>> Welcome back to Los Angeles. TheCUBE is live.
I can't say that enough. The cube is live.
We're at KubeCon Cloud Native Con 21.
We've been here all day yesterday,
and today and tomorrow I'm talking with lots of guests,
really uncovering what's going on
in the world of Kubernetes.
Lisa Martin, here with Dave Nicholson.
We've got some folks.
Next we're going to be talking about a customer use case,
which is always one of my favorite things to talk about.
Please welcome Micah Coletti,
the principal platform engineer at CHG healthcare,
and Venkat Ramakrishnan VP of products from Portworx
by Pure Storage, guys welcome to the program.
>> Thank you.
>> Happy to be here.
>> Yeah. So Micah, first of all, let's go ahead
and start with you.
Give the audience an overview of CHG healthcare.
>> Yeah. So CHG healthcare, we're a staffing company.
So we try like a little companion.
So our clients are doctors and hospitals,
so we help staff hospitals with temporary doctors
or even permanent placing.
So we deal with a lot of doctors, a lot of nursing
and we're a combination of multiple companies.
So CHG is the parent.
So, and yeah, we're known in the industry
as one of the leaders in this field
and providing hospitals with high quality doctors
and nurses. And, you know,
our customer service is like number one,
and one of the things our CEO is really focused on is now
how do we make that more digital?
How do we provide that same level of quality of service,
but a digital experience as rich for her.
>> I can imagine it was a massive need for that
in the last 18 months alone.
>> COVID definitely really raised that awareness up for us
and the importance of that digital experience
and that we need to be out there in the digital market.
>> Absolutely. So you're a customer port works
by pure storage, we're going to get into that,
but then Venkat talk to us about what's going on,
the acquisition of port works by pure storage
was about a year ago.
Talk to us about your VP of products what's going on.
>> Yeah, I mean, you know, first of all,
I think I could not say how much of a great fit for a
Portworx will be part of pure storage,
it's, pure itself is a
very fast moving, large startup
that's a dominant leader in the flash and data center space,
and, you know, pure recognizes the fact
that Kubernetes is the new operating system of the cloud
is not how, you know,
it's kind of virtualizing the cloud itself,
and there's a, you know, a big burgeoning need
for data management and Kubernetes
and how you can kind of orchestrate workloads
between your on-prem data centers and the cloud and back.
So Portworx fits right into the story as complete vision
of data management for our customers,
and it's been phenomenal.
Our business has grown as part of being part of a pure,
and you know, we're looking at launching
some new products as well,
and it's all exciting times.
>> So you must've been pretty delighted to be acquired as a
startup by essentially a startup because,
because although pure has reached significant milestones in
the storage business and is a leader in flash storage still
that that startup mindset is absolutely unique. That's not,
that's not the same as being acquired by a company that's
been around for a hundred years seeking to revitalize
itself.
>> Absolutely.
>> Can you talk a little bit about that aspect?
>> Yeah, So I think, you know,
purist culture is a highly innovation-driven
and it's a very open, flat culture, right?
I mean, it's, everybody in pure is accessible.
It can easily have a composition with folks
and everybody has his learning mindset
and Portworx is and has always been the same way. Right?
So when you put these teams together,
if we can create wonders, I mean,
we right after the acquisition, just within a few months,
we announced an integrated solution that portworx
orchestrates volumes and file shares in pure splash products
and then delivers as an integrated solution for our
customers, and pure has a phenomenal cloud-based monitoring
and management system called pure one
that we integrated well into.
Now, we're bringing the power of all of the observability
that pure's customers are used to for all of the corporate
customers, and I've been super happy, you know,
delegating that capability to our customers and our
customers are delighted.
Now they can have a complete view all the way from
Kubernetes app to the flash.
and I don't think any one company in the planet can even
plan they can do that.
>> I think it's fair to acknowledge that pure one was
observability before observability was a word
that everyone used regularly.
>> Yep.
>> Sounds very interesting.
>> Micah Talk to us about, obviously you are a customer.
CHG is a customer of Portworx now Portworx by Pure
Storage. Talk to us about the use case.
What, what was the compellent?
Was there a compelling event and from a storage perspective
that led you to Portworx in the first place.
>> So we beat, they began this,
our CEO base came to the vision,
we need to have a digital presence we need enhances.
and this was even before COVID.
So they brought me on board and my,
my manager read glossary.
We basically had this task to,
how are we going to get out into the cloud?
How are we going to make that happen?
And we chose to follow a very much a cloud native strategy
and the platform of choice,
I mean, it just made sense with Kubernetes.
And so when we were looking at Kubernetes,
we were starting to figure out how we're doing.
We knew that data is going to be a big factor.
You know, being a, provide data.
We're very much focused on an event driven.
We're really pushing to event driven architecture.
So we leverage Kafka on top of Kubernetes,
but at the time we were actually leveraging Kafka
with a MSK down, out in AWS,
and that was just a huge cost to us.
So I came on board, I had experienced with Portworx,
a prior company before that, and I basically said,
we need to figure out a great storage relay overlay.
and the only way to do is we got to have high performance
storage, we've got to have secure.
We got to be able to backup and recover that storage.
And the Portworx was the right match.
And that allowed us to have a very smooth transition off of
MSK onto Kubernetes
saving us a significant amount of money per month,
and just leverage that already existing hardware that our
existing compute memory and just, and the,
and move right to Portworx.
>> Leveraging your existing investments.
>> Exactly.
>> Which is key,
>> Very key, very key so.
>> So how common are the challenges
that when you guys came together with CHG,
how common are the challenges?
>> It's actually a,
that's a great question.
You know, this is, you know,
I'll tell you the challenges that Micah
and his team are running into is what we see a lot
in the industry where people pay a ton of money,
you know to other vendors are, you know,
especially in some cases use some cloud native services,
but they want to have control over the data.
They want to control the cost and they want higher
performance and they want to have, you know,
there's also governance and regulatory things that they need
to control better.
So they want to kind of bring these services and have more
control over them. Right?
So now we will work very well with all of our partners,
including the cloud providers, as well as, you know,
on-prem and server vendors and everybody,
but different customers have different kinds of needs.
And Portworx gives them that flexibility.
If you are a customer who want, you know,
have a lot of control over your applications,
the performance, the latency,
and want to control costs very well and leverage your
existing investments
Portworx can deliver that for you in your data center.
Right now, you can integrate that with pure slash
and you get a complete solution,
or you want to run it in cloud,
and you still want to have leverage the agility of the cloud
and scale Portworx delivers a solution for you as well.
So it kind of not only protects their investment
its future proves their architecture,
you get future proving your architecture completely.
So if you want to tear the cloud or burst the cloud,
you have a great solution that you can continue to leverage
>> Micah, when you hear future-proof and I'm a marketer.
So I always go,
I love to know what it means to different people.
What does that mean to you in your environment?
>> My environment.
So a future-proof means like one of the things we've been
addressing lately, that's just a real big challenge.
And I'm sure it's a challenge in the industry,
especially the Q and A's is upgrading our clusters.
The ability to actually maintain a consistent flow with how
fast Kubernetes is growing, you know, they're,
they they're out. I think he cast, we leverage the cast.
So it's like 121 or 122 now,
and that effort to upgrade a cluster,
it can be a daunting one.
With Portworx,
we actually were able to make that to where we could
actually spin up a brand new cluster.
And with Portworx shift, all our applications, services,
data migrated completely over,
Portworx handles all of that for us
and stand up that new cluster in, in less than a day.
And that effort, I mean, it would take us a week,
two weeks to do so, not even man hours and time spent there,
but just the reliability of being able to do that in the
cost, you know, instead of standing up a new cluster
and configuring it
and doing all that and spending all that time,
we can just really,
we move to what we call blue green cut-over strategy.
And Portworx is an essential piece of that.
>> So Venkat, is it fair to say that
there are a variety of ways that
people approach Portworx
from a value perspective in terms of,
I know that one area that you are particularly good in is
the area of backups in this environment,
but then you get data management and there's a third kind of
vector there. What is the third vector?
>> As all of the data services,
>> Data services,
>> Yeah Like for example, deep database as a service
on any Kubernetes cluster feed on your cloud
or your on-prem data centers.
>> Which data, what kind of databases are you talking about?
>> I mean we're talking about anything from Reddit Kafka,
Post-stress my sequel console, we are supporting.
We just announced something called a Portworx Data Services
Offering that essentially delivers all these
databases as a service on any Kubernetes cluster
that a customer can point to and lets them kind of get the
automated management of the database from day one to day
three, the entire life cycle, you know,
through regular Kubernetes, scoop cuddle experience
through APIs and SDKs and a nice slick UI
that they can, you know, that's,
role-based access control and all of that,
that they can completely control their data and their
applications through it. And you know,
that's the third vector of Portworx office.
>> Micah a question for you.
So Portworx has been a part of pure storage?
You've known it since obviously for several years before you
were at CHG, you brought it to CHG.
You now know it a year into being acquired by a fast paced
startup.
Talk to me about the relationship and some of the benefits
that you're getting with Portworx as a part of pure storage?
>> Well, I mean, one of the things I, you know,
when I heard about the acquisition,
my first thing was, I was a little bit concerned
is that relationship going to change?
And when we were acquiring,
when we were looking at adopting Portworx,
one thing I would tell my management is Portworx is not
just a vendor that wants to throw a solution on you
and provide some capability. They're a partner.
They want to partner with you and your success in your
journey and this whole cloud native journey to provide this
rich digital experience in the,
for not only our platform engineering team,
but our Dev teams,
but also be able to really accelerate
the development of our services.
So we can provide that digital portal for our end users.
And that didn't change. If anything,
that it accelerated that relationship did not change.
You know, I came to Venkat with an issue.
We just we're, we're dealing with,
he immediately got someone on a phone call with me.
And so that has not changed.
So it's really exciting to see that
now that they've been acquired,
that they still are very much invested in the success of
their customers and making sure we're successful.
You know, it's not all of a sudden.
I was worried I was going to have
to do a whole different support PA process,
and it was going to go into a black hole. Didn't happen.
They still are very much involved with their customers.
>> It's sounds kind of Venkat similar
to what you talked about with the cultural alignment.
I've known here for a long time
and they're very customer centric sounds like one of the
areas in which
there was a very strong alignment with Portworx
>> Absolutely.
and Portworx has always taken pride in being customer
first company. Our founders are heavily customer focused.
You know, they are aligned.
They want, they have always aligned.
our portraits business to our customers' needs.
Now Pure is a company that's maniacally focused on
customers, right?
I mean, that's all in a pure pounder cars
and everybody cared about.
And so, you know, bringing these companies together
and being part of the Pure team, I kind of see how,
how synergistic it is.
And, you know, we have, you know,
that has enabled us to serve our customer's customers even
better than before.
>> So I'm curious about the two of you personally,
in terms of your, your histories,
I'm going to assume that you didn't both just bounce out of
high school into the world of Kubernetes, right?
So like Lisa and I you're spanning the generations between
the world of say virtualization based on x86 architecture,
virtualization, where you're not,
you don't have microservices,
you have a full blown operating system that you're working
with. Kind of talk about, you know,
Micah with you first talk about what that's been like
navigating that change. We were in the midst of that.
Do you have advice for others that are navigating that
change?
>> Don't be afraid of it.
You know, a lot of people want to, you know,
I call it we're moving from where we're name me.
We still have cats and dogs.
They have a name that the VMs either whether or not they're
physical boxes or their VMs to where it's more like,
he'd say cattle, you know,
it's like we don't own the OOS and not to be afraid of
afraid of that, because change is really good.
You know, the ability for me to not have
to worry about patching
and operating system, it's huge, you know,
where I can rely on someone like EKS and,
and the version and allow them to, if a CV comes out,
they let me know.
I go and I use their tools to be able to upgrade.
So I don't have to literally worry about owning that OOS
and containers as the same thing. You know, you,
you know, it's all about being fault-tolerant right.
And being able to be changed or where, you know,
you can actually roll out a new version of a container,
a base image with a lot of ease without having to go and
patch a bunch of servers. I mean,
patch night was hell and sorry if I could say that,
but it was a nightmare, you know,
but this whole world has just been a game changer with that.
>> So Venkat from your perspective,
you were coming at it, going into a startup,
looking at the landscape in the future
and seeing opportunity.
What what's that been like for you?
I guess the question for you is more something,
Lisa and I talk about this concept of peak Kubernetes,
where are we in the wave?
Is this just, is this just the beginning?
Are we in the thick of it?
>> I think I would say we're kind of transitioning from early
adopters, early majority phase in the whole, you know,
crossing the chasm analogy, right?
So I would say we're still early stages of this big wave.
That's going to transform how infrastructure is built.
Apps are apps are built and managed and run in production.
I think some of the pieces,
the key pieces are falling in place and maturing.
There are some other pieces like observability and security,
you know, kind of edge use cases need to be, you know,
they're kind of going to get a lot more mature and you'll
see that the cloud, as we know today, and the apps,
as we know today, they're going to be radically different.
And you know, if you're not building your apps
and your business on this modern platform,
on this modern infrastructure,
you're going to be left behind.
You know, I, my wife's birthday was a couple of days ago.
I was telling the story to my couple of friends is that I,
I used another flowers delivery website.
They miss delivering the flowers on the same day, right.
So they told me all kinds of excuses.
Then I just went and looked up a, you know,
like door dash, which is delivers, you know, and then,
you know, like your food, but there's also flower delivery
and door dash and I don't do I door dash flowers to her,
and I can track the flower delivery all the way she did not
need them, but my kids love the chocolates though.
Right. So, and you know,
the case in point is that you cannot be in a building,
a modern business without leveraging the model tool chain
and modern tool chain and how the business is going to be
delivered at that thing is going to be changing
dramatically. And those kinds of customer experience,
if you don't deliver,
you're not going to be successful in business.
And Kubernetes is the fundamental technology that enables
this containers is a fundamental piece of technology that
enables building new businesses, you know,
modernizing existing businesses. And the 5G is going to be,
there's going to be new innovations.
It's going to get unleashed. And again,
Kubernetes and containers enable us to leverage those.
And so we're still scratching the surface on this. It's big.
Now, it's going to be much, much bigger, you know, as,
as we go into the next couple of years.
>> Speaking, scratching the surface, Micah,
take us out in the last 30 seconds or so with where CHG
healthcare is on institutional transformation,
how is Portworx facilitating that?
>> So we're, we're right in the thick of it.
I mean, we are, we still have what we call the legacy.
We're working on getting those, but I mean,
we're really moving forward to provide that rich experience,
especially with event driven platforms like Kafka and
Kubernetes and partnering with Portworx is one of the key
things for us with that. And AWS along with that.
But we're a, and I remember I heard a talk and I can't,
I can't remember her name, but he talked about how,
how Pure Kubernetes is sort of like the 56K modem, right.
You're hearing it and see,
but it's got to get to the point where it's just there.
It's just the high-speed internet and Kelsey Hightower.
That's great. But yeah,
and I really liked that because that's true, you know,
and that's where we are.
We're all in that transition where we're still early,
it's still at 50. So you still want to hear note,
you still want to do cube CTL.
You want to learn it the hard way and do all that fun stuff.
But eventually it's going to be where it's just,
it's just there. And it's running everything like 5G.
I mean, stripped down doing micro, you know,
Kate's things like that. You know,
we're going to see it in a lot of other areas and just
periphery and really accelerate the industry in compute and
memory and storage, and.
>> Yeah, a lot of acceleration. Guys thank you.
This has been a really interesting session.
I always love digging into customer use cases.
How CHG is really driving its evolution with Portworx.
Venkat, thanks for sharing with us,
What's going on with Portworx a year after the
acquisition. It sounds like all good stuff.
>> Thank you.
Thanks for having us.
>> Pleasure. All right.
For Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin.
You're watching theCUBE live from Los Angeles.
This is our coverage of KubeCon Cloud Native Con 21.