(bright music)
>> Welcome back, everyone, to theCUBE's live coverage here
in San Francisco for VMware Explorer.
I'm John Fore. Dave Vellante.
Two days of walls, three days of wall-to-wall here.
Two sets. Live events.
We've got Purnima Padmanabhan,
Senior Vice President and General Manager
of Cloud Management at VMware.
I got it right. Thanks for coming on theCUBE.
>> You got it right!
>> Great to see ya'.
>> Good to be here.
>> We're all smiles 'cause we were talking
about your history.
You once worked at Loud Cloud and we were reminiscing
about how Cloud was before Cloud was even Cloud.
>> Exactly.
>> And how hard it was. And it's still hard.
Complexity is a big deal and one of the segments we wanted
to talk to you about is the announcement around Aria
and you see Cloud manage a big part of this direction
to multi-cloud.
>> Yes.
>> To tame the complexity and, you know,
we were quoting Andy Grove on theCUBE.
"Let chaos rain and then rain in the chaos!"
>> Exactly.
>> Okay, and very famous quote in Beck and the theme here
is Cloud chaos.
>> Yes.
>> And so we're startin' to see signs of reigning
in that chaos or solving complexity
and every major inflection point has this moment where-
>> Yes.
>> It gets so hard and then it kicks
up to the right and grows and link it solves.
>> Yeah.
>> So we feel like we're in that moment.
>> I couldn't agree more and, in fact,
the way I say is, our tagline is
"We make the complexity of managing Cloud invisible
so that you can focus on building your business apps."
And you're right about the inflection point.
Every time a new technology hits,
you have some point of adoption
and then it becomes insanely successful
and that's when the complexity hits.
(John giggling)
Then you go and tame the complexity
till the next technology hits, right?
That's what happens.
It's happened with virtualization,
then it has happened with Cloud, then with containerization,
and now the next one will hit.
And so, with Aria, we said we have
to fundamentally change the problem, right?
We are constantly running a race of taming this complexity.
So very excited about this announcement
with which we're doing with Aria and we said,
imagine if I could have a view of my environment
and all the dependencies.
I don't need to know everything,
just the environment and its dependencies.
Then I can now start solving problems
and answering questions that I was unable to before.
And newer technologies can keep coming and piling on,
but I'll always be able to answer that.
>> Help our audience understand Aria. Great name-
>> Thank you.
>> And what's new? You're welcome.
What's new from, you know,
it's not just vRealize with a new name.
What's new specifically?
>> Oh, yeah. Please.
No.
(Purnima laughing)
>> Well, explain. So people-
>> Well, there's no commentary on snarky comments-
>> Right.
>> But it's a product it's not a rebrand of something else.
>> It's not.
>> Explain that.
>> It's not. Yeah.
So what we did is, let me start off why we started Aria.
So we said, okay.
Native public managing environments,
native public cloud environments
and cloud native applications, is a different ball game.
More referrable workloads. Very large scale.
Highly fragmented data.
So we looked at that problem rounds up and said,
we need to have a management solution that solves
that problem, focused on native public cloud
and cloud native apps.
And the core to solving that problem was,
you can't just solve it for one cloud,
or you can't solve it for one discipline.
When I say discipline, when you think about management,
what do you manage?
You're managing to optimize cost,
you're managing to optimize performance,
you're managing to optimize your security,
and you're managing to speed up the delivery.
That is it.
And so we said we'll have a new look to this management
and what we have done with Aria is we have introduced
a brand new platform, which we call Aria Hub,
powered by Aria Graph, which allows you to deliver this
on this management challenges by creating a map
of your environment, a near real time map
of your environment.
And then we are able to,
once we know what an application looks like
and how it maps to the infrastructure,
we can go and query other subsystems to tell you
what is the cost of an application,
what is the performance of an application,
creating a common understanding.
>> This, now-
>> Its a new architecture.
I just wanted to get that out there. It's federated.
New-
>> And a Graph database?
>> Yes.
It's a new architecture federated platform
that not only gives you a map of your environment,
but it federates into other sources to pull
that data together.
>> Great.
>> Now one of the data sources that it federates into is,
of course, also, vRealize-
>> Yeah, yeah. Right.
>> Cloud Health.
>> You plug in-
>> Tons of observability. You plug everything into it.
>> Yeah.
>> And, as part of the announcement,
we didn't just announce a platform.
We also announced a set of crosscutting solutions
'cause we said, okay, what is the power of the platform?
The big thing is it removes the swivel chair management.
It allows you to answer questions you couldn't answer before
and so-
>> Swivel chair meaning going one app to another-
>> One app-
>> Logging in.
>> Exactly.
Logging in, credentials, and you don't have
a common understanding of app across those,
so now you hire people who do integration buses, right?
All kinds of trouble.
So the three new end-to-end solutions we
are announcing also in, along with the platform,
these are brand new.
One is something called Aria Guardrails.
So when I have development environments, today, for example,
my, I do development on public cloud as well
as private cloud.
I have thousands of accounts,
each one with its own security rules,
each one with its own policies.
After I initially deploy the account,
it becomes a nightmare to manage that.
>> Yeah.
>> So what Aria Guardrails allows you to do is set up
these multi-cloud environments with the right policies
and not only is it about one time provisioning,
but it is maintaining them on a runtime basis-
>> And those credentials are also a risk
because you can have a password on the dark web
that's exposed on one and you've got to change it
and there's so many things going on-
>> Exactly! Exactly!
>> On security, which brings me up to the point of, you know,
we were talking, we're going to see Tom-
>> Yes.
>> Later on security.
We heard earlier, why wasn't security in the keynote?
Oh, it's table stakes.
That's what Zea said, but we're like, okay. I get that.
So let's just say that security is table stakes.
There's a big trend towards security as a state-
>> Yes.
>> Of something as, at a given time,
and that CCOs and CSOs are goin' to defensibility-
>> Yes.
>> Meaning being defensible all the time-
>> Yes.
>> As an ongoing thing, which is not just running
a pen test once a week-
>> Yes.
>> Like, multiple testing, real testing, not simulation-
>> Yes.
>> To be secure.
>> Yes.
>> So it's not about being secure.
It's about having security-
>> Right.
>> But defensibility is the action now not-
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> How does that fit into this?
Because this seems to, like,
be in this wheelhouse of management.
>> No, I think you're bringing a very important point
which is the security as a post-the-fact item
is no longer right, right?
You want to bake in security.
This is a shift left of security that we talk about.
When you're building an application and you
are deploying code in your test, you want to say, hey,
what is the security?
Is it secure? Is it meeting my guardrails?
Then, when you deploy it
from an operations perspective also,
it is a security concern.
It's not just a security team's concern now.
>> Mhm.
>> So is my configuration right? Is my configuration secure?
Has, is it drifting? It's never a snapshot in time.
It's constantly, you have to look at it. Is it drifting?
And that is exactly what we are doing also with Aria.
>> So that's part of the solution you're talking about
in the guardrails, within-
>> Being able to maintain the secure configuration, right?
Now, as I said, there is always a security discipline-
>> Yeah.
>> Which is, you are done by security teams,
but you also want operations teams and development teams
to enforce security in their respective practices
and that's what Aria allows you to do.
>> So the question on multi-cloud comes in. Okay.
So this is all good, by the way.
We love that shift laughed again.
Great developer and I would argue, actually,
we argue in the theCUBE that DevOps
is the development environment for Cloud Native.
So the I.T. operation was once called Ops is now in Dev.
Just saying.
>> He is.
>> And then Data Ops and Security Ops are now the new I.T.
because that's where the hard problems are.
So how do you look at the data side of it as well
as security in your view of multi-cloud because, you know,
hybrid cloud, I can see the steady state between, you know,
on-premises and cloud if it's operating cloud-like,
but now you're starting to look at spanning clouds.
>> Yes, yes.
>> Not full spanning workloads.
That's not there yet,
but certainly people have multiple clouds-
>> Yeah.
>> But when you, data seems to be the first thing spanning,
not necessarily the app itself, but how do you guys view
that multi-cloud aspect of what you're managing?
I mean-
>> Yeah.
>> How you look at that?
>> I think there are different angles to it, right?
You can look at it from the data angle and you look
at it on how protected a data is.
For us, when you look at management discipline,
it is all from the perspective of configurations.
Okay? If I have configured my environment correctly,
then you should not be able to do something
that destroys all the data, right?
So getting the configuration right
when you're developing the app,
getting the configuration right
when you're provisioning the app,
and then getting the configuration right
even when you're doing day two and ongoing operations,
that is what we bring to the table.
And, to some extent, that Aria visibility that I was talking
about, an Aria Graph, a near real-time view
of the configuration state and its dependencies-
>> Mhm.
>> Is very critical.
So now I can ask questions. Is there a misconfiguration?
By the way, the answer is yes.
>> And that's a lot by the way too, right?
>> Yeah.
(John laughing)
Which you exposes me and then you can say, hey,
is there user activity associated
with that misconfigured object?
Now suddenly you have elevate, go to a red alert.
So, not only is something misconfigured,
but there is user activity associated
with the misconfigured data.
You know this is something that I have-
>> This is where AI sings beautifully because-
>> Beautifully!
>> Once you have the configuration baseline done-
>> Yes.
>> It's like securing the S3 bucket which is like a knee.
Has to be a, like, brushing your teeth, you know?
It's got to be a habit.
>> Exactly.
>> Yeah, it's like, you just don't even think about it.
You just don't leave an S3 bucket-
>> It's got to be simplified because you're,
we're asking the Devs now to be security pros.
>> Correct.
>> Secure the run time, secure the paths, you know,
secure the containers, and so they need help.
This is not what they wake up
in the morning passionate about, right?
But they got to-
>> But that is where the guardrails comes in.
>> Totally. Yeah.
>> So a developer, why should they care?
They should just say, look,
I'm developing for the credit card industry.
I need a PCI-compliant environment and then let us take care
of defining that environment, deploying that environment,
managing that environment on an ongoing basis.
They should be building code-
>> Yep.
>> Right?
But there is a change also which is, in the past,
these were like two different islands
and two different views.
With Aria Graph, we also have created this unified API
that a developer could query or an Ops could query to create
a common understanding of their environment.
So you're not looking at, you know, the elephant,
one the trunk and the other one the tail.
You're looking at it in a common way.
>> Can you talk about the collaboration between Tanzu
and Aria Portfolios because, honestly,
the VMware customers are investing in Tanzu.
A lot of stuff's coming out of the oven.
We heard some, Dave heard some stuff from Chris Wolf
and he's going to come on tomorrow.
And Raghu was hinting at some other stuff
that's not yet public, but, you know,
this thing's happening.
>> Things happening. Lot of things happening.
>> You know, announcements happened years ago, you know,
last year.
Now some fruit's coming off the tree.
This is a hot product.
Aria makes a lot of sense for the customers.
Where's the cloud native stuff, kicking, connecting in-
>> Oh my gosh!
>> And what's the, give us the overview.
>> Yeah.
>> Where's the connection?
>> Yeah. It is lots and lots of connections.
So you have a beautiful Kubernetes environment
and a Cloud Native platform.
You have accelerated app development.
Now, you're building more apps,
more microservices-based apps, more fragmented data,
more information.
So think of Aria as an envelope around all of this.
So wherever you are, whether you are building
an application, deploying an application,
managing an application, retiring an application
through that life cycle, we can bring that management.
So what we are doing with Tanzu is, with the platform,
developing platform, now we can hook in management
with a common perspective earlier in the life cycle.
I don't have to wait for it to go to production-
>> Mhm.
>> To start saying, is it secure? Is it configured?
How is it performing? What is my cost trade off?
As a developer, I've decided to fix a latency issue.
I'm going to add a new region or I'm going to scale
out a particular tier.
Do I know how much it'll cost me?
Can I give you that right at your fingertips?
Potentially even within the developing platform
and within the ID.
That's the power, right?
So bringing Aria-
>> And not a lot of heavy lifting on the developers.
Pretty much almost like a query to a-
>> Exactly!
>> A database or something.
>> Even a simple API that they can just query as part
of their development process.
>> Yeah.
>> So, by bringing Aria and Tanzu and, really,
Aria enveloping Tanzu, right?
You're able to bring that power to the developer.
>> I just always smile because, you know, I remember we have
a group called the Cloud Arati-
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> The early OG founded the group.
>> Cloud Arati!
>> The early days of Cloud.
When we were talking about infrastructure as code-
>> Yes!
>> Way back when-
>> Yes.
>> And finally, it's actually happening.
So what you're describing is infrastructure's code
because now there is more complexity happening
under the hard and top.
>> Exactly.
>> And, you know, services are being turned
on and off automatically-
>> Yes.
>> Sometimes you might not even know what's going on-
>> Exactly.
>> But, if you have guardrails-
>> But you have to discover the state,
know something has turned on, understand the implication,
and then synthesize it down to the insight for the user.
>> You know a lot of people have been complaining
about other older companies like Splunk's The World,
who have great logging technology for gen one cloud,
but now these new logging, logging becomes a problem.
Can you talk about how you guys are handling that?
Give confidence or-
>> Yeah.
>> Explain that there's,
everything's going to be logged properly?
>> Yeah.
(John laughing)
So really, look, there are three disciplines that,
we have management discipline, like, ultimately,
there are thousands of names,
but it boils down to you're managing the cost,
you're managing the security,
you're managing the performance of your applications.
That is it, right?
So what we found is when you think of these disciplines
as siloed solutions, you can't ask a simple question as,
what is my cost performance trade off?
You can't ask a simple question as, hey,
I'm improving performance.
How, what is the implication of security?
And that's when you start building complex solutions
that say, okay, let me collect log from here
and let me collect this from here then let me correlate
and normalize an application definition
and tell you something.
>> And then put it in a spreadsheet.
>> And put it in a spreadsheet, finally,
for somebody or what.
(laughing)
Exactly.
So one of the pillars is about managing performance.
We have very powerful capabilities today in our portfolio:
Tanzu observability which is part of Aria portfolio,
vRealize Log which is part of Aria Portfolio, networks,
insights, and operations.
So with the common, when you have a common language,
we have a common language.
We understand each other.
Similarly, with Aria Graph and Aria Hub,
we have creating this common language.
So once we create a common language,
all of the various observability
and log solutions have a meaning.
They have relevance and so we are able to take the noise
from all these systems and synthesize it down
to what we call business insights and that's what is one
of the big announcement as part of Aria.
>> Awesome.
>> Take data which we have lots of
and convert it to information.
>> Give us the bumper sticker on why VMware.
>> Well, I'll tell you.
When you talk about various public clouds,
each public cloud has their native solutions.
I've got Control Tower, I've got Cloud Wash, Cloud Trail,
different solutions, and some of the hyper-scalers
are also expanding their solutions to other cloud.
I think VMware, in a way, from a multi-cloud perspective,
we are in a wonderfully neutral position.
Not only do we have a wealth of technology and assets
that we can bring to the game,
but we can also do it evenly across all clouds.
So look at something like cost.
Do you trust one of the hyper-scalers to tell you
that what is the cost comparison between them
and another hyper-scaler?
That is where the VMware value comes in.
>> I think people just trying to figure out what the cost
of one cloud is.
>> Exactly!
(laughing)
That is often!
>> People makin' money doing that as a job.
>> No, no. Definitely.
Even a single cloud. What is the cost?
So-
>> It's a cloud economist out there and we know who he is.
Corey, a friend of theCUBE, he does it for his living.
So-
>> Yes!
>> Help people figure out their bill.
>> Exactly! Exactly!
>> Just on one cloud.
>> Exactly. It's one cloud.
So being able, we have the unique position where,
and the right sets of technologies and experiences,
to bring that solution to bare across Multi-Cloud, right?
>> Great. What's your vision?
Real quick. One minute left.
What's your vision for the group?
What are you investing in? What's your goals?
What are you trying to do? Obviously, the product's new.
Going to roll that out.
>> Yeah.
>> What's the plan?
>> I really, again, the biggest one,
the tagline I talked about, right?
I want to, you know, I'm telling customers,
managing stuff is boring.
Don't waste your time on it. Let us take care of it, right?
So make the Cloud complexity invisible so that you can focus
on building your applications and everything that we do
in the business unit is targeted towards that one goal.
>> Because-
>> It is not about doing more features, more capabilities.
It's are you solving customers' questions?
And we start from question down.
>> Purnima, thank you for spending your valuable time
here in theCUBE explaining the new news.
Appreciate it. All right.
>> Good day! All right!
Yeah! Take Care!
>> All right!
We'll be back after lunch, after this short break.
Stay more with theCUBE live here in San Francisco
for VMware Explorer '22.
I'm John. That's Dave.
>> Thank you!
(bright music)