>> Live from San Francisco, it's The Cube
covering Google Cloud Next 2018.
Brought to you by Google Cloud and its ecosystem partners.
>> Hey, welcome back everyone, this is The Cube live
here in San Francisco covering Google Cloud's event,
Google Cloud Next '18,
#Google Next 18.
I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante.
Our next guess is Lakshmi Sharma,
director of product management, networking for Google Cloud.
We met in Denmark at CubeCon, part of the CNCF.
Great to see you again. Thanks for coming on.
>> Thank you so much.
>> Great to have you on,
we've been hearing so many people talk about the networking.
Dave I know has got a lot of questions,
and it's come up.
The performance, the low latency,
even we had Deepti on earlier about Cloud Spanner.
Customers might move from Oracle because of the low latency.
Low latency is the killer app for networking.
>> That's right.
>> Tell us what's new, what's happening at the show for you
and your group.
>> So a lot of things happening,
you must have seen the announcements yesterday
around Cloud service platforms,
where GKE is a very kind of inherit part of it
and anywhere where you talk about hybrid,
you know, it wouldn't happen
without connectivity, it wouldn't happen
without service discovery, load balancing.
So networking is inherit part of a lot
of that hybrid story that we talk about.
This morning we did a demo of Cloud Armor
in a keynote session.
So Cloud Armor which is our,
all the years of infrastructure work that we have been doing
at Google, protecting our infrastructure services,
leveraging that knowledge
and also protecting our edge for our customers,
enterprise customers in cloud.
So there is lot happening in networking.
>> And what's interesting too is that,
I mean I like the hybrid thing,
we actually joking off camera
that I don't think Google actually needs to do hybrid
because we just go to Google.
But I see how you would want to manage the objection,
maybe sales inhibitors but,
it should look like a cloud.
And I think that's what everyone wants to do.
Networking from one company to another
has always been kind of a challenge,
how are you guys solving
that inter-cloud, inter-networking challenge
because it's hard to get an SLA
if you're going to be moving work loads around the cloud.
So how do you guys talk about that inside Google
because this is something that's come up a few times,
you got software to find networking.
What's the solution for moving works load
in and out of the cloud?
>> Fantastic, and um,
that's an area where we have launched some products
like not just from Google perspective,
but even with partners.
Because we do understand wherever it comes to hybrid,
when you talk about gigantic petabytes worth
of load migrating, like in a loop and other kinds of datas,
you do need a network which is reliable
and where you can offer SLAs.
So, support for Interconnect that we have,
and we have launched Interconnect
with partners, partnering to Interconnect,
and offering SLAs for that Interconnect
so that your customers can come to you and reliably,
and that giving you the same infrastructure capability
that we will have for our connective services,
that's where we are coming from.
So yes, services like Interconnect, giving SLAs on them,
so they are enabling lot of these, you know,
data migration stories and allowing
mission-critical applications to be moved over.
>> Okay, so I have a question for you
I want to throw this out there and,
might throw you for a curve ball but you're smart,
so I know you'll get a good answer here.
The whole show's about AI.
And software defined and virtualization,
we've seen that go up and down the stack.
How is AI or machine learning being used in networking?
Because we see Cisco here, and the big theme
that we're connecting the dots in is that network data
is actually really good for working with things
like containers and Kubernetes, GKE and Istio.
So you're starting to see policy concepts
of networking go up the stack.
So how is AI being incorporated into this?
Can you share your reaction and commentary
on what's going on there?
The vision or any top product features?
>> So, brilliant, so security and machine learning and AI,
that's just in Google's infrastructure DNA.
And I sit in infrastructure team, right.
So, a product that I mentioned earlier, Cloud Armor,
which is built upon all the learning
that we have had from our security
and protecting our infrastructure
against the global attacks.
So we had been learning that.
We had been offering that to our end users
with the YouTube and Gmail and other services anyways.
>> Search.
>> A lot of that, right, Search, right?
So all of that has been going in
and we had been learning throughout.
Lot of machine learning, lot of that logistic,
you know, a lot of that heuristics
has already been offered through that infrastructure.
And we are now leveraging that and we want to be able
to offer that as services to our customers, right.
So, it's been there.
>> So it's been there. >> It's there.
>> It's been native. >> We are just,
we just need to kind of bring that infrastructure learning
into the Cloud users, to the enterprise customers.
>> And we saw, we saw a demo this morning in the keynote.
It was, to protect against DDoS attacks,
which is a, was a pretty impressive demo.
And so, like you said, that's just there.
It's an inherent part of the application.
>> Yeah, what we do, right?
It's not enough to talk for this.
>> How about, how about the undersea cable infrastructure
that you run?
I always used to watch videos of that stuff getting laid
and I think you've laid down, I dunno,
a three, four or five, even maybe five this year already.
Talk about why that's important
and how that's strategic to Google.
>> Oh, very nice.
13 so far, like 13 sub-sea cables we have.
So we have this concept of, you know, global VPC.
And VPC, which is like a virtual construct which manages,
maps to, let's say an organization.
Or you know, if you can go multiple hierarchies.
It's a construct that, that we represent in Cloud.
It's global, and we call it global VPC
because of that infrastructure that is laid down.
And the reason that when you go across Atlantic,
when you go from, US to, you know, EMEA region,
the reason that we can still give you that guarantee
and the speed and the bandwidth that you get in the network
is because of that infrastructure that we have laid down.
So that is very in near and part, all that infrastructure
that we have laid out, including sub-sea cables,
it makes our global VPC and global infrastructure and reach.
>> There's no interconnect
>> There is no interconnecting there.
>> It's straight Google.
>> Exactly, right?
Very good point.
So if you needed to go and if you were
another kind of VPC,
where you go regional VPC one, regional VPC two,
then you will be going to another service provider.
Then you will be setting up contracts and commercial,
and IP side VPNs or some kind of fearing policies.
You don't need all of that because you're just going--
>> It's more expensive.
>> Oh, absolutely.
>> So what's the product stray.
You're head of products management,
which means you look at the product features.
You got to decide what to put in, what to put out.
It's like deciding as a chef
what to make the meal the best here.
You know, it's like, and, and, you got to balance customer
needs and engineering happiness and priorities.
Some foundational things.
What are some of the things that you're working on
that you'd like, that you'd want to share
that you think it's important for people to know about.
>> So, in this at Next, we have announced couple of things.
One of the things we are very proud of
is our capability within the container
or the networking space.
So, we make a load balancing
and networking native for containers.
So we launch something calling Ingress,
what we call Ingress, with a multicluster of support.
So, for the first time, for the first time I would say,
from a product offering perspective across the board
from any provider you would see load balancing
working natively for containers.
What it means, you know, the bandwidth optimization
to reach to your containers and your services,
and the latency that you need.
So, keeping our promise of making containers
as a native citizen
or, you know, first class citizen in cloud,
that's what I'm proud of,
what the team has done-- >> And the benefits of that
native local load balancing >> native load balancing
is that now >> Now you don't touch it.
>> Yeah, you get the same experience.
You get the same value from global load balancer,
and you get the same seeding experience,
you get same Cloud Armor experience.
Because now the same infrastructure will support
your VMs and your containers in the same manner.
So same policy, going back to your point about same policy,
same way of configuring, and same way
of managing your infrastructure.
>> Nice, it's continuous, consistent across--
>> Well, and that enables more, you know, greater degrees
of automation if you don't have to deal
with multiple different configurations, so.
>> Talk about the Google relationship,
Google Cloud relation with Cisco.
Obviously, we're very impressed
with Cisco here, for two reasons.
One is, we think this is going to be
a major benefit for Google.
Because, you know, not that you don't have any
sales people out there, but, you know, the people would say,
"Oh they don't have any sales people."
Well, I think Cisco's one of the best
enterprise sales companies on the planet.
They have the most enterprise customers
running their routers and switches and everything else.
They're also co-developed, the cloud services platform.
How's that affecting your product mix?
Are you involved in that?
Are things you guys working together on?
Are you providing value to them?
How do you relate to that relationship?
>> So, um, like in any other, say, hybrid provider,
I would say our focus has been as, Google has been that,
you know, build, increase and enhance
the open source ecosystem, right.
So that Cloud is real, so that hybrid is real, right.
So taking Kubernetes, taking Istio.
So first we brought up the container management framework.
You know, that was the one story.
Or, not just one, all story, but that's just kind
of one method of doing hybrid and multicloud possible.
And then you bring in a surface subtraction layer,
because like you said, policy and how you do you deploy it,
and how do you distribute your load.
That's important.
How do you discover your services?
So in all those areas Cisco has been working.
They have been contributors as well.
And that's kind of, that's the way we worked with them.
So, enabling hybrid, because as you said,
they understand enterprise networking well,
enterprising area very well.
So we can leverage their enterprise knowledge.
We can learn from them about enterprise patterns
and we can build towards the, you know,
our common services platform, cloud services platform,
you know framework.
And make it for the best use
of Cloud plus enterprise customers.
>> Lakshmi, tell me, take your hat
of networking product manager hat off for a second,
and put your industry observer hat on.
And knowing what you know, what's the big story
here at Google Cloud this year?
In your opinion, what's going on?
What's the big story?
I mean, some nuanced points, we love Istio shipping 1.0.
I mean, I love, I geeked out on that.
Obviously GKE, super nice.
Tons of, I mean there's a ton of things.
What are the most important stories
that are being told here?
>> So okay, I'll just, this is my opinion, personal opinion.
The fact that we have interested large enterprise customers
on stage with us, you know.
We, this, Google has been innovative company.
This is an engineering company.
So this company has that DNA already, right?
Like, of innovation.
But being able to understand enterprise customers,
being able to understand partners,
and then get them together to truly work on solutions
that matters to enterprise customers.
To me, personally, I think that's,
that's what is really clicking me in at this Next.
And we have worked really, you know, hard,
as product engineering and partners in customers.
This is real and I'm very happy about it.
>> If I, if I may.
To me that coincides with the recognition,
the strong recognition by Google, that the world is hybrid.
Right, I mean for years we've been hearing, oh,
from all the legacy guys, the world is hybrid.
By the way, they're right.
But they've had the advantage for a while that,
you know, maybe you didn't recognize that
and others didn't recognize that.
You've now embraced that.
That's a big flip in the mindset.
>> It's interesting you mention engineering culture.
Dave and I, was always, the Cube's our ninth year
doing the Cube, we go to all the enterprise events.
And then, you know, years ago,
when Google's getting into Cloud,
and it's like, "John, what do you think
"about Google getting into cloud?"
I remember saying, "Dave, they're engineers,
"they're going to write an algorithm for the enterprise."
So the algorithm is figuring out
that there's math behind the enterprise.
You got customers.
What are their needs?
You got partners.
What are their needs?
How's the ecosystem work?
How's the money shift?
Who makes more money.
I mean, it's a business model.
Just got to figure it out.
And engineer the solution.
>> Yeah, and then the best thing is like, you know,
if you heard at Diane's keynote, like, Mike from Target,
like the CIO of Target.
He was talking, >> Mike Mcnamara, right.
>> Mcnamara, so he was, when they asked him, like,
so how did you make the decision,
I think the question was around who made the decision.
He said my engineers made the decision.
So, I think that's playing very well in our strengths
because we are an engineering company
and we have understood now what's the business model
and what's the partnership model,
engagement model with enterprises.
We have the best of the both sides now,
and that's what is clicking.
>> Well we really appreciate the success.
We like to see the momentum.
My final question for you is, I know you're doing a lot
of women in tech advocating within Google.
I attended your women in tech cocktail hour.
I kind of gate crashed it.
I mean, I mean I was, (Lakshmi laughs)
it wasn't a sign that said "no guys allowed",
but I was the only guy there for a little bit.
>> And thank you for that.
>> I met John in a gate crash like that.
He's known.
>> I'm weird, I know, I do weird things.
No, but it was a nice moment.
You were bringing all the Linux foundation,
CNCF folks together, you sponsored the party.
So, thanks for doing that.
>> Thank you so much.
Yeah, and thanks to my team here at Google I can,
Um, I was very new at that time, like just couple of months.
And then they supported me to kind of organize that event.
It was a great opportunity to meet many other talent.
And thank you for crashing in, because it's about women
in tech, but you need all the people, like,
who can support that ecosystem.
>> Great, well we love the mission, love shining the light
on smart women in tech, really as role models.
And also, just, it's a great conversation to have
about the contributions, the smartness, and the greatness
of what's going on in this community.
And remember, half the population is women
and we need more women building products
that represent half the population that uses it.
>> And thank you so much for the article that you did
for all the strong womens that we have,
engineering leaders and the product leaders at Google.
Thank you so much, that was beautiful.
>> They deserve every word of it.
I wish I had more lines to write,
almost 2,000 words, appreciate that.
The Cube, bringing you all the action here
at Google Cloud.
Lot of great things happening here.
Of course the Cube is bringing you all the action.
Three days of wall-to-wall coverage.
We're in day two, we got a whole nother day tomorrow.
Stay with us.
More coming on the Cube today after this short break.
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