(upbeat music)
>> Announcer: From New York, it's theCUBE.
Covering ESCAPE/19.
>> Everyone, welcome to theCUBE coverage
here in New York City for the ESCAPE Conference 19.
This is the inaugural event for multicloud,
I think it's the first industry event
for, really talking about multicloud
and the impact to enterprises and public cloud.
My next guest is Steve Mullaney,
President and CEO of Aviatrix, storied career in tech,
been there done that, seen many waves of innovation.
Nicira, Palo Alto Networks, and now Aviatrix.
You retired for a while, welcome back!
>> I did, yeah, five years, yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Welcome to theCUBE.
>> Thank you, thanks for having me.
>> It's nice to have you on
because I think you have a good perspective
on the multicloud
because you've been in the industry since the 80s.
We've both been broke in at the same time.
And we've seen the waves. >> Oh, yeah.
>> This wave is bigger than, I think,
most of the other waves combined
because it brings together so many things,
infrastructure, software, cloud scale,
and a new modern application environment.
And then you complicate everything
by throwing IoT out there,
edges being pushed to their boundaries,
securities equations changed,
all this is going on right now, all at the same time.
>> No, and that's why I was basically retired for five years,
and I was at Nicira, we got bought by VMware,
I stayed there for a couple years,
and I just said, "Okay, that's it!"
I've had a good career and I'm done.
And about a year ago, the world changed.
And it felt like on a Tuesday morning,
I noticed enterprises really,
we'd been talking about cloud for 12 years.
And five years ago they said,
"We're coming in, we're going to do it,"
but they didn't really mean it.
But about a year ago, all in the same day,
every enterprise said, "No, now we actually mean it."
And I don't know why,
I don't know if it was just people retired
or just five years of talking about it,
they all decided, we're comin' in,
and enterprises all moved together.
And this wave, as you said, is bigger than,
I was around in 1992, in the early 90s,
in the movement from mainframe to client server.
This is 10 times bigger than that.
And more importantly, it's going to happen 10,000 times faster.
Because (fingers tapping).
What's that?
I just deployed 62 data centers around the world.
Because if I can leverage the greatest
infrastructure built,
basic infrastructure of the hyperscalers,
AWS, Azure, Google, Alibaba, Oracle, you name it.
It's unbelievable the velocity
at which you can now start deploying.
>> Steve, I think you're onto something big here,
and this is why I'm here at this event and why I'm excited,
that a lot of the industry thought leaders and practitioners
and leaders are doing this event.
Small events, inaugural, but I think it has a lot of links.
Because there's a lot of tell signs
that I like to look at, one is cloud.
I've been covering Amazon eight years now, with theCUBE,
I've known AWS since it started,
and I've done many startups in its launch using AWS.
But I've had many conversations with Andy Jassy,
one on ones, privately,
I got an exclusive coming up for re:Invent with him.
I've gotten to know him.
It started out, "Everyone's moving to the cloud.
"Every data center's not going to exist."
And then, you know--
>> Oh, maybe not, yeah, yeah. >> Maybe not,
we'll do an output.
So I challenged him last year,
I said, "Andy, come on, dude,
like you were saying like a year ago that."
>> Steve: Yeah, it's all AWS or nothing.
>> And he said, "John, look I'm not,
"I just listen to the customers."
And I interviewed him when he did the VMware deal.
And he's very customer focused.
And when they make these moves with outpost,
and I think it's going to be a hybrid message
this year at re:Invent,
you know it's real. >> Steve: Oh, yeah.
>> I think this validates your point, so I got to ask you,
what specifically do you see
the formula being for multicloud,
because certainly everyone's recognized
that there's a huge benefit for AWS.
But from a scale standpoint, so why not use that?
What's going on on the Enterprise on-premise
that's making this new thing work?
>> I think it all starts with architecture,
like anything else.
I think right now, enterprises have said,
"Okay, we've burned a boat, right?
"Now, we're not going to get rid of our data centers,
"but in terms of our strategic investment,
"we are moving into the cloud.
"We are going to leverage
"the infrastructure of the hyperscalers.
"And whether that is just one hyperscaler, or multiple."
And I have not met an enterprise
who thinks there only going to be one, right,
every single one of them.
Now, I don't think they're moving workloads across,
I don't think that.
I think they see that, I'm going to use Google for AI,
I'm going to use AWS because it started there.
I'm going to use Azure, for Office 365,
and other different things,
and everything in infrastructure is always multi.
It's never homogeneous, right, it's always that.
So I think is going to happen,
and I think what people are begging for right now,
is, I want to build an architecture
that gives me the optionality
to be able to deliver a common set of services
whether I'm on AWS or multiple clouds.
And I want them to be my services
and I don't want to have understand
the low level abstractions and constructs
of each of those clouds,
because their all different.
One's metric, one's U.S., one's some other weird thing.
And I don't have the time, the people,
or the resources to be able to do that.
Give me a common set of services,
that are my services, that I can deploy
and abstract away the details of those public clouds.
>> Yeah, it's an interesting point there,
in fact, I called BS on multicloud last year
when it started to kind of rear it's head, I'm like,
"Come on, multicloud is bullshit."
And I said that on theCUBE.
And here's what I meant.
Multicloud as an operating model is directionally correct,
but the architecture hasn't shown
where there's true multicloud.
Now, the fact of the matter is,
people have Amazon, people have Office and Office 365,
that's technically two clouds, >> They're siloed, yeah.
>> If they give us Google, that's three clouds.
>> I use two or three clouds. >> So, if he have three clouds,
I guess they have multiple clouds.
But you bring up an interesting point,
and going back as a student of the history of tech industry,
multi-vendor has been a big deal.
>> It is a big deal. >> And like you said,
there will be a multi-vendor world, that will happen.
The question is how.
How do you guys see it happening?
>> Well I think what's-- >> Your company is attacking
this Aviatrix. >> What's interesting is,
so now you think about from a customer perspective
which, I do the same thing, same thing with AWS.
It's always outside in.
Okay, I'm thinking as a enterprise IT person.
I'm making the move.
Do you believe that your basic infrastructure
will lever the hyperscalers, or will you build an on-prem?
Everyone says, "I believe that's the way I'm going to go."
Great, how do I do that?
So, I'm a IT architect, who do I go to to help me?
Do I go to CISCO?
No.
The most shocking thing for me,
of the six months I've been at Aviatrix,
is that word's never used.
It's like it was DEC or IBM in the conversation,
when you were talking about client-server,
no, why would you?
CISCO, Juniper, Arista, any of the networking people,
not even in the conversation.
VMware, not really in the conversation.
So, I don't have any incumbent vendor that I can go to
that I used to go to. >> Why aren't they
in the conversation?
'Cause of the commodity,
they've been extracted away? >> I think it's just because
it's the innovation of dilemma.
Right, once you're selling a lot of stuff into on-prem,
to then go and say, I mean you look at Palo Alto Networks,
they're trying to make that transition.
Acquiring a bunch of companies,
VMware acquiring a bunch of companies.
Why are they doing that?
Because they know, I got to get off on-prem,
everything's going
in the cloud. >> So it's a legacy.
>> It's a legacy thing, and I think what happens is,
there is only one reason, and one reason only,
an enterprise customer is not using Aviatrix.
'Cause they never heard of us.
That's why, that's the only reason.
Once they hear about what they're doing, my God.
>> Well, give the plug, talk about the company,
what do you guys do--
>> So we
deliver, I mean it sounds
like I made it up for this conference,
but actually this conference was perfect for this.
It's networking and security services
for the multicloud enterprise.
And we're building an architecture,
that people can deploy,
that will give them this common architecture
across all the different clouds.
So whether you're just using one cloud or multiple,
it doesn't matter,
it's the same set of security and networking services.
And we do that by embracing and extending
the basic constructs that AWS, Google, Azure, and Oracle,
and all the other clouds will give you,
and to deliver that real enterprise class.
Because the other thing we've found is,
everyone thinks that the cloud gives you everything
and anything you will ever need
from networking and security.
Let's say AWS, they're going to do everything I need.
What the enterprises are figuring out,
is once they start going in, what they realize is,
it's created for the low-level common basic constructs.
And the enterprise starts at,
well, I need these BGP feature
because guess what, the data center is not going away.
And I need more than a hundred route limitations,
and I need, all of a sudden
there's fifty different limitations AWS will give me.
Well, they didn't talk about that!
Well, of course they're not going to talk about that.
They are just going to go check, check, check,
we solve all your problems.
As enterprises now move in,
with mission critical applications,
they're realizing, I need the same level
of networking and security services that I had on-prem.
I can't get that with the native constructs.
So where do I go?
That's what we do, so we fill in,
we embrace what we can of those constructs,
we fill in holes where there are fill in holes.
And then we give you the mechanism
to be able to orchestrate that
across the global network. >> So you operationalize
the hyperscale clouds
for enterprise, >> Yes.
>> that's basically what you do.
>> Steve: Exactly, for the enterprise.
>> Yeah, exactly. >> On the level that they need.
>> So you get the benefits of the cloud,
but all those nuances under the cover details
like networking and other features
you abstract that away and provide an operating model
for enterprise compliments. >> And the beautiful thing
about it is the velocity,
at which we can, we're over the top,
effectively over the top.
We're integrated into the Cloud Suite,
understand what cloud native,
we understand all the constructs of accounts,
and all the things we need to do.
But what we expose to the customer, to the enterprise,
is a set of over-the-top services that just work.
>> Okay Steve, so I got to ask you,
since we are at The Multi-Cloud Conference.
What is multicloud, I mean how do you define it,
you laid out a pretty compelling architecture
of what needs are, levers in the cloud,
and on-prem is what Aviatrix does.
But what is the definition,
how should people understand what is multicloud?
>> I think for us, for networking and security in that base,
so we're basic infrastructure.
We get out there first, right?
So, if you're going to build a city,
you don't start putting people there first
the first thing, if you do it right,
is you get sewers, you get electricity,
gas, roads, all that.
Networking and security, infrastructure,
is basic infrastructure goes out first.
And you want to create an architecture
that's going to live with you for twenty years.
You don't want to have to rip up the roads
and put the sewers in later.
And that architecture needs to be multicloud
because, even though you think maybe,
most of our customers are 90% AWS right now.
But every single one of them say,
"But I'm moving to Azure, I'm moving to Google,
"I've got retail customers that won't allow me
"to put my infrastructure on AWS."
Or, "I have machine learning, AI type apps on Google."
They all say that same thing.
But what they all then say to us,
is, "You're going to be the mechanism
"upon which I'm going to be able to deploy
"this common set of services."
So they don't need to know that.
>> All right, give an example of a customer you guys have,
name a name, we had a customer on stage here--
>> Steve: So, Jefferies.
>> John: They did this for a use case.
>> Yeah so, Jefferies.
Financial Services Institution, lots of requirements,
Mark Leon Soon is going to be on stage with me tomorrow.
We started working with them about nine months ago.
Exactly the same thing, they said, "Okay, you know what?
"We need to start moving to the cloud,
"we've got to start leveraging the cloud.
"But, it's too complicated, right?
"Even AWS, says 'Go Build.'
"I don't want to go build, I want to consume services.
"But they don't have all the service that I needed,
"they're too low a level.
"They're very high function, high enterprise requirements."
So they start using us to orchestrate things,
to provide transit networking,
to provide egress filtering out to the Internet,
we have high performance encryption,
AWS will only offer it one gig.
We can offer it to 10, 20, 30, 40 gig.
So they start deploying,
they start realizing all the things we do.
Then they go and say,
"I want to bring my Palo Alto Networks firewall
"into the cloud."
When you start looking at that, 'cause then guess what?
All my policies,
I want the same level that I have on-prem
when I'm in the cloud.
If I go try to bring in my VM series into AWS
the construct that AWS give you,
they cause you limitations in performance, in visibility,
It's integration hassles,
there's performance, sustainability,
visibility issues, they force you to use SNAT.
And there's all these issues, and they go,
"Oh my God, this is a pain in the ass."
We solved all that for them.
We basically cloudify the VM series for them,
so all those limitations go away.
So that's just another use case that they use.
Now they start looking, and they say,
"Okay, now I'm going to start extending into other clouds
and I want to use you as the common frame point,
the common pane of glass.
>> Well Steve, good luck in your venture,
you're back in the saddle again.
>> Steve: Yeah.
>> Another ride here, you feel good about it?
>> This is going to be the best, the biggest that I've been,
and I was at Palo Alto Networks and VMware Nicira.
And this one's going to be bigger
than both of those. >> What's your vision
for where this is going to be for you,
where do you see the company in a few years,
what are some of the outcomes you expect to happen?
>> Our opportunity, and I look at it as,
someone's going to take this opportunity,
and the reason I came back is,
why not us, someone's going to take it.
And the opportunity, honestly,
is to become, effectively, what Cisco was in the early 90's.
To define the architecture, the networking
and the security infrastructure architecture
for enterprise customers.
They are begging for that right now,
that's our opportunity. >> Cloud Interoperability.
>> Interoperability, yeah.
And so there's so many things that we need to go and do.
When you look at also the thing that people are going to say,
the operations.
So many people think, I want it the same as it was on-prem.
I think with the cloud, and across multicloud
you can do it right with us, and actually better.
Because the visibility that you get is more,
than what you get on-prem.
>> Well, and the thing that's interesting
that's different about this new world
that we're talking about
is that there is going to be
constant improvements in new things
which means that the functionality game is going to increase,
which means the agility is even more important
because the apps are going to have more things to do.
>> Yeah.
I mean in the end, why do you want to go to cloud?
I want to go to cloud
'cause I want it to be self-service and I want agility.
I want my developers, I want everybody
to be able to do things quicker
because all of the sudden they say,
"Let's go roll this out", and you want to be able to do it.
>> Well, good luck on the new venture,
Aviatrix, check 'em out, hot multicloud startup,
growing, how many people do you have,
put the plug in, >> 100.
>> what are you guys looking for,
are you hiring, give me a quick plug.
>> We just hired a new VP at World Wide Sales,
James Winebrenner, who was Viptela CEO, VP Sales in Cisco,
hiring a tremendous amount of sales guys right now,
we're closing on a $40 million Series C round next week,
and we're hiring a lot of people.
>> Good luck, we'll be following you Steve,
thanks for coming on and sharing your insights.
Again, multicloud, this is a shift that's happening,
multicloud is just another word for multi-vendor,
in a new modern era,
this is what it has been in the technology industry,
but a whole new world.
This is theCUBE coverage here in New York City, ESCAPE/19,
I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.
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