 Live from the Fiat Barcelona Grand Villa Compensator in Barcelona, Spain. It's the Cube at HP Discover Barcelona 2014 Brought to you by headline sponsor HP Here are your hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante Okay, welcome back everyone. We are live in Barcelona for HP Discover in Europe This is the Cube our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the silicone noise I'm John Furrier the founder of SiliconANGLE join my co-host co-founder of Wikibon.org Dave Vellante Our next guest is Michael Drew senior director global solution alliance is HP networking Welcome to the Cube. Thank you. So obviously SDN is hot. Andy could not come on. He's going to watch from outside as well Andy SDN, Andy SDN on Twitter We just had the head honcho on from networking talking about all the great stuff But I think what you guys are doing with the app store is really compelling So I want to jump right into it. So talk about what you're talking about with this app store SDN app store and How long it's been out. What are some of the highlights? What's the innovation? Yes, so Obviously, we're very excited because this is the industry's first enterprise grade SDN app store and we have Announced it about a year ago. We have been working very hard on this the entire team For about a year. We launched being on October 1st at Intel New York So it's just been a couple months and we had a lot of attractions from our customers and channel partners as well as developers So the networking community is very geeky. So we love to Kind of you know joke at ourselves But this is cool I mean, this is really an amazing thing to have an app store like environment for networking a lot of changes going on a lot of innovations What drove you to this was some of the motivations and how does it work? It was a quick tutorial of the app store Okay. Yeah, so maybe I can first talk about, you know, how we come to the idea of SDN app store because if you look at SDN, it's really a Dramatic advance from the legacy network and it's probably not a technological Advance per se. It's more of an architectural change but in a lot of the time When you look at a where kind of a design the system You have to be able to break the problems into tractable pieces and for SDN Essentially, you are able to separate cleanly the concerns into three different layers the application layer The controller layer in the infrastructure layer so that the different layers can worry about the different things And what we really believe in is if we can provide a great plan Taking care of the controller in the underlying infrastructure. We can really help accelerate the innovation at the application layer This is what we believe, you know, we can do it with an environment of ecosystem and app store So give an example give it a quick example of how you're doing that because that makes a lot of sense It's a stack so you're going to Componentize the bottom and offer those services, but what's an example of enabling the application layer? Yeah, so so basically what we do obviously you have a controller We have HP has a band SDN controller, which is enterprise-grade. It can be deployed into enterprise today We have already released the product and it talks these Standard-based open flow between the controller and our SDN enabled infrastructure and on top of it We have a northbound API which can communicate with the different applications And what we do at the ecosystem is we expose all these APIs to our partners so the partners can develop for their applications You know based on the platform and essentially taking advantage of the programmability of the network So you're enabling a DevOps like environment So if I'm a partner could be a channel partner bar I can hire developers and Program with your tools. Absolutely. So we see different roles in this ecosystem of partners a lot of them are ISPs These are the partners who have their software products We also see channel partners who wanted to provide a value at they are developing applications because they interact with customer They understand the problem if they have the capability And the other interesting thing is we see our customers are taking advantage of the API's and they are doing application This brings up the trend so App Store Marketplace you said where you mentioned before we came on you can do transactions So App Store, you know, it's a nice word good buzz, you know Apple App Store Hey, rah rah growth money, you know, but transactions the key, right? So I think about companies like CSC we've talked to them on the queue before they're building their own clouds They're basically providing really high-end services So when that would that be a customer of the App Store would they be playing with your API's and can that extend to channel partners? Well, we are open to all kinds of developers cloud related developers as well As a matter of fact inside HP. We're working very closely with the helium team and the helium has a helium connect Ecosystem as well. So we're working together. We are seeing partners who is joining the helium Ecosystem as well as our SDA ecosystem as you know, we mentioned we have a helium at your SDA solution So it ties really well from the technology perspective between the two Basically you're in-house guys are developers so like you look at helium as a customer Yeah, absolutely. So helium is a close partner just happens to be inside HP Yeah, and they want to provide that benefit to their customers So to find that there's in this whole catalog service catalog model and App Store What's the difference that people might get you know kind of caught in that the logo? Yeah I mean it sounds like a catalog of services. Okay. What's that? That doesn't sound compelling all of me It does but nothing new but Essentially when you have a catalog is relatively static you can see and explore the different Applications you have what we have done is we take the next the step and make it into a marketplace You can actually download the applications directly on to the controller in your environment. You can also Purchase you know in the store of the application I think the other thing that we really liked about the store is we really thought through about What enterprise need that is different from the more consumer-oriented store because a lot of the time when Enterprise is consuming enterprise applications. They are thinking about the support and services as well Not only the application they think about the entire solution and how you can help them deploy the solution So what we have done in the store. We actually built enterprise services Listed as apps into the store. So when you're buying your application, you're being recommended and say hey Maybe you want this Services as well, and you can explore you can purchase the application like services Absolutely Yeah, I think we think you know once you detach Controlling centralized from the network the network is not a system That is all kinds of different problems kind of convoluted together Now you have released the application beyond the network and making network Programmable you're able to Industry Really So that's sort of at least in my follow-up which is Where do you see the developer community really innovating and adding value and where do you see the? Vendor community like HP Yeah, so maybe I can give you Working with Microsoft I think we all had the experience working with the UCNC solution from Microsoft But sometimes the experience is not as good not because of the application but because of the network You have jitter and latency and the central and the desktop sharing is not showing up as quickly So what we have done is we have created that for the link optimizer and the Microsoft has created a SDN API and API on the link server is talking to Whenever it starts a new connection from a user a to use a be Our controller knows exactly which devices you are going through from a to be and they will create a priority Q between the destinations so that your user experience can be guaranteed and all these can be done dynamically And this is unthinkable SDN because manually that's a lot of work and the beauty of that solution is once this Communication is done you can release the resource back to the network In a dynamic as we get this virtualized capability to share share those resources. Okay, so that's a really good example of a large ISV Yeah Do you imagine as well that you'll see industry specific whether it's telco or other industry innovations Categories, you know, one of them is the orchestration Because now you have the global view you can use the network as a sensor to take all the information And you can do a much better orchestration across the network. And the second thing is about the security essentially you can turn the network of becoming a security fabric across your entire infrastructure and the third thing is about traffic optimization and the link optimizer traffic optimization category Of course beyond the all three. I think Session Dominic has talked about the virtualization Okay, and so From a developer standpoint, how do I get involved? How do I work with you know, HP? What's the HP outreach to the developer? Yes, so we have a very robust the developer community first of all our URL is hp.com Sdn app store and you can actually sign up you need to join HP's alliance one program Which is our technology alliance program and you go to the networking track, which is the SDA ecosystem What we also do is not only kind of bringing into the store We have enabled you to learn understand the capability of our underlying structure and our controller So we actually in the last year we have won five Developer workshop days Actually This is a great opportunity you're going to where the developers are yeah Yeah, we hosted in a certain city. We put about 10 to 20 developers into the workshop This is she's do you see Michael that is the model where you'll just expand those or do you see a big big worldwide developer conference? We are not currently looking at worldwide developer conference. We're thinking about to maybe do a more of a user conference Yeah, between developers and some of the early adopters Yeah, connect the people together because we are seeing a huge kind of a demand from customers looking for use cases because Nowadays, you know Sdn has been a hive for several years and people are really focusing on use cases now You know, how can you do with the capability of Sdn and these applications really showing people what it Michael I also think what I like about this is I'm not to sound like I'm overly glowing over this I think it's amazing innovation. So I'm pretty excited for you guys But the key thing we're hearing we heard from Dominic yesterday Yeah, just before you came on who heads marketing and now product management as well We'll probably measure now heads marketing is the the network services have to be aligned Instantaneously with the applications. That's a key message for him Where do people find out the more information? Is there a link? Is there like an app store link? I mean, just go to hp.com What's the URL? Yeah, the URL is actually she just asked. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, sorry about that Yeah, it's hp.com slash Sdn slash app store And and currently so we announced We launched the store about a couple months ago. We listed five Partner applications and two applications from HP today. You can see 18 partner applications So it's growing really fast. Where's the low-hanging fruit? What's the what's the demand coming from security? orchestration security orchestration and Optimization we are seeing basically the kind of even distribution between the three categories And as down mentioned, we have virtualization solutions, you know, with three different vendors You know, we have it with VMware. We have it with HP helium and we also have it Okay, so drawer drawer connect the dots forwarder The trajectory of how you see this going let's take it in stages stage one development You just got to see the you know the building blocks How do you how would you explain the next then the first three stages of growth in this app store? So I think first of all the first step is really putting the store together the infrastructure of the app store and that took a lot of work and The next step is really to grow the ecosystem community We actually created four different circles Depending on you know, how much we validate with the customer and how the application is supported and we intentionally Created a community circle, which we don't do any testing or validation at all But the idea of having the community circle is really foster innovation because a lot of time when the application is not as mature Or it's from a small vendor. We just want they have an innovative idea They want people to try out what it is and that's diminishing stimulates new ideas as well, you know, just you know, for example, you look at the Apple app store About seven years ago when they started they only had 500 application today 1.3 million applications I think you know, this is what we are thinking about our app store We need to put more ideas into store so it can really so you want to foster a community. Yeah, early stage community How are you doing that on your site? Events outreach yeah, I mean, what do you got going on well social media is one thing you know, we come here and talk about it and We are running work days. We're really engaging the developer community. For example in HP We are a networking track of the developers. There is kind of a hundred times of more Ecosystem partners with HP. So that's another area. We're looking for new partners There are a lot of other partners are very interested and today just to give you some data points We have more than 85 ecosystem partners in SDM Ecosystem community and we are working on about 35 new applications that is not currently Just going to put in the I'm going to tweet out the app store location URL I think the community things to be interesting one of the challenges that we see it This is an area that we do a lot of work on digital transformation around the digital world We're living in with the Cube and Silicon Angle and Wikibon is it's hard to find with the act with a signal is me Is it on Twitter or you guys have your own Twitter handle? I know Andy's out there doing a lot of tweeting I need to learn from Andy. I need to get a Twitter handle I mean you do have do you guys have our your own Twitter handle SDM app store or Unicode generic or have a part of HP networking. I mean, that's gonna be the challenge Yes, you know, do you do it under your site hp.com and you bring it out to the open? Yeah So one of the things we are Building into the app store is still ongoing is to really increase the search engine optimization SEO Yeah, we think that is really important when people search for any SDM applications because I think because it's industry's first app store and our Kind of vision is really to make it go to place Whenever you think about SDM solutions The latest Innovative SDM applications. This is the place where you can discover new apps. You can explore new apps You can download them. You can try them and you can purchase it. What do you what's the challenge is when you look at this What are you what are you looking forward to? And what are you watching? That's a key in that variable for Managing the success of the project. Yeah, so so we are really focused on customers And as we often talk about the customer is a lost star. So for the SDM store, it is the same We are running the end user customer and use a customer channel partner It's and use a customer It's the customer who are willing to become the early adopters to try the latest apps And once they are satisfied, they're going to put into production and we already have all the five You know a handful of customers who has moved from the trial stage to production deployment So does that mean that they have developers in house that are requirement? No, not necessarily. That's the beauty of the ecosystem. They can take developer developed application in the ecosystem Which has been validated with our controller in the underlying infrastructure and packaged as a solution Supported by those application partner and hp and they will have the support from the vendors when they You know need to try the application Develop the application to your question. We really focus on growing these But it's actually creating a marketplace here. Yes So and and you may have said this before but but the business model for the developers if I develop an app I can give it away to promote to accelerate my product I can sell it. Yeah on your your site. You can you can have a free trial version You can also list a priced version and what we see the developers are doing Is they have a trial period for the customer to try out because this is new right? People wanted to understand better after they install it and really try it in a controlled environment And then they will have the option and what's your take? What's hp's take on it? Or is it standard price or yeah, so there there is a margin share between the hp and the partners as well Is that public information or no, I don't think we Secret we have we have it I think we will be able to share It's not like a novel because it's depending on the different circles The different circles represents the the different efforts hp has put in You know if you had a higher circle hp to more validation hp was supported like it's coming from hp And then the lower circles were less validation Okay, so the more support you so there's a sliding scale. Yes, absolutely how much Support and for the community circle. We don't take anything in most of it It's free, but it's really like I said So it's a percentage of the take On a sliding scale depending on how much effort you guys have to put in how much branding on the service and support Exactly. Yes. Okay. It makes sense. And and this launched when october 1st October 1st in top new york. So can can you give us any kind of You know metrics inside uptake? What can you share with us on momentum? So essentially from the number of partners Applications, uh, we had five launched back then today at discover. We have 18 of them I think 12 of them are physically In discover and they're showcasing their applications at the networking booth The other thing is in terms of downloads I don't have the specific data across all the different applications But what I can share with you is the controller because for every application to run you have to download the controller as well And until now, you know after launch, we have over 5 000 downloads of the controller and more than half of that is from the enterprise customers So essentially we're looking at a couple thousands customers have downloaded and it started to try out the different applications Did you have any invisibility on I mean, how do you forecast, you know, when october somebody said, okay, michael What how many are you gonna? How would you even know right? Do you know for downloads and things like that? I mean, that's sounds like a good number Yeah, the forecast would be challenging because it's so new And the historical data is too long So what we have is the actuals. It's very good. So you're happy 5 000 sounds like a good number You know, like I mentioned that the important thing is All many customers has deployed into production. What we are doing is we're, you know, taking care of this data who has downloaded And we have been running a dedicated beta program. We are currently running a beta program with over two dozen Customers They are at different stages and about a handful of them just in the last couple months Over a handful of them have already put into production. And how do you support those those those downloads those customers and So so for the downloads everything is being handled by the app store and the purchase is Is being handled by the app store when it comes to support, you know, getting into production We have our technology services department trained For the entire solution. And as I mentioned, we listed the services consulting to support in the app store as well So you can actually explore discover and purchase those applications What we have designed what we found out The customer asked a lot about the services is actually the Migration services from a legacy environment because most of the people we're talking to already have a network What they wanted to find out is how do you migrate from a legacy? step by step Michael I want to get your perspective. Dave and I always talk about this on the cube I know we've got a few short minutes left. I want to talk a little bit more about the industry landscape You know, obviously this is a pretty revolutionary concept. You bring in kind of consumerization to the network level Which I love it's like it's a poster child It's consumerization of it and everything is so awesome. It's a real big fan. Obviously you can tell But I want to talk about the global impact Because you have a lot of global experience. I see in asia. You've seen you've done some work with in your history You see this is more of a global announcement not just north america. Yeah Talk about the globalization trend vis-a-vis this new opportunity because what you're basically laying out is a global platform For all companies. Yeah, is that the intention? Is that a coincidence? Was that by design? It's really it's really aiming global It's a global company. We have a global reach of channel partners across the globe And we are really doing this you're taking all the regions into consideration And as a matter of fact for the handful of customers who have started employment We have customer coming from vermia from asia pacific as well as americas and we have two customers Who has been sdn? Deployed you know with ecosystem applications coming to the event, you know, one of them is delta university and the other is A university from turkey. So both of them started employment. It's not really a north american We're a student of a student of change and innovation So why i'm curious is because you know one of the things that we're on are our big Are we always ranting talk about things like doing things differently and Marketing and or leverage is something that we love about the cloud and things so do something like a marketplace like this Puts the tooling out there the platform to let people pick and shoot what they want So that you don't have to do one the old way is not necessarily the right way So in a sense, you have a lot of leverage with this kind of approach and it's new so Do you get people looking at you like we don't really understand how this works nothing could be that good? I mean, it's it's kind of an innovative dilemma Are you too far ahead of yourself or people at hb get really behind in which what's it like? Well, so when we first started You know thinking about this about over a year ago We have really thought it through and we talked to a lot of customers And channel partners developers alike They all like the idea because today it's it's it's quite complicated to To purchase and discover enterprise applications And it can be done and because everybody have this consumerized experience right of an app store So why can't you buy enterprise application from an app store? So I think people are embracing I can imagine the cost savings too just to roll out programs as you get more Programmatic people can pick and choose whatever country they're in whatever their needs are from application standpoint Michael drew great to have you on the cube great perspective. Thanks for sharing as great news HP's SDN app store first of its industry time really pointing to the trend of consumerization Of everything down to the network level for the geeks and certainly We'll be helping the application developers. So thanks for coming on the cube. It's the cube We'll be right back with more live from Barcelona after the short break. I'm john furrier with my co's Dave Malonte. We'll be right back