 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. Brought to you by IBM. Welcome back to IBM Think 2021. This is theCUBE's continuous virtual in-depth coverage of the people, processes, and technologies that are changing our world. Right now we're going to talk about modernization and the synergy with cloud. And we're pleased to welcome Doug Armbrust who's the VP of GTS Cloud Synergy. Hey, Doug, how you doing? Great, Dave. Excited to be on theCUBE. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's our pleasure. Hey, let's talk a little bit of tech. What are some of the technologies that your clients are applying on their path to modernization? Sure, one, give you three examples and three that we're seeing a lot of interest in from a services standpoint. One is automation. Automation is an area that's been a focus for several decades but we're seeing a renewed excitement around the opportunity for automated operations and really I'll talk about two other technologies but the extension of automation into some of the newer cloud technology. So that's one. Two is cloud. Cloud has been a term in industry for a while now and folks have been at various points of a journey to cloud centric models and technologies. We're seeing an even accelerated transition to not just public cloud but also private cloud technologies and in particular a need to interconnect those with one another and with traditional environments. And then the last one and I think there's been a bit of a referendum on the technology over the last year is around containers, specifically Kubernetes as a standard for that space. You see really a cementing of direction around containers. Clearly people are different stages of implementation and experimentation with the technology but I do see a referendum on this being a fundamental part of future technology and direction. So automation, cloud and containers. I'm going to ask you to follow up on containers because it's clear that when you look at all the data it's off the charts in terms of adoption and ultimately our scenario is okay it gets subsumed into the stack but where do customers ultimately want to go? I mean obviously they're upskilling but what's the outcome that they're trying to achieve? Yeah, it's a good question. I think a general question we have to ask a modernization right is it, I like modern things. I would like to live in a modern house but my wife likes a farm house. So guess where we live? We live in a farm house with modernized appliances and infrastructure. New car smell, we love it. You know ultimately what enterprise is they're working back from an objective and that objective had this term digital transformation for about a decade. And underneath that umbrella it's about being able to move and respond quickly. It's about being able to create innovation and accelerate innovation. And I think probably most important is deliver on a customer experience and end customer experience. You know 10 years ago what I expected when I went to a restaurant was you know if I could look them up on the internet and find their location, use my GPS to get there. I was good to go. You know a year ago I'm looking for you know to use an app them to remember my favorite place to sit. You know very different expectations and that pressure on enterprise to meet those end expectations is really at the heart of you know the modernization and part of that's infrastructure modernization. Containers is interesting because it brings together you know not just infrastructure it brings together how application development cycles are being implemented. It has implications for security that you know can be positive if done right. So you know we do see that as a key area to meet the end business objectives. It's going to take some time. IDC I think is the most bullish they talk about 80% of workloads by 2023 will shift the containers. I believe that for newly created workloads. I think developers have got this in their hands and they understand the efficiencies for their own work as well as when this moves to production this sort of DevSecOps model is you know kind of comes with containers if done right. You know there's a legacy that's going to be around a long time and so helping customers understand those operating models and how to live with them both is going to be important over the next five to 10 years. Yeah you're talking about those drivers responsiveness, the innovation, et cetera. I live in an old house too and there's another component here which is that 80% reasonable people could discuss that because there's a risk component right. I could modernize my house but I could jack up one into the house but it might mess up something that I just did. And so CIOs obviously are risk averse. They want to modernize but at the same time they want to get from point A to point B without with minimum disruption. So to that end, I wonder if you could talk about what you saw during the pandemic. I mean we're still in the pandemic but you had a reduction in budgets in virtually across the board. You know minus four, minus 5% in spending had a shift toward work from home, whatever. VDI, laptops, you know, it was a rush end point security, that whole thing. A lot of organizations tried to do both. They said, hey, we're actually going to double down on digital transformation. We see this as a lean in opportunity. We got liquidity. How did COVID influence modernization initiatives in your client base? Yeah, it impacted different clients in different ways. Some, as you mentioned, I almost view it as very Darwinian in the sense that those who had modernized and had capabilities more deeply automated were ready for the transition they had to go through. So they were able to quickly shift to work from home. They were able to deliver on new client experiences. You know, the analogy before on digital transformation those pressures never went away but COVID just brought new ones. They expected all of those things but now they expected the restaurant they expect the restaurant to bring that food to my door and do it in a safe manner. So that, you know, the challenges it brought on organizations were, in many cases, new. Some who were in a good position could accelerate work in place and leverage that. Others had a harder time, right? Those who couldn't translate technology to immediate returns to kind of fuel that ongoing progress have made that had to make some hard decisions. And I would say that's probably the single trend is, you know, projects are very carefully reviewed. There's that view of, you know, will this help me now and into the future? That's always present but it's present in a stronger manner than we've seen it for some time. In that envelope, I kind of come back to within those three technologies, automation has certainly we've seen a jump because of its nature. What we see in automation projects is a faster time to implement and achieve some of the agility and flexibility that, you know, cloud provides, but can take a longer timeframe if you haven't gotten far along in your cloud journey. Containers even longer timeframe. So a lot of folks are looking at automation projects as particularly those that weren't as well positioned for sort of a quick turn. And then taking that automation work and extending it into cloud and containers and, you know, as those initiatives progress. I mean, there are definitely some historical parallels and I can even go back to Y2K and look at all the application rationalization exercises that were going on back then. The technologies were different. You know, you didn't have, you know, the modern cloud. You know, containers been around forever but not in the form of Kubernetes. And automation, you know, automation was scary, you know, back then, but nonetheless, people were trying to, you know, use scripts or, you know, whatever they could do. But now it's almost like an automation mandate. If you weren't a digital business, you were out of business. So what are some of the learnings that you've seen from these modernization journeys that you're taking customers on that you might be able to share? Yeah, let me comment on automation first and I'll say it more generally. You know, I think automation, you're right. We're not finding enterprises that are doing things manual. Everybody's gotten at least to kind of that scripting point. And then we see, you know, that has its own journey. Then there's, you know, centralization. And folks trusting the automation to enable self-service. That's sort of a kind of a tipping point to who is ready for COVID and who wasn't. You know, those who had hardened their automation to enable self-service generally could then call on that self-service to meet the new demands that they were facing. You know, the next stage, and we see less folks there, we get into sort of infrastructure as code. Yeah. We talk about areas of intelligence in your automation. You know, when you talk about trust, it's not as many have progressed to where they trust their automation to, you know, proactively, maybe sometimes reactively respond to a situation or set as, you know, you have to be very integrated at that point and you have to really believe in your automation. And then you then talk about integrating AI to sense, respond, make decisions and bring those back into your automation technologies. I'd say that's still very future, but folks are very intrigued by that. Now, you know, your more general question, what's sort of some of the learnings? And it really goes back to, you know, modernization needs to have a business goal. And that's, you know, that's become, you know, maybe more clear than it was a year and a half ago. In the absence of that, you know, IT projects have always had some degree of failure. It's just the evidence of that failure is probably a little bit more poignant. You know, related to that is there needs to be a strategic plan. And in particular with modernization, it's easy to get caught up with the modern side. And Dave, you were kind of alluded to this before. If you're not thinking about the old, the connection to the legacy, that's a very common kind of failure signature. It's a marching ahead with the modernization without a strategic plan to connect those things and an ability to kind of tackle a piece of the time. You know, sometimes budgets go away and, you know, that's a problem. So, you know, each step in the journey is just really the third lesson needs to have incremental value. It needs to kind of pay back something to help fund the next stage of modernization. And I'd say the last one, and it's self-serving for us as a services company, it's helpful to have a partner on these journeys. You know, we, you know, in my particular area of focus, you know, in a year and a half, we've had 6,600 engagements. A lot of those engagements are people coming to us after making what they now view as mistakes. You know, some of the three areas I just mentioned and being able to bring somebody in with experience, with maybe some complimentary skills that can partner with an enterprise, it can be very helpful to avoid some of the pitfalls. Yeah, I think, you know, your point is right on. I mean, I've seen horror stories where people, I mean, literally said, we're going to go off the mainframe. They got decades old cobalt code that's working just fine and then they literally risked their business trying to brute force, migrate off and they never could, they're not going to freeze the code. I mean, it's just horror stories. But today's different. You can actually build an abstraction layer, leverage cloud services and Kubernetes and the like and build, use microservices to actually connect the old to the new. And that's the hardest part. Again, old house analogies. I've done a lot of connecting the old to the new. That's the hardest part. You got to be really careful. But today, the technologies are enabling to do that. And one of them is obviously things like open shift. I mean, the definition of open, again, little history here, it used to be UNIX was open and then, you know, then Windows and then, you know, Linux, the LAMP stack. But really, you know, that piece of your portfolio is a critical part to enable these types of moves. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it's exciting that technologies are there and there's a path forward. And it's great to, you know, it's great to work with a partner who's maybe done that 10 or 15 times or, you know, or more and have them help guide you on that path. But the good news is there is, you know, enabling technologies to transform in a number of ways depending on, you know, what the business objectives are for an enterprise. Cool. All right, Doug, we got to go. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. It was great to see you. Okay, same day, appreciate it. Keep it right there, everybody. This is Dave Vellante. You're watching IBM Think 2021, the virtual edition covered on theCUBE.