>> From Las Vegas, it's theCUBE.
Covering Open Systems.
The future is crystal clear with security in SD-WAN.
Brought to you by Open Systems.
>> Welcome back to Las Vegas everybody,
my name is Dave Valanti and you're watching
theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage.
We go out to the events,
we extract the signal from the noise.
We are covering the Open Systems
networking event.
They're here as part of the
two Gartner events here this week.
On the heels of AWS Reinvent,
a lot of action going on in Las Vegas.
Steve Garson is here, he's the president
and founder of SD-WAN experts consultancy in this space.
Steve, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE.
>> Glad to be here.
>> So tell us a little bit more about your background.
>> Okay.
I've been in the networking space since about 2007.
Initially, my company was called MPLS Experts,
when companies were migrating to MPLS
and not understanding, well, what carriers should I use.
I helped companies re-engineer their WAN back then.
As that developed, the WAN optimization came into the scene
and I helped companies evaluate
the right WAN optimization solution.
Then I had the foresight to see the potential of SD-WAN.
I pivoted the business, called it SD-WAN Experts
and started writing for network world
and blogging on my own sites
and with a number of other websites.
I've been helping enterprises worldwide
re-engineer their network, make a WAN transformation
that's secure and supports easy management
and save a lot of money.
>> So, awesome.
So you have a practitioners background, right?
>> Exactly. >> That's fair to say.
So you know your stuff, let's get into it.
So let's talk trends, I mean.
At a high level we always talk at theCUBE about
the cloud and how that's affecting network traffic.
Going from North South to East West
has a major impact on security and performance.
What are the big trends in the market space
that you see, that are relevant?
>> Well, we see consolidation obviously.
(coughs)
Obviously moving to the cloud is a big driver.
The WAN has been designed for a data center
with an MPLS network.
That's a hub and spoke architecture
that really doesn't make sense anymore.
Companies are moving to Office 365,
they're using Salesforce.com,
they're using all kinds of softwares and service.
That just doesn't work with a data center.
So what companies have traditionally done
is they have regional secure gateways
and they're sending the traffic
from an office to a secure gateway
and now they're going through the internet.
It just is convoluted, the traffic is tromboned
and the latency is higher than it has to be.
They're spending more money for these expensive circuits
that, ultimately, they're going to the internet anyways.
>> So, there's a lot of technical debt out there.
How does a company go from point A to point B
without spending a zillion dollars
or bringing in, you know,
a huge SI to re-architect everything.
Is there a path that you can advise customers,
or is it just every situation is a snowflake?
>> You could probably define a half-dozen different
basic situations that are snowflakes.
Essentially you're moving to, you know,
if you have an MPLS network
companies typically will need more bandwidth
and instead of getting more MPLS bandwidth
they'll add internet connectivity.
Using SD-WAN they'll root traffic over the internet
that's supposed to go to the internet.
The things that are still required
on their MPLS network will stay in play.
When those MPLS contracts expire,
then there's a question of, do I need MPLS?
That's a complicated question to answer.
I will not say that you can eliminate MPLS,
I'll always say it depends.
It depends on the latency between paths on your network.
I presented a paper at O-NUG a few weeks ago in New York,
in which I analyzed with a lot of empirical data.
Latency, packet-loss, and standard deviation of that latency
between paths like from Tokyo to New York.
You might a have 200 millisecond latency.
But your standard deviation over the internet
might be 200 milliseconds.
So that means, potentially,
if you're using only the internet,
you might have 400 milliseconds latency.
Can your application work appropriately?
>> If you need 200 guaranteed, you've got a problem.
Right? >> Right, exactly.
In a situation like that, you might want to use MPLS
or there's a new category of connectivity
called SDCore which is an MPLS network in the Cloud
that you access through an IPSec VPN
to pops that are typically within 20 milliseconds.
So you get that stability,
but you cut the cost dramatically.
>> Now the Edge just confuses us even further, right?
IOT, The Edge, I mean certainly a trend
everybody's talking about.
From your standpoint, how real is it?
Is it here today?
Is it coming?
What is the effect going to be on all these trends?
>> You mean, the Edge?
>> Yeah, the Edge, IOT.
>> I mean it's a complicated thing.
I mean the Edge.
>> The industrial internet.
>> Yeah, I mean, when people talk about the Edge today
the Edge used to be their router
and SD-WAN devices are supplanting the router.
Gartner has indicated that by 2023
nobody is going to be buying routers.
Everybody is going to be using an SD-WAN device
which will route.
>> Amazon, we were at Reinvent last week,
they might even look at the data center as the Edge.
But, I digress.
Let's talk about the horses on the track.
Lay out the competitive environment right now.
We're here at the Open Systems event.
Where do they fit in the market landscape?
>> Open Systems is a very unique company
where people will say, who's Open Systems competitor.
They really don't have a competitor because they're unique.
Open Systems is a company that has a secure SD-WAN
which means there's a full security stack with SD-WAN.
So you have the benefits of SD-WAN,
but instead of having to deal
with all these different security applications
like HASBY, Data-loss Prevention, and IPSIDS,
authentication, VPN integration with active directory.
They do all of that and it's all managed.
It's a very unique offering.
>> So the competition is Do-It-Yourself, right?
>> The competition is Do-It-Yourself
or use a managed service provider who
probably doesn't have all the pieces that work together.
Open Systems has been doing this for 25 years.
They have developed what the customers want.
I went to one of their global customer meetings.
They called a cap meeting last year.
Each year they get input from the customers
as far as what kind of enhancements they want to see.
They actually take that input and the following year
the customers, I was amazed,
the customers just are thrilled that the company listens
and the company implements what they ask.
>> Again, I've mentioned there's a couple
of Gartner shows going on this week.
Sounds like Open Systems wouldn't really fit cleanly
into a magic quadrant.
>> They don't.
They don't because they're not an Edge device.
They're a complete Edge security solution that's managed.
>> We talked about this at theCUBE,
John Ferrs has brought up several times that
the magic quadrants will have to evolve
as these managed services,
the Cloud certainly affects that.
As more and more things get co-opted
by the services, you know, economy.
But, your thoughts on magic quadrants,
how customers are using them.
My understanding is, today,
you heard a talk from a Gartner analyst
that was helping people understand
the do's and don'ts of a magic quadrant.
Your thoughts?
>> Yeah, well what Gartner was talking about today
is how many people use the magic quadrant inappropriately.
They think this tells us which companies we should look at
and really what it's telling you is how that customer's
strategy fits in with the market place.
But you really have to look at what your requirements are.
You can't just say, okay I'm going to look at
quote the top three SD-WAN vendors.
What are your requirements?
That's what my firm does as a consultant
is we help companies figure out what their requirements are
to find out what's the right solution.
A story I love to tell is a company that spent
a year evaluating SD-WANs.
They were about to make a decision
and the CIO basically told the committee
after a year of evaluations
hey before we sign a contract,
let's get an independent sanity check
that we've made the right decision.
I met with the company, spent a couple weeks
assessing their requirements,
and I know all of the major technologies
and I knew that what they had selected wasn't correct.
But you can't tell a client that they've made a mistake.
So we set up a meeting with the vendor,
which was a carrier, and their technology provider
and the committee and I asked the hard questions
that the vendor couldn't answer.
Which made it really clear to the client
that this is the wrong solution.
They went a completely different direction.
>> Saved them a lot of money.
I love those stories.
What's your website?
>> SD-WAN-experts.com
>> Alright, Steve thanks so much for coming on theCUBE.
Sharing your knowledge.
>> Thank you. >> Awesome stuff.
Really appreciate it.
>> Pleasure.
>> Keep it right there, everybody.
We'll be back from Las Vegas Cosmo hotel.
Open Systems networking event.
You're watching theCUBE.
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