 From the CUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a CUBE conversation Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and welcome to this special exclusive presentation from the CUBE We're digging into Pensando and their future-proof your enterprise event To help kick things off welcoming in front of the program Scott Renovitch. He is the principal Analyst at Futurum coming to us from Montana I believe first time we've had a guest you know on the program in the state of Montana, so Scott. Thanks so much for joining us Thanks Stu happy to be here Alright, so we're gonna dig a lot into Pensando They've got their announcement with Hewlett Packard Enterprise might help We give a little bit of background and definitely I want Scott and I to talk a little bit about you know Where things are in the industry, especially what's happening in networking and how some of the startups are helping to impact What's happening on the market? So for those that aren't familiar with Pensando if you followed networking I'm sure you are familiar with the team that started them So they are known for those of us that watch the industry as MPLS Which are for people not to be confused with the protocol MPLS But they had very successfully done multiple spin-ins for Cisco On Diamo Nuovo in N.C.M.E. which created fiber channel switches the Cisco UCS and the ACI product line so multiple generations of the Nexus and Pensando is their company They talk about future proof your enterprise is the proof point that they have today talking about the new edge John Chambers the former CEO of Cisco is the chairman of Pensando Hewlett Packard Enterprise is not only an investor but also a customer an OEM piece of this solution and You know so very interesting piece and Scott, you know what want to pull you into the discussion You know there the waves of technology, you know I think the last you know 10-15 years of networking it a lot of it has been you know Can Cisco be disrupted? So software to find networking was let's get away from hardware And you know drive towards more software lots of things happening So I'd love your commentary just some of the macro trends you're seeing you know Cisco's position in the marketplace how the startups are impacting them Sure, Stu. I think it's it's very exciting times right now your networking Because we're we're just at the point where We kind of have this long battle of software defined networking like you said, you know Really pushed by the startups and there's been a lot of skepticism along the way But you're you're starting to see some success and The way I describe it is we're really on the third generation of software defined networking You have the the first generation which was really One company NYSERA which VMware bought and turned into their successful NSX product, which is a A virtualized networking solution if you will and then you had another Another round of startups people like big switch and cumulus networks All of which were acquired in the last year, you know big switch went to a rista and and cumulus Just got purchased by You know, who are they purchased by stew purchased by nvidia who interestingly enough had just picked up melanoc So, you know watching watching nvidia build out their stack. Sorry. I was having a senior moment It happens to us panelists, but yeah, so nvidia is kind of rolling up these data center networking plays Which is interesting because nvidia is not a traditional Networking hardware vendor. It's a chip company So what you're seeing is kind of the this vision of what they call the industry disaggregation You know having the different components um, you know You know sold separately and then of course sysco announced the plan to roll out their own chip and sell that You know disaggregated from the network as well. So I think that's when sysco did that They acknowledged that this is successful basically they acknowledged that disaggregation is happening um, it's being it was originally driven by the the large public cloud providers like microsoft azure and amazon which started the whole disaggregation trend by By acquiring different components and then Melting it all together with software. So it's definitely the future And so, uh, there's there's a lot of startups in this area to watch, you know, I'm watching many of them. They they include an arcus Which is a exciting new routing vendor drive nets, which is another virtualized routing vendor This company alquira, which is gonna gonna do routing fully in the cloud multi cloud networking aviatrix, which is doing Multi cloud networking, you know, all these are basically software or software companies and not, you know, they're not pitching hardware as this part of their their value at or their Integrated package if you will so it's a different business model And it's going to be super interesting to watch because I think the third generation Is the one that's really going to break this all apart Yeah, you brought up a lot of really interesting points there there scott that that disaggregation and some of the changing landscape Of course that that more than billion dollar acquisition of nysera by vmware Caused a lot of tension between vmware and sysco Interesting, I think back to when sysco created the ucs platform. It created a ripple effect In the networking world also HP was a huge partner of syscos before ucs launched and not long after ucs launched HP stopped Selling sysco gear they got heavier into the networking component and then here many years later We see, you know, who does the mpls team partner with when they're no longer part of sysco and chambers is, you know, no longer the ceo Well, it's hpe front and center There you're going to see john chambers at Hpe discover so, you know, that was a long relationship and changed and from the chip companies, you know intel Of course is built a, you know a sizable networking business We talked a bit about melanox and the acquisitions they've done One you didn't mention but, you know caused a huge impact in the industry and something that pensondo was responding to Is amazon bought anapurna labs and anapurna labs a small israeli company and really driving A lot of the, you know innovation when it comes to compute and networking at amazon the gravitan You know can be compute and nitro is what powers Their their outpost solutions so You know if you look at amazon, you know, they buy lots of pieces they It's that mixture of hardware and software You know there was in early days people thought that they just bought kind of off the shelf white boxes and did it cheap but really We see amazon really hyper optimizes what they're doing So, you know scott, let's talk a little bit about pensando if we can amazon with the The the nitro solutions built outposts, which is their hybrid solution So the same stack that they put in amazon they can now put in customers data center What pensando is positioning is well other cloud providers and enterprise Rather than having to buy something from amazon. We're going to enable that so, you know What do you think about what you've seen and heard from from? Pensando and you know, what's that need in the market for for these type of solutions? Yes, okay, so I'm glad you brought up outposts because I should have I should have mentioned this this next trend we have the If you will the the disaggregated open software based networking Which is going on it started in the in the public cloud But then you have another trend taking hold which is the so-called edge of the network Which is going to be driven by the emergence of 5g and technology called cbrs and And you know different wireless technologies That are emerging at the so-called edge of the network and the purpose of the edge remember is to get Closer to the customer get to get larger bandwidth and compute and storage closer to the customer And there's a lot of people excited about this including the public cloud providers You know amazon's building out their outpost Microsoft has an edge stack the azure edge stack that they've built they've acquired a couple companies for a billion dollars They acquired metaswitch. They acquired a firm networks And so all these public cloud providers are are pushing their cloud out to the edge with this infrastructure a combination of Software and hardware and that's the opportunity that pensando is going after You know with this outposts theme and it's it's very interesting stew because it The the co-operatician is very tenuous a lot of players are trying to occupy this edge if you think about What amazon did with public cloud? They sucked up all of this it Compute power and services applications and everything moved from these enterprise private clouds To the public cloud and and amazon's market cap Exploded right because they were basically sucking up all the the money for it You know spending so now if this moves to the edge We have this arms race of people that want to be on the edge whether that takes the plate The way to visualize it is a mini cloud Whether this mini cloud is at the edge of cosco so that when you when stew's shopping at cosco There's ai that follows you in the store and knows everything you're going to do and predicts You're going to buy you know this cereal and we're going to give you a deal today. Here's a coupon you know this kind of big brotherish ai tracking thing which is happening whether you like it or not or Autonomous vehicles that need to connect to the edge and have self-driving and have very low latency services very close to them whether that's on the edge of the highway or Or wherever you're going in the car you you might not Have time to go back to the public cloud to get the data So it's about pushing these compute and data services closer to the customers at the edge And having very low latency And having lots of resources there compute storage and networking and and that's the opportunity that Sando is going after and of course hpe is going after that too and hpe as we know Is competing with its other big mega competitors, you know primarily del the del vmware combo in the sisco the sisco You know machine so it's At the same time the service providers are interested in this as well and they have by the way they have infrastructure They have central offices, you know all over the world So they they are thinking that can be an edge Then you have the data center people the equinexes of the world who also Own real estate and data centers that are closer to the customers in the metro areas So you really have this very interesting dynamic of of all these big players going after this opportunity Putting in money resources and and trying to acquire the right technology Pensando is is right in the middle of this they're going after this opportunity You know using the the p4 networking language and a specialized asic and a nick that they think is going to accelerate Processing and networking at the edge Yeah, you know, they laid out a lot of really good pieces there scott as you said that the first Incarnation of this it's a nick and you know boy, you know, I think back to you know years ago It's like well, we tried to make the nick, you know, really simple or do we build intelligence in it? How much you know the hardware versus software discussion? What I found interesting is if you look at this team, you know, they were really good at the end of they made a chip It was a you know, it's a switch. It's an asic. It became compute And if you look at the technology available now They're building a lot of your networking just in a really small form factor You talked about p4. It's you know highly programmable So, you know the theme of you know future proof your enterprise with anything you say I you know, what is it? It's a piece of hardware. Well, it's highly programmable So today they position it for security telemetry observability But if there's other services that I need to get to the edge So, you know, you laid out really well a couple of those edge use cases And if something comes up and I need that in the future Well, just like we've been talking about for years with software to find networking and network function virtualization I don't want a dedicated appliance. It's going to be in software and a form factor like Pensando does I can put that in lots of places. They're positioning. They have a cloud business Which they sell direct and expect to have a couple of the cloud providers using the solution Here in 2020 and then the enterprise business and you know, obviously a huge opportunity With hpe's position in the marketplace to take that to a broad customer base So interesting opportunities. So many different pieces, you know, flexibility of software, you know, as you late Scott It's it's a complicated co-op petition out there So I guess, you know, what would you want to see from the market and you know, what is success from Pensando and hpe If they, you know, make this generally available this month. It's available on Proliance. It's available on Green Lake What would you want to be hearing from customers or from the market for you to say further down the road that this has been highly successful? Well, I want to see that it works and I want to see that people are buying it So, you know, it's not that complicated. I mean, I mean, I'm being a little, you know, uh Superficial there, but um It it's you know, it's hard sometimes to look in these technologies. They're very sophisticated and sometimes it comes down to whether they They perform, you know, they deliver on the expectation, but I think there are also questions about the edge You know, the pace of investment We're obviously in a in a recession and we're in a You know, a very strange environment with the pandemic which has accelerated spending in some areas But also throttle back spending in other areas and 5g is one of the areas that it appears to have been Throttled back a little bit this big explosion of of technology at the edge. Nobody's quite sure You know, how it's going to play out when it's going to play out. Also, you know, who's going to buy this stuff, you know Personally, I think it's going to be big enterprises. It's going it's going to Start with like the the big box retailers the walmarts the cost goes Of the world who who by the way, you know walmarts in a big competition with amazon and I think one of the the news items you've seen in the pandemic is all these online digital e-commerce sales of Skyrocket obviously because people are staying at home more. They need that intelligence at the edge They need that that infrastructure and one of the things that I've heard is The thing that's held it back So far is the price. They don't know How much it's going to cost so we actually ran a survey recently Targeting enterprises buying 5g and that was one of the number one Concerns like how much does this infrastructure cost? So I don't actually know how much pensando costs But they're going to have to deliver The right roi like if it's if it's a very, you know expensive proprietary nick, uh, you know who pays for that and does it deliver the roi that they need You know, um, so we're gonna have to see that in the marketplace and and by the way, you know Cisco is going to have the same challenge and and del is going to have the same challenge Uh, they're all they're all racing to supply This uh, this edge stack if you will packaged with hardware, but it's going to come down to You know, how is it priced? What's the roi? And and are these customers going to justify the investment is is the trick? Absolutely scott really good points there too. Of course the the hpe announcement big move for pensando Doesn't mean that they can't work with the other server vendors that they absolutely are talking to all of them And and we will see if there are alternatives depends on whether they come up or if they end up signing them All right, so what we have here is I I've actually got quite a few interviews with the pensando team Starting with I talked about MPLS We have Prem Jane and sony giandani who are the p in the s and MPLS as part of it both co-founders Prem is the CEO We we have Silvano guy who if anybody that followed this group, you know writes the book on it If you've watched all the way this far and want to learn even more about it I actually have a few copies of silvano's book. So if you reach out to me Easiest ways on twitter just hit me up at at stew I've got a few copies of the book about pensando Which you can go through all those details about how it works the programmability what changes and everything like that so We've also of course got hula packard enterprise And while we don't have any customers for this segment Scott mentioned many of the retail ones goldman sacks is kind of the marquee early customer So did talk with them. I have randy pond who's the cfo talking about they've actually seen an increase Beyond what they expected at this point of being out of stealth only a little over six months even more Which is important considering that, you know, it's tough times for many startups coming out In the middle of a pandemic. So watch those interviews. Please hit us up with any other questions Scott reinovich. Thank you so much for joining us to help talk about the industry and this pensando partnership extending with hpe Thanks stew always a pleasure to join the cube team All right, check out the cube doc net for all the upcoming as well as if you just search pensando on there You can see everything we had on there. I'm stew miniman and thank you for watching the cube