 Good afternoon, welcome back to theCUBE. Lisa Martin here with Dave Nicholson. We are live in San Francisco at Moscone West for VMware Explorer 2022. We're excited to welcome a new CUBE guest to the program. Steve Brabo joins us, the SVP of Edge Technology at Lumen. Great to have you on the program. Thank you very much for having me, appreciate it. Welcome. Talk to us a little bit about, we've had several conversations with Lumen folks over the last day and a half. Talk to us a little bit about it from your perspective, the VMware relationship with Lumen. So it's actually, we have been partners for the last 20 years. When VMware was really cutting its teeth in the virtualized space, Lumen and one of its companies that had acquired through time was really a cutting edge user of VMware technologies. And as time has evolved and VMware's technologies have evolved, we have grown with VMware. So much of the software they write is embedded not only within our network, but on our Edge platforms and extended out to the hyperscalers as well as in the client-prem. So it's an ever-growing partnership and one that we're continually innovating and creating better outcomes for really the enterprise space. Talk about those enterprise customers and some of the outcomes that you're helping to deliver. What's the joint value prop that Lumen and VMware bring to the enterprise? So really stronger together, right? If you think about the strengths that Lumen has, it's really our network, we call that our central nervous system, our platform, okay, so all of our Edge technologies and compute capabilities that we're able to deploy in our Edge centers, data centers globally, as well as out to-prem. We lay the software technologies that VMware creates not only from a hyper-virtualized sense, but also through SASE, through security and also out to workspace one. So it's their entire suite, we're able to support it. So with those, we create amazing technology solutions to serve the enterprise, whether it's healthcare, whether it's manufacturing, retail space, the customers are aplenty in the use cases are endless. You talked about your history and at the foundation of what you do, this sort of idea of a central nervous system, the network. If we wanted to completely geek out, we could just talk about that for an hour. Sure we could. But we're not going to. We were talking just, before we came live, came on live about Lumen's philosophy and how you're taking that foundation, that network, that central nervous system, and you have a philosophy about what you want to achieve with it and the other things you layer on top of it. Tell us about that, because that's interesting. It's really all about furthering human progress with technology. We're very lucky that we have the global network that we do, but the workloads, the applications that make it really life go around in today's world, lives in forms and factors, a compute that hang off of the network. We're very lucky that we can bring that all together. So over the years, every enterprise has a different need. They're trying to solve a problem. We want to help them solve that problem. We bring our technology, our capabilities, our experience and experts to really cater to and be that partner that can build the entire stack for them to allow them to be very, very efficient in their place of competition. So I want to hear a concrete example of that in action, but I think it's interesting, not just from a what is happening on the outside perspective, but it's also very interesting culturally from an organizational perspective. When you wake up in the morning and you have that mindset that that's what your mission is, that's a lot different than waking up in the morning thinking I'm going to deploy 50 terabytes of storage. I'm going to install nine ports and yellow cables and blue cables in my switch, thinking you're toiling in obscurity. So everybody illumined then is waking up with this mission in mind, which makes the day a lot easier to get through when you're having to work hard, but give me a concrete example of that in motion. Sure, so it's actually, it's about those outcomes and those use cases, right? I explained to my kids sometimes, they're like, dad, tell me, you know, like, tell me what you do. And if you start talking about the cables and the computer, their eyes gloss over, but if I say to them, you know, remember when you were sick and it was during COVID and you couldn't go to the doctor, right? And we were able to pop open the computer and we were able to see a doctor on the screen and they had to stick your tongue out and do all the things. You got care and we were able to deliver that based on our platform, based on our network. We helped healthcare providers, you know, go remote to see patients as COVID was happening and people were going to the hospital. So that's just a real world scenario that we did for a very large network. When people were dealing with it, they needed to really expand horizontally to allow care providers to operate in different areas and we were able to hit it out of the park. That's a great explanation to your kids, go, wow, dad, that's awesome. Absolutely, absolutely. But then they're like, anything else? Like is there anything else cool? And then talk about sporting stadiums, lighting up, you know, a different venue where they go and they're able to, from their, you know, phone, order a soda, or a pretzel and with the different sensors from an IO2. Now you're talking. Yeah, I see perspective. They're like, dad, you guys did this? Yes, you know, so it resonates. And those use cases, if you think about the building blocks, right? Whether it's the medical scenario or a smart stadium, the building blocks are very similar, right? And we're lucky enough that you put those building blocks together in a prescriptive way for a specific outcome. You're able to play with strikes and you're able to get better scale and you're able to move fast because the technology industry we're in is, I mean, it's moving at light speeds. As the edge grows and expands and becomes more and more amorphous, how have your customer conversations changed as there's more demand for every company to become a data company, to be a security company? How have they kind of elevated up the stock to the C-suite? We've really had to just pivot to talking about that outcome, that that entity, that that enterprise is really trying to achieve. You know, if you think about the two examples, another one, it could be very cost-driven. It could be that we need to get to market in a much more rapid fashion at a global level. How can we stamp things out quickly? So you take those outcomes, show them how the technology is going to enable it, and then you can really open the door for the return, right? Did you get the cost savings? Yes, did you achieve that time to market for it could be seasonality, right? People don't have to pay for the full boat anymore. If, let's say they're at an online marketplace and it's huge around the seasons, right? There's going to be big peaks that they have there, right? We like to be able to have them burst and ebb and flow. So it's all about that outcome and getting to that, the technology pieces, you just put them together to accommodate. What is your go-to-market strategy look like? How do you engage with customers? You know, there are a finite number of seats, strategic seats at a customer table. Are you typically going in arm-in-arm with partners and alliances? What does that ecosystem look like? Do you have a direct sales force that engages customers? Tell me about how the whole thing works. So we have a direct sales force, okay? And we like to play to our strengths. So we have a great alliance partners as well. So that arm-in-arm absolutely happens where we are heavily connected already at C-Sweets. They're able to walk in and make those types of relationships and outcomes of reality. But we find that we're better with partners playing to their strengths with us, right? If we come in and show up and we have that complete stack, the software experts as well, our assets, our platform, our network, it's really a one-two punch, wrap with our service capabilities at a global level that it's unbeatable. So we show up to the very best of our abilities with our alliances and then with those more steep relationships where we've been there, where we have the relationships, there's more of a trust factor, but it's all about build and trust. And we got to show up appropriately to do that. So if it's unbeatable, why do customers choose Lumen? What's the value prop that you talk to customers about? So if you think about a COO or CIO or CTO and all of the different things you need to purchase to make outcomes of reality, whether it's network, whether it's compute, whether it's storage, whether it's software, right? Whether it's people, it becomes very easy if you have a partner that can do all of that for you and it's their assets, right? So we have those assets. We have those, you know, our employees are absolutely our greatest asset. In my opinion, at a global level and then we partner with the biggest software manufacturers like an AWS or like a VMware and we load it into our fabric and now we have literally the entire stack right there. It's a single hand of shake rather than I need to go to a network provider, you go to compute provider storage, firewall security, like you get that holistic solution approach. Makes it far easier and that's a huge differentiator. And you said AWS, you work with all. All the hyper scalers, like if you think about the cloud, I'll say the big three, right, AWS, Google and Microsoft, everything is using the cloud and the fact that we can connect to it in dynamic ways and extend that experience all the way out to our edge and on-prem and deliver the same experience, again, massive differentiator. So from your customer's point of view, you can be agnostic. Yes. You can say, well, Azure for this, AWS for that, maybe run VMware in both contexts. Interesting stat that was brought up to Lisa and I yesterday through the VCPP program, the VMware cloud provider program. If you aggregate all of that cloud stuff that's going on, that becomes the third or fourth largest cloud on Earth. So a lot of the messaging, a lot of the stuff they're talking about now has to do with that. So you, so for example, you could be involved in deploying that software-defined data center stack in a variety of hyperscale clouds where appropriate for people. 100% and whether it's in the hyperscalers or in their own data center, in one of our platforms, the biggest differentiators, it's going to be the same. You have that partner that can do it for you no matter where the venue is. So that's really the coming of hybrid cloud, very agnostic. But I always say it's a best venue, right? You have different applications, you're going to need different things. Build it to suit. And when you do that, okay, and you're not pushing one way, you're taking the requirements, you build trust. And when you build trust, you build long-lasting relationships with your clients. And that's what it's about. And you then make more great outcomes in reality. Right, that trust is absolutely critical. It's currency, it really is. Talk about you have a joint innovation lab with VMware. Talk a little bit about that. What is it all about? How long have you guys been doing it? What exciting things are coming from it? So we launched that about 18 months ago. Some amazing thinkers on our team and their team came together. And it's really to keep pace with the market, okay? So platforms and software evolve at a certain pace, right? And it's always speeding up. But creating use cases within that lab to solve a common core set of problems for maybe a specific vertical is really what it's intended to do. So when the software's ready, it's kind of an incubation engine that we're testing these use cases so we can then go deploy and begin solving immediately when market ready. So it puts us ahead of the game. It gives us those at bat. So we're very comfortable deploying and creating that muscle memory before you're going live in a client environment. And then you can show and scene is believing. So there are multiple, just I'll say different, IoT use cases that we're doing right now, 5G wireless, untethered headsets, things of that nature. You think about some of the VI and AI capabilities that are emerging, whether it's digital twinning, whether it's literally IoT sensors with packages, tracking those types of things. The use cases are endless. But the cool thing about it is you're testing those building blocks that I kind of keep referring to and you're expanding the portfolio of use cases that you can solve with them. And when you start to see patterns, you now have use cases that can solve many similar needs and outcomes. So it's a huge differentiator. We're lucky to have the teams, the collective teams together, making those outcomes a reality, some of the best technologies I've ever seen. So the joint innovation lab formed about 18 months ago during the pandemic. What was the compelling event or was that part of it? Or was it customer demand that caused you guys to go, you know what, let's come together and actually build a joint lab? We saw how fast things were moving. We wanted to say, okay, as something's getting ready to roll out, let's start touching it before it's market ready. So when it does, we can hit market and begin generating those outcomes immediately. And it took a little doing, but it came to place very quickly. Like mines, right? Thinking the right way. You get a good outcome. So, if you think about the way that a lot of consolidation has happened over recent years, you have large cloud vendors, including VMware, if you accept that definition of their partner program, spanning their software defined data center stack across clouds. And then on the other side of the chasm, you have the organizations that help people take the technology and move it into the realm of outcomes. Doing actual things with the shiny toys. It's one thing to develop the shiny toys. It's another thing to get value out of them. You guys are in that middle space, that critical space. So are the largest global systems integrators in the world. So how do you work with or are you strictly competitive with the alphabet soup of global systems integrators? Where do you fit into that space? So, again, go back to those, the assets and the capabilities that we have, right? Power users of software. We have a managing professional services organization and it's all about, I'll say, day zero, day one. Think of that consultative professional services approach to literally discover, define, design, analyze what that outcome is and then build and deploy. So migration, transition of workloads, all team it up for the day two type capabilities. Where we are different, those assets that we're building on are ours, okay? The excensures, the deloits, they're amazing, right? They're also sourcing network. They're sourcing compute, they're sourcing edge, they're sourcing things from other third providers. We are the power users of our capabilities. That makes us the best at it. So that integration, we have the instructions to put those Legos together better than anybody else. So does that mean that you are best targeting at a certain market segment where possibly would you seed some market to the largest of global systems integrators at some point? So there are certain things that they are amazing at, right? Think about some of the biggest ERM applications and things like that. We're power users and power employers of SAP. That's really the niche as high up that will go into the app stack, right? Doing the dynamics, doing different types of Oracle suites and things of that nature, let them go there, right? But enabling applications to live on our platforms and across our networks, we play to our strengths there. Leveraging software technologies like VMware, right? And the hyperscalers, that's really where, I don't want to say it's their hard boundaries, but again, it's boundaries where we have strength. We always want to play to our strengths and be honest, right? If you're honest about your capabilities, you will win the business that you were great at and that's what we do. Yeah, I think there's huge opportunity in that space, frankly. I think not too long ago, when asked, I think a lot of people would say, hmm, it's all going to be consolidation. There's going to be five standing over here, five standing over there, and they're going to work together and everyone else is going to have to go work for those people. What we've seen is organizations like Lumen, taking their historical capabilities and finding that space. Sure. It's really, really interesting to see that. There's one thing that I'll add to and the way of the world is automation and orchestration, okay, when you own the platforms, when you own the technologies that you're able to work with, you're able to evolve those capabilities and it stays your intellectual property, right? That intellectual property gives you amazing scale too. So that's one of the things that we've been lucky enough to do is we're continually working and involving that suite of orchestration and automation that layers on top of our platform, right? Our platform for amazing things. It's that automation orchestration, very key to making it go around. Speaking of amazing things, what are some of the things on the horizon for Lumen and VMware? What can customers look forward to in the coming months? So yesterday we actually just launched our Sassy offering. So that's amazing and a great job to the product teams for that. I gave one of your colleagues grief yesterday. He didn't appreciate it, I'm sure. But it's considered a party foul to let's remind people what Sassy stands for. So secure access service edge basically, all right? Software to find networking plus security, it really becomes a dynamic network, right? One that can live, breathe and grow and VMware has amazing technology that we are leveraging that's really the overlaid network for our network. And then we're also even scaling that out too to include carbon black security offerings as well as Workspace One. So those are additional evolutions. Some of the further enhancements with Tanzu and Kubernetes, right? Right in the portfolio as well. So as that capability expands, so does the efforts that we have with it. Fantastic. Awesome, Steve, thank you so much for joining Dave and me on the program. I really appreciate it. We're talking about Lumen and what's going on there, how you're working better together with VMware and the outcomes that you're delivering for customers. We appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Greatly appreciate it. Our pleasure. Thank you. For our guests and Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE day two coverage of VMware Explorer 2022. Dave and I will be right back with our next guest. So don't change the channel.