>> Hey everyone. Welcome back to Chicago.
Lisa Martin here with John Furrier.
We're live with theCUBE at AnsibleFest 2022.
This is not only Ansible's 10th anniversary,
John, but it's the first in-person event in three years.
About 14 to 1500 people here talking
about the evolution of automation,
really, the democratization opportunities of Ansible's-
>> And this segment's going to be great.
CUBE alumni are back,
and we're going to get an industry perspective
on the automation journey. So it should be great.
>> It will be great.
We've got two alumni back for the price of one.
Scott Kinane joins us,
Director of Worldwide Automation at Kyndryl.
Nelson Hsu is back as well.
Product marketing director at Red Hat.
Guys, great to have you back
on the live CUBE.
>> Oh, thank you for having us. >> Thank you.
And, you know, it's really great
to be back here live and in person,
and, you know, get a chance to see you guys again.
>> Well, and also, you get such a sense
of the actual Ansible community here.
And only a fraction of them that are here,
but people are ready to be back.
They're ready to collaborate in person.
And I always can imagine the amount of innovation
that happens at these events, just like off the show floor,
people bumping into each other and go,
"Hey, I had this idea. What do you think?"
Scott, it's been just about a year
since Kyndryl was formed.
Talk to us about the last close to a year
and what that's been like,
especially as the world has been
so topsy-turvy. >> The world been-- exactly.
Topsy-turvy. People getting back to working in person,
and everything else.
But, you know, you throw on that what we've done
in the last year, taking Kyndryl,
you know, outside of being a part of IBM,
right in our own company at this point, you know.
And, you know, you hear a lot of our executives,
and a lot of our people when we talk about it, like,
oh yeah, it's, you know, it's a $19 billion startup,
we got freedom of action,
we can do all these different things.
But, you know, one of the ways I look at it is
we are a $19 billion startup,
which means we've got a lot of companies out there
that are trusting us no matter what change we're doing,
continue to deliver their operations, do it flawlessly,
do it in a way so they can continue
to service their clients effectively, and don't break 'em.
And, so that to me, you know,
the way we do that and the way I focus
in on that is automation.
Ansible's obviously corridor strategy getting there.
>> Yeah, and I'd like to get your thoughts too,
because we seeing a trend,
we've been reporting on this with the cloud growth
and the scale of cloud
and distributed computing going cloud native,
the automation is the front and piece center
of all the conversations.
Automate this. Make developers go faster.
And with the pandemic,
we're coming out of that pandemic, view post pandemic,
with large-scale automation, system architecture,
a lot more like architectural conversations,
and customers leaning on new things.
What are you seeing in this automation framework
that you guys are talking about?
What's been the hot playbook or recipe or architecture,
you know, play on words there,
but I mean, this is kind of the key focus.
>> Yeah, I mean,
one of the things that customer comp talks
that I've been pulled into a lot recently,
have all been around thinking about security, right?
A lot in terms of security and-
I think, I mean, think about the world environment
as a whole, right here, everything that's been going on.
So, people are conscious of how much energy
that's being used in their data centers, right?
And people are conscious of how secure they are, right?
Are they, you know,
their end customers are trusting them
with data information about them, right?
And, they're trusting us to make sure
that those systems are secure,
to make sure that, you know,
all that is taken care of in the right way.
And so, you know, what's hot?
Security and compliance, right?
What can we do in the energy space, right?
Can we do things to help clients understand better
their energy consumption as, you know,
especially as we get now in Europe to the winter months,
can we do things there that'll help them also be better
in that space, right?
And reduce their costs.
>> And a lot more cloud rails out to this.
Right there. >> Scott: And yes.
>> You got Enclose, and you got now Ansible.
They're kind of there to help the customers
put it together at scale.
This has been the big conversation.
Last year, remember,
it was automate, automate, automate. right?
This year, it's automation everywhere,
in every piece of the landscape.
Edge. It's been big discussion.
Tomorrow we hear about event driven stuff.
This is kind of a change of focus and scope.
Can you share your thoughts on how you see how big
this is in terms of the customer journey?
>> In terms, I'm sorry. >> In terms
of their architecture,
how they're rolling out automation.
What's their view? >> Yeah, so, in terms
of their rolling out-
in terms of them consuming architecture, right?
And the architecture or,
sorry, consuming automation. >> John: Yeah.
>> And rolling out the architecture for how they do that.
You know, again, to me,
a lot of it's been focused around
how do we do this in the most secure manner possible?
How do we deliver the service to them
in the most secure manners possible?
How do they understand that they can trust the automation,
and it's doing the right things
on their environments, right?
So it's not, you know, we're not pushing out,
or, you know, it's not making bad policies-
>> and they're leaning on you more-
>> It's not putting malware out there, right?
At the same time, we're doing different things.
And so they really rely on, our customers,
rely on us to really help them with that journey.
>> I think a big part of that with Kyndryl
as such a great partner and so many customers trusting them,
is the fact that they really understand that enterprise.
And so as Scott talks about the security aspect,
we're not just talking to the IT operations people, right?
We're talking across the enterprise, the security,
the infrastructure, and the automation around that.
So, when we talk about hybrid cloud,
we talk about network and security.
Edge is a natural conversation to that
'cause absolutely at the Edge
network and security automation is critical.
Otherwise, how are you going to manage
just the size of your Edge as it grows?
>> Scott: Yeah.
>> And that's another area that we've been having
a lot more conversations with clients on,
is how do you do automation for IoT
and Edge-based devices, right?
We, you know, traditionally data center, cloud, right?
Kind of the core pieces of where we've been focusing on.
But I, you know, recently, I've been seeing
a lot more opportunities
and a lot more companies coming forward saying, you know,
help us with the network space, help us with the IoT space.
We really want to start getting to that level of automation
and that part of our environments.
>> And what are some of the key barriers
that customers are coming to you with saying,
help us overcome these so that they can, you're smiling,
so that they can obviously attract
and retain the right talent
and also be able to determine what processes
to automate to extract the most value
and the most ROI for the organization.
>> Yeah. And, you know, that's an interesting--
The ROI conversation's always an interesting one, right?
'Cause when you start having that with customers
some of the first things they think about,
or the first, the natural place people go is,
oh, labor takeout, I can do this with less people, right?
But that's not the end all be all of automation.
In fact, you know, my personal view is that's,
you know, maybe the the bottom 30%, right?
That's kind of--
Then you have to think about the value you get
above and beyond that.
Standard operations, standardized processes, right?
How are you going to be able to do those faster?
How's that enabling your business, right?
What's all the risk that's now been taken out
by having these changes codified, right?
By having them done in a manner that is repeatable,
scalable, and really gets them to the point of,
you know, what their business needs
from an operational standpoint
>> And extracting that value.
Nelson, talk about the automation journey
from your perspective.
How have you seen that evolve from your lens,
especially over the last couple of years?
>> Nelson: It's a great question.
>> You know, it's interesting because, obviously,
all of our customers are at different stages
of their automation journey.
We have someone that just beginning,
looking at automation, they've been doing old scripts,
if you will. The past.
And then we have more that are embracing it, right?
As a culture.
So we have customers that are building cultures
of automation, right?
They have standups, they have automation guilds.
It's kind of a little bit of a clique.
It's kind of, you know, building up steam in that momentum.
And then we have, you know,
the clients that Kyndryl works with, right?
And they're very much focused on automation
because they understand that they have a lack of resources,
they don't have the expertise,
they don't have the time to be able to deliver all this.
And that's really Kyndryl really comes into effect
to really help those customers accelerate their automation.
Right? And to that point, you know,
we're doing a lot of innovation work with Kyndryl,
and we lean on them heavily because, you know,
they're willing to make that commitment as a partner,
both on the day-to-day work that we do together,
as well as forward looking at different architectures.
>> Yeah, and the community aspect from our side, internally,
has been tremendous in terms of us being able
to expand what we'll be doing with automation,
and what AAP has been able to do with that community
to get there, right?
So to last month we did about 33 million day one,
day two operations through automation, right?
So that's what we've done.
If you look at it, you know, if I break it down,
it's really 80% of that standard global process stuff
that we bring to the table.
20% of that is what our account teams are bringing
specifically to their clients
based on their needs and what they need to get done, right?
You know, one of my favorite examples of this, right?
We have a automation example out there
for a client we've got in Japan, right?
They tie, you know, they're obviously concerned,
you know, security,
everything else that we've been talking about.
They're also concerned about resiliency, right?
In the face of natural disasters.
So they took our automation.
They said, okay, we're going to tie your platform
to seismic data that's coming through,
and we understand what seismic data's happening, okay?
It's hitting a certain event.
Let's automatically start kicking off resiliency operations
so we can be prepared and thus keeps serving our clients
when that's happening. Right?
And that's not something like when you talk
about a global team coming in and saying,
we're going to do all this.
It's that community aspect,
getting the account focus, getting to that level, right?
That's really brings value to clients.
And that's one of the use cases, you know,
AAPs enabled us to do with the community approach we've got.
>> Nelson, talk about this partnership.
I think earlier when we were talking to Stephanie and Tom,
the bottoms up Ansible community
with top down kind of business objectives
kind of come into play.
You guys have a partnership
where there's some game changing things happening
because Ansible's growing,
continuing to have that scope grow
from a skill set standpoint, expand the horizons,
doing more automation at scale,
and then you got business objectives
where people want to move faster
in their digital transformation.
So to me, it's interesting
that this partnership kind of hits both.
>> It does really hit both. I mean, you know,
the community cloud that Kyndryl has is so critical, right?
Because they build that CACF architecture internally,
but they follow that community mantra, if you will.
And community is so important to us, right?
And that's really where we find innovation.
So together with what we call it discussing
about validated content earlier today
becomes critical to build that content,
to really help people get started, right?
Validated content.
Content they can depend on and deliver, right?
So that becomes critical.
On the other side, as you mentioned, is the reality of
how do we get this done?
>> John: Yeah. >> Right? How do we mature?
How do we accelerate?
And without the ability to drive those solutions
to them to fix, if you will, all the problems
that the line of business has, well,
if you don't answer those questions with the innovation,
with the community, and then with AAP,
it's got to all come together as well.
>> I mean, that community framework is interesting.
I think we hear a lot in theCUBE, you know,
hey, let's do this, sounds good, who's going to do it?
Who's the operator?
So there's a little skills gap going on.
It's also a transformation in the roles of the operators,
in particular, and the Devs.
So, the DevOps equation's completely going the next level.
And this is where people want to move faster.
So you're seeing a lot more managed services,
A lot more services that's,
I won't say it's so much top down, but more like,
let's do it and here's a play to get it done.
Then backfill on the hiring.
Whether it's taking on a little bit of technical debt or
going a little faster to get the proof points.
>> Right. And I think one of the critical aspects is,
you know, Ansible has its certified collections, right?
And oftentimes we don't, I don't--
I meet with customers two, three times a week, right?
There's not a single one that doesn't emphasize
the importance of partners
and the importance of certified collections. Right?
And Kyndryl is included in that, right?
Because they bring a lot of those certified collections.
Use them. Leverage them.
It's helps customers get a jumpstart, right?
It's a fuel. It's their easy button, right?
But they only get that, and they value that
because of the support that's there. Right.
>> John: They get the wins.
>> Yeah, just adding on the certified collections, right?
So, you know, it was great to see the hub come out
with those capabilities because, you know,
as we've gone through the last 12 months and change,
one of the things that we focused more
in on is network devices, network support, right?
And so, you know,
some of the certified collections out there
for Cisco for F5, right? Some of those things.
We've been able to take back in
and now build on top of with the expertise
that we have in that space as well.
And then use that as a starting point
to deliver more value for our clients.
>> How is Kyndryl working together with Red Hat
and with Ansible to help organizations like you mentioned,
Nelson, they're on the journey varies considerably.
Some are well on their way, others aren't.
But for those to really start developing
an automation-first culture,
we talked a lot about culturalship,
We talked about it this morning.
You can feel the power of that community and driving it,
but how do you guys work together
to help companies and any industry
kind of really start understanding
what an automation-first culture is
and then building it internally
and getting some ground swell?
>> Well, it's interesting, right?
One of the things that really is,
we found really helpful is assessments, right?
So you have silos and pockets of automation,
and that's that challenge, right?
So to be able to bring that, if you will,
automation community within an enterprise together,
we often go out, and we'll do an assessment,
an automation assessment, to really understand holistically
how the enterprise could leverage automation not just
in the pockets, but to bring it together.
And when they bring that automation together,
they can share playbooks,
they can share their experiences, right?
And with Kyndryl and the practices they have, right,
they really bring that home from an industry perspective.
They also bring that home, if you will,
from a technology perspective. And they bring that together.
So, you know, Kyndryl in that respect is the glue
for our customer success.
>> What's news?
What's the next big thing that you guys see?
'Cause if this continues down the road, this path,
people going to get the wins, going to get the successes.
New beachhead, if you will, is established.
You got the Edge around the corner.
What's next for you guys in the partnership?
How do you see it developing?
>> Nelson: No.
>> We're looking-
(Scott and Nelson laughing)
>> No, it's all good.
So really, you know, I mentioned it earlier,
and the automation journey, paralleled by innovation, right?
Customers today are automating. They're doing a great job.
There's multiple tools out there.
We understand we're not going to be the only tool in the shed,
but Ansible can come in and integrate
that entire environment.
And in a hybrid cloud environment,
you want that there, right?
I think what next is, obviously,
the hybrid cloud is critical.
The Edge is critical, right?
And I think that, you know, the needs and the requirements
that Kyndryl hears that we have is kind of that future.
And, you know, we often in Red Hat,
we talk about a north star, right?
And when I work with partners at Kyndryl
we talk about the North Star.
Where we want to get to?
And that is the acceleration of automation.
And I think both by the practical aspect of working
with our customers and the innovation as partners,
as business partners,
technology partners will help accelerate.
>> Scott, your perspective to bridge
to the future is obviously hybrid and Edge.
How you bringing your customers along?
>> Yeah, so, we see, you know,
when I talk about my automation strategy,
our automated strategy, right?
It's about being automated,
orchestrated and intelligent, right?
Kind of those three layers of the stack.
We've been building out a lot of work,
what we call our integrated AIOps layer
for actionable insights, right?
We've got, you know, a goal to integrate that,
and we have integrated into our automation service
for how we're delivering the whole package
to our clients so they can better see opportunities
for automation.
What's the best way to go about it?
You know, what are some of issues they have,
vulnerabilities they have in their environment,
and really bringing it to them in a real holistic manner.
In fact, we internally,
we call it our F5 steering wheel, right?
Based on the, the racing thing, right?
'Cause you think about this, the racing cars,
F5s know they're right there, right?
They got everything they need in front of 'em.
So our goal's been to include
that into our automation view and service
and build that out, right?
So that's one way we're doing it.
The additional way is
through some announcements you probably heard,
hopefully heard, the last couple weeks
through something called Kyndryl Bridge, right?
Kyndryl Bridge is more the digitization
of the way we deliver services for our clients
to make it easier for them to consume,
and to make the barrier to entry
for things like getting automation,
getting it more in their environment, right?
Lower as much as possible. Right?
So really integrated AIOps, Kyndryl Bridge,
those are really the two ways we see it as going forward.
>> It's interesting, you know, we live through
a lot of these different inflection points in the industry.
Every time there's a big inflection point,
there's more complexity that needs to be tamed, you know?
And so you got innovation.
If you've got innovation coming
and you got the clients want to simplify
and tame the complexity,
this is a big part of what you guys do.
>> Scott: Absolutely. Yeah.
>> I mean, how do we, you know,
when the clients come to us, right?
Like I said, one, it's about trust.
They trust us to do it because we can make it easy
for them to not have to worry about that. Right?
They don't have to worry about what it takes
to secure the environment, manage it, run it, design it,
build it for the cloud.
We give them the ability to focus on their core business
while we do the stuff that's important to them.
>> Which is absolutely critical
that you can't emphasize trust in this relationship enough.
I wish we had more time guys.
You're going to have to come back.
I think that's basically what this is boiling down to.
But thanks so much guys for talking with John and me
about how Kyndryl and Ansible are working together,
really enabling your customers
to unlock the value of automation across their organization
and really make some big business changes.
We appreciate your insights and your time.
>> Fantastic. >> Absolutely, thank you guys.
>> Scott: Happy to do it and happy to do it any time.
>> All right, our pleasure. >> Thank you so much.
>> For our guests and John Furrier.
I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE Live from Chicago.
This is day one of our coverage of AnsibleFest 22.
Don't go anywhere. Our next guest joins us in just a minute.
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