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>> Live, from New York City,
it's theCUBE!
Covering Lenovo Transform 2.0,
brought to you by Lenovo!
>> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage
of Lenovo Transform.
I'm your host, Rebecca Knight,
along with my co-host, Stu Miniman.
We've got two guests on the show right now,
we've got Naj Husain, the CEO of Cloudistics,
and we're welcoming back Rod Lappin, who is the
Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing
here at Lenovo.
Thanks so much for coming on the show.
>> Thank you very much.
>> Great to be here. Nice to meet you.
>> So...
>> Rod, why are you so lazy at this show?
MCing the show, on theCUBE twice...
(laughter)
>> I know, it's been an exciting day, hasn't it?
I've actually done a few meetings between
I saw you last time as well so,
I'm living on 2 and a half hours of sleep last night,
and I'm running hot so I'm looking forward to a
drink at the end of the night.
>> Yeah, a well-deserved drink.
>> Sleep fast, sleep fast.
>> Exactly. So I want to start with you Naj.
>> Yeah.
>> Tell our viewers a little bit about Cloudistics,
it's based in western Virginia, what do you do?
>> Yeah, so we build a private cloud
with a premium experience.
We founded the company in 2013 on the idea
of simplifying infrastructures.
In our previous world, we actually lived the problem.
So in our previous company, we actually
took Amazon as an analog, and tried to move
our resources at Amazon and simplify it.
Because we were tired of managing complex infrastructure.
So as a company of 500 people and a software
development company, we wanted to simplify our world.
So we went to Amazon, we spent 3 months or so
developing codes of implement QA.
Great, real simple.
Don't have to worry about hardware at all.
It's a great value proposition.
All of a sudden we started to implement this thing,
after month one it was 100,000 bucks.
After month two, it was 150,000 a month.
After month three, we're creating the 200,000 a month
in fees to run Amazon, right.
While the value proposition's all
about "simplicity is awesome."
The problem is, it's very very expensive.
So as the company of 500 like I said,
we had to figure out what to do next.
So I spoke to my CTO and I said,
how can we solve this problem?
So he said, okay I can bring the infrastructure
back on prep, great.
So he priced that out, it cost less than one month
of opex in Amazon.
So we did, and then we had a problem where okay,
now we need software to run on it, to make it work.
We needed a virtualization platform.
So we looked up what was out there,
and the cost for it at the time in 2012, 2011,
it was a million dollars in commercialization software.
I said we can't do this, right?
We're too small, we don't have the funds to do that.
So we decided at that point, we're going to found the company
to solve that problem, and democretize IT
to give companies of any size the ability
to implement cloud computing behind the firewall,
at an affordable price.
>> And you call it "Composable Cloud".
>> We do.
So when we looked at the market at that point,
there was different types of technologies out there,
and there was things called hyper-converged
and traditional converged infrastructure.
And what we did, is we took a page out of
how the public cloud operated.
And the way the public cloud operates is
they have composable resources so you can
scale resources independently.
So I can scale networks separate from computes,
separate from storage.
And that's a big deal when you're running a cloud
because you have to worry about economics.
So when we architected the product, we started there.
So we started with this scale-able architecture
that's composable, so company's grow as they need to grow.
They don't have to tie resources together, right,
so there's no resource drift, we call it.
It's independent scaling.
And that's one of the big differentiators in our platform.
>> So Rod, why don't you help bring in
some of your customer views that you hear on this.
I'm sorry but I smirk a little bit when I hear,
"We're going to simplify things."
(laughter)
In my career, I've talked to lots of companies,
and everybody, we always have the goal to be simple.
>> Yes.
>> "But, oh wait I need to change this a little bit,
I need this other thing,
oh wait I've got this Lenovo product,
but oh, you've got this other product that's good,
how do I manage all of these?"
And Cloud was supposed to be, you know,
just an easy button and low-cost and everything,
and it's helped but it's also added new silos,
and new things that I now have to get my arms around.
So maybe set up for why you--
>> Yeah, sure.
Well I think to Naj's point firstly,
I think the Cloudistics solution is really unique.
And it's very compelling, actually.
It's a very compelling offering.
Firstly because I know one management said
that you could basically run storage, compute,
as well as networking, sitting over the top
of a hypervisor, on prem, his point?
So to Naj's point, you had like 50% of the cost
of a normal cloud infrastructure that would
be going out into the market pool,
and still have the management suite sitting up in the cloud
that they obviously manage for you.
That's very cool.
But one of the other things that's very cool
about the Cloudistics offering is you can scale up
and scale out, depending on customers' requirement.
So once you've got yourself
in this composable cloud model, right?
And you're actually running with Cloudistics,
instead of saying okay, my business is growing,
now it's getting bigger, I have to pay this much
for an extra amount of x, whatever it might be,
if you want more compute, you can have more compute.
If you want more storage, you can have more storage.
You can actually add the components of the cloud
that you require, based on the consumption that
your business is actually running to.
And that's one of the very very compelling events
that Cloudistics' offering actually has.
>> Composable and customizable.
>> Yeah, and very simple.
One of the key tenants of the platform is
making this thing really really simple.
So when we designed the product when we started,
we started with the application first
because at the end of the day,
that's what you're trying to run.
You're not here to manage infrastructure,
you're here to develop being agile in your business.
So we focused everything on making it
really simple to deploy,
and making the hardware invisible,
automating all of the updates,
so you never have to see hardware.
And all you can focus on is delivering your services.
>> So I want you to get really specific for a second.
>> Yeah.
>> Because many of the things that I hear, they think,
oh, reminds me of what the companies that do hyper-convert
say that they're doing.
>> Right.
>> Simplicity in the enterprise...
>> Right.
>> Easy to manage, things like that.
>> Yes.
>> Is there a software offering, is there hardware involved--
>> Correct.
>> How does this all go together,
is this a management suite that ties in to what I have?
>> That's a great question.
>> Make sure I understand.
>> Yeah, so it's a completely integrated hardware-software
platform, so think of it like your iPhone.
When you buy an iPhone, it's hardware-software
beautifully integrated...
>> Motorola's the same by the way.
(laughter)
Yeah, okay, Motorola, fine.
But it's a phone that's integrated with hardware-software.
You connect to the network, you're up and running,
you download your apps, and you're done.
It's a beautiful experience.
So we took that as an analog for our platform.
So literally, it's completely plug-in play cloud,
you roll it in, plug it into your network,
go to our Marketplace, log in,
download apps and start running.
You can run Containers, you can run Docker,
you can run Windows Sequel,
all those apps are available for you to run with a click.
So businesses now can be much more agile, right?
Because now they're worried about delivering services,
not messing with multi-solid hardware.
Right so now generalists now can manage this platform.
DevOps can manage this platform.
Just like the public cloud. Yep.
>> So to make this setup really simple,
what we're doing is we're taking the thick agile solution,
which is that pre-configured, pre-set, rackable solution.
So compute, storage and networking all in one solution.
At factory, we're setting it up with all the Cloudistics
structure that we need to send it out,
and basically ship it on site for customers.
They only need two plugs, right?
A plug for the network, and a plug for power
and basically it's ready to go.
>> It's amazing.
>> Rod can you help, so we were just talking about
the big news with NetApp.
>> Right.
>> You know, you've got new relationships with tenants,
how does this fit in the work folio?
What are the customer kind of pain points as to when
Lenovo would lead with this?
>> I think that's a fair question, Stu.
I think if you have a look at what our
go-to-market strategy is in the hyper-conversion space.
This is largely guided by customer demand.
So, basically at a customer demands point,
we'll go in and we'll obviously lead with
our customers and understand what are the pain points
they actually have in their environment.
Because many customers have got different environments,
and three years ago, everyone was like
"I'm going to be an AWS jumper, or I'm going to be..."
The reality is everyone's got so many different
clouds in their environment, they've got so many
different environments set up.
You know, whether that's the Adobe Cloud and Marketing,
or AWS, whatever it might be, you've got to manage
all of these different environments.
So it sort of is dependent purely on what
the customers' environment is, where we actually go.
Now, from our perspective, this is a brand new relationship,
only 6 months old, we are setting up dedicated people
specifically to sell this with Cloudistics,
and I feel like it's got a really good future.
We just got to get this business growing,
and I think we're going to be talking to more
customers about it.
>> Yep.
>> So who is your sweet spot?
You said that the emphasis of starting this company
was that companies of any size could be
able to do these things, and act more agile, as you said.
>> Right.
>> So who is your sweet spot,
what's your target?
>> Yeah so we target a medium-sized enterprise.
So you know, 500 employees to 5,000,
kind of in that range is our initial target.
And we drive the applications
like Window Sequels applications,
applications that rely on performance potentially,
or even general purpose work clouds
where they just want to simplify management of the stack.
And as Rod was saying, the management of the platform's
pretty unique, and the fact that that's in the cloud,
the management of the platform is in the cloud.
So it makes it very simple to manage.
So from one central spot, I can manage my multiple stacks
throughout my company, and it makes it very easy
to employ applications and manage everything.
>> Do you have any specific examples of sort of
the pain points that you helped solve?
>> Yeah, so in our case, it was
really around driving simplicity.
So in many companies, many medium-sized companies,
they struggle with the complexity
of multi-tiered infrastructure.
So I have to have a virtualization expert,
I have to have storage expert,
I have to have a network expert.
And I have to have an app expert as well.
Right, I've got to make all those people work together.
So businesses now are trying to be more agile to push
applications out the door so they can run their business.
So by all those interdependencies, it creates
a lot of complexity.
So we've cut out all of that and we've created a platform
where you don't need all of those interdependencies.
It's done for you.
So it's literally plug and play, so businesses
can get right to their work at deploying applications.
>> So, there are a number of things that we've looked at,
from a research standpoint of what makes a private cloud,
and a lot of it is kind of measuring the bar
against a public cloud.
You said, simplicity, absolutely a good one.
One of the ones that we're starting to see some movement
in the private cloud, it's starting to go more opex.
>> Right.
>> As a service office.
>> Correct.
>> I was walking through the show before
and talking to Lenovo people about that.
Is that part of the discussion today,
and maybe talk about how that works.
>> It is, and the platform is fully tenanted for example.
We took a page out of the public cloud where,
if you go into any public cloud, you create yourself
a virtual data center.
And within that virtual data center,
you can deploy your applications.
With our platform you can do the same.
You can have a pool of resources,
we've extracted everything to pool.
RAM, cores, and stores, that's all you need.
You can allocate those to your constituents,
your customers, your departments.
And they have a completely multi-tenanted,
fully secure environment to work under.
Without impacting anybody else.
And with our core technology around networking,
we've completely isolated the layer 3 networking layer,
to make sure it's highly secure within that box.
>> I understand.
So they can almost be like a service provider themselves?
>> Yes.
>> So I guess one of the things is,
what about from the financial standpoint?
Are things still allowing me to scale up and scale down,
is it just in that box I can carve it up?
You know Lenovo has an option that was like
oh hey, I need to burst up for a certain season,
but I'm not going to have to pay,
or are there certain things they can do financially.
>> Very, very interesting.
So the platform is elastic in a sense,
where you can plug in and play resources.
You can add memory, you can add cores,
you can add storage, you can network on demand.
And jack it in and scale the resources.
We are working on coming out in a future period
a hybrid where you can burst and scale
into public clouds, which is a big deal, right?
Because we have very unique layer 3 networking technology,
we can potentially stretch those networks
into some other cloud, which is very interesting.
So that means that our Lenovo customers can then burst into
on demand, on the monthly payroll system,
into a public cloud if necessary.
So that's a future thing we're working on.
>> To your points as a service,
you heard today obviously as we had a little bit of a
keynote up there, Kirk hinted at the fact
that we're trying to drive as a service solution around
on the hardware, which really matches perfectly
with the Cloudistics solution that Naj
was just talking about.
>> Yes.
>> We're really, really close to this.
I would have loved to have been one of our announcers today.
But we've got a few other things going on.
So we will come forward in the market as a service,
fully metering as a service solution
that we think is very compelling in market
to match up with the Cloudistics offering
very, very shortly actually.
>> It's fun.
>> So how are you getting the word out?
I mean we already know you need to increase your budget,
that was our last guest who said that.
(laughter)
>> Exactly, so Naj and I went on our focal
about this decision this week.
>> Yes.
>> We need to get the word out a lot more aggressively,
and a lot more compelling than we are today.
So we have dedicated resources now in
Western Europe and North America,
we're about to expand our dedicated resources
into China and the Asian Pacific,
and then down into Latin America.
So we start off by dedicating people on the street
that are actually going to be at the start
talking to customers.
Then we're going to have to drive into a marketing campaign
of some description, so we can actually start to drive
a more compelling story to market,
so they actually get to know
what Naj's company has developed.
Because once again, it's really compelling.
>> Right, great.
Well Naj, Rod, thanks so much for coming on the show,
it was great having you.
>> Thank you.
>> Thanks very much.
>> I'm Rebecca Knight with Stu Miniman,
we will have more from Lenovo Transform
and theCUBE's live coverage in just a little bit.
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