 From Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Open Systems. The future is crystal clear with security and SD-WAN. Brought to you by Open Systems. Welcome back to Las Vegas, everybody. My name is Dave Vellante, and you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We're here at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in the Chandelier Bar at the Open Systems networking event. Two Gartner events this week in Las Vegas. On the heels of last week's AWS re-invent, Suresh Manchella is here. He's the director of global infrastructure at Hillenbrand. Suresh, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. So, tell me about Hillenbrand, what you guys do, and what your role is. So, Hillenbrand owns two different companies. One is the Batesville Cascade Company, which has been around for about 150 years or so. And then the other side of the business is Process Equipment Group, where we do industrial pumps, separations and heavy machinery and things of that nature. Okay, and your role is global and infrastructure. So, it touches on all infrastructure. Presumably secure. We wanted to describe the scope a little bit. So, my role is, I'm the global director of infrastructure from a corporate standpoint. So, I oversee everything, networks, storage systems, compute, cloud initiatives, and whatnot, including some of the security operations as well for Hillenbrand corporate across all the companies that we own. So, you guys manufacture industrial equipment, which presumably supports, at times, critical infrastructure, so security is vital. What are some of the big factors that are driving your business, and how do they affect your technology strategy? So, from a business standpoint, Hillenbrand is, we're in the M&A space a lot. We try to acquire a lot of companies within that Process Equipment Group space, and as a result, we have many companies that are coming in and out of our portfolio. And with any other manufacturing companies, we have the same challenges where, how do we integrate them faster? How do we integrate them in a secure and safer way? But at the same time, also enabling our businesses to take on the next step and evolve from a traditional manufacturing company to doing the digital transformation and taking advantage of the technology to have the competitive advantage in the market. So, I got to ask you, so we do a lot of these events. Everybody talks about digital transformation. It's become kind of a buzzword, but when I talk to practitioners like yourself, there's actually some of a substance there, and it relates to, it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but what's behind your digital transformation? Is it instrumentation? Is it better collection of data? Is it using that for competitive advantage? All of the above, how would you describe it? You said it's all of the above. We have a lot of data that we're collecting over the years about our customers, how they use our products, and what are some of the maintenance cycles that are going through our larger equipment, things of that nature. So, we have all that information. I think we need to start looking at that information and saying, how can we enable the business to provide the intelligence it needs to be proactive, to reach out to the customers and say, these machinery might need maintenance very soon or things of that nature. So, we want to provide that value to the business. So, as part of that instrumenting that machinery or as the machinery already instrumented, is it translating analog to digital and providing connectivity? What's behind that? Some of our machinery that have been out there have been there for many, many decades and many, many years. So, it's not, they're not already there as when it comes to IoT and things of that nature, but we're trying to look at some of those opportunities out there and see how we can better support our products. So, that's largely roadmap stuff. Right now, you're trying to focus on making sure that the business is working, you're getting products to market fast and winning the competitive game. Let's talk about security a little bit. Obviously, Open Systems is a security company, managed security, infrastructure. What's happening in security? What are the big trends, the mega trends that you see and how are they affecting the way in which you approach technology and applying that to business advantage? So, as a customer and as a manufacturing company, traditionally we used to look at a company as you have your four walls, which is your data center, all of your key elements are inside it. And as we're going towards the cloud transformation and everybody's talking about that cloud buzzword, those boundaries are getting shattered. Information is everywhere. It's no longer within those four boundaries. So, we have to start thinking security in a different way. We used to think that, you know, put some firewalls, put some controls around these things and things could be safe, but it's no longer the case. Everything is in the cloud. As a software as a service or platform as a service, infrastructure as a service, and they're all over the place. And for the most part, you don't have access to those backend systems. So, how do you protect them? So, we need to fundamentally change how we look at security and how do we protect it. So, rather than focusing on the central systems, we have to focus on the end points at this point. So, different mindset for sure, and different sort of technology approach or similar practices with just different methodologies. How do you describe that? It's certainly a different methodology. The focus is certainly shifting. It's no longer centralized. It's decentralized. It's information everywhere, information or live. So, it could be on your phones. It could be on your desktops. It could be on laptops. It could be on servers in the cloud, cloud service providers. So, there are a lot of things that come into play when you're talking about the security of these, the data that's scattered all over the place. So, you're a customer of open systems. Is that right? So, and maybe you could describe what you do with them and what your relationship has been with them. How do you apply their tech? So, Helen Brand knows a co-parent company based out of Germany. And they've been a longstanding customer of open systems for many, many years. So, as a part of the acquisition, we got to know open systems and the value that they're adding to, you know, in the SD-WAN space and security space, which is, you know, quite phenomenal. Okay, so you're part of the, your role as it relates to open systems is through that other division of the company. So, how do you apply their tech? I mean, what are you doing with it? We utilize open systems as our SD-WAN provider outside the U.S. And, you know, primarily the division that we had was outside the U.S. for the most part. So, as we are getting to know more and more about open systems over the years, you know, it's a no-brainer for us. You know, they can provide a very reliable, very robust service that's scalable, that's very, you know, quick turnarounds. And that's certainly fitting in well with our M&A strategy where, you know, when we acquire a company or try to integrate these things, we cannot wait several months for an MPLS provider to drop a circuit and get them in and things of that nature. So, with open systems and with the SD-WAN concept, you only need an internet connection with, you know, and then they do all the magic behind the scenes and put it all together. So, it's cloud-like in the sense that it's sort of a managed service. It is. But it's not necessarily remote cloud services. It could be on-prem or... Yes, it could be anywhere, or eventually at the edge. Yeah. So, it fits into the roadmap. What's the biggest security challenge that you face as a practitioner today? The biggest security challenge that we have is, you know, protecting the data that's everywhere. The biggest challenge is knowing where the data is today. So, you know, if anybody can solve that problem, I'd like to know. I'll be the first to know that. That's been quite a challenge for everybody lately. It's an arms race, isn't it? It is. Good. Well, Suresh, thanks very much for coming to theCUBE. It was a pleasure meeting you. Thank you. All right, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back from Las Vegas at the Open Systems Networking Event. You're watching theCUBE.