(upbeat music)
>> Welcome back everyone to Supercloud22,
I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here in Palo Alto.
For this next ecosystem's segment we have Muddu Sudhakar,
who is the co-founder and CEO of Aisera,
a friend of theCUBE, Cube alumni,
serial entrepreneur, multiple exits,
been on multiple times with great commentary.
Muddu, thank you for coming on, and supporting our-
>> Also thank you for having me, John.
>> Yeah, thank you.
Great handshake there, I love to do it.
One, I wanted you here because, two reasons,
one is, congratulations on your new funding.
>> Thank you.
>> For $90 million, Series D funding.
>> Series D funding.
>> So, huge validation in this market.
>> It is.
>> You have been experienced software
so, it's a real testament to your team.
But also, you're kind of in the Supercloud vortex.
This new wave that Supercloud is part of is,
I call it the pretext to what's coming with multi-clouds.
It is the next level.
>> I see.
>> Structural change and we have been reporting on it,
Dave and I, and we are being challenged.
So, we decided to open it up.
>> Very good, I would love it. >> And have a conversation
rather than waiting eight months to prove that we are right.
Which, we are right, but that is a long story.
>> You're always right. (both laughs)
>> What do you think of Supercloud, that's going on?
What is the big trend?
Because its public cloud is great,
so there is no conflict there. >> Right.
>> It's got great business, it's integrated,
IaaS, to SaaS, PaaS, all in the beginning, or the middle.
All that is called good.
Now you have on-premise high rate cloud.
>> Right.
>> Edge is right around the corner.
Exploding in new capabilities.
So, complexity is still here.
>> That's right, I think, you nailed it.
We talk about hybrid cloud, and multi cloud.
Supercloud is kind of elevates the message even better.
Because you still have to leave for some of our clouds,
public clouds.
There will be some of our clouds, still running on the Edge.
That's where, the Edge cloud comes in.
Some will still be on-prem.
So, the Supercloud as a concept is beyond
hybrid and multi cloud.
To me, I will run some of our cloud on Amazon.
Some could be on Aisera,
some could be running only on Edge, right?
>> Mm hm
>> And we still have, what we call remote executors.
Some leaders of service now.
You have, what we call the mid-server,
is what I think it was called.
Where you put in a small code
and run it. >> Yeah.
>> So, I think all those things will be running
on-prem environment and VMware cloud, et cetera.
>> And if you look back at,
I think it has been five years now,
maybe four or five years
since Andy Jassy at reInvent announced Outposts.
Think that was the moment in time that
Dave and I took this pause back and said
"Okay, that's Amazon."
who listens to their customers.
Acknowledging Hybrid. >> Right.
>> Then we saw the rise of Snowflakes,
the Databricks, specialty clouds.
You start to see people who are building on top of AWS.
But at MongoDB, it is a database,
now they are a full blown, large scale data platform.
These companies took advantage of the public cloud to build,
as Jerry Chen calls it,
"Castles in the cloud." >> Right.
>> That seems to be happening in all areas.
What do you think about that?
>> Right, so what is driving the cloud?
To me, we talk about machine learning in AI, right?
Versus clouded options.
We used to call it lift and shift.
The outposts and lift and shift.
Initially this was to get the data into the cloud.
I think if you see,
the vendor that I like the most,
is, I'm not picking any favorite but,
Microsoft Azure,
they're thinking like your Supercloud, right?
Amazon is other things, but Azure is a lot more
because they run on-prem.
They are also on Azure CloudFront, Amazon CloudFront.
So I think, Azure and Amazon are doing a lot more
in the area of Supercloud.
What is really helping is the machine learning environment,
needs Superclouds.
Because I will be running some on the Edge,
some compute, some will be running on the public cloud,
some could be running on my data center.
So, I think the Supercloud is really
suited for AI and automation really well.
>> Yeah, it is a good point about Microsoft, too.
And I think Microsoft's existing install base saved Azure.
>> Okay. >> They brought Office 365,
Sequel Server, cause their customers
weren't leaving Microsoft.
They had the productivity thing nailed down
as well as the ability to catch up
>> That's right. >> To AWS.
So, natural extension to on-premise with Microsoft.
>> I think... >> Tell us-
>> Your Supercloud is what Microsoft did.
Right? Azure.
If you think of, like, they had an Office 365,
their SharePoint, their Dynamics,
taking all of those properties, running on the Azure.
And still giving the migration path into a data center.
Is Supercloud.
So, the early days Supercloud came from Azure.
>> Well, that's a good point,
we will certainly debate that.
I will also say that Snowflake built on AWS.
>> That's right.
>> Okay, and became a super powerhouse
with the data business.
As did Databricks.
>> That's right. >> Then went to Azure
>> That's right.
>> So, you're seeing kind of the Playbook.
>> Right.
>> Go fast on Cloud Native, the native cloud.
Get that fly wheel going, then get going,
somewhere else. >> It is,
and to that point I think you and me are talking, right?
If you are to start at one cloud and go to another cloud,
the amount of work as a vendor for us
to use for implement.
Today, like we use all three clouds, including the Go-Cloud.
It's a lot of work.
So, what will happen, the next toolkit we use?
Even services like Elastic.
People will not, the word commoditize, is not the word,
but people will create an abstraction layer,
even for S3.
>> Explain that, explain that in detail.
So, elastic? What do you mean by that?
>> Yeah, so what that means is today, Elasticsearch,
if you do an Elasticsearch on Amazon,
if I go to Azure,
I don't want enter another Elasticsearch layer.
Ideally I want us to write an abstracted search layer.
So, that when I move my services into a different cloud
I don't want to re-compute and re-calculate everything.
That's a lot of work.
Particularly once you have a production customer,
if I were to shift the workloads, even to the point
of infrastructure, take S3,
if I read infrastructure to S3 and tomorrow I go to Azure.
Azure will have its own objects to store.
I don't want to re-validate that.
So what will happen is digital component,
component is already there, we want storage,
we want network layer, we want VPM services,
elastic as well as all fundamental stuff, including MongoDB,
should be abstracted to run.
(John laughs) On the Superclouds.
>> Okay, well that is a little bit of a unicorn fantasy.
But let's break that down. >> Sure.
>> Do you think that's possible?
>> It is.
Because I think, if I am on MongoDB,
I should be able to give a horizontal layer to MongoDB
that is optimized for all three of them.
I don't want MongoDB.
>> First of all, everyone will buy that.
>> Sure. >> I'm skeptical
that that's possible.
Given where we are at right now.
So, you're saying that a vendor will provide
an abstraction layer.
>> No, I'm saying that either MongoDB, itself will do it,
or a third party layer will come as a service
which will abstract all this layer
so that we will write to an AP layer.
>> So what do you guys doing?
How do you handle multiple clouds?
You guys are taking that burden on,
because it makes sense,
you should build the abstraction layer.
Not rely on a third party vendor right?
>> We are doing it because
there is no third party available offer it.
But if you offer a third party tomorrow,
I will use that as a Supercloud service.
>> If they're 100% reliable?
>> That's right. That's exactly it.
>> They have to do the work.
>> They have to do the work because if today
I am doing it because no one else is offering it-
>> Okay so what people might not know is that
you are an angel investor as well as an entrepreneur
been very successful, so you're rich,
you have a lot of money.
If I were a startup and I said,
Muddu, I want to build this abstraction layer.
What would be funding advice that you would give me
as an entrepreneur?
As a company to do that?
>> I would do it like an Apigee that Google acquired,
you should create an Apigee-like layer,
for infrastructure upfront services,
I think that is a very good option.
>> And you think that is viable?
>> It is very much viable.
>> Would that be part of Supercloud architecture,
in your opinion? >> It is. Right?
And that will abstract all the clouds to some level.
Like it is like Kubernetes abstract,
so that if I am running on Kubernetes
I can transfer to any cloud.
>> Yeah
>> But that should go from computer
into other infrastructures.
>> It's seems to me, Muddu,
and I want to get your thoughts
about this whole Supercloud defacto standard opportunity.
It feels like we are waiting for a moment
where there is some sort of defacto unification,
whether it is in the distraction layer,
or a standards body.
There is no W3C here going on.
I mean, W3C was for web consortium,
for world wide web.
The Supercloud seems to be having the same impact
the web had.
Transformative, disruptive, re-factoring
business operations.
Is there a standardized body or an opportunity
for a defacto?
Like Kubernetes was a great
example of a unification around something for orchestration.
Is there a better version in the Supercloud model
where we need a standard?
>> Yes and no.
The reason is because by the time you come to standard,
take time to look what happened.
First, we started with VMs,
then became Docker and Containers
then we came to Kubernetes.
So it goes through a journey.
I think the next few years will be stood on SuperCloud
let's make customers happy,
let's make enough services going,
and then the standards will come.
Standards will be almost 2-3 years later.
So I don't think standards should happen right now.
Right now, all we need is, we need enough start ups
to create the super layer abstraction,
with the goal in mind of AI automation.
The reason, AI is because AI needs to be able to run that.
Automated because running a work flow is,
I can either run a workflow in the cloud services,
I can run it on on-prem, I can run it on database,
so you have two good applications, take AI and automation
with Supercloud and make enough enough noise on that
make enough applications, then the standards will come.
>> On this project we have been with SuperCloud
these past day we have heard a lot of people talking.
The themes that developers are okay,
they are doing great.
Open source is booming. >> Yes
>> Cloud Native's got major traction.
Developers are going fast and they love it,
shifting left, all these great things.
They're putting a lot of data,
DevOps and the security teams,
they're the ones who are leveling up.
We are hearing a lot of conversations
around how they can be faster.
What is your view on this as relative
to that Supercloud nirvana getting there?
How are DevOps and security teams leveling up to devs?
>> A couple of things.
I think that in the world of DevSecOps and security ops.
The reason security is important, right?
Given what is going on,
but you don't need to do security the manual way.
I think that whole new operation
that you and me talked about, AI ops should happen.
Where the AI ops is for service operation,
for performance, for incident or for security.
Nobody thinks of AI security.
So, the DevOps people should think more world of AI ops,
so that I can predict, prevent things before they happen.
Then the security will be much better.
So AI ops with Supercloud will probably be that nirvana.
But that is what should happen.
>> In the AI side of things, what you guys are doing,
what are you learning, on scale, relative to data?
Is there, you said machine learning needs data,
it needs scale operation.
What's your view on the automation piece of all this?
>> I think to me, the data is the single, underrated,
unsung kind of hero in the whole machine learning.
Everyone talks about AI and machine learning algorithms.
Algorithms are as important,
but even more important is data.
Lack of data I can't do algorithms.
So my advice to customers is don't lose your data.
That is why I see, Frank, my old boss,
setting everything up into the data cloud, in Snowflake.
Data is so important, store the data, analyze the data.
Data is the new AI.
You and me talk so many times- >> Yeah
>> It's underrated, people are not anticipating
how important it is.
But the data is coming from logs, events,
whether there is knowledge documents, any data in any form.
I think keep the data, analyze the data, data patterns,
and then things like SuperCloud
can really take advantage of that.
>> So, in the Supercloud equation
one of the things that has come up
is that the native clouds do great.
Their IaaS to SaaS is interactions
that solve a lot of problems.
There is integration that is good.
>> Right.
>> Now when you go off cloud, you get regions,
get latency issues-
>> Right
>> You have more complexity.
So what's the trade off in the Supercloud journey,
if you had to guess?
And just thinking out loud here,
what would be some of the architectural trade offs
of how you do it, what's the sequence?
What's the order of operations to get Superclouding going?
>> Yeah, very good questions here.
I think once you start going from the public cloud,
the clouds there scale to lets say,
even a regional data center onto an Edge,
latency will kick in.
The lack of computer function will kick in.
So there I think everything should become
asynchronous, right?
You will run the application in a limited environment.
You should anticipate for small memories,
small compute, long latencies,
but still following should happen.
So some operations should become the old-school following,
like, it's like the email.
I send an email, it's an asynchronous thing,
I made a sponsor, I think most of message passing
should go back to the old-school architectures
They should become asynchronous where thing can rely.
I think, as long as algorithms can take that into Edge,
I think that Superclouds can really bridge
between the public cloud to the edge.
>> Muddu, thanks for coming,
we really appreciate your insights here.
You've always been a great friend, great commentator.
If you weren't the CEO and a famous angel investor,
we would certainly love to have you as a theCUBE analyst,
here on theCUBE.
>> I am always available for you.
(John laughs)
>> When you retire, you can come back.
Final point, we've got time left.
We'll give you a chance to talk about the company.
I'm really intrigued by the success
of your ninety million dollar financing realm
because we are in a climate
where people aren't getting those kinds of investments.
It's usually down-rounds. >> Okay
>> 409 adjustments, people are struggling.
You got an up-round and you got a big number.
Why the success?
What is going on with the company?
Why are you guys getting such great validation?
Goldman Sachs, Thoma Bravo, Zoom, these are big names,
these are the next gen winners.
>> It is. >> Why are they picking you?
Why are they investing in you?
>> I think it is not one thing, it is many things.
First all, I think it is a four-year journey for us
where we are right now.
So, the company started late 2017.
It is getting the right customers, partners,
employees, team members.
So it is a lot hard work went in.
So a lot of thanks to the Aisera community for where we are.
Why customers and where we are?
Look, fundamentally there is a problem to solve.
Like, what Aisera is trying to solve
is can we automate customer service?
Whether internal employees, external customer support.
Do it for IT, HR, sales, marketing, all the way to ops.
Like you talk about DevSecOps,
I don't want thousands of tune ups for ops.
If I can make that job better, >> Yeah
>> I want to, any job I want to automate.
I call it, elevate the human, right?
>> Yeah. >> And that's the reason-
>> 'Cause you're saying people have to learn specialty tools,
and there are consequences to that.
>> Right, and to me, people should focus
on more important tasks and use AI as a tool
to automate those things right?
It's like thinking
of offering Apple City as Alexa as a service,
that is how we are trying to offer
customer service, like, right?
And if it can do that consistently,
and reduce costs, cost is a big reason
why customers like us a lot,
we have eliminated the cost in this down economy,
I will amplify our message even more, right?
I am going to take a bite out of their expense.
Whether it is tool expense, it's on resources.
Second, is user productivity
And finally, experience.
People want experience.
>> Final question, folks out there,
first of all, what do you think about Supercloud?
And if someone asks you what is this Supercloud thing?
How would you answer?
>> Supercloud, is, to me,
beyond multi cloud and hybrid cloud.
It is to bridge applications that are build
in Supercloud can run on all clouds seamlessly.
You don't need to compile them, re-clear them.
Supercloud is one place to build, develop, and deploy.
>> Great, Muddu. Thank you for coming on.
Supercloud22 here breaking it down
with the ecosystem commentary,
we have a lot of people coming to the small group of experts
in our network, bringing you in open conversation
around the future of cloud computing
and applications globally.
And again, it is all about the next generation cloud.
This is theCUBE, thanks for watching.
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