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>> We're back in Boston, the CUBE's coverage
of AWS re:Inforce 2022.
My name is Dave Vellante.
Steve Mullaney is here as the CEO of Aviatrix,
longtime CUBE alum,
sort of a collaborator on Supercloud.
Which we have an event August 9th,
which you guys are participating in.
So, thank you for that. and welcome to theCUBE.
>> Thank you, great to be here as always.
>> Back in Boston. >> Yeah.
>> I'd say a good show, not like blow me away.
We were at AWS Summit in New York City three weeks ago.
>> I heard it took three hours to get in.
>> Out of control, I heard, there were some people,
two, maybe three,
but they expected like maybe nine, 10,000,
19,000 showed up, and that was a free event.
Yeah, 19,000 people, Steve.
>> Oh, I didn't know it was that many.
>> It was unbelievable, I mean, it was packed,
so it's a little light here,
and I think it's 'cause everybody's down the Cape.
>> They are down in the Cape, Rhode Island,
it's after the 4th.
The thing is that we were talking about this.
The quality of people are pretty good though.
Right, there's no looky-loos
it's everybody that's doing stuff in cloud.
They're moving in.
This is no longer,
"Hey, what's this thing called cloud," right?
I remember three, four years ago at AWS,
you'd get a lot of that kind of stuff.
The summit meetings and things like that.
Now, we're on full on deployment mode
>> Even here in 2019, the conversation was like
so there's this shared responsibility model
and we may have to make sure you understand.
I mean, nobody's questioning that today.
It's more really hardcore best practices.
You know, how to apply tools.
You know, dos and don'ts.
And so it's a much more sophisticated narrative, I think.
>> Well, I mean that's one of the things that Aviatrix does
is our whole thing is architecturally,
I would say, where does network security belong?
In the network.
It shouldn't be a bolt on.
It shouldn't be something that you add on.
It should be something that actually gets integrated
into the fabric of the network.
So you shouldn't be able to point to network security.
It's like, can you point to the network?
It's everywhere.
Point to air, it's everywhere.
Network security should be integrated in the fabric
and that wasn't done on-prem that way
you steered traffic to this thing called a firewall.
But in the cloud, that's not the right architectural way.
It's a choke point.
Operationally adds tremendous amount of complexity
which is the whole reason we're going to cloud
in the first place is for that agility and the ability
to operationally swipe the card and get our developers
running to put in these choke points is completely
the wrong architecture.
So, conversations we're having with customers is integrate
that security into the fabric of the network.
And you get rid of all those operational issues.
>> So explain that, how you're not a checkpoint
but if you funnel everything into one sort of place
>> So we are a networking company.
It is a cloud networking company.
So we were born in the cloud, cloud native.
We are not some on-prem networking solution
that was jammed in the cloud.
>> Wrapped in stack.
>> Wrapped in, you know, VM or something like that.
No, no, no.
And looking for wires, right?
That's VM series from Palo Alto.
It doesn't even know it's in the cloud, right?
It's looking for wires.
And of course multi-cloud 'cause you know,
Larry Ellison now, could you believe that?
On stage with Satya Nadella talking
about multi-cloud, now you really know we've crossed
over to this is a thing
whoever would've thought you'd see that.
But anyway, so we're networking.
We're cloud networking,
of course it's multi-cloud networking,
and we're going to integrate these intelligent services
into the fabric.
And one of those is networking.
So what happens is you should do security everywhere.
So the place to do it is at every single point
in the network that you can make a decision
and you embed it and actually embed it into the network
such that when you're making a decision
of does that traffic need to go somewhere or not,
you're doing a little bit of security everywhere.
And so what it looks like a giant firewall effectively
but it's actually distributed in software
through every single point in a network.
>> Can I call it a mesh?
>> It's kind of a mesh, you think?
Yeah, it's a fabric.
>> Okay.
>> It's a fabric that these advanced services
including security are integrated into that fabric.
>> So you've been in networking much of your career.
>> 37 years >> All your career, right?
So, Bay, Cisco, Palo Alto,
Nicira,
probably missing one or two
but so what do you do with all the--
>> Blue Coat. >> Blue Coat.
What do you do with all that stuff that's out there?
>> Synoptics. >> Yes, keep going.
>> Yeah, I think that's it, that's all I got.
>> Okay, so what do you do with
all that stuff that's out there?
You rip and replace it?
>> In the cloud, you mean?
>> Yeah, all this infrastructure that's out there.
>> Well, you don't have it in the cloud.
And so right now what's happening is people, look
you can't change too many things if you're a human,
you know they always tell you don't change a job,
get married, and have a kid or something
all in the same year.
Like just do one of them 'cause it's too much.
When people move to the cloud,
what they do is they tend to take what they do
on-prem and they say, look, I'm going to change one thing,
we're going to go to the cloud.
Everything else, I'm going to keep the same.
'Cause I don't want to change three things.
So they kind of lift and shift their same mentality.
They take their firewalls, their next-gen firewalls,
I want them, they take all the things that they currently do
and they say, I'm going to try to do that in the cloud.
It's not really the right way to do it.
But sometimes for people that are on-prem people
that's the way to get started.
>> And not screw it up.
>> And not screw it up and not change too many things.
And look, I'm just used to that.
And then I'll go to change things to be more cloud native,
then I'll realize I can get rid of this
and get rid of that and do that.
But that's where people are.
The first thing is bring these things over.
We help them do that, right?
From a networking perspective
I'll make it easier to bring your old security stuff in.
But in parallel to that, we start adding things
into the fabric and what's going to happen is eventually
we start adding all these things
and things that you can't do separately.
We start doing anomaly detection.
We start doing behavioral analysis.
Why? Because the entire network
we are the data plane, we see everything.
And so we can start doing things that a standalone device
can't do because not all the traffic's steered to them.
It can only control what's steered to you.
And then eventually what's happening is people look
at that device.
And then they look at us and then they look at the device
and they look at us and they go,
"why do I have both of this?"
And we go, "I don't know."
>> You don't need it.
>> Well, can I get rid of that other thing that's a tool?
Sure.
>> And there's not a trade off. >> But you don't have to.
>> There's not a trade off.
>> You don't have to.
No, right now people will do belts and suspenders.
'Cause it's just who has enough,
who has too much security? Nobody.
They're going to do belt, suspenders,
you know, anything they can do.
But eventually what will happen is they'll look
at what we do and they'll go, that's good enough.
That happened to me when I was at Palo Alto Networks,
we inserted as a firewall.
They kept their existing firewall.
They had all these other devices and eventually
all those went away and you just had a next-gen firewall.
>> Just through attrition.
>> Through attrition.
You're like, you look and you go,
well that platform is doing all these functions.
Same thing's going to happen to us.
The platform of networking
is going to do all your network security devices.
So any tool
or agent,
or external,
you know, device that you have to steer traffic
to it's going to go away.
You're not going to need it.
>> And you're talking multi-cloud obviously.
>> And then they don't want to do the same thing.
Whether Azure, you know.
>> And its all going to look the same.
>> Yeah, same architecture, same experience,
same set of services.
True multi-cloud native like, that's what you want.
And oh, by the way, skills gap,
skills shortage is a real thing.
And it's getting worse.
'Cause now with the recession
you think you're going to be able to add more people?
Nope, you're going to have less people.
How do I do this in a multi-cloud world with security
and all this kind of stuff.
You have to put the intelligence in the software
not in your people.
Right?
>> So speaking of recession. >> Yep.
>> As a CEO of a well funded company
that's got some momentum.
How are you approaching it?
Do you have like, did you bring in the wartime consigliere?
I mean, you've been through, you know,
downturns before this is, are you--
>> I'm on wartime already.
>> Okay, so tell me more about how you're kind
of approaching this potential downturn.
>> So recession didn't change what we were doing one bit
because I run it that way from the very beginning.
So I've been around 37 years.
>> That's what Frank Slootman told me.
>> He's like me.
>> You know what he said?
>> Yeah, or maybe I'm like him.
>> No, I want to be like Frank 'cause he said, you know,
people talk about, you know, only do things
that are absolutely necessary during times like this.
He goes, "I always only do things
that are absolutely necessary."
Why would you ever do things that aren't necessary?
>> You'd be surprised, most companies don't.
Recession's very good for people like Snowflake
and for us because we run that way anyway.
I constantly make decisions that we have to go and dip.
There's people that aren't right for the business,
I move them out.
Like I don't wait for some like Sequoia,
stupid rest in peace,
the world's ending fire all your people.
That has no impact on me because I already operate that way.
So we kind of operate that way and we are,
like Satya Nadella even came out and kind of said,
"I don't want to say cloud is recession proof,
but it kind of of is."
Look, our top customer spends 5 million a year.
Nothing.
We haven't even started yet, David.
That's minuscule.
We're not macro, we're micro.
5 million a year for these big enterprises is nothing.
Right?
Satya Nadella is now starting to count people
who do billion dollar agreements with him,
billion, over a period of number of years.
Like the scale we have not even begun to--
>> He's got multi billion dollar agreements now.
>> We haven't even under begun to understand the scope
of what's happening in the cloud.
Right?
And so yeah, the recession's happening.
I don't know I guess it's impacting somebody.
It's not impacting me.
It's actually accelerating things because it's a flight
to quality and customers go and say, I can't get gear
on on-prem anyway, 'cause of the shortage,
you know,
get chips.
And that's not the right thing,
so guess what the recession says,
I'm going to stop spending more money there
and I'm going to put it into the cloud.
>> All right, so you opened up Pandora's box, man.
I want to ask you about your sort of management philosophy.
When you come into a company,
to go lead a company like that.
What's your approach to assess the team?
How do you decide who to keep on the bus,
who to throw off the bus,
put in the right seats,
and how long does that take you?
>> Doesn't take long.
When I join, we were 30-38 people.
We're now 525.
And my view on everything, and I've never met Frank Slootman
but I guarantee you, he has the same philosophy.
You have a one year contract, me included.
Next year the board might come to me and say,
"You are the right CEO for this year,
you're not next year."
Ben Horowitz taught me that, it's a one year contract.
There's no multi-year contract.
So everybody in the company
including the CEO has a one year contract.
>> So you would say that to the board?
"Hey, if you can find somebody better--"
>> And you know what I'll be the first one to pull myself,
fire myself and say, "We're replacing me
with somebody better."
Right now there isn't anybody better, so it's me.
So, okay, next year maybe there's somebody better.
Or we hit a certain point where I'm not the right guy.
I'll pull myself out as the CEO,
but also internally the same thing,
just because you're the right guy this year,
and we hire people for what you need to do this year.
Oh, like this is the mistake a lot of companies make,
"Well, we want to be a billion dollars in sales,
so we're going to go hire some loser from HPE
who's worked at a company for a billion dollars,
and by the way
has no idea how they became a billion dollars, right?
In revenue or billions of dollars.
But we're going to go hire them
because they must know more than we do."
And what every single time you bring them
in what you realize, they're idiots.
They have no idea how we got to that.
And so, you don't pre-hire for where you want to be.
You hire for where you are that year.
And then if it's not right
you'd be really nice to them.
Have great severance packages, be respectful for people,
and be honest with them.
I guarantee you Frank Slootman's not,
just had this conversation with a sales guy
before I came into here,
very straight conversation,
Northeast hockey player mentality.
We're straight.
If you're not working out or I don't think you're
doing things right, you're going to know.
And so it's a one year, it's a one year contract.
That's what you do.
You don't have time, you don't have the luxury of time.
>> So, but that's probably the hardest part
of any leadership job is, and people don't
like confrontation.
They like to put it off, but you don't run away from it.
>> It's all in the confrontation, right?
That's where relationships have built.
Why do war buddies hang out with each other?
'Cause they've gone through hell, right?
It's in the confrontation.
And it's actually with customers too, right?
If there's an issue, you don't run from it.
You actually bring it up in a very straightforward manner
and say, "Hey, we got a problem," right?
They respect you, you respect them, blah, blah, blah.
And then you come out of it and go, you know,
you have to fight, like with your wife.
You have to fight.
If you don't fight, it's not a relationship you
got to see in that tension
is where the relationship's built.
>> So, I should go home and have a fight tonight.
>> You got to have a fight with your wife.
(laughter)
>> You know, you mentioned Satya Nadella and Larry Ellison
interesting point, I want to come back to that.
What Oracle did is actually pretty interesting
doing for their use case.
You know, it's not your thing.
It's like low latency database across clouds.
Who would ever thought that?
>> But we love it.
We love it because it drives multi-cloud, it drives,
and I actually think we're going to have multi-cloud
applications that are going to start happening.
Right now you don't, you have developers
that kind of will use one cloud.
But as we start developing
and you call it the super cloud, right?
When that starts really happening
the infrastructure's going to allow that networking
and network security is that bottom layer,
that Aviatrix helps.
Once that gets all handled
the app people are going to say, "So there's no friction,
so maybe I can use autonomous database here.
I can use this service from GCP.
I can use that service and put it all into one app."
So where does the app run?
It's a multi-cloud app, doesn't exist today.
>> No, that doesn't happen today.
>> It's going to happen.
>> But that's kind of what the vision was.
You know, seven, eight years ago of what that would be,
you know, the original premise of hybrid.
>> Right. >> Right?
I think Chuck Hollis, the guy was
at EMC at the time he wrote this piece on
he called it private cloud, but he was really
describing hybrid cloud.
Application running in both places that never happened,
but it's starting to.
I mean the infrastructure is getting
put in place to enable that, I guess is what you're saying.
>> Yep. >> Yeah, cool.
>> And multi-cloud is becoming not just four +1
as a lot of enterprises, it's becoming n+1,
meaning you're going to have more and more.
And then there won't be infrastructure clouds like AWS
and so forth, but it's going to be industry clouds.
Right?
You've talked about that.
And again, back to super clouds, you're going to have
Goldman Sachs creating clouds and you're going to
have AI companies creating clouds.
You're going to have clouds at the edge, you know,
for edge computing and all these things all need
to be networked with network security integrated.
And comes back to Aviatrix
>> You mentioned Ben Horowitz, that's Marc Andreessen.
All companies are software companies.
All companies are becoming cloud companies.
Or they're missing opportunities,
or they might get disrupted
>> Every single company I talk to now, you know,
whether you're Heineken, they don't think
of themselves as a beer company anymore.
We are the most technologically, you know,
advanced brewer in the world.
Like they all think they're a technology company now.
Whether you're making trucks,
whether you're making sneakers,
whether you're making beer,
you're now a technology company.
Every single company in the world.
>> We are too, we're building a media cloud.
You know?
John is laying that out
and we got developers doing that.
That's our future.
>> Yep. >> You know? Cool.
Hey, thanks for coming on, man.
>> Thank you.
>> Great to see you and thank you for watching.
Keep it right there.
We'll be back right after this short break,
it keeps coverage.
AWS reinforced 2022 from Boston.
Keep it right there.
>> You getting tired?
How many interviews?
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