>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE
with coverage of SUSECON Digital,
brought to you by SUSE.
>> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman.
And this is theCUBE's coverage of SUSECON Digital '20.
Really excited we get to talk
to the SUSE executives, their partners and their customers.
In this segment, we have one of the customers,
he's in the keynote and really excited to talk to him,
Günther Tschabushnig and he is the CIO of ZAMG.
If you're not familiar with them,
they are the Central Institute for meteorology and geodynamics,
the oldest weather service in the world,
based out of Austria.
Günther, thank you so much for joining us.
Great to see you.
>> Thank you for being here, thank you.
>> All right, so obviously weather
something we are very interested on theCUBE.
We talk how important data is.
And data, is it for central to what your service is doing,
providing data, the organizations,
they can do lots with it.
Give us a little bit,
we probably don't have time to go through
the 150 plus, years history of the organization,
but tell us a little bit about what your organization does,
and especially your role as CIO.
What's involved with that?
>> Oh, let me hook you in.
One thing you said, we have the oldest,
weather service in the world.
I always tell people,
we are doing big data analytics between until 1851.
And actually that's true.
We have actually two big data centers based in Austria.
We are operating about 20 petabytes of data,
100,000 data sets per minute.
What is very, very interesting for tech guys.
We have one small data center additional
on over 3000 meters above sea level
on the observatory.
It's in the middle of the glacier.
Can't imagine how cool that is.
When you go up, into the glacier
and yeah, you have a lot of sensors,
a lot of measurements
and a lot of data collecting, configurations.
Actually, we are also using a lot of super-computers.
We do simulating, we do a lot of AI.
We did big data analytics and the most important thing,
we do a lot of cooperation with the people
that are out there.
>> Yeah, in 1851, wasn't exactly super-computers.
You're gathering data from a lot of sources.
Help us understand a little bit.
What are some of the, asks that the business have for you?
What are the kind of challenges?
In 2020, that might be a little bit different
than they were years ago.
>> Weather comes from, but different source,
actually in 1851, it was more for the King,
for their wars.
Nowadays it's much more peaceful, thank, God.
It's more for sporting,
it's more for producing things.
It's a lot for logistics,
but it's actually for all the human people are out there,
and therefore we have to use a lot of data,
a lot of processes and a lot of different customer journeys.
Our most important thing is customer first.
So we try to produce, our full costs,
our, integrated processes, especially for the customers.
Justin, quick example is, the Olympic winter games.
The ZMAG is doing the forecast for the last two,
winter games, because we are doing now casting
and we're very good at now casting that means the forecast
between the next five minutes to 15 minutes,
with, what's it call a breath of 100, 150 meters,
which is very, very important for,
some kind of events.
But we do other forecast as well.
The only thing we cannot forecast
but we also to, earthquakes,
that means naturally earthquakes on the one side,
on the other side, artificial earthquakes,
which are produced through, normally bombs or nuclear bombs.
And, we are working with the CTBTO,
the UN organization together to analyze
and to measure is illegally, nuclear tests.
To make the world a little bit a better place.
>> Yeah, so Günther it's interesting you mentioned
in the early days it was, weather for the king.
One of the things we look about in data,
especially in the public sector
is what data, where do you collected from?
How much hearing is there?
Can you talk a little bit about,
how it goes kind of beyond your borders and is there,
I guess, how do you work with other organizations
there any of data that shared any of the models?
How does that work together in your organization?
>> The most important thing is the link data
to link our data to other organizations
and to collect other data from other organizations.
It's not forecast anymore.
It's forecast, integrating into processes,
especially in the business processes.
Weather doesn't stop at the borders.
That's a good thing.
So we had a lot of collaboration with our neighbors.
We found a weather services from our neighbors.
That's one thing.
I have them, the big picture.
For, our models for our simulations.
But what we also do is a lot of crowd data.
Because the more data we get,
the more data we can assimilate into our model.
The better, the higher is the resolution of our forecast,
so we do a lot of integration of this crowd source weather,
that could be on the one hand,
a simple app that could be a weather station,
in our, in your home.
But that could also be a photograph.
What did you do with your smartphone?
Well, we do artificial intelligence algorithms.
To get out the information about clouds, about damages,
what we integrate again in our models,
in our simulations.
And give you the better forecast as a response.
We have a big, cooperation, for example,
with, the Austrian fire department.
They get the best forecasts we can ever do.
A specialist forecast for the emergencies.
When does, a fire in the woods, for example,
they need a special soil moisture for example,
then wind directions.
Do we need wind strengths?
They can use this on their smartphone.
They can, use the smart watch.
They do pictures after emergency,
send it back to us.
We analyze it and do a live modeling
through our super-computers.
To have a better forecast on this place.
>> Excellent, now you talked about a bit about communities,
leveraging, a lot of different technologies,
I guess that's a good way
for us to help connect the dots
to us talking here to at SUSECON.
Obviously, open-source, the communities,
the piece of what we or hearing at the show.
Talk to us a little bit about
SUSE , what technologies are using them,
what's the role of open-source,
is that, the piece of how you look at technology.
>> Nothing is more boring
than they get weather from yesterday.
So what we need is a really fast development
of our forecasts, to our customers.
And SUSE helps us, there.
We have special services,
especially on our ship of computers.
Well, we use the special SUSE ranking system.
We use SUSE, on our storage systems
on our software defined storage system.
To have a, we can develop man, to our customers,
to our cooperation partners.
And, the last big thing is we use SUSE containering,
that forms, and on AI platforms.
So the new SUSE AI platform,
we tried to do forecasts for avalanches, for snow avalanches
and that's a really, really big effort at the moment,
because there are people dying every year in Austria
and in the Alps, because of avalanches.
And maybe we can save some of them,
because we do have good forecast together with SUSE.
>> Excellent, you talk about moving to containerization,
gives a little insight.
You are a government agency.
How easy it is for you to take advantage
of new technologies?
Any guidance you can give as to things
that you've through that might be able to help?
>> Innovation and new technologies,
but kind of moving on the edge,
because on the one hand we have 24/7,
the whole year long, we have to be high availability.
We have a very stable, on the other hand,
we want to have new technologies, new innovations.
So it's really, really working on the edge.
We use two groups, two separate data centers.
On one hand, we do the all the stable thing.
The high availability things on the other things.
On the other data center, on other group,
they are doing the true new things.
They do containerization, they do blockchain
and they do artificial intelligent moves.
And the thing is they are working together.
They are connected, that means tell it this way.
We have a very, very experienced,
head of our one group, our stable 24/7 group,
and very, very young high potential or not innovation group.
To be honest, first two weeks they hated each other,
because one guy wanted to have the innovation
and going forward and forward and forward,
and the other one said, "No stop, we have to be stable.
"That's the most important thing."
After four weeks with a lot of maintenance for sure,
and with a lot of guidance, they started to love each other
because they can learn from each other.
And that's the main point.
We learned about all of these things.
Now we can combine, stable with technology,
with new technology, with cool, new things,
which can be proved in the one side
and integrate that in the stable side, a little later.
>> That's an excellent story to learn from,
learning so important, great to hear
that the more traditional, reliable group
and the new innovation group work together.
Of course we can't let you go
talking about weather without touching on climate.
So, anybody that's watched the space
with his global pandemic has some interesting,
I guess you'd say, positive side effects,
there are parts of the world where pollution's cleaned up,
major impacts, on climate that,
I'd expect you have some interesting data on.
What can you share, when it comes to climate change?
Any advice, you'd give for business leaders,
that are looking to help contribute in a positive way.
>> Okay, sure actually, a data center,
we are also data hub for the ESA, the European Space Agency
for their sentinel data.
This data is very interesting,
because it hasn't direct shows and direct impact
how the climate is changing.
The most important thing I can tell you as a CIO,
it is changing.
That's the most important thing.
What we are looking for is how can we combine data,
to stop this climate change.
How can we show other leaders, politicians, etc.
How to stop it, how can we work against it,
and how they can be cooperate, work against.
The thing is if we only show us the weather service,
our climate data, that's nice to have.
You see what a curve
that's going to be warmer and warmer
and the parameters are changing,
but that's not the goal.
The goal is, how can we work together?
How can we link data together?
To stop pollution, to stop several kind of attributes.
To stop climate change.
We started to do some collaborations with big companies.
One of these is SUSE.
One of these is Hewlett Packard, to work together.
To combine resources, to combine a compute power,
to combine storage, to combine knowledge,
especially data to stop climate change.
>> Excellent, so Günther final question is,
anything you've been seeing strange, being a CIO,
a question we always have, something we heard in the keynote
is the changing role of the CIO.
You talked a bit about AI, talked about,
you live with actual cloud, and super-computers.
So what in 2020 is kind of different about the role of CIO?
>> What I really learned is IT,
it's the supporting accompany
or the supporting department anymore.
IT is, the strategic partner
of each domain we have,
we had all our scientists
and they always told us,
"We had a scientist and we need IT."
From several years now,
they started to work together with the IT,
with Artificial Intelligence, with big data analytics,
with several platforms, both integrations,
how to, solve problems.
So the CIO especially,
is not the IT leader anymore,
it's more the management part of the management board.
So that means, the integration of the CIO
in the whole company is much, much more
then it was several years ago.
Meg Whitman, I met years ago and we had a good talk,
told me there is no company anymore without IT.
That's not correct.
There's no company anymore that is IT.
Even every culture is IT, everything is IT.
It's no support anymore, it's linking anymore.
>> Excellent, yeah Günther, such an important point
to talk about if a company,
is going to thrive in the modern era.
Data is such a critical piece of that gives you as a CIO,
a seat at the table to work closely with them,
because if the business needs to be driven by data,
the CIO's role of connecting IT
in the business, so important.
Thank you so much for sharing your stories.
Pleasure to talk with you.
>> Thank you, it was a pleasure.
>> All right, and we'll be back with more coverage
from SUSECON Digital '20.
I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching theCUBE.
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