 From San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering OCP US Summit 2016, brought to you by OCP. Now your host, Jeff Brick and Stu Miniman. Hey, welcome back, Jeff Brick here. We are winding up day two of wall-to-wall coverage at Open Compute Project Summit in San Jose, California. Third year we've been here, fifth year of the show. Open Source meets hardware, meets hyperscale, and powering the cloud. Really started by Facebook, ecosystems growing out, and we're excited for this next segment to be joined by a very special guest. Someone you'll recognize. John, for your fresh off the plane, was back east in Orlando, covering Enterprise Connect. Welcome back, John. How are things back east? It was great, it was a great event. It was a market that's kind of old, but being reborn. Born again, unified communications with collaboration, really has that energy. Collaboration and software has gone a full collision course with this old PBX voice over IP market. Some, a lot of networking, but a lot of unified communications, group chat, video, but in the old days it was old software. Again, Facebook is a classic example of the ultimate unified communication. It is an app that does it all, and they bought WhatsApp, and you're starting to see that consumer experience that the mega, mega, mega web scale guys have done. In the Enterprise, it's a little bit different from some legacy stuff, and it's student-nosed networking. So that's a super exciting space. There's some old incumbents that will become Driftwood. This next wave is you're going to put them away, and then a new guard is coming in, new school coming in, born in the cloud, cloud native, the folks that Brian Graceley, Wikibon is tracking. That kind of DevOps culture is going to come in and absolutely wrestle away the value. And again, the collision course between software industry and communications and networking on a full-on collision course. And again, that's super exciting. And I wanted to come back here because it's all powered under the hood by all the hardware. And watching you guys interview yesterday with the folks here, and we were here, I was here last year, this show represents the future of the data center. And then you say cloud, not cloud, not yet, but the cloud wannabes are coming here, but also the cloud players are here. So this is the trend that will either go big or go home. Yeah, I think for sure it's going to go big, because this is not the old players that were around before. It started by Facebook, and the big news, John, is Google got up on stage. Microsoft's here, the Azure team is here in force. So those are a couple of the classic, big public cloud players. Also, of course, Microsoft plays on the enterprise side. So they got private cloud as well. And it's really becoming software defined, wrapped around this hardware standard. We just had Leo on from Scality. Software continues to eat the world, and now it's eating even more into the hardware infrastructure layer. I mean, the thing that you guys talked about yesterday, you had a couple interviews, you had Crawford on earlier, Stu, great interview, getting down on the weeds, but you know what, he's a purist who brought a modern licensing approach to this area in a very pioneering way. That to me was really groundbreaking and revolutionary. That is kick-ass. Also, the Facebook guy was on, and he kind of threw out some nuances there, Stu. He said that doing hundreds of millions of live concurrence, or some big number. The number that I could find on the web as a public number was Bob Bowman, who's the CEO of MLB Advanced Media Unit. I think he was throwing around his highest concurrence that they've seen, they're around 12 million. So if you look at the classic CDNs, the numbers globally that you can max out as is anywhere between 12 and say 20 million concurrence. That's if that happens and no one else can do anything. Yet Facebook has a scale level up around hundreds of millions, potentially concurrent live viewers. Yeah, actually John, I thought they only talked about like a million or so concurrence. Was it a million? It was hundreds of millions of hours of video that they're creating, but concurrence, I still don't know that they've gotten that, but you know, it's really interesting, John, because I mean, the trend that we've been tracking with theCUBE now for many years, distributed architectures really at scale. And I mean, this is where we see the limitations of what's happening for some of that scale. You know, what can happen? You know, where do the laws of physics and just the technologies that we have, you know, bump up against the reality of what we can develop today. Well, we'll check the tapes too, but this is against the battleground, right? So the question is, Facebook is building a large scale. You got Google now in the mix, Microsoft in the mix. HP's put the toe in the water, you see their sponsorship, but their booth is intact. So are they really here? Are they truly committed to this? But here's the deal, Amazon is not here. You said that yesterday, Stu, but is this Facebook against Amazon now with Google, the two Silicon Valley Titans together against the Seattle Seahawks in Amazon, Stu? Yeah, so, you know, the Niners versus the Seahawks, Mariners versus the Giants. You know, John, we understand why Facebook's here. Facebook's here because they need this infrastructure and they want the community to help them paint their fence. You know, the analogy I always go back to. Google, you know, they donated something with their like 48 volt power. It's kind of interesting, but it's not exactly a game changer. I mean, it's great to see them participating and, but I don't know that Google's all in, but it does kind of, you know, put them at the table there. Amazon, you know, we kind of said, well, we see Amazon here in a year. I kind of doubt they'll be here. I don't think that they'll be here, but what's the motivation people? You know, why? You want to know why Hewlett Packer Enterprise is here? Because Microsoft is one of their biggest partners. Intel is, you know, their biggest partner and they need to be there with them. They need to be part of Azure, both, you know, in the public cloud as well as Azure Stack On-Prem. And if they don't support OCP, they're going to miss out on a big part of their business. Yeah. I mean, I love this show as a geek and I know you do too, so we talked about this. It doesn't get the fanfare. I mean, we had better guests from Facebook that come on in terms of I would love that Mike Shep come on and some senior people, Jay. Because what's going on is they're kind of stepping back. Facebook is, they're not trying to be a land grabber here, which I respect. Zuckerberg had a post on Facebook yesterday talking about the four years. And what they're doing is they're doing that step back, donate, step back, let them pay the fence and opening it up to the industry. The question is, Stu, will it work? Yeah, so it was interesting. You look at OpenStack and we felt, you know, Rackspace and NASA, you know, helped start it. Rackspace kind of stepped back and I think stepped back too far and almost certain parts moved away from what they were doing. And now you see Rackspace, they're doing lots with AWS and Azure. Facebook has gotten enough players at the table. You've got over a hundred companies here and not only the technology providers, but some big financial companies, some other people. It feels like it is growing, it is moving and it'll be an important piece of that hyper-scale work. What's your take here about, will they win and is it working? What's your vibe here? So define winning, John. Is this a red herring, let me be specific. Is this a red herring for Facebook and Google to throw this out there? To maybe slow down Amazon? Do we know Amazon builds their own gear? We know that. I mean, the question is, are they more open than Amazon? I don't know that Amazon's customers care. It's not like when I'm going to get my compute or storage from an infrastructure service provider. I don't really, I shouldn't care what hardware is behind it. It is all about the price, the efficiency, and therefore can the Facebooks and Google world create an ecosystem where it's going to drive their costs down and it's them versus, you know, Amazon's got really smart people working on it. We've had James Hamilton on his team of people that are hyper-optimizing their environments. Can Amazon afford to be on their own or will they have to be part of this larger community? Or Amazon can just, I mean, so put source John, they can take what they need, make their modifications off on the side and we're none the wiser. I mean, Google, you know, built their business on leveraging open source. You know, we've had conversations. If it wasn't for Linux, you know, Google wouldn't have said it. So what's the purpose of open compute then? To offer the opportunity for what? Are the players that want to get up to speed and bring into the community? So, you know, I look back at my background on networking and you need, you know, a few really big companies that are pushing the envelope. You know, Facebook's going to be the first company I've heard of that said, we're going all in on 100 gig. If Facebook doesn't start that, you won't get the adoption. You won't get the investment for people to say, okay, this is where we're going. So to build, you know, Facebook, you know, just scale over a billion users. Nobody else, if Facebook doesn't get everybody involved, I don't know that they continue to grow and add services, you know, they're not just photos anymore, John. If they're doing live video, they need an ecosystem around them to help them to add the new services, grow, reach out to those, you know, emerging markets where, you know, they can't do it on their own. Look, Facebook's doing a lot of great stuff. We saw them at Grace Hopper, Sheryl Sandberg was there. Mike Shepp was there as well. So they're doing a lot of great stuff. This is one of them. I love what they're doing. I think they're hiding in the shadows a little bit too much as far as I'm concerned. They should come out a little bit more. They're trying to step back and not grandstand, which I respect that, but Stu's got a good point. They are the gravity here. I think that's a really great point. And again, they're committed to open source. Having Google come in here, I think takes the heat off of Facebook a bit, because now there's two whales in there, two 800 pound gorillas. Microsoft's the bigger contributor doing a lot in this space, both from the hardware and the software size, and they bring a lot of big players to the table here. So, Microsoft, I mean, John, in the keynote, I don't know if you saw, there was the discussion of, is Microsoft an open source player? Do you see that? And there's like 10 people in the audience that thought that they were. But Microsoft- 10 people out of what, thousands? Yeah, out of thousands, so. But I mean, look, they're taking- Satya just started, so he's got some time to do that. Is Microsoft the bridge from OCP and the hyperscale into the enterprise? No, I don't think so. I think they're a enabler as a participant because they're install based. I think it's the other way around. They are- That's what I'm saying, they got a huge install base. They're a bridge to open compute into their customer base. Which are a lot of enterprises. So, Stu, I want to ask you a question, because here's my theory. I believe the red herring and all this open compute is, especially with Facebook and Google, is Cisco. Cisco is under pressure. The pressure for Facebook to put on the networking side, you mentioned some of the things on networking. So, Stu, this is a Google Playbook, by the way, and I know Elliott and the ex-Google guys are over there, policy guys. Google rolled out fiber to put pressure on the telcos to make bandwidth go better. Community and all that good stuff, they got self-traving cars. They're always pushing the envelope, not going to wait for other people to innovate in a dependency manner. Is the Facebook, now Google and the industry putting the pressure on other people to either open up or go faster? Yeah, especially Cisco. And John, absolutely I agree. Pressure on Cisco is something I see is one of the big stories of this week with Sonic, what Facebook's doing with Wedge. We're going to have Equinix come on in a little bit, talk about taking the Wedge switch and putting it in all their data centers. This is the interconnectivity for the cloud. Cisco wants to be the inter-cloud. They want to be the network for IoT. So, there's competitions out there from open source. Cisco's very much aware of it, John. We've talked to lots of Cisco people. They know this is coming. They're participating, but they're not all in. There's so many groups inside Cisco that they're selling their products. And Cisco sells to all these guys, even the big guys that are all about open source. There's some Nexus 9000 sitting in the back corner somewhere doing some of the backbones, doing some of the activities. Cisco is still a strong force, but we're starting to see some encroachment from all of this open technologies that the Aristos and Junipers of the world and the software companies are starting to eat at the edges of what Cisco's doing. Here's my take, Stu. Here's my take on what's happening here at OCP. Facebook has a lot of ex-Googlers, and they have the Playbook. The Playbook is clear. If they're not going to wait for other people to innovate, that's going to hold them back. Facebook is going to move forward as fast as possible. They're opening up the reference design. Microsoft jumped in, good call by Azure. Satya Nattela, prior to becoming CEO, did that move. They are putting the pressure on the people who are going slow. Cisco's one of them, others, and now you got the industry coming together. I think Facebook is executing masterly, and this is the story that Wired Magazine didn't pick up, and that is the nuance of the competitive strategy of Facebook to say, hey, you know what? We're going to open it up and go faster that way. As an open source ethos, that's my take, and I think it's working because they win either way. They're going to bring the community together, and based upon the attendance being flat from last year, they have to go faster. All right. Stu, give you the final take before we have to cut out of this segment. Yeah, so overall the numbers are flat, but the vibe in the show is very good here. The practitioners that are here, not just some of the big players, but some enterprise guys that are here. It's still early days, John, absolutely, but the momentum feels good. It's growing in the right direction. Very positive feedback, so. Is this the future of the data center? So I think this is a major component of what, especially the big guys. If I'm the big seven or eight, I have to pay attention to this. Service providers absolutely are the companies that look like service providers. I don't expect the company that buys dozens of compute nodes to think about this. This is rack scale architecture, very different, but our forecast, John, is that you're going to put most of your stuff in the metadata centers, which are going to be based on these architectures, and then you've got edge nodes, which is more for the IoT and other applications like that. So this will, over time, as that shift happens, be a significant slide. So when are we going to see some steak on the, meat on the bone, as they say, sizzle and steak? Use cases, what, flaunting some good? Well, John, I think it's coming in. I mean, Goldman Sachs says that 90% of their, I think it's 90% of their servers, ROCP. Bloomberg's here, Netflix, talking about what they're doing with 100 gig ethernet with OCP, partnering with Melanox, so there are some good early proof points, but I mean, John, these are the Lighthouse accounts, these are the ones showing play for the restaurant. So, started with compute, Leo Dunn from Scalady actually said, we should rename this, it shouldn't be the open compute project, we need something that says about the scope, because this is changing infrastructure. Open stack? All right, I'm going to catch you guys off. The next guest is here, John, thanks for popping in for a quick segment, appreciate it. Stu Miniman and Jeff Rick, we are live, wrapping up, coming to the close of day two open compute project summit in San Jose, California. Stay with us, we'll be back on our next guest after this short break, thanks for watching.