[Announcer] Live from Las Vegas.
It's theCUBE.
Covering NAB 2017.
Brought to you by HGST.
>> Welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE.
We're at NAB 2017 with a hundred thousand of our closes
friends but we actually do have one of my friends here.
Who I can't believe we haven't had on theCUBE since 2013
ServiceNow Knowledge. >> That's right. That's right.
>> Just down the road at the Cosmopolitan.
Brian Lillie, he is now the Chief Customer Officer
and EVP of Technology Services from Equinix.
>> Brian, it's always great to see you.
>> Jeff, it's always a good thing to be on theCUBE.
And I love NAB. Love it!
>> What do you think, you've been coming here for awhile.
What's kind of your take away, what's the vibe?
>> Well, so the vibe, it feels as innovative
and as exciting as ever.
And I really think that,
people are seeing, are starting to hit a tipping point
where they're seeing what's possible.
What's possible with the cloud,
possible with increased collaboration.
When I first started coming here a few years ago,
saw very few of these kinds of projects.
Now, we're seeing tons
of innovative approaches to using the cloud.
Using our facilities,
using really some of our network providers
that are really innovating around this vertical.
>> Yeah, it's pretty interesting Brian
because this is our first time for theCUBE being here.
And what's surprising me is how many of the macro trends
that we see time and time again at all the other shows
about increasing capacity, flexibility,
democratization of data, democratization of assets.
All these kinds of typical IT themes
that are being executed here within
the media entertainment industry both
on the creative side and as well as the production side.
>> That's right. That's very well said.
I think this industry,
really more than many,
is very, very collaborative.
You know, from
everything from acquisition to pre-production,
production, post production, delivery.
It feels like a community
that wants to share, wants to learn,
sees that they don't necessarily own all the best ideas.
And that we're seeing some young innovative startups
from all over the world.
Everywhere from Europe to Asia coming up with ideas
that the big houses, big players
are starting to see as viable.
And I do think, I think,
when you talk about it being maybe some of these IT trends,
I think some of the secular trends.
The fact that consumers want
their content anytime, anywhere, on any device.
>> Jeff: Right, right.
>> Really if you work from the customers backwards,
everybody else has to adjust to that.
And we're parents. >> Jeff: Right, right.
>> We see what our kids wants.
And it's really driving I think the whole industry.
>> And good stuff for you.
You guys at Equinix made a big bet on cloud long time ago.
And the fact of the matter is,
we're surrounded by all these crazy hardware,
both in the production side, the data center side.
No one is buying this.
You don't just take this stuff home anymore and plug it in.
It's just too big and too expensive.
As you said,
I think was interesting about the media business,
is everybody comes together around a project.
When the project's over, they go away.
How many people has Quentin Tarantino employed directly,
probably not that many.
But the guy kicks out a lot of big budget movies.
>> That's right.
I think when you think about the creation of a production,
like a QT movie,
wherever that set is, it's ephemeral.
You go, you setup and it's big data needs,
it's high bandwidth, low latency, you've got to get the data.
In some cases centrally, but in some cases
you're processing at the edge. But it's very cloud-like.
We're seeing a lot of this unfold.
We're seeing these players not only in the centers
where it makes sense to consolidate,
but we're actually seeing some of this kit show up
in our data centers in a distributed mode,
where they say some information, some equipment,
we want to keep behind our firewalls on our premise,
which could be an Equinix cage or their own.
But then I want to absolutely connect to multiple clouds.
I want to use the tools in Asure,
the tools in Amazon, the tools in Google and others
to further enhance
our abilities.
And so it's truly this hybrid, best of breed,
I got a lot of tools in my tool kit,
some cloud, some on premise.
And there has never been a better time
to be in this industry.
>> Right.
>> You see a lot of industries, you got a lot of customers,
how do you see it kind of compare, are financial services,
the entertainment, et cetera, are they all kind of
progressing pretty much down the same path,
at the same rate or do you see some significant laggers
or significant people ahead of the curve?
>> Well, I would say that financial services is way ahead,
to be frank.
Financial services has been doing this for a long time.
Like when we built Equinix, it was really starting
with the networks at the core.
And the first vertical to take advantage of that
was the financial services, where they said, hey,
I want low latency routes between New York and London.
Low latency routes between Chicago and New York.
And so they've been doing that
and then building communities of interest
where they could reach all the folks
in their digital supply chain.
On the financial services side,
guys like Bloomberg and Reuters,
they said, I can reach all my customers in one place.
And I can direct connect to them.
So they built early.
The content guys did see it right after that.
Guys like Yahoo, and if you remember Myspace.
>> Jeff: Right, right.
>> So it's wonderful to see Facebook video here.
I mean, here's now Facebook,
real-time video, live at NAB.
And with a big presence.
So I think content digital media has been a little bit
slower to move.
But it's one of these ramps.
>> Jeff: Right, right.
>> And they, over the last two years,
I think they have been the fastest
excelerating vertical using the cloud
and interconnection to build their brand,
to build their business.
>> Right. It's interesting, because
some of our other guests were talking
about the theme I guess last year, here was a lot of VR.
>> Brian: Yes. >> It's all about the VR theme.
But now, we're hearing about machine learning,
and metadata
and a lot more kind of tradition themes,
it's not necessarily just about
the VR and the 360. >> Brian: Yup, yup.
>> To add more value to these assets,
to be able to distribute them better,
to have the metadata, to create an experience
for that individual person, >> Yup.
>> even within the context of a bigger asset,
have these small ones, they're pretty interesting trend.
>> Yeah, it's spot on.
I think VR, virtual reality
and augmented reality, >> Jeff: Yeah, I think so.
>> is the future.
I mean it's the future.
I think what maybe what people are realizing is,
it's at it's really early days.
But data we have, and this whole notion of data science
and analytics that you can put around
the customer experience in real-time, in situ.
>> Right.
>> They're like, we can do that now.
>> Where virtual reality, the massive bandwidth,
the storage, the compute, the compute.
Because it's no longer that you're watching the movie
in a third person, you are the movie.
You are the experience, you're in it.
And that's just going to require just massive compute,
that in my opinion, only the cloud can do.
[Jeff] Right, right.
>> So I think it's a little bit further off,
But I think VR and AR is
the wave, it's the future.
>> And certainly in the AR, I think is really cool
because there's so much potential there.
So from a data center perspective,
you guys are sitting right at the heart of this thing.
And you're taking advantage of these tremendous Moore's law
impacts on not only compute and store but networking,
it's got to be phenomenal to see the increase demand.
I always think of the old Microsoft Intel,
you know back in the day, >> Brian: Right, right.
you get a better microprocessor,
well, Microsoft's OS heats up,
another 80% of that one back and forth.
But now we're really hitting huge, huge efficiencies
in these core components that are enabling
ridiculous scale that you could never even imagine before.
>> I think the Intel Microsoft example
or analogy is a really, really interesting one
because in fact,
when you look at companies like Mesophere
and Google's Kubernetes and these others,
that are, they're calling themselves
the data center operating system
which is operating containers
with the move to microservices,
all this technology that's coming,
that's making compute more ubiquitous,
where you can run workloads anywhere.
The fact that we sit, we feel privileged
cuz we sit in the middle, of not only all the networks,
but of the clouds, the multi-clouds.
>> Right, right.
>> And if you're a, whether you're a producer
or you're in production, you're in delivery,
you're an over-the-top guy, where you want to be
is where you can connect very directly
with little latency and high security and high reliability,
to the clouds you need, to the networks you need,
to the partners you need.
I think that's just a powerful thing.
Now the operating system is
how do we make that easy,
how do we create the easy button.
>> Right, right.
>> For these folks to access these resources.
And what' the value we provide as that neutral,
in the middle provider
that brings people together.
You know, I was at an event last night, and DPP,
Mark from DPP was there.
We were talking about the question of
who owns this new business model.
He said he saw a panel on Sunday,
because it's transforming in front of us.
[Jeff] Right, right.
>> And it's an excellent question.
I don't know who owns it, but I know we see it.
And we're seeing people talk about it.
I think the community owns it.
They own what this new business model looks like
and we're just listening to our customers
and letting them lead us.
>> Jeff: Right.
>> To the place we need to go.
>> Interesting.
So we're running a little low on time.
Just want to get kind of what are your priorities for 2017.
>> Well, priorities in this area is really
to make cloud ubiquitous globally.
It's to push that out to the edge,
make that available in as many markets,
to as many customers as we can.
With our big partners,
with Google and Amazon and Microsoft and Oracle
and all the rest. That's a big priority.
Second is this notion of the easy button.
How can we add value,
how can we take friction out of the system
to make collaboration and communication
between this industry that much easier, that much faster.
Those are our two big ones in particular here.
And I'm delighted to see
this vertical just taking off with the cloud.
>> Yeah. Pretty exciting times.
>> Brian: It's a great time.
>> Alright, I got to embarrass you before I let you go Brian.
Never have I met an executive that takes such pride in
in losing good employees to better jobs.
I just want to compliment you on that.
(Brian laughs)
I know you take pride in CIOs all over the industry
that were once your charges.
So I want to give you a shout-out for that.
>> Okay.
Alright, he's Brian Lillie, keep working for him.
Don't take the other CIO jobs just yet, but if you do,
he'll be happy to mentor you.
>> Brian: I will help you get there.
>> Alright, thanks for stopping by.
He's Brian Lillie, I'm Jeff Frick.
You're watching theCUBE from NAB 2017.
We'll be right back after this short break.
>> Brian: Thanks Jeff. >> Good to see you buddy.
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