazon Glacier, like Azure Archive. So that intersection that we sit in between cloud and storage and all of that is really around delivering the entire experience as a service and solving, day one, very difficult data protection problems. >> When talking about things like scale, can you quantify for us what's kind of the low bar for your customers? Where does it start and how big is big? >> For us, a minimum starting point would be a few hundred terabytes of file data. >> Okay, which is not that big, right? >> Yeah, in today's world, not so much, but it certainly does bring clarity to the type of customers that we can help. And really, we're not focused on on structured data, right? We believe that there are a lot of great solutions out there for protecting databases and a virtualized infrastructure, and that's not what we do. We partner with those folks. As far as how big is big, our largest customers have approximately 100 petabytes of file data, and so approaching kind of the top end of what customers have still on-premise today. >> Great. Sounds like you can start with, I mean, most customers are going to have that kind of data. Do you find maybe it's because it's unstructured, there's plenty of companies that might not fit in your bucket? And then, you've got plenty of headroom for scale, is what I'm hearing. >> Correct, and architecturally that headroom is built in day one. I think the focus from a customer standpoint around unstructured data is, if we quantify and qualify what that data is and where it comes from, it's really machine-generated data at scale, it's application-generated data at scale, and so the types of industries where we're really doing well are, call it, electronic design and automation, whether that's in the semiconductor space or in engineering use cases, it's in media and entertainment, a traditional place that has large-scale file data. It's in legal services, it's in proprietary trading, it's in all the places where that data exits. But then, it's also in bioinformatics, where genome sequencers and next-generation 3D microscopes are producing those kinds of data sets. And so, not every organization is in that boat today, right, and so we're really working at machine scales as opposed to human scale data creation. >> Yeah, and it really goes back. I think of when object storage was first discussed, you described it really well, people data versus machine data. All the industries that you went through, there's just the growth portfolio that I have to do things, and how do I take that from being, Oh my gosh, this is a challenge, to How do I make an opportunity, how do I leverage that data, how do I use it? >> It's about monetizing the data, right, and if it's just simply data that you're storing, then there's less incentive to invest in platforms that allow the extensibility of that data, to comb through it and be integrated into other applications, other use cases that can be monetized, right. And if we come back to some of the core problems that we really solve and get us to demonstrate the value of the product and of the approach to customers, it does indeed start with data protection, day one. And so, many of our customers today are protecting their data in a traditional paradigm, whether that be NDMP to tape or just working within backup windows where the goal as an IT Organization is to not impact your end users, and their ability to create the type of data that they can then monetize. So whether that's an engineering organization that's writing code or creating designs, whatever it may be, the goal is to be behind the scenes. And so when the scale of data creation, when the density of the file data that is being created creates challenges for those traditional architectures, whether that be around metadata management or some other challenge of scale, that's where we come in and we shine. And so we start day one focusing on customers' hardest problems as it relates to file data at scale and protecting it. And then, once that data's on our system, the power of that platform, the power of the microservices-driven architecture that we've spoken about here on past interviews, the power of the extensible, you know, compute context, if you will, that can then integrate into other applications and be leveraged for also very tangible things, like archive and reducing your spend on primary storage, and also integrating with the cloud. >> Kevin, one of the things that we've looked at is inside an organization, a lot of times, this paradigm shift also goes with, Organizationally, who owns this? When I think about a lot of the applications, it would be application owner that has the problem, but isn't connected necessarily with the storage admin or virtualization admin or cloud architect. How does Igneous, how do you get involved there and how do you help companies work through some of those organizational dynamics? So that's been one of the most satisfying elements over the last year or so of successfully solving customer problems, has been actually seeing the closer marriage of those three entities within organizations. So again, the application owner, the backup or disaster recovery owner, and the storage owner. And so, the most tangible example I can give is, in a world where backups were impacting end users, in this case an engineering organization that would experience latency in their application and then the work they were trying to do, traditionally their first order, or I guess their first solution was to contact the backup team and say, Hey, are you running a backup, and if so, kill it because you're impacting my ability to do my job. And then the storage folks of course were experiencing pain around trying to manage the scale of the infrastructure to support that engineering organization. And so in our approach, we don't impact the end users in any way, and we provide continuous and automated protection, which allows those data protection team members to focus on other things that are higher-order priorities than sitting there managing, actively managing, a backup window or a backup itself. That's something software does for them now, and the end users no longer complain, and therefore their daily interaction with IT as it relates to data protection is less colored by the IT impacting their ability to do their job through the data protection approaches that they're using today. >> When it comes to some high-level data protection secondary storage, there's a lot of players out there, and many of them, it's like, Data Domain? Very different from a rubric or cohesity. Where does Igneous fit in kind of the spectrum of what's going on? What are some of the companies that you're running up against that make sense for you, as opposed to which ones that we're just in the wrong conversation here? >> So the clear line of delineation between us and most of the other new entrants and traditional entrants in the field is that we're only focused on file data. We believe that the growth of unstructured data is unbounded and will continue to be unbounded and will break traditional architectural paradigms. And so that's the problem that we're specifically focused on, is how to help customers manage and protect that. Therefore, we're not focused on protecting structured data, databases, and VMs; that's not our point of entry. What that does do within that space is create a lot of opportunities for partnership, where our architectural approach is unique and is something that is very difficult to pull off if your day-one focus is on protecting virtual machines. It's not easy for you step up to the plate and protect two, three petabytes of file data, right? And so that's an opportunity for best-to-breed solutions where the customer can have the best data protection and two vendors in place for those kinds of use cases. >> Okay, Kevin I want to give you the final word. Maybe do you have a customer story? You talked a little bit about the organizational piece, but what's a customer story that you could relate that people might find interesting? >> Being in Boston, and having Boston be such a hotbed of bioinformatics, one of our recent customers is leveraging new 3D microscope technology to do very important research on the human body and disease and things of that nature, and that produces petabyte-scale data, even once it's been processed. And so what we're helping them do is both protect that and minimize their cost of implementing primary storage, minimize their cost around data protection, and not have to implement, or put IT folks in play, to manage that whole process. It's all very automated in this deployment. But then also, even more importantly, is from a collaborative standpoint they leverage us to tier to the cloud to then move that data and then share that data with their other collaborating investigators, and then also meet grant requirements of publishing their findings in a publicly available, downloadable format. And so, that end-to-end ability to provide a solution for customers that have unique challenges in creating large-scale file data has been really satisfying. >> Well Kevin Kotecki, appreciate all the updates. As we've been saying for the last couple years, data is at the center of it, and needs change from that kind of challenges around data to huge opportunities out there. Congrats on all the success. >> Thanks you, thank you very much, appreciate it. >> Lots more coverage here at the VTUG 2018. I'm Stu Miniman. You're watching theCUBE. (up-tempo electronic music)