 Live from Atlanta, Georgia, it's theCUBE. Covering AnsibleFest 2019, brought to you by Red Hat. Welcome back, this is theCUBE's coverage of AnsibleFest 2019, I'm Stu Miniman. My co-host of the week is John Ferrier and this is theCUBE Insights where we share our independent analysis, break down what we're hearing from the community, what we've learned from all of our interviews. John, we knew community would be a big portion of what we did here at Culture and Collaboration were things that we talked a lot about that wasn't necessarily what I thought I would be hearing. You've been talking a lot about how observability and automation are these huge waves we've seen, acquisitions, we've seen IPOs, we've seen investments, so your take here is we're wrapping up. Well, I mean, first of all, Stu, as we said in our opening, and the big scene here has been automation for all, that's Ansible's kind of wrap because they're announcing their main news, Ansible Automation Platform, so that's the big news. But the bottom line is where this emerged from was configuration management. Ansible started out as a small little project that solved a very specific problem. It solved configuring devices and all the automation around opening up ports and things that were important beyond the basic static routing, the old Web 1.0, Web 2.0 model and it grew into a software abstraction layer for automating because a lot of that stuff, the mundane tasks in configuring networks and servers, frankly, were boring and redundant, everyone hated them, patches, so easy ground to automate. And I think it's evolved a lot into DevOps because with the cloud scale, more devices, just because software is defining everything, doesn't mean servers go away, so we know that. There's more servers, there's more storage, it's in the cloud, it's on-premise, it's cloud operations, so automation, I think, and my prediction is, is that automation will be as big of a category as observability was. And remember, we kind of missed observability, we saw it as important, we covered all those companies, but it's basically network management on steroids with the cloud, but look what happened, multiple companies went public, big companies getting sold for billions of dollars, a lot of M&A activity, observability is one of the most important areas of cloud 2.0, it's not just some white space around network management, the data's super important. I think automation is going to grow into a highly competitive, highly relevant, and lucrative marketplace for companies. And I think Ansible is in pole position to capture that with Red Hat, and now Red Hat, part of IBM, I think automation is going to be very big land grab, it's going to be where the value's created, I think observability and automation are going to go hand in hand, and I think AI and data, those are the things, programming infrastructure revolve around those two spheres, I think it's going to be super important, I think that's why the cube is here, we smelled it out, we sniffed it, we can see it, we can touch it, and the community here, they're doing it, they actually have proof points. This community is demonstrating that the process can be more efficient, the technology works, and the people are transforming, and that is a key piece, with automation, people can work on other things, and it's certainly changing the game, so all three aspects of digital transformation are in lockstep and expanding rapidly. Yeah, John, I would expect nothing less than a bold prediction from you on this space, it's only $150 million acquisition, which is really small compared to a lot of the acquisitions that we see these as, heck, Red Hat, Ansible didn't get talked about all that much when IBM went and spent over $30 billion for Red Hat, but absolutely, automation is so important, that infrastructure as code movement that we've been tracking for quite a long time helps enable automation across the entire stack, a lot of discussion this week here, networking and security, two areas that we know need to make progress, and we need to have less errors, we need to be able to make changes faster, and cloud. Just as in the infrastructure space, that configuration management, we need to be able to simplify things, absolutely one of the things that will slow down the growth of cloud is that we can't simplify those environments, so the same type of tooling, and where Ansible is trying to span between the traditional environments and the cloud is to get this working in the containerization cloud-native Kubernetes world that we're living in today. Yeah, and Stu, you're right on, this is the analysis and it's spot on, I think one of the nuances in the industry landscape is when Red Hat got acquired by IBM for a massive amount of money, everyone's scratching their heads, but if you think about what Red Hat has done, and you know I'm a real big fan of Red Hat, UR2, they're smart, they make great acquisitions. Ansible, not a big payout, they had CoreOS, they had OpenShift, they decouple, they're operating systems people, they get the notion of systems architecture. I think Red Hat has executed brilliantly in that systems mindset, which is perfect for cloud computing. I think Arvin Krishna at IBM really understood the impact of Red Hat, and when I talked to him at Red Hat Summit two years ago, right before the acquisition, he had the twinkle in his eye when I asked him about Red Hat, because you can see him connecting the dots. Red Hat brings a lot to the table, and if IBM doesn't screw up Red Hat, then they're going to do well. We talk about Red Hat not screwing up Ansible, and they didn't, not part of it. If IBM doesn't screw up the Red Hat acquisition, let Red Hat bring that systems mindset in. I think IBM could use Red Hat as a beautiful way to bring a systems architecture into cloud, cloud native, and really take a lot of territory down these new cloud native applications. Automation is a force multiplier for customers, and Ansible has that capability to be a force multiplier for Red Hat. When you look at the ecosystem they're building out here, the Ansible Automation platform really helps get customers more in lock steps. So, I was talking to some people and said, oh, AWS has an update, oh, we need to roll the entire core and put out another version. I can't wait for that. I need to be able to decouple the partner activity, which, by the way, they talked about how this project is the six most popular in GitHub. De-coupling collections might actually put them lower on the list, but that's okay because they're solving real customer problems, and it's interesting, John, when you talk about the ecosystem here, there's only a couple of other companies other than Red Hat that can commit without having to go through approval. Microsoft is one of them, so you talk about the collaboration, the ecosystem here, where this can be. Well, Stu, the thing about Ansible is that it's a double-edged sword. Their value is also an Achilles heel, and one of the critical analysis that I have is that they're not broad enough yet, and they're, I won't say misunderstood. The customers here in the community, they totally get it. Everyone here loves Ansible. The problem is that in the global landscape of the industry, they're tiny. Red Hat needs to bring this out faster. I think IBM has to get Ansible out there faster because they have all the elements kind of popping right now. You've got community, very strong, customer-based, loyal, and dynamic. You've got champions developing, that's classic sign of success. They've got a great product, perfectly fit for this glue layer, this integration layer, below containers, and maybe even sitting above containers, depending on how you look at it, and then finally the ecosystem of partners. Not yet fully robust, but all the names are here, Microsoft, Cisco, NetApp, F5. Kind of feels like VMworld on a small scale. They have to up-level it. I think that's the critical problem I see with these guys is that it's almost too good and too small. Yeah, when I look back at when Red Hat made the acquisition, there were a handful of companies, most of them embracing open source as to which configuration management tool you're going to do. Ansible did well against them, and Red Hat helped make them the category leader in this space. There is a different competitive landscape today. Just public cloud, Ansible can help, but there's some customers that would be like, oh, I've got different tooling and it doesn't fit into what I'm doing today. So there's some different competitors in the landscape, and we know John, every customer we talk to, they've got a lot of tools. So how does Ansible get mindshare inside the company? They had some great stories that we heard both on theCUBE from ING and the Southern Company, as well as in the Keynotes, from JPMorgan where they're scaling out, they're building playbooks, they're doing this, but this is not just push a button to get all of this rolled out through the company. Well, the IBM marketing should help here. And if I'm, you know, the marketing team at IBM, I'd be like all over this because this is a game changer because this could be a digital transformation ingredient, the people equation. The problem is that, again, IBM has to embrace this. And Ansible has that glue layer integration. This could be great. Now the benefit to them, I think their tailwind is, they can solve a lot of problems. One nuance from the show that I learned was, okay, configuration management, DevOps, great. The network automation is looking good. Security is a huge opportunity because if you think about the basic blocking and tackling, patches, configuration, misconfigurations, automation plays perfect role. So to get Beachhead and the enterprise as an abstraction layer is to own and dominate those basics. Because think about the big hacks. Capital one, misconfigured firewall to an S3 bucket. It wasn't Amazon's fault, but the data on Amazon, this is automation can solve a lot of these problems. Patches, malware, vulnerabilities. The adversaries are going to be all over this. So I think the security piece, huge upside, position Ansible and Red Hat as an abstraction layer to solve those basic problems rather than overselling it. Could be a great strategy. I think they're doing a good job with that. Yeah, totally, you know, built on simplicity and modularity, this tooling is something that can sit lots of places in the organization and help that cultural communication. I was a bit critical of enterprise collaboration, that top-down push that you get. But here, you know, you've got a tool that we just had on our final interview with Parag. You know, developers, they didn't build this for developers, but developers are embracing it. The infrastructure people are embracing it. It gives some good ways to work together. And then why we're here, I mean, Stu, why we're here is I think Ansible Fest is a community event which we love. But Stu, I think this is early days and the Canary in the coal mine is saying that the Ansible formula for automation is going to be a growth here. That's my prediction. And we have data to back it up. If you look at our community and the folks out in the CUBE alumni know, know that when we reach out to them and get some data, but here's what supports why I think the automation thing with Ansible and Red Hat's relevant because it applies to what we just talked about. The number one thing that came back from the community, Stu, was focused efforts on better results. Automation from time efficiency, days, hours, to minutes, check. Security is absolutely a top driver for automation. That's the tailwind. The job satisfaction issue is not like a marketing feel good thing. People actually like their jobs when they don't have to come in on the weekends. So this automation does align with that. And finally, infrastructure and developers reskilling with new capabilities and new things is just an uplift. So those are the drivers driving the automation. That's why RPA is so hot. And this is a critical foundation in my opinion. So Ansible is leading the wave here in this new automation wave. And I think it's going to be a big part because it's controlling the plumbing. It's controlling the machinery. Johnny, the future of work, we know that automation is going to be hugely important. You mentioned RPA, a huge one. I had an interview with an associate professor from Syracuse University here. They're teaching this to education. It's not just, oh, hey, you got to go learn coding and learn this programming language. No, we need to have that combination of the business understanding and the technology and automation can sit right at that intersection. What's your big learning point? What did you take away? Yeah, so it is, it's at that point here that this is not just some cool little tool on the side. This is something, John, we've talked at many shows. Software can actually be a unifying factor inside companies to help build platforms and for customers to help them collaborate and work together. This tool like Ansible isn't just something that is done tactically, but strategically gets everyone on the same page, enables that collaboration, isn't just another channel of some other thing that I don't want to have to deal with. It helps me get my job better, increase that job satisfaction. That's so hugely important. And, Sue, if you think about the digital transformation form of people, process technology, how many interviews have we done? How many interviews have we done and the companies we've talked to where they have the great product on the process side to address the process. They have the tech, but they fail on the people side. It's the cultural adoption, it's the real enablement. And I think Ansible's challenge is to take the platform, the capabilities of their software, launch the platform and create value because if they're not enabling value out of the platform, that does not cross check with what platforms are supposed to do, which is, create value. Yeah, and John, the thing I want to look for when we come back to this show next year is how much are they allowing customers to leverage their data. When we heard from their engineering division here, okay, the platform's the first piece, but how do I measure internally and how do I measure against our peers? We know that that's people want to have, there's so much information out there. How am I doing? Where am I on my five step progression and adoption of automation? And hey, am I doing good against my competition or are they smoking me? Well, that's the metrics. With the insight piece and tying into RHEL, now people can say, look, I just saved a bunch of money, I saved some time, that's the business impact. And I think when you have the KPIs and you have the analysts to back it up, good things will happen, Stu's been great. All right, John, always a pleasure to catch up with you. We got lots more here toward the second half of 2019. Big thanks to the whole community for, of course, watching us here at Ansible's Fest. Check out thecube.net for all the upcoming shows. Thank you to our whole production team and to our host, Red Hat, for giving us this beautiful set right in the middle of the show. And thanks as always for watching theCUBE.