>> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston,
it's theCUBE, covering IBM Think, brought to you by IBM.
>> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman,
and this is theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2020,
the digital experience.
Welcome to the program, Dinesh Nirmal,
who's the chief product officer for Cloud Paks inside IBM.
Dinesh, nice to see you, thanks so much for joining us.
>> Thank you Stu, really appreciate you taking the time.
>> All right, so, I've been to many IBM shows,
and of course, I'm an analyst in the cloud space,
so I'm familiar with IBM Cloud Paks,
but maybe just refresh our audience minds here,
what they are, how long have they been around for,
what clouds do they live on,
and maybe what's new in 2020
that if somebody had looked at this in the past
that they might not know about IBM Cloud Pak?
>> Yeah, so thanks Stu.
So to start with,
let me say that Cloud Paks are cloud agnostic.
So, the whole goal is that you build once
and it can run anywhere.
That is the basic mantra, or principle,
that we want to build Cloud Paks with.
So they are, look at them as a set
of micro services containerized in a form
that it can run on any public cloud or behind a firewall.
So that's the whole premise of Cloud Paks.
So, when you go back to Cloud Paks,
it's an integrated set of services
that solve a specific set
of business problems and also accelerates building
each set of applications and solutions.
That's what Cloud Paks brings.
So, especially in this environment Stu, think about it.
If I'm an enterprise,
my goal is how can I accelerate and how can I automate?
Those are the two key things that comes to my mind
if I am a C-level exec at an enterprise.
So, Cloud Paks enables that,
meaning you already have a set
of stitched together services
that accelerates the application development.
It ordinates a lot of things for you.
So you today have a lot of applications running
on multiple clouds or behind the firewall.
How do you manage those, right?
Cloud Paks will help.
So, let me give you one example
since you asked specifically on Cloud Paks.
Let's take Cloud Pak for Data.
The set of services that is available in Cloud Pak
for Data will make it easier
for all the way from ingest to visualization.
There's a set of services that you can use,
so you don't have to go build a service
or a product or user product for ingest,
then use another product for ETL,
use another product for building models,
another product to manage those models.
The Cloud Pak for Data will solve
all the problems end to end.
It's a rich set of services that will give you
all the value that you need all the way
from ingest to visualization.
And with any personas,
whether you are a data engineer,
data scientist, or you are a business analyst,
you all can collaborate through the Cloud Paks.
So that's the two minute answer
to your question what Cloud Paks is.
>> Awesome, thanks Dinesh.
Yeah, I guess you pointed out something
right at the beginning there.
I hear IBM Cloud Pak and I think IBM Cloud.
But you said specifically this is really cloud agnostic.
So this week is Think,
last week I was covering Red Hat Summit,
so I heard a lot about multicloud deployments,
talked to the rail team,
talked to the open chip team.
So, help me understand where do Cloud Pak fit
when we're talking about these multicloud employments?
And is there some connection with the partnership
that, of course, IBM has with Red Hat?
>> Of course, so all Cloud Paks are optimized for open chips,
meaning how do we use the set of services
that open chip gives,
the container management that open chip provides?
So as we build containers or micro services,
how do we make sure that we are optimizing
or taking advantage of open chip?
So, for example, the set of services like logging,
monitoring, security, all those services
metering that comes from open chip
is what we are using as Cloud Pak.
So Cloud Paks are optimized for open chip.
From an automation perspective,
how do we use and support, right?
So, all the value that Red Hat and open chip brings
is what Cloud Pak is built on.
So if you look at as a layer as a Lego,
the base Lego is open chipped and rail.
And then on top of it sit Cloud Paks,
and applications and solutions on top of it.
So it's, if I look at layer base,
the base Lego layer is open chip and (faintly speaking).
>> Well, great, that's super important because,
one of the things we've been looking at for a while is,
you talk about hybrid cloud, you talk about multicloud,
and often it's not that platform,
that infrastructure discussion,
but the biggest challenge for companies today
is how do I build new applications,
how do I modernize what I have?
So, sounds like this is exactly
where you're targeting to help people
through that transformation that they're going through.
>> Yeah, exactly Stu,
because if you look at it, in the past products were siloed.
You build a product, you use a set of specs to build it.
It was siloed.
And customers becomes the software integrators,
or system integrators,
where they have to take the different products,
put it together.
So even if I am focused on the data space, or AI space,
before I had to bring in
three or four or five different products,
make it all work together to build a model,
deploy the model, manage the model,
the lifecycle of the model,
the lifecycle of the data.
But the Cloud Paks bring it all in one box,
where out of the box you are ready to go.
So your time to value is much more higher
with Cloud Paks because you already get a set
of stitched together services
that gets working right out of the box.
>> So, I love the idea of out of the box.
When I think of cloud native,
modern application development,
simplicity is not the first thing I think of, Dinesh.
So, help me understand.
So many customers, it's the tools, the skillsets,
they don't necessarily have the experience.
How is what your product set
and your team's doing,
help customers that deal with the ever-changing landscape
and the complexity that they are faced with?
>> Yeah, so the honest truth, Stu,
is that enterprise applications are not an app
that you create and put it on iPhone, right?
I mean, it is much more complex,
because it's dealing with hundreds
of millions of people trying to transact
with the system.
You need to make sure there is a disaster recovery backup,
scalability, elasticity, all those things,
security, obviously, very critical piece, and multitenancy.
All those things has to come together
in an enterprise application.
So, when people talk about simplicity,
it comes at a price.
So, what Cloud Paks has done,
is that we have really focused on
the user experience and design piece.
So, you as an end-user has a great experience
using the integrated set of services.
The complexity piece will still be there,
to some extent, because you're building
a very complex multitenant enterprise application,
but how do we make it easier for a developer
or a data scientist to collaborate or reuse the assets,
find the data much more easier,
or trust the data much more easier than before?
Use AI to predict a lot of the things,
including bias detection, all those things.
So, we are making a lot of the development,
automation and acceleration easier.
The complexity part will be there still,
because enterprise applications tend
to be complex by nature.
But we are making it much more easier for you to develop,
deploy, manage and govern what you are building.
>> Yeah, so, how does Cloud Paks allow you
to really work with the customers,
focus on things like innovation,
showing them the latest in the IBM software portfolio?
>> Yeah, so the first piece
is that we made it much more easier
for the different personas to collaborate.
So in the past,
what is the biggest challenge, me as a data scientist had?
Me as a data scientist, the biggest challenge
was that getting access to the data, trusted data.
Now we have put some governance around it,
where by which you can get data,
trusted data, much more easier using Cloud Pak for Data.
Governance around the data, meaning if you have a CDO,
you want to see who is using the data,
how clean is the data, right?
A lot of times he data might not be clean,
so we want to make sure we can help with that.
Now, let me move into the the line of business piece,
not just the data.
If I am an LOB, and I want to use,
automate a lot of the process I have in today,
in my enterprise,
and not go through the every process automation,
and go through your superior or supervisor to get approval,
how do we use AI in the business process automation also?
So those kind of things, you will get through Cloud Paks.
Now, the other piece of Cloud Pak,
if I am an IT space, right?
The day-two operations,
scalability, security, delivery of the software,
backup and restore, how do we automate
and help with that, the storage layer?
Those are day-two operations.
So, we are taking it all the way from day one,
meaning the whole experience of setting it up,
to day two, where enterprise is really worried about,
making it seamless and easy using Cloud Paks,
I go back to what I said in the beginning,
which is out of the accelerate and automate,
a lot of the work that enterprise have to do today,
much more easier.
>> Okay, we talked earlier in the discussion
about that this can be used
across multiple clouded environments.
My understanding, you mentioned one of the IBM Cloud Paks,
one for data.
There's a number of different Cloud Paks out there.
How does that work from a customer's standpoint?
Do I have to choose a Cloud Pak or a specific cloud?
Is it a license that goes across all of my environments?
Help me understand how this deployment mechanism
and its support and maintenance works.
>> Right, so we have the base, obviously.
I said look at us, a modular Lego model.
The base is obviously open chipped and rail.
On top of its cells sits a bedrock, we call,
which is a common set of services and the logic to expand.
On top of it sits Cloud Pak for Data,
Cloud Pak for Security, Cloud Pak for Applications,
there's Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management,
there's Cloud Pak for Integration.
So there is total of six Cloud Paks that's available,
but you can pick and choose which Cloud Pak you want.
So let's say you are a CDO,
or you are an enterprise who want to focus on data and AI,
you can just pick Cloud Pak for Data.
Or let's say you are a Cloud Pak based on processes,
BPM decision rules, you can go without platform automation,
which gives you the set of tools.
But the biggest benefits too,
is that all these Cloud Paks are a set
of integrated services that can all work together,
sits optimized on top of open chipped.
So, all of a sudden, you'll need Cloud Pak for Data,
and now you want to do data,
but now you want to expand it into your line of business,
and you want Cloud Pak for Automation,
you can bring that in.
Now those two Cloud Paks works together well.
Now you want to bring in Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management,
because you have data,
or applications running on multiple clouds,
so now you can bring Cloud Pak for MCM,
which is multicloud management,
and those three work together.
So it's all a set of integrated set of services
that is optimized on top of OpenShift,
which makes it much more easier for customers
to bring the rich set of services together
and accelerate and automate their lifecycle journey
within the enterprise.
>> Great, last question for you Dinesh.
What new in 2020,
what should customers be looking at today?
Would love if you can give a little bit of guidance
as to where customers should be looking
at for things that might be coming
a little bit down the line here,
and if they want to learn more about IBM Cloud Paks,
where should they be looking?
>> Yeah, they want to learn more,
there's www.ibm.com/cloudpaks.
There's a place to go.
There, all the details around Cloud Paks are there.
You can also get in touch with me,
and I can definitely take you to more detail.
But what is coming is that, look,
so we have a set of Cloud Paks,
but we want to expand and make it extensible.
So how do we, already it's built on an open platform,
but how do we make sure our partners and ISPs
can come and build on top of the base-cloud part?
So that's the focus going to be,
as each Cloud Pak innovate and add more value
within those Cloud Paks.
We also want to expand it so that our partners
and our ISPs and GSIs can build on top of it.
So this year, the focus is continuously innovate
across the Cloud Paks, but also make it much more extensible
for third parties to come and build more value
on top of the Cloud Pak itself.
That's one area we are focusing on.
The other area's MCM, right?
Multicloud management, because there is tremendous appetite
for customers to move data or applications on cloud,
and not only on one cloud, hybrid cloud.
So how do you manage that, right?
So multicloud management definitely helps
on that perspective.
So our focus this year is going to be one, make it extensible,
make it more open,
but at the same time continuously innovate
on every single Cloud Pak
to make that journey for customers on automating
and accelerating application development easier.
>> All right, well Dinesh, thank you so much.
Yeah, the things that you talked about,
that absolutely top of mind for customers
that we talked to.
Multicloud management, as you said,
it was the ACM, the Advanced Cluster Management,
that we heard about from the Red Hat team
last week at Summit.
So thank you so much for the updates.
Definitely exciting to watch Cloud Pak,
how you're helping customers deal with that huge,
it's the opportunity but also the challenge
of building their next applications,
modernizing what they're doing
without, still having to think about what they have
from (faintly speaking), so thanks so much,
great to talk with you.
>> Well, thanks Stu, great talking.
>> All right, lots more coverage from IBM Think 2020,
the digital experience.
I'm Stu Miniman, and as always,
thank you for watching theCUBE.
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