>> From around the globe.
It's the CUBE.
With digital coverage of DockerCon live 2020.
Brought to you by Docker and its ecosystem partners.
>> Hello and welcome back to DockerCon 2020,
DockerCon 20. I'm John Furrier, host of the CUBE.
We're here for a virtual event,
DockerCon, go to dockercon.com
and check out all the great footage
and also get great guests.
We're talking to all the major thought leaders
and people in the industry,
making it happen as we have this new reality.
We got a great guest
and a great segment here from engineers.
Now part of F5 Sidney,
Rabsatt who's the vice president
of product management,
Sidney.
Appreciate you taking the time to chat with us.
>> Yeah, no problem. Happy to be here.
>> So NGINX,
everyone that does development knows
about you guys been very popular product with developers.
Number one in the Docker hub,
we'll get into that and later on the segment,
so it's, it's, it's known really
in the industry as really easy,
easy to use and very reliable,
component of cloud native and cloud,
if you will, anything networking.
So, so I got to, I got to ask you with the new reality
we're living with, COVID-19.
We now see the new reality that's now apparent
to everyone in the world that with the new work style,
working at home, you know,
VPNs are under provision.
Now people are working from home,
more surface area with security.
The at scale problems that are surface
for the executives and business thing.
We need to figure this new reality out
because this is not going to change.
It's going to move to hybrid
when it comes back, but ultimately it exposes
and highlights the opportunities around cloud native
and kind of shows the operating model
of how applications are going to to be using.
So I think this is going to be a mainstream trend
for what used to be an inside baseball kind of industry
conversation around microservices,
Doc containers, Docker containers, Kubernates.
This is all now a tailwind
for what will be a massive surge in new apps.
I want to get your thoughts and reaction to that as you guys
are in the middle of it, with your product
and the developers, who have to build
new value on top of it.
What's your reaction?
>> Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
We're also dealing with our own version
of this new way of working, right?
We're we're also working from home and working remotely
and seeing how that impacts us.
But as we think about our customers
and the folks that leverage, NGINX,
you know, we started with scaling applications.
We have that 10X solution that made it easier
to deploy an application and have it scale
in a very efficient way.
And so, as folks are moving online more and more,
relying more on staying connected,
no matter where they're working from,
providing that capability is something
that's going to continue to be core
and will increase in importance.
And as folks who are looking to build more
modern applications or modernize what they already have,
leveraging our technologies is just a natural extension.
It's, it's the technology
that they're already familiar with.
They've been riding on it, you know,
for many years and, you know,
as they look to the future,
it has the capabilities they need to continue
to rely on it going forward.
>> What are some of the new things
that you're working on that you can share
with the audience
because you're known for tried and true, very reliable.
Okay. Now you've got microservices,
which is emerging and very dynamic, literally figuratively.
So what's the new stuff?
What are you guys focused on?
Can you share some insights into how you're
thinking about it and some things that you're doing?
>> Yeah. A big part of what we're focused on
is really taking away the headaches that come
with scaling up applications,
especially in the modern world.
You know, those headaches are all about, you know,
understanding the complexity of these new applications,
gaining the confidence needed
to be able to deploy them at scale and understand
not only what they're doing, but make sure
that if something were to go wrong,
they could figure out what was happening.
And so, as we think about the investments we're making,
and to help folks modernize versus just making it easy
to deploy modern applications at scale,
which is one category of things.
Secondly, is making sure that you have,
you know, really strong understanding of how
that application is really working
so that if it breaks, it can be fixed quickly
with the opportunities to improve it,
we can quickly see the impact of it.
And you know, there's a lot of capabilities
we're building in on those two dimensions.
And then the third dimension I would say
is around security.
I think there's a lot of new surface area
that's being exposed as folks start to build more
microservices based applications.
And, you know, with the technology we have,
we, we allow people to apply both rich security
capabilities, as well as very surgical, capabilities,
depending on where they need the right functionality.
>> And the container business has been
really a great ride to watch.
The rise of containers are really,
you know, someone who's been
in software engineering since I was 17,
you know, the old way of systems thinking
is modernized with containers.
And you saw that the beginning of a surge of a see change.
Now, obviously with microservices,
we just pointed out it's going to
create a whole another level,
level of headroom.
But containers really brought in this notion
of making systems work better together.
And I think that's really been a great boon for developers.
So I got to ask you, you know,
Docker containers is obviously now a good
Kubernetes with the trend,
you guys have been very popular
if not the most popular, downloaded container in the hub.
And so you've been super, super popular with developers.
So what happens next?
Well, first of all, why is that the case?
And talk to the developers.
Why will you continue to be popular?
What do you guys, how are you going to keep
that satisfaction going?
Why so popular?
And how are you going to keep that rolling?
>> Yeah, I think, why so popular?
I think we just been fortunate to ride the wave
of trusted solutions, right?
So folks are already leveraging us
for their critical applications.
In a very critical location, it's natural
to look to that same type of technology
as you move to new environments.
And yeah, we've been very fortunate
to have folks continue to trust us
with their applications as they move to new environments
and as a containerized things and we appreciate that.
And we continue to invest in making sure
that our feature set is just as capable in those
environments as it is anywhere else.
And in addition to that, we do invest heavily
in making sure that our capabilities in those,
in the container space and the microservices space
specifically are, you know, staying ahead of the curve.
There's a lot of work we're doing
to support the next
generation capabilities of folks.
Want to be able to leverage, but aren't necessarily yet.
And that scales from kind of nearer term things like,
things like GRPC and all the way out to HDB3
that's, you know, on the horizon.
And so, you know, as we look at, you know,
the space, we're privileged to have the footprint already,
but at the same time,
we're not risking on our laurels.
We're, we're absolutely investing in making sure
that we allow folks to continue to deliver that high
quality, high performance application experience,
no matter what environment, they choose to use.
>> You know, you know, this whole COVID crisis
brings up the glass is half full or half empty,
depending who your view is.
You know, the two, the two worlds
are certainly getting more collision oriented,
whether they come together.
The CXO level size, the size of the business
and the developer side, you know,
we've always said for years,
other developers on the front lines and it's true,
I've been cloud native
and cloud has been great for developers,
but now more than ever,
the conversation we're having on the business side
with CXO CEO, CIO, CSOs, or whatever,
have been, 'hey, my house is on fire.
I don't have worried about,
I don't need to worry about the appliances
and what's going on in my kitchen.
I need to save my business.'
And so they're then going to call the developers to the table.
And you seeing this, this kind of formation
of critical path thinking around,
okay, we need to come out of this crisis
on a reinvention growth trajectory.
Which brings the developers into the mix even faster.
So I want to get your thoughts on that because,
you know, what does that actually mean?
Are they going to be called in for projects?
I mean, what's the meetings look like?
Cause, you have a zoom meeting?
or whatever.
This is going to be now a new dynamic,
a new psychology of the business models
of these companies, where the developers
are going to be very active leaders in that new role,
because the virtualized world now that we live in,
is going to be different.
The applications going to >> Yeah.
>> have more demands and more, more needs, more capabilities.
So take us through your thinking on this
and what should developers expect
when they get called to those meetings?
>> Yeah, I think, you know, the, the trend
that we're seeing is going to accelerate.
I believe as a result of this,
is the internal transformation.
So there's a lot of technologies that developers
already leverage to be able to deliver their apps
and there's technologies that they'd like to be able
to leverage more and more,
especially as they're using more modern environments.
And that tends to come into sharp relief
against the legacy infrastructure
that exists in the legend legacy tooling
that oftentimes exists in large organizations.
And so as organizations start to see,
not only that the world has changed prior to COVID
and they need to modernize and transform,
I think, you know, this, this crisis will also spur folks
to really put some more thought into how they operate.
We're already looking at it from a remote work perspective,
but also the agility that businesses is really
want to be able to have,
but traditionally have been prevented from having.
And so I think that the developers are really
going to have an opportunity here to really drive
that agile change they want to see in an organization
so they can get,
the capabilities as they want help to market quickly.
And that's going to require new tools,
new processes within the organization.
And, you know, those are the types of things that we're,
we're fully supportive of.
We work in legacy environments.
We work in modern environments.
We allow companies to be as agile as they'd like to be.
And I think developers are going to have
really good opportunity here
to really be leaders of that change.
>> That's awesome.
Great insights.
Let's go to the developer side.
I'll put my developer hat on for a second, you know, Sidney.
Okay, the business guys came to me.
'We're going to move, we're going to do more cool stuff.'
I get that.
That's totally relevant.
Very good insight there.
But now I'm the developer,
and I've been working with NGINX
and I know of NGINX, what's in it for me?
What's in it for me, the developer?
What do I need to know about NGINX now?
For me as a developer going forward.
>> Look, we come from a really strong, open source tradition,
and, you know, the main reason folks use our solutions
because we take headaches away, right?
I mean, we're a tool that allows folks
to deliver their applications, deploy their applications
without having to worry about
the mechanics and the plumbing.
And so for the developers, you know, what's in it for you
is you build the application, we'll take care of the rest.
We'll make sure it gets delivered with the controls
that are required with the security
and authentications required.
We operate as an extension of your application.
We provide a lot of nice things at the front door,
all the way back to, you know,
into the bedrooms technically
as far as the application infrastructure is concerned.
But you know, we take care of that.
How many infrastructure capabilities needed
so application developers can simply focus on building
the best applications they can
and will make sure that they work.
>> Awesome.
Now let's get into the F5 acquisition
combination with NGINX.
What does that do for you guys
as a change of capabilities
as it increased more head room for solutions?
Is there a new joint tech?
Take us through some of the impacts of that combination?
>> Yeah.
So it's been a good ride.
It's been just over a year since the deal closed
and we've been aggressively investing
in scaling up a division that we previously had.
No, we really want to bring applications to life,
make it so that, you know, your application not only
is scalable and highly available,
but it's able to adapt over time.
And that of course would require, you know, input from,
you know, the operations teams of course.
But, you know, we're trying to make sure
that folks have the ability to,
to operate their applications under any circumstances,
whether they're being attacked,
whether they're under high demand,
whether people are moving all over the place
and we're really trying to make it
so that the application is essentially bullet proof.
So, you know, with F5, you know, we have the ability
to invest more in that roadmap and that vision.
I mean, in addition to bringing on some pretty cool
complimentary capabilities, one of the things
that we're really happy to see is
the risk capabilities that F5 had or has
that we're now able to leverage,
with the NGINX solutions side by side,
providing, you know, again, new ways to get really advanced
security capabilities into the right places
in your application.
And so, yeah, >> Great
Great insights.
I really appreciate that commentary.
I'd love to get your thoughts on just something
that's always been near and dear to my heart.
You know, being in the cloud world since the early days
and try and stuff now it's fully enterprise ready
and doing all sorts of new things with multicloud hybrid,
but remember the days back when DevOps
was kind of debated all day.
Is it Dev, is it Ops?
I always had that DevOps kind of, you know,
I'm an operations person or a Devo developer.
That's kind of generally been resolved
in the sense of infrastructure's code,
is kind of resolved that.
But now with the COVID crisis,
you seeing operations clearly front and center again, right?
So you got security Ops now coming online, networking Ops.
So I think the new reality, and you've got the edge
exploding, people are at home,
that's technically an edge,
you know, perimeter security is now the edge point.
More and more edges, more and more
network traffic's getting more and more complicated.
This is bringing up a lot of conversations around.
What is the new formula as you navigate this?
How do you attack the problem spaces?
How do you create solutions?
Is there a play book?
Is there anything that you could share
in terms of this new thinking,
because it's going to be a new trajectory.
I think this is an inflection point.
Cambrin explosions coming of apps.
I believe we've been kind of reporting on that,
but the thinking has to change.
It's going to be pretty crazy.
What's your, what's your thoughts on this?
>> Yeah, I think folks are getting more and more
experienced with kind of this new way of working.
And infrastructure of code is absolutely here.
Automation is absolutely here.
Orchestration is absolutely here.
And so I see, you know, more and more of these,
these capabilities will get stitched together.
And as I said earlier, you know, this,
this organizational transformation,
that's all about taking the human more and more
out of the loop for certain things,
to be able to...
In the benefit or to the benefit of being able
to move much more quickly, but in a predictable way.
So you're eliminating the failures
that come with moving quickly,
but you're getting that velocity that you really wanted.
And so, yeah, I think there's
more and more adoption of new practices.
It's not going to be overnight for folks,
but I do think again, that this,
this crisis is going to give folks an opportunity
to really take a deep look at how they've been operating
and where they want to get to.
A6nd it's going to provide an opportunity
to accelerate that move,
>> You know, from a developer's perspective,
the tried and trued formula
of making something complex easy,
whether it's true abstractions,
making things highly performing and highly available,
always a good formula, right?
I mean, as the world gets more complex,
you still got to move packets around.
You still got to run applications.
It's just going to be that tried and true formula
of, you know, reduce the complexities, make things easier,
but makes things run faster, make things runs higher scale.
That seems to be the playbook.
What's your thoughts?
>> Yeah, absolutely.
You know, things that once were, were hard or becoming easy.
And I think we'll look three years, five years from now,
we'll see a world that's, that's even more automated moving
much more quickly on some of the things that looked
difficult now, are going to become commoditized.
Right?
And so, you know, as I talk about bringing applications
to life and making applications more resilient,
more able to protect themselves, more able to, to heal,
defend all that kind of stuff.
The things that, the advanced things that we're doing now
that, you know, folks are kind of playing with,
will become the easy things and we'll have new challenges
to focus on, especially as we look at things like AI,
we're really starting to get a sense
for not only the capabilities we can apply to,
to impact application behaviors and performance,
but, you know, once you get to the point where
you've built up a good library of capabilities,
now you really have a nice playbook
that can become the foundation
for even more advanced things.
>> Yeah, build that foundation, scale it up.
It's beautiful.
Scales, a new competitive advantage.
Love it.
Final question.
Just take a minute to give the plug
for an NGINX,
really appreciate your insights here in this segment
on this new reality, this new developer environment
is going to be huge.
Give the plug for NGINX.
What are you guys working on?
What should people know about?
>> Yeah, so Internet's has been, you know,
the last decade plus making applications work at scale.
We're really focused now on making applications
easy and bringing them to life.
And so, you know, the, the laser focus we have
is on taking away the headaches that folks might have,
you know, as they try to scale up on their applications.
So we're focused on that space
and we're focused on taking where the headaches
that folks have as they're trying to make sure
that the applications are more secure.
We're taking away the headaches that folks have
as they're dealing with the complexity
of applications and APIs, you know, that's,
that's the hardest thing right now.
People aren't talking just about applications,
but they're actually talking about APIs
and their need to be leveraged
to be able to make their applications really sync.
And so, you know, in all of those spaces,
our focus is on making modernization much easier
and taking away the headaches associated with doing so.
>> Sidney Rabsatt with EPM product management at NGINX,
now part of F5 great conversation.
Hit him up on twitter.
He's out there, great conversation with the community.
We really appreciate you taking the time.
Thank you, Sidney.
>> Okay, Thank you.
>> Okay, Hit him up on twitter.
If got any questions, jump into the event.
This is DockerCon 2020.
I'm John Furrier here in Palo Alto studios,
getting all the remote interviews
as fast as we can, get them to you.
Here's DockerCon's segment.
Thanks for watching.
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