 The Cube at EMC World 2014 is brought to you by EMC. Redefine VCE, innovating the world's first converged infrastructure solution for private cloud computing. Brocade, say goodbye to the status quo and hello to Brocade. Hi everybody, we're back, welcome to The Cube. This is EMC World 2014, the live Silicon Angle of The Cube production. We, I've been here all week, three days of non-stop coverage. I'm here with my co-host, Jeff Frick. Dr. KK Krishnakumar is here and he is the vice president and chief architect at EMC IT, relatively new role. You told me off camera five years you've been in this position. Welcome to The Cube, thanks so much for taking the time. Thank you, a pleasure to be here. So talk about that role a little bit. How did it come about and what's your focus? I think the role came about because we were starting to do a lot of things in the architecture side, which is very fundamental to how we put systems out there. And what was noticed was we were doing things on the application front, on the infrastructure front, on the security front, with no real correlation between what is going on. So the role was created to make it all come together. So I've been leading up the enterprise architecture function since then. And in addition, I lead the office of architecture and innovation, meaning that we've been focusing on how do we look at new things and bring them to bear, incubate them, bring them to bear. And so examples of that are the mobility program in IT or which is EMC-wide, but of course we incubate it first. Another example is master data management. Another one is data science and so on and so forth. So I mean, you're essentially CTO, right? CTO? So you were involved in the CTO conference here this week. That's right. So what was the CTO conference all about? This is something that, you know, we actually started up, this is the first time of its kind. So the first one of its kind that we hosted up here, we call it the chief architect slash CTO forum. And this is equivalent to the CIO forum. The reason we started it up was, we said that there are enough tracks going on for regular architects up in, you know, EMC world, but things are getting so converged. Things are, you know, getting more focused on applications, the infrastructure, the middleware, all of that. So he said, how do we bring it all together? So Job Simon, who's my counterpart at VMware, is the chief architect there. And he and I said, hey, let's create something. Let's start it off with EMC world. Invite a bunch of CTOs to it, let's share our thoughts, and then we'll extend it to VMware and it was a great success yesterday. We had about 20 CTOs from different organizations come and we had a lot of fun, you know? Now you report to the CIO, is that correct? That's right, Big Bagat, who's CIO. And prior to that, Sanjay Murshan Dhani. That's correct, yeah. Who's a CUBE alum we've had him on many times. So when you came in five years ago, EMC IT has transformed dramatically. That's absolutely right. I remember that when you came in, the really virtualization was probably minimal. That's right. Joe Tucci put the stake in the ground and said, we will be fully virtualized by, I forget what date. Absolutely. I was skeptical, but it's happened or is happening, right? Talk about when you first came in, where did you start? I mean, obviously you want to take an inventory, understand the application portfolio, understand the infrastructure, the people, the process. Talk about where you started and where you've helped take EMC IT over the last five years. By the time that I came in, obviously virtualization was well here, except that the number of things that were already virtualized was sort of on the lower side. So the infrastructure approach to it had been established. So one of the things that we started up was, we did have many of the applications which were new going on to the virtual platform. So we had a virtual first approach at that time. But we also ran what we call sweep the floor to take existing applications and move them on to virtualized infrastructure as well. That was the first foray we had into going beyond the IT owned applications into more mission critical applications. So one of the first things we did was virtualize our, customer facing platform power link at that time. And one of the things we also did was, we left the databases to the very end because those are typically the worst one to virtualize. Even though now at this point in time, we virtualized much of the database footprint. But we started doing those, so we started doing the web and the applications over two years. And so then it became more of an activity where we knew what we were doing. It was more of cranking the wheel and we do more and more P2Vs, right? But our focus started to change based on the fact that, hey, we were already about maybe 75% virtualized at some point of time. We said that this does not necessarily deliver all the value that it can to the business. We started looking at business agility. We started saying that, hey, it still takes a lot of time to produce a single VM. So that's when it started to impact the process and the people aspect of it. So we said we should change our operating model. So we started looking at processes that we had to generate VMs or provision VMs and we looked at 33 steps and the number of handoffs that were happening between different groups. So one of the things that we did was we put many of the groups together in this infrastructure area, server storage, backup recovery and all of that into a single group called private cloud infrastructure group at that time. But we also started looking at the overall process of getting the agility to the business and we started looking at IT as a service. Saying that, why are we in the business of being in the middle of generating VMs? We should be, let me say at AWS and saying that we should be able to go to a self-service portal, click, click, click at the end of it, the VMs should be up and running. And so that's the model that we started on. So we started defining a track to say what is our service catalog going to be? What are our services? How do we package them up? What is the charge back model and so on and so forth? So we've been on this journey for about three years or so on IT as a service so that's our second phase of transformation if you will after the virtualization of the infrastructure. Now we are onto, okay, yeah, you can build a cloud, operate it like a cloud but how about applications that need to run on it in a very optimized and cloud aware manner and that's where we really get to the third platform application. So are they cloud aware, cloud optimized? Are they mobile? Everybody wants to run the business. David Golden wants to run the business from his iPad, right? What about social, what about mobile? What about big data? So those are things we expanded into once we got past the couple of infrastructure and the operating model. So one of those services that you began offering was file sharing, dealing with unstructured data. Of course the EMC bought simplicity but prior to that, you had file sharing services box.net or box and so, and you guys are very particular about what you'll let behind the firewall of EMC IT, we know that. So for a long time you couldn't get the queue behind your firewall, you got to get it whitelisted. But talk about that a little bit. So everybody, the business people want ways to share. So what were you doing before and how did simplicity change that? We had them in for a collaboration perspective. Obviously there was the notion of consumerization of IT that was happening widespread, right? People outside the workplace could share many, many things easily. But come into IT or come into EMC and hey, you have eRoom here and some SharePoint site there and this and that. And in the end, even though people were using those tools, it was always much more oriented on a server based platform, right? Meaning that hey, you drop files into a certain place and then you can go and access it, yes, with your browser and stuff like that. But it was not the seamless way in which you come in and I used different devices. So for instance, if I had an iPhone or an iPad and I wanted to access something on the network which is in a SharePoint site or an eRoom, it always meant that they had to log in, either use VPN or some other means, use VDI as a mechanism to get in and that was a very clunky way of getting to it. So we said hey, we need to be looking at other mechanisms of doing that. And came along simplicity. One of the things I should say is simplicity at that time at least looked as good as drawbox or box.net to us. I mean meaning that it had many of the consumer level features that you would expect, but not the enterprise level features. So is it secure enough was one instance. It was still running in the AWS cloud at that time and we were saying hey, a lot of people are sharing very sensitive information on file shares and so on and so forth. Would we be comfortable putting that stuff out in a public cloud kind of setting? That was one. But at the same time, we didn't want to stop the flow of information and the innovation that could happen with it. So we said let's work with the simplicity team. We absolutely are committed to bringing this platform in but let's work with them to actually add in the enterprise features. And obviously we were not the engineers building the product but we worked with them. And so the things we started looking at was okay, how can you first of all have an on-premise implementation? And so we said, could you put this on an Atmos? Could you put this on an Isilon kind of a footprint? And so they started looking at that and bringing that on to a platform. So today our rollout of simplicity is all based on an on-premise kind of a model. And so where the data, it's definitely stored on-premise for us. Can we extend it out to a hybrid cloud model? Absolutely, because we run in that mode today because the initial free accounts that people had on simplicity are still out in Amazon but we're bringing them and converting them to come on to our platform, our internal platform today. Aspects of security, of course. And we worked with the team to say that, okay, there is a notion of authentication initially. How does it get integrated with our RSA two-factor when you sign on initially, as an example. But then subsequently, when you're actually using the product, not everybody wants to, every time you use the product, nobody wants to sign on with a two-factor key fob authentication. So we said, how can we enable that to happen much more seamlessly? And so that happened, we worked with the team on that. The third area is around, okay, here I am. I want to share not only within the enterprise but outside of the enterprise. I'm sending links over to people. Now, the links can point to very sensitive data as well. And so how can we actually enable it with passwords? And so at least a mechanism by which we can have a notion of more security and more secure access to it. So that's what we worked with the team on. Our initial and final goal on this was to say, let's enable all of the business and the agility that it brings and the productivity that this kind of tool brings. But at the same time, preserve what you would consider as assets which are very core to EMC. I believe we've done that. And thanks to the simplicity team who are working so closely with us and enabling the entire enterprise at this point of time, we are pretty much on about 45,000 almost, people with all of EMC rolled on to it and more people are getting rolled on to it. So KK, that was an interesting strategy because we talk about consumerization of IT all the time and expected behavior of applications based on what people do on their phones and other things. But you guys, rather than just look at it and then try to build from scratch something to replicate, actually taking what was there and then trying to wrap it and really integrate it back into an enterprise-centric environment. Absolutely, absolutely. And that is the model that we are, as the very core to our strategy today. Before EMC IT could have probably said, hey, I don't want shadow IT. I don't want other apps coming in. We got to build it all. Even if you are integrating with others, we used to have very, you know, very restrictive kinds of mechanisms. We've seen, you know, we've smelled the coffee, if you will, right? We've seen that everybody wants to bring their home experience into the workplace. We want to enable that as much as possible but very central to it is absolutely keeping the security, the integrity of everything that we own. And so you would find that obviously with simplicity we've worked with the engineering team to do that. At the same way, we are working with, you know, even the business line of business teams to say that, hey, if you want to build an application yourself, including mobile applications, let's enable you to do it. But at the same time, we'll give you a platform where we put a guardrail, a set of guardrails on it. Stay within the guardrails. We'll enable you to do it, including big data access, all of that. If you want to do analytics by yourself, do that. But even then, your guardrails are kind of wrapped around at a macro level that once you get inside, then it kind of operates as if you were just on the native internet. The focus is absolutely agility, the productivity, which, you know, in the world of IT before we used to kill, right? People are just pretty amazed and, you know. That's way too simple. Make it harder. Exactly, exactly. So we've definitely turned the corner on that. You would see that many of our services, especially in the context of IT as a service is all about, yes, we will preserve what the enterprise wants as integrity and availability and all that. The robust industrialized operations is very core. But we've seen the fact that lines of businesses want the agility and the choice. And that's how we're enabling with different solutions how you can do this, you know? So we just got a couple minutes left. I wanted to ask you about business agility. Yes. For the third platform, transforming into a software-defined data center. So you're giving some talks. Absolutely. What's all about? What's the main message, the premise? Talk about that a little bit. I think, you know, the third platform obviously has been, you know, broadly defined as the integration of cloud, big data of social and mobile. We are all about enabling that. I mean, clearly as from within IT, we've enjoyed a very big footprint in all of those, right? By themselves. Cloud, clearly we play a big part and we've 94% virtualized as far as the virtualization platform goes. But we've enabled very much a hybrid cloud within EMC IT, right? The second aspect of it is mobile. We've run a mobility program for the last three and a half years. We, much like I was saying earlier, we operate on a model where we're saying we will provide an environment where we can build apps within IT for business needs. But if the business wants to build apps, we will support that as part of the platform as well. The third area is, you know, big data. We have a very robust big data program which we've been talking about. Again, the notion of initially our strategy has been about consolidate, liberate and close the loop. The consolidate was, let's get all the data together and put that into one place. But then we were accused of holding the data hostage and, you know, all of the things that are company. It's a balance. Yeah, exactly. But we said that's where the liberate came into play, right? We said we wanted to give the guardrails for the business to come in, work on the data by themselves if they want to actually have different analytics done on that. We created a business analytics as a service platform. And so these are virtual workspaces which the business can come and do ad hoc, querying on, data mining on and so on. And we obviously provide the services that they want us to help us do that. We provide reporting services, we provide data quality services all the way up to data science services. So, you know, we are on a consulting basis. So it's not that we are the only people who can do that. They can get the platform and then they are off and running by themselves. If they want, they can bring us into the picture. This is part of your service catalog. Absolutely, absolutely. And so you guys are really moving aggressively in that service catalog. Very much, very much. What do you call the file sharing, collaboration, simplicity service? This is part of the collaboration taxonomy. And absolutely, it's what is called sync and share. So it's very much- So it's called sync and share. And you got a price for that? Is that how it works? There is a price, there is a price. It's a per user charge on, it's a seat charge that is being charged back to the business units. You got a brochure? Yes, we do. Yes, we do. I mean, and that is the whole notion of a service catalog. Absolutely. We got to have a brochure. In many cases, we also try to compare ourselves to what we call the competition, right? Because really, we want to be the provider of choice. We may not be the, let's say, the most inexpensive provider, but quality of service-wise and all that. So we compare ourselves to the typical Amazons and drop, in this case, at least sync and share, drawbacks. So you're the value play? Absolutely the value play. Love it. Absolutely, yep. KK, really thanks for coming on theCUBE. Awesome story. I'll give you the last word. The bumper sticker, when you're leaving Las Vegas in the back of your car, EMC World 2014, what's it say? It says, for us, if you had to give a plug for IT, we say EMC IT is a trusted advisor and enabler of choice for all of EMC. If you say for EMC World, the event is one of the best events I've ever attended and I'm just enthused. I talked about the CTO forum. We had a fantastic start to it. Amazing, amazing, you know, conference and the people we've met here are fantastic. Thank you. They can do it, you can too. That's great. Absolutely. Thank you very much, KK. Really appreciate you coming on theCUBE. Thank you very much, Dave. It's great to meet you. Thank you, Jeff. Everybody, we'll be back with our next guest. This is Dave Vellante with Jeff Frick. Day three, EMC World 2014. This is theCUBE. We'll be right back. Thank you.