 from our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California. This is a CUBE Conversation. Hi, welcome to the CUBE studios for another CUBE Conversation, where we go in-depth with thought leaders driving innovation across the tech industry. I'm today's host, Peter Burris. One of the biggest challenges that every enterprise faces, especially those that are considering a serious move to the cloud, goes way beyond any questions about compute, way beyond any questions about storage. Perhaps the most important question will be what do I do with my network? How does my network transform? How does my security profile transform in response to a movement to the cloud? Now, there are a lot of reasons why, but one of the chief ones is the cloud really is in a strategy for centralizing your IT and your applications and your data. It's better thought of as a cloud for more broadly distributing that function, getting it close to the action where it's going to generate the most value. Big challenge for enterprises and to have that conversation, we've got Matt Carter, who's the CEO of Ariaka. Matt, welcome to the CUBE. Thanks for having me. So before we get into this important question, give us the update on Ariaka. So recently we were got an investment from Goldman Sachs, Series F, $50 million. That capital is going to really be deployed towards helping us to expand our global footprint, put money into marketing, more sales people, build out our processes internally as a company. So we're well capitalized in a really great position to take advantage of the enormous growth that we see in this space. So I mentioned up front this notion that the cloud is a strategy for distributing your work and with controls and with certainty and with greater security, perhaps even more so than it should be thought of as a way of centralizing things. That puts enormous pressure on networks. What are you hearing from your customers as they think about some of these challenges? Well, one of the big challenges for a lot of our customers is complexity. Many of them have to work with a number of different providers to be able to stitch together a reliable, secure network. What makes Ariaka so differentiated is that we're able to manage that as one single source provider. We have a global network. We have a secure network. And so we make it easy. We take out the complexity for our customers. And even more importantly, what we also do, we help our customers to accelerate their digital transformation. Many of them are going through various stages of digital transformation. They're able to do that by working with one single provider like Ariaka who could help accelerate that end state for them much faster than others in the marketplace today. So you're trying to remove the network from the transformational, or from the side of uncertainty when we start talking about digital transformation. But what is the Ariaka network? This notion that you have a full stack from the actual network all the way up to the software defined services. What's the, how does that manifest itself as different apologies or different approaches to your customers? Yeah, so think of it this way, Peter. So for a customer to put together a holistic network, there are different component pots. So one component pot is let's say, last mile. So being able to get that circuitry, broadband circuitry someplace around the world. They have to deal with a number of different vendors around that. We were able to be the single source provider, the provider for the customers. Secondly, they have to then figure how to connect to the cloud. And they're working with a number of different telco providers to help them to stitch together that piece. Again, we have our own global pops around the world. We're able to provide the local, the last mile, plus that sort of middle stage there for the customer as one single source provider. So again, complexity is the thing that's actually driving a lot of the challenges for our customers. We're able to sort of do that as one single source provider for our customers. But it sounds like you're also in a position to say we can reduce complexity, but we can also increase the flexibility that the network has. So I was talking with a large customer, a large client earlier this week, and one of the things that they observe is they're trying to reduce the amount of traffic that's associated with backhaul, back to their corporate network before it goes to some SaaS provider. How are customers ultimately starting to rethink how they direct traffic? Because a good solid foundation like Ariaka should allow you greater flexibility in how you target traffic to different circuits at different times based on location, application data, and identity. Yeah, so part of the thing that what customers are also to build upon that, or face with this, is that what type of traffic works best on what network, right? And so if you're dealing with a variety of different networks, it creates a lot of monitoring, a lot of flexibility and lack of reliability for the customer. So with us, again, we're able to provide them insight to application performance and user state performance because it's on one single network and we become, frankly, an early detector of if there are problems with particular types of applications, we're able to inform the customer of that and make the appropriate changes to allow for a much more seamless, reliable application experience for our customers. So let's talk about specifically how you're helping customers today, with some of the offers that you have and some of the approach that you have to engaging them. So one of the challenges within any large organization is to get the groupings of individuals to agree on what the problem is and the direction to take. The more shared the resources, the more people participating in the conversation. And let's be honest, there's nothing more shared in an organization today than a network. How are you seeing your customers succeed and sometimes fall victim to the challenges of trying to build that unity around how to move forward? Yeah, that's a really great question. So what we have found is that it's not a single decision maker any longer with a customer. There are the, let's say you're dealing with the CTO, the CIO, he or she has a constituency who have a say around the types of applications or networking that we're using to deploy those applications. So what we have found at Ariaka that the approach we have to take is that we have to be really good, if you will, diplomats, knowing how to go into a customer, really work and partner with the various constituencies, getting them in a room, making sure that they understand and help them to sort of see the in-state vision. And a lot of ways, part of what we're trying to do with the CIO or CTO is how do we become a really good partner for them to help them help their constituencies? So what we call it at Ariaka is no innovate growth. The no part of what we do is actually one of the most important component parts of how we go to market. What is the problem? How does this problem impact the various constituencies inside that customer and their customers? So getting dimensionalizing that problem makes sure we're bringing the right people to the table is a real important competency that we have manifested over time to help that organization become successful. The thing that's important for us, we view ourselves as an enabler. And so you just don't see, you know, you're enabler. You have to really work with the customer and really understand the problem that they're faced with. How do we enable the customer to really understand, dimensionalize the problem and then figure out how our solution helps that customer solve that problem or take advantage of that opportunity? So we call it no innovate growth. The no part is really important. The innovate is not just invention. It's really about making sure we are able to position and tailor our solution set to the needs of the customer and grow. The grow pod is really all about our customer success. Did we help them to become successful? Whatever that objective is, opening up offices in China and getting their sales team productive up and running quickly to monetize opportunities there. Whatever those growth objectives are, how do we help them to become successful? So everything we do is aligned to the customer success. So no innovate grow is a real part of how we go to market to serve the customer. It's comprehensive, it's time consuming, but we feel it's differentiating because we're not just selling you a, you know, sort of a solution, so to speak. What was really selling you is, is a way to solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity. It's a different sort of dimension of how we go to market vis-a-vis others. So talk a little bit about then how that is translating into customer success directly. You got a good product, sounds like you got a good, love the go to market strategy, really love the emphasis on innovate, which we look at as, you know, how do you get your customers to successfully adopt? Time to value, reduced uncertainty, deeper integration, more embeddedness. How is that translating into success? Tell us a little bit about how you're seeing Ariaka's customers be able to do things differently as a result. So the two parts to that. So the first part is the existing customers. So let's start with the fact that most of the existing customers who came to us, came to us because they had a particular problem someplace around the world. So let's just say we've been able to get sort of a few sort of site locations with them. They like what they see. Then they come back to us and say, hey, you know, you solved this problem here. Can you help us solve this problem over here? And then over time we've been able to expand and increase share with the existing customers. The second thing that we've done is that I've always said to the team, since I've been at the company, we're the best kept secret out there. That people don't realize that we offer this sort of end to end managed service and our customers know, our customers have been good evangelists in helping us to bring in more customers. But as big as the market opportunity is, not enough people know who we are. So part of what we're doing now, Peter, is really elevating our brand presence. You know, if you're going to be a company that's moving up the stack and if you're a CIO who's going to outsource this decision, this your connectivity to a company like Ariaka, you need to know that the person sitting across the table from you understands me, gets me, has the empathy and sensitivities of the problems that we're dealing with. So a great deal of what we're now doing is I brought in a new team, folks who've been there, done that, folks who have sold to these folks over the years who understand those customers' problems. So elevating our brand, bringing the right level of competency into the organization, and really starting to make our brand much more aware around how we help our customers solve these problems. So a little bit of this marketing, you know, in sales, but the main thing is, is just that we're now in a position where we need to really hone in on getting our brand much more elevated so people understand how we solve their problems. Yeah, engagement across the entire life cycle. Exactly. In service to success. Correct. So where is, so we can kind of see, you know, Ariaka, a good fast growth company in a market that's, I think it's going to become increasingly hot as people start to realize the role that network transformation is going to play in this whole thing. How do you see Ariaka being a force, say, in two, three years as CEO? You got to be thinking about that. Well, you know, constantly thinking about that. So for us, it's really continuing to add more innovation to our platform, and a big part of that innovation is around security as you're starting to, as more things are going to the cloud, people want to know that it's just a secure platform. We have a very secure platform today, but we'll continue to innovate and add more layers to that. So that's one piece. The second piece is to, you know, continue to advance, elevate our brand out into the marketplace. So we got to show up at the places that give people confidence that this is a company that's going to be around for a while that has sustainability, et cetera. So elevated, and really, you know, we have a guy on our team, Ashwath, who really is a pioneer in this space around the technology and where it's going. Having more thought leadership, showing up at the right sort of conferences, making sure that we are framing and helping to lead the thoughts around SD-WAN and how it plays a role in the marketplace. Making that no consumable. Making that no consumable. That's exactly right. So I think for us, it's really the continuation of maturing and growing as a company. You know, we've been a Silicon Valley startup company. We've operated as a Silicon Valley startup company. But now where we are, and given the complexities of managing a network, right, is that we have to now come across to our customers that we're a company that is here for the long haul that we have taken into account all the precautions, all the necessary building blocks to be able to deploy a secure global network. Today, we do that. Not enough people know about that. We need to continue to enhance that message out there in the marketplace. Well, every company has its challenges and every company has its go forward. But I can tell you, certainly our clients speak well of Ariaka. So Matt Carter, thanks very much for being on theCUBE. Thank you. And once again, we've been talking to Matt Carter, CEO of Ariaka. Thanks for joining us for another CUBE Conversation. I'm Peter Burris. See you next time.