>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE
covering NetApp Insight 2017.
Brought to you by NetApps.
>> Welcome back everyone, we are live in Las Vegas
this is theCUBE, SiliconANGLE's flagship program
where we go out to events and extract the signal
from the noise.
I'm John Furrier, my co-host Keith Townsend.
We're here at NetApp Insight 2017 here at the Mandalay Bay
with two great guests, a senior executive,
senior NetApp folks, are going to share some insight
on what's going on.
We have Mark Bregman is the Senior Vice President
and CTO thanks for coming on.
John Woodall VP of Engineering
at Integrated Archive Systems.
The first partner of NetApp going back in the day.
Welcome to theCUBE thanks for coming on.
>> Thank you. >> Thank you.
>> So we've seen that movie before,
you know every cycle of innovation
there's always opportunities.
Interesting now we're in a cycle where you can see
some new waves out there coming in.
And we think we're surfing on some waves now,
but the tsunami's coming.
Everything from blockchain down
to just cloud growth like crazy.
You guys have done extremely well.
You've seen them before, these transitions.
People are busy right now, your customers are super busy.
They've got app development going on,
DevOps, they've got security unbuckling from IT
becoming critical, data governance.
What should they know about in this transition
that they may miss or they should pay attention to.
>> Well, I would say that the thing that is probably
the most profound is we've gone through
a couple of big transitions, as you mentioned,
in the industry as a whole.
20, 30 years ago we would talk to customers
and they'd start with infrastructure and they'd
talk about servers and storage.
10, 15 years ago they start with applications
and they'd talk about their ERP or whatever software.
That would decide then the infrastructure.
Today they're starting with data and companies
are realizing that data is the thing
that's going to transform their business.
And then based on that data, what software
am I going to use and then talk about infrastructure.
So the conversation's kind of turned around completely
from where it was 20 years ago.
>> John, you've been a partner,
I see the partner landscape certainly changing.
You seeing resellers and VAR's and I think,
does the word VAB even exist, value added business?
They're actually building their own tech
because there's opportunities to be a service provider.
Almost like a telco, who would have thought?
>> It's crazy, it's crazy.
I think I think from our perspective
as a longtime partner, we've been successful
with NetApp through transitions.
We were talking before about the resiliency
of NetApp in going through transitions.
They've done it again, the keynote today filled with
a lot of, what I call, mic-drop moments
of yet another level of innovation.
But you're right things have flipped
almost 180 degrees in the discussion
that starting with data, starting with a business outcome,
as part of the discussion.
It's not about what can I sell, it's about in solving
the problem, do I accelerate the pace of my business.
Do I open up new ways to monetize in my business.
Do I drive efficiencies in my business that translate
to the bottom line.
As a reseller and as a partner, we have to transition
with that because the discussion changes,
the skill sets change and it becomes much more
of a services play on the front-end
and to help through and then becomes managed services,
as you know, and that.
>> Mark I want to ask your a question.
We were joking with the product marketing team
on the cloud earlier that you know the slogan should be,
I don't know NetApp could do that.
It just keeps happening, oh, I didn't know they did that.
While that's kind of a history NetApp,
but I want to ask something specific.
We see it's a success out there in the cloud,
you look no further than Amazon Web Services.
Now Microsoft's kind of catching up to the rear,
Google's there's some other people are
trying to kind of get in there.
But Amazon's the winner when it comes to
the number of announcements you see an event
and I'm sure at Reinvent coming up is going to be
a tsunami of their bigger announcements,
more services so it's a plethora.
And so that's an indicator of success.
And also the new differentiator, at scale,
as you got to keep iterating, you guys have a slew
of announcements, so running engineering and being the CEO.
What's going on at NetApp?
What's the conversation like, you have all these roadmaps,
is it just all this innovation,
is it part of the plan and just give us some insight
into how this all works.
>> Well, I think for a long time,
maybe for the first 20 years of the company,
we were almost like a one product company.
The innovations were all in that lane.
They were all, you know, make this a better product,
make ONTAP better and customers love that
because they were growing with us.
What's happened is it's kind of exploded
in multiple dimensions.
So we continue to innovate in our core.
But at same time we're having to say,
how can we use this capability
in a completely different way, in the cloud?
How can we help customers manage their data,
no matter where it is, not just on our ONTAP systems.
We made the acquisition of a little over a year ago,
a year and a half ago, of SolidFire, to get into
an area of a different approach to managing storage.
And it's not sometimes people get it confused
and they go that's how you got into flash.
Frankly, we're already doing flash units
and have flash in all of our product lines.
The real reason we did that was to get into
this more programmatic, scale out, API driven model
of administration of storage.
And we're having to do that in so many dimensions.
so as we expand those dimensions,
Of course we have to expand our innovation.
We have to innovate at the given rate
in each of threads.
>> The old joke in Silicon Valley is you know
get lucky once and you get rich.
And it's hard, you know, the sophomore jinx
whatever you want to call it, repeated successes is a sign
of success and certainly as a partner
you want to, you don't want to one trick pony at all.
Now, I got to ask you, given the NetApp history
of those successes, the data fabric is very good positioning
I like that position because it's got a lot around
it's super important, you think data is the new wave
it's going to come bigger than cloud in terms of its impact.
What from NetApp, for the customers that are watching
and especially new customers, as you take new territory
down with data, what is it about the NetApp portfolio,
or the architecture the DNA that makes you guys relevant
in this data fabric equation?
Because you can't just get there overnight
because of diseconomies of scale.
What is it about NetApp that makes them super relevant?
Couple things, one thing, what's the one thing?
>> Well, I think I think it becomes back to
I think you even said the term, DNA.
It's what is it about NetApp, why are we one
that's been around for 25 years and continue
to make it through these transitions.
And I think it's because, first of all, we don't rest
on our laurels, we're not caught up in
the innovator's dilemma of continuing to just refine
what we already have.
We'll do that, but we also recognize that there
are emerging new customer needs.
And our basic intellectual capital
can be applied in different ways.
So when I talk to our engineers, they don't talk about
I build controllers that go into arrays that manage data.
They realize that deeper down there's a kind
of intellectual capital could go into
a piece of software in the cloud.
And there's a customer problem that we can go solve.
So I think it's about being motivated by solving
those customer data problems. >> So culture, some culture.
>> It's culture.
>> What are the products now, so you have a data,
storage, storage stores data.
So you don't need rocket science to figure out
that you're storing data.
>> I'll give you an example, there a lot of competitors
in the flash storage business that
have come into the market and basically gave up on us
because we were late coming to that market.
But we came in the market, we accelerated,
we passed them, why is that?
Partly, we built a good product at the flash storage layer.
But more importantly we leveraged all
of the storage management which we'd
already built over 20 years.
And so now we're suddenly out there with
a very rock solid flash engine
but it's supported by all the other capabilities which make
it valuable to our customers.
So it's not just, hey, here's a new tool,
it's here's a new solution to your problem.
And I think that's a big part of our DNA.
And our technology side is we've been in data management
for 20 years, we just never talked about it that way.
>> So John, we had Dave Hitz on earlier,
and he said that one of the keys to keeping away from
the innovators dilemma has been that NetApp
has leaned into the thing that will kill us.
I tweeted that out, that's an awesome pull,
that they've leaned into the things.
As a partner though, that can be a bit scary.
Technology is especially enterprise tech
is a very stable thing.
NetApp has been with ONTAP a very traditional partner
even with fads and bringing those innovations to flash.
How's that ride been for you guys over the past 25 years.
>> It has been consistent, it has been a great partnership,
and it continues to be a great partnership
because as I look out and hone my portfolio
of offerings and partnerships, NetApp stays very high
in, that not just because we have
a great run rate business, but because NetApp,
in their innovation allows me to continue
to solve problems with an existing partner,
which makes us more efficient.
Now, having said that we talked about
you mentioned data fabric.
That's a completely different discussion
from a storage company.
At first you think okay, I'm replicating data,
I have a transport layer, that's fine.
But what are you doing beyond that?
I think you begin to see a new NetApp emerging
as software defined.
An organizing principle in my mind of the data fabric
is it gives the customer freedom and flexibility
that just buying storage doesn't give you.
It gives them the flexibility to deploy in the cloud,
next to the cloud, on-prem, as a virtual instance,
as an AMI in the cloud, et cetera.
So it allows the customer to place data and workloads
where and when and how they want that makes sense
for their business, not NetApp's business,
or my business and so in that we're starting to see now
with Anthony Lye's demo today of Cloud Orchestrator.
>> Which, by the way, isn't shipping yet,
but it's multi-cloud. >> Multi-cloud?
>> It's multi-cloud instance. >> Yeah, that right there,
and its applications, it's provisioning VM's,
it's provisioning. >> If you guys get that
to the market fast, it will be the first multi,
True multi, orbiting call it real multi-cloud
There's a lot of fake multi-cloud out there
but that would be a real use case.
>> And that's a completely different discussion
so you know to kind of plagiarize, you can teach
an old storage dog a new trick.
So they transformed to meet the emerging needs
of a new market, we are have to transform with them.
So there's a bit of bumpiness that we're all going
to experience as we learn that and do that.
>> John, I just want to drill-down on that,
I want to get also your both perspectives.
What you're really teasing out with
the Cloud Orchestrator demo in my mind,
the impact of that demo significance is
you guys as a storage company, now a data company,
are enabling opportunities with the data.
That's clearly what's happening, obviously, no debate there.
But the impact is to developers.
Now the developer dynamic is as these devops guys
come in, there's new, there's re-skilling going on.
So the biggest challenge of multi-cloud
is each cloud has its own way to pipeline data
or do things with data.
So making that easy, I don't want to have to hire guys
to program for each cloud.
>> Mark: And they're hard to find.
>> It's incredible, it's too hard.
Abstracting that away is going to be a boon
for the developer market.
That's a new market, that's a different thing than NetApp.
>> It's a very different market than we've been in before.
>> So what are you doing?
What's the plan, just continue to enable developers?
>> Well, the comment you made earlier,
about lean in to the thing that's going to kill you
is exactly right, I wouldn't have said it quite like that
but I'm not Dave Hitz.
So we definitely, when we see a challenge
we lean into it.
And and that does two things, it's a little bit like,
I don't know was it TaeKwonDo where you use
the other competitors energy? >> I think it's judo.
>> Think it's judo, use the other energy,
the power the other opponent to win.
And that's kind of what we're doing.
I think when you do that it means we have to transform
and our partners do, and you're a partner that's
been with us long time, you've been through
a lot of transitions.
>> Yes we have.
>> Well judo move is about leverage,
and that's about having installed, you guys have
that leverage with your customers.
>> And the customers are moving as well,
so we could try to keep them, hold them back.
Or we can move with them and actually accelerate them
to where they're going to our benefit,
and to our partners benefit and I think that's what Dave
was referring to.
Well, Mark and John love to have you guys on,
love to do a follow-up segment in Palo Alto,
our offices are really across the yard
from each other, certainly if you guys are in Sunnyvale
This is a super important conversation.
I'll give you guys the last word, impact to customers
for NetApp with the new capabilities
with data center innovation modernization,
next gen data center, on-premise, true private cloud
and power a horse in the cloud with data.
All that working together in some cases end to end
or in pieces whatever the customers is.
What does it mean to the customer this new.
>> I'll steal a line from our marketing teams
and what it really means is it's going
to enable customers to change the world with data.
Transform their business, create new opportunities.
>> It's a new wave in the economy.
It's going to be disruptive and tumultuous for some.
We have an opportunity to go into a customer
and to help them find new ways, with their data,
because the two key assets of company now
is people and then data.
So the people are there taking their data,
allowing them to find new opportunities
to go to market faster.
NetApp's in a unique position.
>> It reminds me of value creation, I mean a lot
of stuff with blockchain you see the indicators,
almost the Web1.0 again.
You see in the new shift in architecture
happening upside down it's almost reverse.
>> The developer model's right.
I mean you talk about Amazon, I think from 2008
until 2014 or 15 they introduced
about three thousand new services on their platform.
I don't see an average IT organization doing that.
>> I think that rates gone up now.
>> It's on an exponential growth there.
>> I think we're starting to see the swim lanes,
if you will, I'm calling them native clouds
because they're so native.
But they're also powering a new ecosystem
and part of it, I wish we had more time
to talk about the partner equation.
There a lot of musical chairs going on
in the partner ecosystem.
You've been with NetApp from the beginning, congratulations.
Congratulations on all the success on the platform
and the product innovation.
It's theCUBE bringing you the innovation
and the data through our data fabric called theCUBE.
We'll be back with more live coverage
after this short break.
>> Announcer: Coming off barrier breakers,
status quo smashers, world.