 We're here with Steve Mulaney, the president and CEO of Aviatrix. Steve, John and I started this whole super cloud narrative as a way to describe that something different is happening specifically within the AWS ecosystem, but more broadly across the cloud landscape. At Reinvent last year, you and I spoke on theCUBE and you said one of your investors, guy named Nick Sturriel said to you at the show, it's happening. Steve, welcome to theCUBE. What's happening? What did Nick mean by that? Yeah, we were just getting ready to go on and I leaned over and he looked up and he whispered it in my ear and said, it's happening. And he said it just like that. And you're right, it was kind of funny and we talked about that. And what he means is enterprises, this is why I went to Aviatrix three and a half years ago is the flip switch for enterprises. And they said, now we mean it. We've been talking about cloud for 12 years or 15 years. Now we mean it. We are digitally transforming. We are the movement to cloud is going to make that happen. And all by the way, of course it's multi-cloud because enterprises put workloads where they run best, where they have the best security, the best performance, the best cost. And the business is driving this transformation and they decide that I'm going to use Azure and another business unit decides I'm using Google and another one says I'm using AWS. And so of course it's going to be multi-cloud. And I think we're going to start seeing actual multi-cloud applications. Once that infrastructure, and you know, you call it the super cloud, once that starts getting built, developers are going to go, wait a minute. So I can pick this feature from Google and that service from Azure and that service from AWS easily without any hesitation. Once that happens, they're going to start really developing today, there aren't multi-cloud applications, but what's happening is the enterprise embracing public cloud, they're using multiple clouds. Many of them call it four plus one, right? They're four different public clouds plus what they have on-prem. That to me is what's happening. I am now re-architecting my enterprise infrastructure from applications all the way down to the network. And I am embracing public clouds in that process. So I mean, you nailed there's so many things in there. I mean, digitally transforming to me this is the digital transformation. It's leveraging embracing the CapEx from the hyperscalers. Now, you know, people in the industry, we're not trying to do what Gartner does and create a new category per se, but we do use super cloud as a metaphor. So I don't expect necessarily vendors to use it or not. But I get that, but when you talk about multi-cloud, what specifically is new? In other words, you touched on some of this stuff. Well, what constitutes a modern multi-cloud or what we would call a super cloud network architecture? What are the salient attributes? Yeah, I would say today. So two years ago, there was no such thing even as multiple clouds. It was AWS, let's be clear. Everything was AWS. And for people to even back then, two, three years ago to even envision that there would be anything else other than AWS, people couldn't even envision. Now people kind of go, yeah, that was dumb. We now see that we're going to use multiple clouds. We're going to use Azure. We're going to use GCP and we're going to use this and we're guess we're going to use Oracle and even only cloud. We're going to use five or four or five different public clouds, but that would be, I think of as multiple clouds. But from an IT perspective, they need to be able to support all those clouds in these shared services and what they're going to do. I actually think we're starting and you may have hit on something in the super cloud or I know you've talked about meta cloud that that's got bad connotations for Facebook. I know everybody's like, no, please, not another meta thing. But there is that concept of this abstracted layer above, you know, writing, we call it, you know, altitude, you know, AVA tricks, everything, you know, writing above the clouds, right? That common abstracted layer, this application infrastructure that runs the application that rides above all the different public clouds. And I think once we do that, you know, Dave, what's going to happen is, I think really what's going to happen is you're going to start seeing these multi cloud applications, which to my knowledge, really doesn't exist today. I think that might be the next phase. And in order for that to happen, you have to have all of the infrastructure be multi cloud, meaning not just networking and network security from AVA tricks, but you need Snowflake, you need Hashtagorp, you need Datadog, you need all the new horsemen of the new multi cloud, which isn't the old guys, right? This is all new people, AVA tricks, Hashtag, Snowflake, Datadog, you name it, that are going to be able to deliver all this multi cloud, cross cloud, wherever you want to talk about it, such that application development and deployment can happen seamlessly and frictionlessly across multi cloud. Once that happens, the entire stack, then you're going to start seeing, and that to me starts enabling this, what you guys call, you know, the super cloud, the meta cloud, the whatever cloud, but that then rides above all the individual clouds. That's going to start getting a whole new realm of application development in my mind. So we got some work to do, to do some basic blocking and tackling, then the application developers can really build on top of that. So some of the skeptics on this topic would ask, oh, how do you envision this changing networking versus it just being a bolt on to existing fossilized network infrastructure? In other words, how do we get from point A, where we are today to point B, so-called networking, so we can actually build those super cloud applications. Yeah, so you know what it is? It's interesting because it goes back to my background at Nasirah and what we used to talk about then, it isn't about managing complexity, it's about creating simplicity is very different. And when you put the intelligence into the software, this is what computer science is all about. We're turning networking into computer science. When you create an abstraction layer, we are not just an overlay there. We actually integrate in with the native services of the cloud. We are not managing the complexity of these multi-clouds. We are using it, controlling the native constructs, adding our own intelligence to this and then creating what is basically simplification for the people above it. So we're simplifying things, not just managing the complexity. That's how you get the agility for cloud, that's how you get to be able to do this because if all you are is a veneer on top of complexity, you're just hiding complexity. You're not creating simplicity. And what happens is, it actually probably gets more complex because if all you're doing is hiding the bad stuff, you're not getting rid of it. I love that. I love that, Steve. And at the layer, we're doing that at the networking and network security layer, you're going to see Snowflake and Datadog and other people do it at their layers. You know, it reminds me of a conversation I had with Kaws, one of the founders of Pure Storage who they're all about simplicity, this idea of creating simplicity versus, like you said, just creating a way to handle the complexity. Compare Pure Storage with the sort of old legacy EMC storage devices, and that's what you had. You had EMC managing the complexity at Pure Storage disrupting by creating simplicity. So what are the challenges of creating that simplicity and delivering that seamless experience, that continuous experience across cloud, is it? Engineering, is it mindset, is it culture, is it technology, what is it? Well, I mean, look, you see the recession that we're hitting, you see, there is a significant problem that we have in the general IT industry right now and it's called skills gap, skills shortage. It's two problems. We don't have enough people and we don't have enough people that know cloud. And the reason is everybody on the same Tuesday, three and a half years ago, all said, now I'm moving to cloud. We are a technology company, we don't make sneakers anymore, we don't make beer. We're a technology company and we're going to digitally transform and we're going to move to cloud. Guess what? Three years ago, there were probably seven people that understood cloud. Now everyone on the same Tuesday morning, all decides to try to hire those same seven people. There's just not enough people around. So you're going to need software and you're going to have to put the intelligence into the software because you're not going to be able to A, hire those people and B, even if you hired them, you can't keep them. As soon as they learn cloud, guess what happens Dave? They're off, they're under the next job at the next highest bidder. So how are you going to handle that? You have to have software, that intelligent software that is going to simplify things for you. We have people managing massive multi-cloud network and network security people with two people. On-prem they got hundreds, right? It's not about taking that complex model that it had on-prem and jamming into the cloud. You don't have the people to do it and you're not going to get the people to do it. You know, I want to ask you. Yeah. So I want to ask you about the go-to-market challenges because our industry gets a bad rap for selling. We're really good at selling and then but actually delivering what we sell. Sometimes we fall down there. So I love Tom Sweet is CFO of Dell. He talks about the say-do ratio, that's actually got to be low but you know what I mean, the fraction guy, right? So but do what you say you're going to do. Are there specific go-to-market challenges related to this type of cross-cloud selling where you have to set the customer's expectations because what you're describing is not going to happen overnight, it's a journey. But how do you handle that go-to-market challenge in terms of setting those customer expectations and actually delivering what you say you can sell and selling enough to actually have a successful business? So I think everything's outside in. So I think that what really is exciting to me about this cloud computing model that with the transformation that we're going through is it is business led and it is led by the CEO and it is led by the business units. They run the business. It is all about agility. It's about enabling my developers and it's all about driving the business. Market share, revenue, all these kinds of things. You know, the last transformation of mainframe to PC client server was led by the technologists. It wasn't led by the business. And it was really hard to tie that to the business. So this is great because we can look at the initiatives. You can look at the initiatives of the CEO in your company and now as an IT person you can tie to that. And they're going to have two or three or four initiatives and you can actually map it to that. So that's where we start is let's look at what your CEO cares about. He cares about this. He cares about that. He cares about driving revenue. He cares about agility of getting new applications out to the market sooner to get more revenue. There's this, and oh, by the way, transforming your infrastructure to the cloud is number one thing. So it's all about agility. So guess what? You need to be able to respond to that immediately because tomorrow the business is going to go to you and say, great news, Dave, we're moving to GCP. What? No one told me about that. Well, we're telling you now. And you need to be ready tomorrow. And if you're sitting there and you're tied to the low level constructs and all you know is AWS, well, I don't have those people. And even if I could hire them, I'm not allowed to because I can't hire anybody. How am I going to respond to the business in the needs of the business? Now all of a sudden I'm in the way as infrastructure team of the CEO's goals because we decided we need to get the AI capabilities of GCP and we're moving to GCP. Or I just did a big deal with GCP and miraculously they said I need to run on GCP, right? I did a big deal with Google, right? Guess what comes along with that? Oh, you're moving to GCP. Great, the business says we're moving to GCP and the IT guys are sitting there going, well, no one told me, well, sorry. So it's all about agility. It's all about the, and complexity is the killer to agility. This is all about business agility. They're going to come to you and say, we just acquired a company, we need to integrate them. Oh, but they use the same IP address range as we do. There's overlapping IPs and oh, by the way, they're in a different cloud. How do I do that? No one cares, the business doesn't care. They're like me, they're very impatient. Get it done, but we'll find someone who will. So you got to get ahead of that. And so in terms of when we talk to customers, that's what we do. This isn't just about defenses. This is about making you get promoted, making you do good for your company such that you can respond to that and maybe even enable the company to go do that. Like we're going to enable people to do true multi-cloud applications because the infrastructure has to come first, right? You put the foundation in your big skyscraper, like the prune behind me and the plumbing. Before you start building the floors, right? So infrastructure comes first, then comes the applications. Yeah, so again, some people call it super cloud like us, multi-cloud 2.0, but the real mega trend that I see, Steve, and I'd love you to bottom line this and bring us home, is you know, Andreessen's all companies are software companies. It's like version 2.0 of that. And the applications that are going to be built on that tie this tie into the digital transformations. So it's Goldman, it's JPMC, it's Walmart, it's Capital One, B of A, Oracle's acquisition of Cerner is going to be really interesting to see these super clouds form within industries, bringing their data, their tooling and their specific software expertise built on top of that hyperscale infrastructure and infrastructure for companies like yours. So bottom line is, Steve, what's the future of cloud? How do you see it? The future is N plus one. So two years ago, people had one plus one. What I had on-prem, I don't know what I had in AWS. They, today, if you talk to an enterprise, they'll have what they call four plus one, right? Which is four public clouds plus what I have on-prem. It's going to N plus one, right? And what's going to happen is exactly what you said. You're going to have industry clouds, you're going to, the multi-cloud aspect of it is going to N. It's not going to go from four to one. Some people think, oh, it's not going to be four. It's going down to one or two. BS, it's going to N, it's going to a lot. As they start extending to the edge and they start integrating out to the branch offices, it's not going to be about that branch office or that edge IoT or edge computing or data centers or campus connecting into the cloud. It's going to be the other way around. The cloud is going to extend to those areas. And you're going to have AI clouds, whether it's all to beauty as a customer of ours who's starting to roll out AR and VR out to their retail stores to show make-up and this that and the other thing. These are new applications. Transformations are always driven by new applications that don't exist. This isn't about lift and shift of the existing applications. The 10X TAM in this market is going to be becomes all the new things. That's where the explosion is going to happen. And you're going to see N level. Those branch offices are going to look like clouds. And they're going to need to be stitched together and treated like one infrastructure. So it's going to go from four plus one to N plus one. And that's what you're going to want as an enterprise. I'm going to want N clouds. So we're going to see an explosion there. It's not going to be four. It's going to be N. Now, at the end, underneath all of that will be leveraging and effectively commoditizing the existing CSPs. But you're going to have an explosion of people commoditizing them. And just like the goldmines and the industry clouds are going to do, they're going to build their own IaaS. No way. No way. No way. So that's what's going to happen. It's going to be a 10X on what we saw last decade with SAS. It's all going to happen around clouds. It's super called Steve Mulaney. Thanks so much for coming back at the Cube and helping us sort of formulate this thinking. I mean, it really started with you and myself and John and Nick and really trying to think this through and watching this unfold before our eyes. So great to have you back. Thank you. Yeah, it's fun. Thanks for having me. All right, you're welcome. We keep it right there for more action from Super Cloud 22. We're right back.