 Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering DockerCon 18. Brought to you by Docker and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of DockerCon 2018 in a beautiful San Francisco. It's a stunning day here. We're at Moscone West. I'm Lisa Martin with John Troyer. Very honored to welcome to theCUBE for the first time the CEO of Docker Inc. Steve Sting. Welcome Steve. Hi Lisa, very nice to be here. John, how are you? So the general session this morning, standing room only between five and 6,000 people. I got to say a couple of things that jumped out at me. One, coolest stage entrance I've ever seen with this. Great, if you haven't seen it from the live stream. This like 3D Golden Gate Bridge, and I loved that. And I loved the demo of Docker Desktop that your kids did, fueled by Mountain Dew, which actually single-handedly got me through college here in San Francisco. So the momentum that you guys, it was kicking off with the bang. Yeah, I got a great team. And one of the things that we wanted to communicate this morning is that you see a massive transformation in the world of software. And this transformation is enabling every company in the world to think about their business in a new light. To think about how their business meets customer needs in a way that's much more personal, in a way that delivers more value. And this is the beauty of where Docker is, right? We have a chance to help literally every company in the world. And that's the part, honestly, that gets me excited. It's like, how do you help other people go create amazing businesses? And so I couldn't be more happy to be at Docker. Steve, keying on that, one of the customers on stage today, McKesson. And I loved Rashmi Kumar came out and talked about future-proofing, her application, their infrastructure, their applications in partnership with Docker. And that implies a certain amount of trust so that they have in Docker, in Docker's technology, platform, and in partnering with you. You've been at Docker for about a year now, right? Came in as CEO. Docker is still a small company, a couple hundred folks, but punching way above its weight with a huge community impact. How do you, and you've worked with the biggest companies in the world, how do you come in and establish that trust and help reassure them that you're going to be a good partner for them? And what are you seeing with your customers? It's a great question, John. And look, there's maybe two or three pieces of how we think about that. The first thing, trust is very human, right? You've got to know that you're walking into a situation as a vendor and as a customer, but really as partners. You're trying to solve a problem together because the reality is this transformation that companies are going through is first time in 40 years that this kind of transformations happen. Second is the technology stack is still in the early stages. Now it's incredible and it enables amazing things, but it's still in the early stages. So both of us have to walk into the relationship knowing that, you know what, sometimes it won't go perfect, but guess what, we're going to be there. Now, if it doesn't go perfect, we're going to honor everything we ever committed to you. And the same thing on the other customer side, they look at it and say, I may have actually described my needs differently than what they actually are. And that's what a real partnership is. That's number one. Number two is trust is driven by culture. And one of the things that I love about Docker is that we see our place in the world, but we want to make sure the customer always has choice. We want to make sure that if we do a great job, the customer will choose to work with us. If we don't, they should have a choice to go somewhere else. And that's what our platform enables is the choice to be able to work with anybody you like to work with. Whether you're a developer or you're an operator or you're an architect or the executive. The other piece around this is that part of the value of Docker is this not just the 400 people of our company. There's 5,000 members of our community that are adding value to our community. One of the things that I want to make sure we do for our community is help them not just innovate on this incredible platform, but how do we help them take their innovations to market? And so that's part of the ethos of our company. One of the things that you talked about this morning that I thought was really compelling was you said software innovation used to be for the last 40 years that's been driven by tech companies, that's changing. You talked about distributed innovation and distributed consumption. How is Docker helping to, culturally, I don't want to say instill, but helping to influence maybe organizations to be able to distribute innovation and be able to share bi-directionally. Yeah, so great question, Lisa. So first of all, is there's a cultural change within companies? When you think about the next generation or the next 40 years being software being driven from non-technology companies, first of all we're seeing that. Second is that there's a, that requires a cultural change within the business, but that change is critical because in the absence of becoming more of a software company, your business is going to be under threat, right? From the competing business. Look at what Netflix has done in media compared to every other media company. That same example applies in every single industry. Now, the way that we help enable that software transformation is to provide a platform that is so easy to use that it doesn't require a lot of training. Now this is complicated platform, so yes you have to be a fantastic developer or an IT professional, but our job is to take complicated technology like container management software, orchestration layers like Swarm or Kubernetes, service mesh, storage, networking, all this and make it so simple and easy to use that your IT department can say, I can use this platform to effectively future-proof your company, right? So how do you have a platform that you can build every application on, take all your legacy applications on, run it and then run it anywhere you like? I think that's been one of the through lines for Docker since the very beginning, that developer experience, right? And what's been interesting in Docker's development was, I think for both inside and outside is kind of what is Docker, Inc. And the project versus the company, what is it selling, what's the commercial aspect here? I think, I kind of think back to my experience at VMware where there was an enterprise side and then a huge install base of workstation folks. And it's even stronger with Docker because actually now with Docker desktop as an application development environment or, I don't know, not quite development environment, but what you announced today with Docker desktop, that's an even more valuable through line into the enterprise edition. So I guess what I'm trying to get at Steve is, can you talk a little bit about the commercial situation, Docker EE as the flagship platform and kind of where we are in the maturity journey with customers right now, this is real information. Absolutely, John. But you're bringing up a great point within this week. Look, we're both, we're a enterprise software company and we're this incredible community where innovation is being brought in by every member of the community. And there's nothing in the world that says you can't do both. Like this idea that you're one company versus another, this is nonsense. It's a very narrow view of the world. In fact, I would argue that more and more companies have to think about that they have multiple people that they serve, multiple constituents that they serve. In our case, we serve the enterprise IT organization and we also serve developers. And developers are a critical part, not just of our community, that is the life of every company going forward, which is why we're so excited about this. That's the life of every company. So Docker Desktop, the reason we're so excited about it is, first of all, it's the easiest way to engage with Docker, to build applications. And then we feel like there's a lot more innovation that we can actually deliver within Docker Desktop. So a million new developers joined on Docker Desktop this year. In fact, we're growing about seven or eight percent month over month on that. And so you should expect over the next year another million will be on Docker Desktop. But it's incumbent upon us to say the only way that we continue to earn the trust of that portion of our constituents, that the developer community, is to make sure we're innovating, to make sure we're open and allow others to innovate on top of us. I'd love to kind of explore on audience a little bit. So in terms of innovation, we know that the companies that have the ability to aggressively innovate and to do that they have to have budget are the ones that stay relevant and that are the most competitive. But I think I saw some stats and I think Scott Johnson said that close to 90% of IT budgets are spent keeping the lights on. So you very little dollars to actually drive innovation. So when you're talking with customers, and you said you met with, just met with 25 of Docker, getting some biggest customers just this morning, are you talking to both of the developer guys and girls as well as the C-suite? What is, how are you connecting and maybe is it a conversation to enable the developers to just be able to sell up the value up the stack or is it vice versa? A couple of things. So first of all, John, I didn't answer part of your question, which is the growth in our enterprise customer base. We've literally doubled it year over year, right? And so more than 500 global 10,000 companies that are using Docker to run their applications. And to manage their applications. The way that we engage with our customers is literally across the entire constituents of that organization, right? A developer by themselves is genius as that group of people are. You can't deliver the application and delivering the application is just as important as building it. And so the IT organization, the ops organization is critical. And then there's got to be an overriding objective. What is it we're trying to do? How do we transform ourselves into a software company? Think about just for example, Tesla, right? When you have a company, and I realize Tesla stock goes up and down and they're always in the news, but when you have a company that's worth more than some of the biggest automotive companies in the world, you have to ask yourself, why? Well, part of the reason why isn't just the fact that we've got an electric vehicle that's better for the environment. Part of it is it's really as much a software company as it is a automotive company. They have incredible amounts of data about how we use our cars, where we go. And in fact, the Tesla cars are actually interconnected. And so that brings a perspective in how you build cars and how they're going to be used and how they're going to be consumed. That's radically different than if you're just an auto manufacturer. And I look forward and GM and Volvo are all really smart, great companies and they're quickly moving to themselves to be software companies. Steve, can you talk a little bit about ecosystem? Microsoft on stage this morning, long partnership with them, but also here at the show, the enterprise folks, Dell and Accenture, and I'm just looking down the list, as well as Google and Amazon. So you need to be partnering with a lot of folks to make all this work. How are you approaching that? John, part of the reason for that is to start with a simple premise. In something this large, you can't possibly innovate fast enough on your own. There's seven billion amazing people on this planet. The only way you can really drive mass scale, global innovation, is you have to be open. I'm literally a guy that was born in a mud house in India, so I certainly appreciate the opportunity to participate in the rest of the world's economy. So we have to be open and say, anybody that wants to contribute, can. Now, obviously, we think that that contribution has to be within an ethos, right? If your definition of contribution is how do you help your own business, that's not good enough. You have to look at this and say, there has to be choice in our view, choice, security, and agility. So how do we deliver those values or that ethos to our customers? And if you're willing to do that, man, we want to partner with everybody in this space. Yeah, sometimes I despair of the tech press, although I consume a lot of it. And if I never have to read another swarm versus Kubernetes article again, I would be happy. But Kubernetes all over the keynote, it seems like Docker, you all have embraced it and in fact, are supporting it in very innovative ways with the cloud providers in terms of ecosystem. Can you talk a little bit about that? Part of the value of Docker is we simplify very complex things and make it available to our customers to consume with little training, little understanding the underlying deep technology. And the other part is that it comes back to this idea that innovation will happen everywhere. Why should we view the world as it's our solution or nobody's, that's nonsense, right? Kubernetes is a fantastic orchestration layer. Why shouldn't it be integrated into the Docker container platform? And so as we did that, guess what happened? Our customers, all they saw was instead of conflict, they saw the opportunity to work together. And in fact, it's been amazing for the growth in our business, right? That's why we doubled year over year. That collaboration is essential. And we were talking with Scott Johnston a little bit earlier today about the internal collaboration but also the external collaboration with customers. You talked about partnerships. I think that the MTA program, the modernization of traditional apps launched about a year ago with Avanon, Cisco, HPE and Microsoft. Tell us a little bit about that and probably around the same time that you came to the helm, you're seeing customers like Visa, PayPal as part of this program be able to transform and go to the container journey. Yeah, and Lisa, this speaks to an observation you made a few minutes ago about the fact that 85, 90% of IT budgets are fixed before you even walk into the year. So look, the Docker platform can be used for any kind of application. Legacy apps, next generation apps that run in the data center, next generation apps that run on edge devices. But if you accept that 90% of the apps that sit within a company are all legacy apps, well guess what, that's where their cost is. And then if you marry that to the fact that every CIO has this problem that I don't have a lot of money that's free of my budget, well how do we help solve that? And the way we chose to solve it is this Docker MTA solution, modernizing traditional apps. Take your traditional apps, run them on the Docker platform, run them on any infrastructure you like, cut your app and infrastructure management costs in half. Now then take that savings and then apply it towards innovation. This is why it resonates with CIOs. I mean, as much as they may love Docker and they may love us, they have a business to serve and they're very, very practical in how they think about going about their business. So with that approach, thanks John, how receptive were those enterprise CIOs to going, you're right, we've got to start with our enterprise apps. They don't have the luxury of time, of ripping out old infrastructure and building them on containers or microservices architectures. And these are often mission critical applications. What, was that an easy sell? Was that, don't worry. Well nothing's easy, but the reality is that they got it quickly, right? Because it speaks directly to their pain point. And what I'm very proud of my team is, not only were we able to deliver a great product for MTA, we're also helping our customers actually make sure they can migrate these apps over. But what's been really a positive, kind of a signal we've seen that's still in the early stages is that as the customers, as our customers are moving their legacy apps to Docker and running them on new infrastructure, sometimes public cloud and cutting costs, they're starting to take that cost savings and actually applying it to our next generation apps. So they're now using Docker for new apps. And so that is, that's the benefit of when you really try to solve the problem, the way the customer wants to consume it. So Steve, the user conference very energizing, right? Already the energy has been good here. You've been doing trainings and certifications. There's people behind us, everyone's talking. So that's kind of, in some way sets the tone for the year. So as you and your team go back to the office after this week, what are you looking to do and what can we expect out of Docker? I'll just speak to two things. First of all, there's so much innovation we still have to deliver. If anything, I would say my team would tell me I might be pushing a little hard, but you know what, this is the fun. You only have X number of years in life and you should make the most of it. And so we're really excited about new apps. We're excited about secure edge apps. We're excited about, I don't know if you saw the demo this morning of Armada, which allows you to run any app on any operating system on any infrastructure all from a single pane of glass. Our customers love that and they're very excited about that. With that said, you know, look, this is a, it's a big tent and we have a huge opportunity to work with a lot of other companies. So look, when you walk around and see 5,000 people that see amazing opportunity, not just for Docker, for themselves. That's the secret part of Docker that I love. We're creating jobs that didn't exist before. I mean, you've seen kids coming out of college now, getting Docker skills and they're using that to grow their IT profession. In fact, I was just at the IC stars. This is amazing organization in Chicago that helps individuals who've been displaced in the workforce learn the IT skills required to come back to the workforce and really help run internal IT organizations. Guess what they're learning? They're learning Docker. So these are the kinds of things that get us excited. And that's essential for enterprise organizations who that's one of the challenges that they face with, you know, modernizing the data center which they have to do, but then it requires new skill sets, maybe upskilling. So it's exciting to hear that you're seeing this investment in people that have an opportunity and a proclivity to actually learn this technology. Yeah, this is, we are happy because we help customers but we also create amazing new jobs that, you know, certainly our community can still benefit from. So last question, the three themes that came out of your session really the general session this morning was, and you talked about some choice, agility and security. Are those the three pillars that you believe Docker upon which Docker sits as really competitive differentiators? Amen, amen number one. But it's also our values, right? This is rooted in our values. And when a company performs best is when their values show up in their products because then you're never lost. You always know what you're focused on. And when I ran concur, we had this vision called North Star called the perfect trip. And our objective was to always go create a delightful business trip experience. And for Docker, I want to make sure that we have a North Star. And our North Star is our values and they have to translate directly to what actually helps the customer. I love that, the North Star. Well, hopefully theCUBE is the North Star of modern tech media. Steve, thanks so much for stopping by. It's wonderful to meet you. It was great to meet you as well and congratulations on the big success. We look forward to hearing what's coming out in the next year. And we want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with John Troyer today live in San Francisco, DockerCon 2018. Stick around, we'll be back after a short break.