(upbeat music)
>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas,
it's the Cube.
Covering AWS re-invent 2019,
brought to you by Amazon web services,
and Intel, along with it's ecosystems partners.
>> Welcome back to the Cube.
We are in Las Vegas, Lisa Martin, with John Walls,
I'm very excited that we're kind of color coordinated.
>> Well we didn't compare notes to begin with...
>> We didn't.
>> But certainly the pink thing it's working.
>> I feel like you complete me.
>> Oh, thank you.
>> I really do.
>> I don't hear that very often.
(laughter)
>> I don't think my wife even says that.
>> Can you tell that we're at the end of day one
of the cubes coverage of AWS re-invent.
>> Good day though.
>> Yes, it has been.
We're very excited, we have a couple of guests joining us
for our final segment on this, please welcome,
We have Bill Giard,
CTO of Digital Transformations and Scales Solutions
at Intel.
Bill, welcome to our show.
>> Thank you very much, happy to be here.
>> Lisa: One of our friends, that's no stranger to the Cube.
One of our former hosts,
Bobby Allen, the CTO of Cloud Genera, Bobby.
>> Thank you, thank you for having us.
>> So you guys, here we are, this,
there has not been a lull in the background noise all day,
(group chatter)
At re-invent day one.
But bobby I want to start with you, talk to our audience
about Cloud Genera, who are you guys?
What do you do?
What's different about what you're delivering?
>> So one of the first things
that different about Cloud Genera, is where we're located.
So, we're in Charlotte, which I call Silicon South.
So we're kind of representing the East coast.
We're a company that focuses on helping with work load
placement and transformation.
So, where you don't know,
whether something should go on-prem, off-prem,
if you put it on Amazon, what services should it consume,
licensing models, pricing models,
we help you make data driven decisions, right.
So, you're not just going based on opinions,
you're going based on fact.
>> That's challenging, because you know in the,
as John Furey would say,
Cloud 1.O, which was compute, network, storage,
it was the easy, I shouldn't say easy,
but the lift and shift applications that enterprises knew,
these work loads, should go to the cloud.
Then, we have, you know, what's left over,
and that's challenging for organizations,
some of the legacy ones can't move.
How do you help, from a consultative stand point?
That customers evaluate the work loads,
what data are they running?
What the value that data has,
and if they are able to move
some of those challenging applications?
>> So part of the frame work for us, Lisa,
is we want to make sure we understand what people are willing,
and able to change.
Right, because sometimes it's not just about lower cost.
Sometimes it's about agility, flexibility,
deploying a different region.
So, what we often start with,
is what is better look like to you?
What is success look like for your organization?
So, then based on that we analyze the applications,
with an objective data driven frame work,
and then make sure the apps lay
where they're supposed to go.
We're not selling any skewer products,
we're selling advice,
to give you inside about what you should do.
>> You know, but Bobby, I think,
and Bill too, you can chime in here on this,
if you give people a choice,
what does this look like to you?
What do you want to...
I don't want to do anything.
[group Chatter]
I want to stay put, right.
But that obviously is not an option,
but you, I'm sure you do get pushed back quite a bit
from these, you know, almost the legacy mind set.
We've talked a lot about this whole transformation
versus transition,
some people don't want to go, period.
So, how do you control them, persuade them,
bring them along,
on this journey,
because it's going to be a long trip.
>> William: Yeah, I think...
>> You got to pack a lunch.
>> It's a good point.
(laughter)
I think what we've seen most of them have, you know,
data experience,
they say they've tried an element,
didn't get the results that they expected.
This is where, you know,
the partnership that we have with Cloud Genera,
really, that data driven, intelligent based planning
is super important, right.
We want to really fundamentally help organizations
move the right work loads,
make sure they get the right results,
and not have to re-do it, right.
So, part of that, you know,
move when you're have past scars,
or not used to what you're doing,
given the data,
and the information to be able to do that intelligently,
and make that as fast as they can,
and you know, at the right, you know experience,
and performance from a capability perspective.
>> So, so many businesses these days,
if they are not, it's legacy,
if they're not looking in the rear view mirror,
what does the side view mirror say,
objects are closer than they appear.
>> Group: Yes.
>> Even for Amazon, right, for all these companies,
there are smaller organizations,
that might be born in the Cloud,
compared to the legacies who weren't.
If they're not looking at,
we have to transform from the top down...
>> Group: Yes.
>> Digitally truly transform,
their business may not be here in a year or two.
So the choice, and I think they need to pack a lunch,
and a hit flask for this cause it's quite the journey.
But, I'm curious, with the opportunity that Cloud provides,
when you have these consultative conversations,
what are, this can be, so transformative,
not just to a business, but to an entire industry.
>> Group: Yes.
>> Bill, talk to us from your perspective
about some of the things that you've seen,
and how this next generation of Cloud,
with AI machine learning, for example,
can really transform,
like what's the next industry that you think,
is primed to be really flipped, you know, upside down?
>> Well, I mean the good news is,
I think most of the industries,
and the exec's that we've talked to,
have realized they need,
you know, some level of transformation.
So, you know doing the business as usual,
really isn't an option to grow and drive in the future.
But, I do think the next evolution really does center on,
what's happening on AI analytics,
whether it's, you know, moving manufacturing from,
you know, video based defect detection,
you know supply chain,
integrity, you know what's happening from a retail,
was really the first in that evolution,
but we see it in health care,
in federal data center modernization,
and its really moving at a faster pase,
and adopting those Cloud technologies wherever they need it.
Both in their data center in the public Cloud,
out at the edge,
and we'll start to see a real shift
from you know real consolidation,
into large hyper converged data centers to,
you know, distribute computing wherever they can get in.
That's where we're excited about,
the work we're doing with Amazon,
the work we're doing with ISV partners,
to be at the capability where they need it,
but I think it will be,
really the next evolution of services everywhere.
>> So Bobby, talk us through an example or a used case
of a customer that your working with at Cloud Genera,
with Intel, and AWS,
what does that trifecta,
look like for say,
a retailer, or a financial services organization?
>> Yeah, so that looks like this, Lisa,
when we talk about work load placement,
we think that most companies
look at that as a single question,
its at least a five fold question.
Right?
There's the venue.
There's the service.
There's the configuration,
the licensing model, and the pricing model.
You need to look at all five of those things.
So, even if you decide on AWS as your strategic partner
we're not done yet.
We have a very large financial services customer
that I can't name publicly,
but we've collaborated with them
to analyze tens of thousands of work loads,
some that go best off pram, some that go best on pram.
They need guidance and coaching on things like,
are you paying for rad had twice?
You're paying for licensing on pram,
are you also paying for that on the Cloud?
There are things that maybe should be running in RDS,
database as a service.
Here is your opportunity, to cut down on labor and shift,
some of the relationships to have to,
re-index and databases is not glamorous,
or differentiate value for your business.
Lets take advantage of what AWS does well,
and make this better for your company.
One of the things that I want to kind of introduce
to piggy back on your question,
we lean on people process technology,
as kind of the three legged horse in enterprise.
I want to change that.
People process product or people process problem.
We're falling in love with the tech and getting lazy.
The technology should be
how much you BIC with us under the covers,
to make a product better,
or to solve a problem for the customer.
>> Maybe on that, I mean,
you know, automation can sort of come in
and make a big play here,
'cause we're taking all these new tasks.
If you could automate them,
then you free up your people,
your developers to do their thing, right?
(group chatter)
So, you raise an interesting point on that about being lazy
and relying on things,
but yet you do want to of put or off load
some of these tasks.
Do you not, to free up...
>> Yes.
(group chatter)
>> That creativity,
and free up the people to do
what they're supposed to be doing.
>> Bobby: Yes.
>> That's a delicate balance though isn't it?
>> Bobby: It is.
>> This is where I think,
the data driven, you know,
informed decisions is important,
we did a lot of research with cloud Genera,
and our customers.
There's really four key technical characteristics,
when evaluation work load.
The first one, of course is, the size of the data.
Where's the data created, where's it used,
where is it consumed.
The second one is the performance, right.
Either performance not only to other systems around it,
or the end user, but the performance of the infrastructure.
What do you need out of the capability.
The level of integration with other systems,
and then of course security.
We hear that timing again, right.
Regulatory needs, what are we having from top secret data,
to company sensitive data,
and really getting that type of information to drive those
work load placement decision
becomes out the forefront of that.
Then getting, you know,
using Cloud Genera to help understand
the number of interfaces in and out,
the size of the data,
the performance utilization of the systems,
really helps customers understand
how to move the right work load.
What's involved,
and then how to book that in the right AWS instance
and use the AWS capabilities.
>> You know, and you both have hit on something here,
because the complexity of this decision,
because it's multi- dimensional,
because you talked about the five points a little bit ago,
now you've talked about four other factors.
So this is not a static environment?
(group chatter)
To me, that as, you're making a decision,
that point is what's very difficult
for what I would assume for the people that you're
interfacing with on the company level.
>> Yes.
>> Its a moving target for them.
(group chatter)
They just, it's dynamic, it's changing your data flows,
exponentially increasing,
your capabilities are changing,
so how do you keep them from breaking down?
(laughter)
>> I want to jump in on that, because again,
I'm going to repeat this again,
my thesis is often technology is the easy part.
We need to have conversations about what we want to do.
So, I had a conversation earlier today,
think of Amazon like a chef,
they can make anything I want,
but I need to decide what I want to eat.
If I'm a vegan and he wants steak,
that's not Amazon's fault
if they can't cook something that's a mismatch
of a bad conversation.
We need to communicate.
So, what I am finding is
a lot of executives are worried about this,
they're worried, you're going to give me the wrong answer
to the the right question.
The reality is,
you may have the wrong question, first of all, right.
The question is usually further upstream,
so they're worried that
you're going to give me the wrong answer to the right question,
but often you need to worry that you're getting,
you're starting with the wrong question,
and you're going to get the right answer.
Ask the right question first,
and then you got a chance
to get to the final destination better.
>> Then in this multi-cloud world.
>> Yeah.
>> That many organizations live in, mostly not by strategy.
Could be by MNA,
could be by developer preference for different solutions.
A lot of the CIO's telling us,
we've inherited a lot of this multi-cloud...
>> Bobby: Yeah.
>> Mess, maybe if you would.
>> Bobby: Technical debt.
>> Technical debt, exactly.
So doesn't that just compound the problem?
Because to your point, you think of,
we hear about so many different stats,
the number of Clouds,
that an average enterprise is using is five to nine.
That whole world, that's a reality for organizations.
So, in terms of how the business can be transformed
by what you guys are doing together
it seems like there is tremendous opportunity there.
But, to your point Bobby, where do you start?
How do you help them
understand what that right first question is,
at the executive level?
So, that's those four technical points
that Bill talked about,
the executive staff is all on board with
yes, this is the question we're asking,
then we'll understand
if the technology is right to solve it.
>> It's got to start with really
what the company's business imperative is.
Right.
It can't start with an IT objective,
it's are we moving into new market's,
do we need to deploy capabilities faster?
Are we doing a digital customer experience transformation?
Are we deploying a new factor,
new products into new regions?
So, you know, really the first area is what's the core
company strategy imperatives in the business objectives?
Then how does IT really help them achieve that,
and some cases maybe we have to shift,
and reduce our data center footprint,
we have to move capabilities
to where we have a new region deployment, right.
We have to get them over to Europe.
We don't have capabilities in Europe,
we're going to Asia.
I've got a mobile sales force now.
Where I need to get that customer,
meet the customer,
where they're doing, you know in the retail store,
and that really then leads to quite simply to
what are the capabilities that we have in house?
That we're using, how are they being utilize?
Who's using them?
Then how do we get them to where they need to be?
Some case it's a cost imperative,
some cases is an agility time to market,
and into theirs, we're seeing this more often,
is really what are the new sets of technologies
AI services, training, inferring,
that we're not experience to do and set up
we don't want to spend the time
to go train our infrastructure teams on the technology.
So we'll put our data scientists
in their figuring out the right set of work loads,
the right set of technology,
that we can then transform,
and move our application to utilize.
So it really starts, I think,
with the business conversation,
or what's the key
inflection point that they're experiencing.
>> Have you both seen that change in the last few years,
that now it's where you know,
Cloud, not Cloud, what goes on Cloud,
was an IT conversation to your point Bill,
and then the CIO got involved a little bit later.
But, now we're seeing and hearing the CEO
has got to be involved
from a business imperative perspective.
>> Yeah, I'll share some data, right.
So a couple years ago, you know,
everybody was pursuing Cloud, largely for cost,
agility started to become primary,
and that's still very important.
A lot of the internal, enterprise data modernizations were
essentially stalled a bit,
because they were trying to figure out how much do we move
to the public Cloud.
Right, we want to take advantage of those modern services.
At that time we did a lot of research for their partners.
We used roughly 56 percent of enterprise work loads
were in their own data center, you know,
the rest of them were public Cloud.
Then we saw really the work,
the intelligent work load discussion
that says we had some false starts.
Organizations now really consistently realize
they need both.
You know their own infrastructure, and public cloud,
and we actually seen an increase
of infrastructure modernization
while they're moving more and more stuff to the Cloud,
they're actually growing their on centers.
Now, roughly 59 percent, you know, on prem today,
for that same business,
and that's largely because they're
using more cloud services,
but they are also even using more on premise.
They're realizing it's a balance,
and not stalling one, or starving one,
and then committing to the other.
They're committing to both.
Really just growing the business where it needs to go.
>> For strategic reasons though, right?
>> Yes, they should be for strategic reasons.
They aren't always,
back to your question about which question to ask.
One of the questions I often ask is,
what do you think the benefits will be if you go to Cloud?
Part of what happens is, is not a Cloud capability problem,
it's an expectation problem.
You're not going to put your ERP system in the Cloud,
and drop 30 percent cost in a month.
So, that's where we need to have a conversation on you know,
lets iterate on what this is actually going to look like.
Lets evolve the organization,
lets change our thinking,
and then the other part of this,
and this is where Cloud Genera and Intel come in,
lets model what simulation looks like.
So we're going to take those legacy work loads,
and lets model containers,
lets model micro services.
So, before you have to invest in transformation
that may not make sense,
lets see where the outcome look like through simulation
through AI, through ML,
and understand where does it makes sense to apply
the resources,
you know, to double click on that solution
that will help the business.
>> I was going to finish my last question, Bobby, with you
saying why Cloud Genera,
but I think you just answered that.
So, last question for you though,
from an expectation perspective,
give me one of your favorite examples of customer,
whatever kind of industry they're in
that you've come in and helped them
really level set their expectations,
and kicked that door wide open.
>> That's tough.
>> Lisa: Too many to choose from?
>> Yeah.
>> Lisa: That's a good problem to have.
>> Let me try to tackle that one quickly.
Storage, compute, databases,
those are all things that people look at.
I think what people are struggling with the most
in terms of cutting expectations is,
what they're willing, and able to change.
So, this is kind of what I leave on,
Bill, and I talked about this earlier today.
A product is good, a plan is better, a partnership is best.
Because with the enterprisers are saying is
we're overwhelmed.
Either fix it for me, or get in there with me,
and do it, right.
Be in this together.
So, what we've learned is not about
work loads, applications, its all kind of the same.
We need help, we're overwhelmed, I want a partner,
Intel and Cloud Genera, to get in this thing with me,
help me figure this out,
because I told Stu this,
Cloud is the bastard teenager
that just learned how to drive.
(laugh)
He is very capable, but it needs some guard rails.
>> I love that.
Thanks, you guys so much for explaining to John and me,
what you guys are doing together,
and how you're really flipping the model
for what customers need to be evaluating,
and what they need to be asking.
We appreciate your time.
>> Thank you for having us.
>> Lisa: Our pleasure.
>> Thank you.
>> For John Walls, I'm Lisa Martin.
You've been watching the Cube, at re-invent 19 from Vegas.
We'll see you tomorrow.
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