>> Announcer: From around the globe it's theCUBE
with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021.
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>> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021.
I'm John Furrier, you host of theCUBE.
We're here with Howard Boville who's the
Head of Hybrid Cloud Platform for IBM.
He's been in the industry for many,
many decades as a practitioner.
Heading up organizations now at IBM,
heading up the hybrid cloud.
Howard, great to have you on theCUBE.
>> Pleased to be here, John.
Thank you for your time.
>> Can you tell us a little bit
about the digital transformation trends that you've seen
over the past year as they have clearly shook the industry?
Certainly, COVID.
No one would have predicted provisioning VPN access
or remote access for all the employees.
I'm sure that wasn't on anyone's radar,
but many more other disruptions and opportunities
for accelerating these new, what are now obvious benefits.
Can you take your time to explain what you've seen?
>> Yeah, sure.
So been a huge amount of acceleration
of digital transformation.
So VPN projects, as you mentioned,
the people working from home,
projects that, in the past, were taking many, many years
to work through, then got done literally in weeks.
And they're very complex when you get
under the skin of them.
And companies, therefore saw confidence in that
and started to look at broader digital transformations.
And you can kind of think about them in terms
of their successes and their failures,
or the lessons learned from them.
So when it's done right, what I've observed
from companies that have done it right,
they've done it from a business process perspective.
They've looked at their business processes that they
want to transform as opposed to just
the underpinning technology.
But the companies that have been around for a while
have also been understood that legacy's a problem.
So God created the Earth is seven, or the world
in seven days, but that's because
He didn't have any legacy to deal with.
So as companies have taken the confidence
for the smaller projects to work through, they've found
in these larger ones, where they've got
legacy environments to work through,
digital transformation's still very important
but it's not as straightforward as they thought it might be.
>> You know, one of the things that's coming
out of the hybrid cloud discussion is a couple of things.
One is everyone now agrees that this is the standard
and multicloud's soon around the corner.
Hybrid cloud is an operating model and it's a new kind
of operating system with the ability to use Kubernetes
and containers and microservices
and other service meshes to integrate legacy.
This is huge.
What's the biggest pain points that you're seeing
from an adoption standpoint that are blockers from clients?
What's gettin' in the way of the obvious,
now, path with hybrid cloud?
>> Well actually, the first and foremost,
the position that IBM's created by kind of calling it
a hybrid cloud where companies will be on-premise
and off-premise because of legacy,
gives CIOs around the world a huge sigh of relief.
And having sat in their seats, I've often thought
I must be the dumbest person in the room
because I don't understand this full on public cloud model
because I can't see the benefits to my shareholders
that that would deliver.
I could see it to the pure player
cloud service providers, but not to myself.
So talking to CIOs, I think thank heavens for that.
We're no longer as seen as Arondight
when we're explaining that we'll be on-premise
and off-premise, and it'll be heterogeneous environments
we're operating within.
But the simple way to think about the blockers
and actually, you've done a nice job, yourself, John,
in terms of explaining this, is cloud is just simply
another resource pool that you use to run
your applications or your datasets on.
And in the past, you had a nicely queued
resident environments when it was in your own environments
but there are benefits that you can get
by using more immersing technologies like cloud,
particularly around developed productivity.
But in chapter one of cloud with a pure player
cloud providers, it was kind of a carbuncle
that you kind of put onto the side of your organization
which then became very difficult to this
kind of Frankenstein's monster of piece parts
to put together from an IT operations
and a cyber security perspective.
>> Okay, so you talk about this Franken-cloud model, before.
I've heard that come from you.
What is this about?
You just referenced it, there.
What is the Franken-cloud?
>> Yeah, it's the simple way to think about it is
in the old world when you ran all of your applications,
your datasets, your developers, in your own data centers,
you would create a curated model that would allow you
to run it very strongly from an architectural perspective.
Lots of different legacy environments,
but the actual architecture you'd put around it would be
clean and the IT operational environments would be clean,
and the actually cyber security controls.
You put on a third party capability
whether that's a cloud service provider
or a software as a service provider
and you add a world of complexity where you have
no controls over those environments, and you're certainly
not driving the architectural standards.
So you're putting together these piece parts
in the same way as Dr. Frankenstein put together
the monster that he created.
And ultimately, that will turn upon you.
It will create technical operational issues,
it will create economic issues, and it absolutely
will create cyber security issues.
So the important thing to think about on these
digital transformations is the architecture
in a hybrid context is one that will work for you
with a multicloud environment, whether that's
from a software as a service provider
or from a cloud service provider.
>> It's interesting you bring up these other
turning on you kind of the Franken-cloud, I get that.
But let's bring that up to the positive.
A client customer might say hey, you know,
I did a great job of moving into the public cloud,
I brought some stuff on hybrid.
Oh my god, look at them pushin' some new stuff.
And then they push new code and then things break.
They call this day 2 operations or as you guys
are referring to, AI ops.
These are opportunities.
So how does a company get their arms around that
because that's going to be the next progression.
Okay, I'm operating on a distributed basis.
All right, great.
I got an Edge, data center, whatever,
but now I'm pushin' code all the time.
I don't want it to break.
>> I mean, most of my comments, John, are based
upon the experiences and mistakes that
I've made in my career.
So that element that you talked about there,
that day 2 operations, not only are we going
through an inflection point in terms
of the technologies that are used,
and the architectures at a technical level
you have to put together, the silicon that
you think about, you got to really think about the carbon,
the people, and the IT operating model that you have.
'Cause a lot of the actual manual work you did,
previously, we'll be doing it
in an automated fashion, so an AI fashion.
So any transformation program needs to look
at the actual transformation of the skills of the people
that you have working for you.
And the shouldn't feel fearful that it's a place
where they actually won't have a role,
they just won't have a role
with the current skillset they've got.
But there are adjacent skillset that
you an have that they can actually get trained
into or get on assignments where they get the experience
to operate in that fashion.
>> Hey, I'd love to get the comment on the Edge
with the S system on a chip, SOC as it's called,
as more and more capabilities are going to be at the Edge.
But I want to stay on this quick cloud thing
on Franken-cloud, because you know, one of the things that
I see with the positives of cloud is that
okay, get me more agile, but then I get worried that
if I'm going too fast, I might break something or get fired.
I got all this compliance, I don't want to get sued
or you know, there's all kinds of regulations now,
and compliance around distributed clouds, globally.
So what's your take on that?
What specific challenges do these companies face
when they're either in regulated industries
or don't want to go too fast?
They got to watch that data and make sure
it's not going to be misused.
>> Yeah, so the philosophy that we have at IBM is
different to chapter one in the pure player cloud providers
which is we believe if you build
the actual compliance controls in from the outset
and have them as a standard of consumption
for all customers, they can actual accelerate
their adoption of cloud.
So they can actually get to the benefits of cloud
productivity, innovation far more quickly.
And that's been evidenced by chapter one
where all large institutions in multiple-year programs
spend tens of millions of dollars and are building
the compliance controls, themselves.
You don't do that with IBM.
You get that out of the box for the entire industry.
We keep that fresh and current, and vibrant going forward
so those non-functional requirements are no longer
a consideration for you, and you can then focus your energy,
your developers in terms of the actual point of innovation
on the functional capabilities that you can provide.
>> I want to get your reaction to something
and a comment, if you don't mind.
I mean, there's been a big trend of data clouds
built on other people's clouds, and you got the needs
of specialty in industries or critical needs.
Do you see the need or do you see a path
for specialty clouds or vertical clouds, specifically,
as these, the AI in data can be relative to these verticals
but you want, at the same time, horizontal scalability
for a data plane or data access.
What's your take on specialty clouds or vertical clouds?
>> Yeah, I mean, that's at the heart
of the thesis and the idea that we have here, at IBM,
which is there is a need for specialty clouds
in particular industries and their workloads.
And really, as kind of people look back
in the very near future, they'll say that's
an evident thing because again, in the old world
when it was in your own data center, you would have
build types for specific types of applications
and the processes that it supported and the risk posture
of that, and then your associated datasets.
So the capabilities that we build
within our global availability zones is
for the large enterprises and that's an area that's
obviously at IBM's heritage.
And then it's not just the software level,
it's the hardware it runs on.
So IBM provides the hardware from a mainframe power X86
so through all those kind of form factors,
and then at an operating system level,
obviously if you're Linux in terms
of the capabilities that we have.
So we can meet all of that stack
but build them specifically for the applications
and the datasets for the industries that we serve,
and the AI capabilities necessary.
>> That's great stuff.
I want to get your take and shift gears to cyber security.
I mean, every time you look, there's a headline of a breach.
SolarWinds had more implications than anyone could imagine.
Do you hire more firefighters to put out the fire?
Do you make fire resistant materials?
I mean, there's an optimization balance.
What do you think is the best way we prevent
cyber breaches goin' forward?
What's your take on this?
I'm sure you've had a perfect--
>> So in the world of cyber security, it's all of the above
and then many more because you've got to put checks
and balances in terms of every capability
having kind of come from an environment
where my old bank was named after the country that
it was in, and therefore, nations states were
to correct the light in terms of trying to breach the area.
So all of those controls are necessary as you put them in.
But the other element to think about
on digital supply chains is again,
if you actually have your supply chain
on a cloud that has the compliance controls built in,
they benefit in a Herodot, as well.
Whereas, if you don't, you've got to actually ensure
that they are actually attesting to the controls.
The cloud that we built here, at IBM,
give you continuous monitoring to ensure that
those software as a service providers are actually
adhering to the controls you want in real time.
That is a massive game-changer in terms of the then
logging information we can provide to customers
to assure that their digital supply chain
does not become compromised.
>> Real quick while I got you here, as cyber standards
become around hybrid, the early responses were
specialized on AWS, Azure, or Google,
and they pick one, I have a backup cloud,
and then build your teams around that, your developer teams.
Does that shift with hybrid?
How does CSOs change with hybrid?
>> So the benefit in terms of the entry to IBM
has in the cloud space which is probably in terms
of the current variants, two years old, is that
we're not dealing with legacy.
So we're kind of learning from the mistakes
that these older cloud providers that have got
a wealth of legacy in their environments
both for the actual hardware level,
but also at the code-base level,
some more so than others in terms of the issues
they have with their code bearers.
And therefore, with the AI ops and the actual
cyber security tools that we put in place
we're building upon the bad experiences they've had
but also other intelligence that we get
in terms of threat factors as they come through, John.
>> Howard, and the last question to end this segment,
you've led a lot of digital transformation initiatives
through your career.
What have you found has been the best practice
as that applies now, as companies are coming out of COVID,
they want to have a growth strategy,
they want to make sure the foundation's in place
that's solid, that they can build upon.
What's your lessons learned?
What's your best practice advice?
>> So you've got to deal with the difficult problems first,
that sometimes are fundamental to get to pace.
So controls appears to be a fairly mundane topic
but unless you can deal with the controls,
you can't actually get the accelerated pace.
And then when you do these transformations
you have to bring your people along with you
at the same time as you're transforming the technology.
So you need the silicon to be allied with the carbon
and then you get people that are actually change hungry
as opposed to change resistant.
>> Howard Boville, thanks for comin' on theCUBE.
Head of Hybrid Cloud Platforms at IBM.
Thanks for joining us, today.
>> You're welcome, thank you, John.
>> Okay, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE
for IBM Think 2021 coverage.
Thanks for watching.
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