 Everyone, welcome to this special CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier, host of the CUBE here, remote in Washington DC, not in Palo Alto, but we're all around the world with the CUBE as we are virtual. We're here recapping the Citrix Launchpad Cloud accelerating IT modernization with CUBE alumni, Kevin Jackson, Kevin L. Jackson, CEO of GC GlobalNet. Kevin, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. No, thank you very much, John. It's always a pleasure to be on the CUBE. It's great to have you, it's got great insights, but here we're recapping the event, Citrix Launchpad Cloud Accelerated IT Modernization. And again, we're seeing this theme constantly now, IT modernization, application modernization. People are now seeing clearly what the pandemic has shown us all, that there's a lot of projects that need to be up-leveled or killed. There's a lot of things happening going on. What's your take of what you heard? Well, from a general point of view, organizations can no longer put off this digitalization and the modernization of their IT. Many of these projects have been on the shelf waiting for the right time or the budget to get right. But when the pandemic hit, everyone found themselves in the virtual world. And one of the most difficult things was how do you make decisions in the virtual world when you can't physically be with someone? How do you have a meeting when you can't shake someone's hand? And they all sort of stared at each other virtually, of course, to try to figure this out. And it dusted off all of the technologies they had on the shelf that they were told to use years ago, but just didn't feel that it was right. And now it became necessary. It became the way of life. And the thing that really jumped at me yesterday, well, jumped at me with the launch of the Launchpad for Cloud, is that Citrix honed in on the key issues with this virtual world. I mean, delivering applications, knowing what the internet state is so that you could select the right sources for information and data, and making security holistic. So you didn't have to, it was no longer sort of this bolted on thing. So, I mean, we are in the virtual world to stay. You know, you had a good call out there and honing in was a good way to put it. One quote I heard from Tim was, he said, one thing that's become painfully evident is a lot of companies are going through the pandemic and they're experiencing the criticality of the application experience. And he says, application experience is the new currency. Okay, so the pandemic, we all kind of know what's going on there. It's highlighting all the needs. But this idea of an application experience is the new currency is a very interesting comment because, I mean, you nailed it. Everyone's working from home. The whole work is shifting. And the applications, they kind of weren't designed to be this way, 100%. Right, right. You know, the thing about the old IT was that you would build something and you would deploy it and you would use it for a period of time. You know, a year, two years, three years, and then there would be an upgrade. You would upgrade your hardware. You would upgrade your applications. And then you go through the process again. You know, what was it referred to as, it wasn't modernization, but it was refresh. You know, you would refresh everything. Well, today, refresh occurs every day, sometimes two or three times a day. And you don't even know it's occurring, especially in the application world, right? I think I was looking at something about Chrome. And I think we're at like Chrome 95. It's like Chrome is updated constantly as a regular course of business. So you have to deploy this, understand when it's going to be deployed. And the customers and users, you can't stop their work. So this whole application delivery and security aspect is completely different than before. That's why this, you know, this intent-driven solution that Citrix has come up with is so revolutionary. I mean, by being able to know the real business needs and requirements and then translating them to real policies that can be enforced, you can really, I guess, project the needs, requirements of the organization anywhere in the world immediately with the applications and with this security platform. I want to get your reaction to something because that's right on the point there. Because when we look at the security piece and the applications, you see, okay, your mind goes, okay, old IT, new IT. Now with cloud, with the pandemic, showing that cloud scale matters, a couple of themes have come from that used to be inside the ropes concepts. Virtualization, virtual, and automation. Those two concepts are going mainstream because now automation with data and virtual, virtual work, virtual queue, we're doing virtual, virtualization is coming here. So building on those things, new things are happening around those two concepts. Automation is becoming much more programmable, much more real time, not just repetitive tasks. Virtual is not just doing virtual work from home, it's integrating that virtual experience into other applications. This requires a whole new organizational structure mindset. What's your thoughts on that? Well, one of the things is the whole concept of automation, it used to be a nice to have. Something that you could do maybe to improve your particular process, not all of the processes. And then it became the only way of reacting to reality. Humans, it was no longer possible for humans to recognize a need to change and then execute on that change within the allotted time. So that's why automation became a critical element of every business process. And then it expanded that this automated process needed to be connect and interact with that automated process and the age of the API. And then the organization grew from only relying on itself to relying on its ecosystem. Now an organization had to automate their communications, their integration, the transfer of data and information. So automation is key to business and globalization creates that requirement or magnifies that requirement. One of the things we heard in the event was obviously Citrix has the experience with virtual apps, virtual desktop, all that stuff. We know that. But as the cloud grows in, they're making a direct statement around, we're going to, Citrix is going to add value on top of the cloud services because that's the reality of the hybrid and now soon to be multi-cloud workflows or architectures. How do you see that evolving? Because is that something that's being driven by the cloud, the app experience or both? What's your take on that focus of Citrix taking their concepts and leadership to add value on top of the cloud? To be honest, I don't like referring to the cloud. It gives an impression that there's only a single cloud and it's the same no matter what. That couldn't be further from the truth. A typical organization will consume services from three to five cloud service providers. And these providers aren't working with each other. Their services are unique, independent. And it's up to the enterprise to determine which applications and how those applications are presented to their employees. So it's the enterprise that's responsible for the employee experience, integrating data from one cloud service provider to another cloud service provider within this automated business process or multiple business processes. So I see Citrix is really helping the enterprise to continually monitor performance from these independent cloud service provider and to optimize that experience. You know, the things like where is the application being consumed for? What is the latency today on the internet? What type of throughput do I need from cloud service provider A versus cloud service provider B? All of this is continually changing. So it's the enterprise that needs to constantly monitor the performance and degradation and look at outages and all of that. So I think Citrix is on point by understanding that there's no single cloud. Hybrid and multi-cloud is the cloud. It's the real world. You know, that's a great call out. I think it's naive for enterprises to think that, you know, Microsoft is sitting there saying, hmm, let's figure out a way to really work well with AWS and vice versa, right? I mean, and you got Google, right? They all have their own specialties. I mean, Amazon Web Service has a great compliance action going on there, much stronger than Microsoft. Microsoft's got much deeper legacy and integration to their base and Google's doing great with developers. So they're all kind of picking their lanes but they all exist. So the question in the enterprise is what? Do I, how do I deal with that? And again, this is an opportunity for Citrix, right? So this kind of comes down to the single pane of class Dave Vellante always talks about or how do I manage this new environment that I need to operate in? Because I will want to take advantage of, say, some of the Google goodness and the Azure and the AWS. But now I got my own on-premises. Bear Metal's growing. You see more Bear Metal deals going down now because the cloud operations has come on-premises. Yeah, and in fact, that's hybrid IT, right? I always see that there are an enterprise, when enterprise thinks about modernizing or digitally transforming a business process, you have three options, right? You could put it in your own data center. And in fact, building a data center and optimizing a data center for a particular process is the cheapest and most efficient way of executing a business process. But it's only cheaper and efficient if that process is also stable and consistent. I'll say, but some are like that. But you can also do a managed service provider. But that is a distinctly different approach. And the third option is a cloud service provider. So this is a hybrid IT environment. It's not just cloud. It's sort of, you know, it's not smart to think everything's going to go into the cloud. It's distributed computing. We've seen this movie before. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, in today's paperless world, don't you still use a pen and paper and pencil? Yes, the right tool for the right job. So it's hybrid IT. Cloud is not always the perfect thing. And that's something that I believe Citrus has looked at, that interface between the enterprise and all these choices when it comes to delivering applications, delivering the data, integrating that data and making it secure. And I think that's a winning positioning to have this app experience, concurrency narrative because that ultimately is an outcome that you need to win on. And with cloud and the cloud scale, it goes on with all the multiple services now available. The company's business model is app driven, right? That's their application. So I love that, I love that narrative. I also like this idea of app delivery and security. It's kind of, you know, in the weeds a little bit, but it highlights this hybrid IT concept you were saying. So I got to ask you as the expert in the industry in this area, you know, as you have intent, what they call intent-driven solution for app delivery and security, self-healing, continuous optimization, et cetera, et cetera, the KPIs are changing, right? So I want to get your thoughts on that because now as IT shifts to be much faster, whether it's security teams or IT teams to service that DevOps speed shifting left that everyone talks about, what's the KPIs that are changing? What is the new KPIs that the managers and people can work through as a North Star or just tactically, what's your thoughts? Well, actually every KPI has to relate to either the customer experience or the employee experience and sometimes even more important your business partner experience. That's the integration of these business processes. And one of the most important aspects that people really don't think about is the API, the application programming interface. You know, you think about software applications and you think about hardware, but how is this hardware deployed? How do you deploy and expand the number of servers servers based upon more usage from your customer? It's via the API. You manage the customer experience via APIs. You manage your ability to interact with your business partners through the API, their experience. You manage how efficient and effective your employees are through their experience with the IT and the applications through the API. So it's all about that, you know, that experience. Everybody yells customer experience, but it's also your employee experience and your partner experience. So that depends upon this integrated holistic approach to applications and the API security. The web app, the management of bots and the protection of your APIs. Yeah, they're really nailing it. I think the position is good. You know, if you can get faster app delivery, keep the security in line and not bolted on to the fact and reduce costs, that's a winning formula. And obviously stitching together a service layer of app and software for all the cloud services is really key. I got to ask you though, Kevin, since you and I have rift on the cube about this before, more importantly now than ever with the pandemic, look at the work edge, people working at home and what's that causing the office spaces changing the entire network architecture. I mean, I was talking to a big enterprise and say, oh yeah, we had the network for the commercial and the network for kind of dial up, now 100% provisioned for everyone at home. The radical change to the structural interface has completely changed the game. What is your view on this? I mean, give us your, where does it go? What happens next? So it's not what's next, it's where we are right now. You need to be able to be work from anywhere at any time across a multiple devices. And on top of that, you have to be able to adapt to constant change in both the devices, the applications, the environment and the business model. I did an interview with Citrix, actually from an RV in the middle of a park, right? And it's like, you did video, we did it live, I think it was through LinkedIn Live, but I mean, you need to be able to do anything from anywhere. And the enterprise needs to support that business imperative. So I think that's key, it's not the future, it's to the day. Yeah, I mean, the final question I have for you is, okay, is the frog in the boiling water? At what point does the CIO and the IT leaders, I mean, their minds are probably blown. I can only imagine the conversations I've been having it's been, you know, be agile, do it in the cloud, do it at speed, fix the security, programmable infrastructure. Why, how fast can I run? This is the management challenge. What's your, how are people dealing with this when you talk with them? First of all, the IT professional needs to focus on the business needs, the business requirements, the business key performance indicators, not technology, and the business ROI. The CIO has to be right there in the C-suite of understanding what's needed by the business. And that also has to be an expert in being able to translate these business KPIs into IT requirements, all right? And understanding that all of this is gonna be within a realm of constant change. So the CIO, the CTO, and the IT professional needs to realize their key deliverable is business performance. Kevin, great insight. Love having you on theCUBE. Thanks for coming on. I really appreciate your time, highlighting and recapping the Citrix at the cloud event, accelerating IT monitoring. Can't go fast enough. People want, they want to go faster. Faster, faster, yes. It's great stuff. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. Thank you, John. I really enjoyed it. Okay, it's theCUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Thanks for watching.