 Live from the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California, it's the CUBE at Oracle Open World 2014. Brought to you by headline sponsor Cisco Systems with support from NetApp. And now, here are your hosts, John Furrier and Jeff Frick. Okay, welcome back everyone. We're here live in San Francisco at the Moscone Center for Oracle over the world 2014. This is the CUBE. We are on the ground. We are in the Cisco booth for a special presentation live of three days of wall-to-wall coverage. This is SiliconANGLE Media's theCUBE, our flagship program where we go out to the events and extract a signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media. Join my co-host, Jeff Frick, who's the general manager of our CUBE operation in Silicon Valley. Our next guest is Sarah Leep, a global partnering marketing manager at Cisco Manager. 65,000 partners across strategic to channel partners. Welcome to the CUBE. Happy to be here. You're a tech athlete. You manage all those partners. You must be like, you broke your leg. I mean, go break a leg. I mean, we saw you limping in here. Yes. You break a leg doing a new job? No, I broke a leg on vacation, but good guess. Well, you got a big job. Thanks for coming on the CUBE. Appreciate it. My pleasure. So Cisco, honestly, so much going on. I mean, Oracle customers since day one, Silicon Valley mafia. It's just my words, not yours, but now you're at the cloud, right? Yeah. Cloud's not new to Cisco, so you data center presence across all your customer base. Give us the update on what you guys are talking about today for your announcement around inner cloud. Then we can kind of dance or back and forth and drill down into it. Sure, John. Well, today we announced what I think is great with Cisco is we have this. We always do something interesting in the market around cloud. So, you know, everybody has their own cloud in the market. One of the things that Cisco did is they said, you know, we would be stronger if we had a cloud that was a connected set of clouds from our partner ecosystem. And that's indeed what we've done. We announced that at partner summit. We followed up at Cisco Live. And here today we're announcing, broadening that there's almost 40 partners that are now part of our inter cloud ecosystem, which is really exciting for us. So it's a federated cloud model of Cisco? Yeah, it's a form. Absolutely, John. It's a form of federated cloud. And what you can think about is we today, a couple of the marquee players that have joined our Deutsche Telecom and British Telecom. And essentially our idea is that you can't really have one vendor provide cloud around the world. There is data sovereignty issues. There's data issues by industry. There are regulations. And so we create we're creating really a data center blueprint around the world. Each of the inter cloud partners agrees to create the architecture like we believe the cloud will come in and they agree to put that in their data centers. And so now we have over 250 data centers around the world that have committed to this open architecture for the inter cloud. So the use case is what? Vertical specialization? Like you mentioned data sovereignty, that's obviously a global issue. Yeah. Is it consumption patterns as well within certain verticals? Yeah. Certain applications? So John, it's actually customer choice. Right? So what we're saying is if you're, you know, any kind of enterprise, if you're an enterprise, you need flexibility. And we believe that hybrid cloud is the way to go, right? The ability to change workloads across public and private clouds is the flexibility that enterprises want. If you're in the small and medium enterprise or small and medium business, you want to just jump over any kind of data center and you want to really grow your business through the cloud. So it's really about customer choice. So talk about who's involved. Some of the names. You mentioned some big players involved. Yes. Some names? Yeah. So today we announced Deutsche Telekom, which is a really important player. You could say that data sovereignty and European sovereignty rules are at the pinnacle in Germany. And so they're going to be offering their data centers as part of it. British Telecom is a global player. They're going to offer their data centers around the world. We also have a couple of other players. EQUIS is a strong data center partner for our service providers and for a lot of our customers and also NTT. So those are the big supply side players. The other players either are committed that they would create clouds that have our architecture inside Cisco power clouds or they would be excited to resell the cloud services that are going to come out of this partnership. So what were the main technical or business challenges that you guys had to overcome to execute this vision? Yeah. So Jeff, great question. There are three things that are important to us about an open cloud architecture. One is that we really have to have the application-centric infrastructure blueprint. And that's one that you really have to get your mind around. Are these guys saying, okay, is that going to be an architecture blueprint that's going to make the cloud hung? Another is open standards, right? Are we really going to build this on open standards? And then also the pinnacle of our solution is this inter-cloud fabric. So this inter-cloud capability allows a CIO or allows a service provider to change workloads from public to private clouds. It's really the first of its industry. It's vendor agnostic. So that gives our customers flexibility that they don't have. And is it like a fabric that's in the middle that all these things connect to or is it kind of direct connections in between the individual clouds inside of that same fabric? It's a technological capability that allows you to change workloads. So workloads are on virtual machines, so you have a workload on a machine. And it allows you to seamlessly change that from, usually, what our customers have to do is they have to decide in the beginning and forever whether it's going to be in their data center, it's going to be a service provider in some sort of a private cloud, or it's going to be public cloud. Now, they don't have to make that decision immediately and forever. They can do it based on sort of a changing landscape. And so that's a very powerful flexibility. And with the application-centricness of it, then it doesn't really matter necessarily what the underlying cloud infrastructure is. It'll just move. It will move, yes. So we can move it. The capability is on our data center blueprint, but yes, we can move it to any public cloud. So I got to talk about IT service management. Recently, BMC just sued ServiceNow, we covered on SiliconANGLE around all these, like, patents that they had. But basically, they're a cloud. One's a cloud player. One's kind of an on-premise. Well, BMC has been around for a while. They went private. They're trying to reinvent themselves. But this brings up the notion of the changing guard of IT in the cloud. So I got to ask you on this inter-cloud, which sounds awesome. SLA's around security or use. Yes. QOS. So you're talking about network. The third thing is, with cloud, this API economy is kicking in. Does that fit into the playbook and how, as a customer, would I figure out whether I fit into the inter-cloud based on those three things? So if you're a customer, it's a great question, right? So one of the reasons many, and the gentleman from Deutsche Telekom said it this morning, he said a vast minority of companies in Germany will trust cloud because of security. That's their number one issue. So what we've done with the application-centric infrastructure is two things. So we've created this, to your point, federated ecosystem. So companies that want to keep their data in Germany can keep their data in Germany on a data center that's much like a data center that sits in a different part of the ecosystem. So that's why it's so easy to move loads. You don't have to go, OK, what did you do that on? Can I run up a virtual machine there? So that's the beauty of it. So I think the other thing that I would think about is really just flexibility, right? There's a lot of dialogue about what CIOs are facing is that their lines of business have bought cloud, put their applications on cloud, and they're sitting out there vulnerable. By implementing this technology, they can actually bring those clouds back into a safe harbor, so to speak. Well, Docker is a big trend right now, containerization of applications, and that's getting a lot of traction, certainly in the open stack and VMware communities, because it allows for developers to wrap right to a container, if you will. Not a new concept, it's been around for a long time, containers, and what's interesting is that it allows for that kind of interoperability. So what's interesting here is, you guys are building like almost like what channel partners are for reselling and this integration, you're building a cloud channel. Like basically, if I understand it correctly- It's almost like a cloud API. A cloud network of cloud partners, of clouds. But the partners are clouds. Yes, they are. And what I'd say is, one of the fantastic things about Cisco before I joined them, right, is they actually have a great history of connecting lands from multiple vendors into a network. Well, indeed that's a little bit what we're doing today with the cloud. We're connecting clouds amongst multiple vendors across application providers with an architecture that we believe will work for that. I want to follow up on a nugget you just said, right? You said German customers like cloud for security. They don't, actually. Oh, they don't. Okay, I was going to say that too. No, it keeps you safe. I was going to say that too. The fly in the face of what we always hear about Germans' cloud and security that would not be discongruent. That's right. I said the SPP from Deutsche Telekom, he gave this German phrase, which those who speak German understood, but he basically said, you know, you can't change habits that you've made for a lifetime. So his point is that if you're a German customer and you care about security and you care about privacy, and this will get over both of those points for enterprises in Germany, what they've announced today. Okay, okay. Okay, good. Yeah. Well, the Germany thing is interesting. We were talking to big global Royal Philips and they're making folks sign a consumption cloud consumption contract because of the issues are, you can't just put a data center in Ireland and the EU. Yes. You've got to be really specific on the specific policies by country. That's right. That's just in the EU. That's exactly right. And so it puts more tax, if you will, both money and resources on the IT department. Well, John, you know, you're spot on. And in fact, the gentleman from British Telecom who was also with us this morning said, not only do you have to, to your point, care about the laws in country or border laws, you also have to care about industry and vertical laws. What are the financial rules around the world for data privacy? What about health care, right? So you're spot on. So this brings up the whole globalization of IT. I mean, we are living, the consumerization of IT, that's been kicked around. It's like a beaten horse at this point because it's happening. Yes. We're all kind of in agreement. Consumerization is happening. Yeah. But now the globalization is a bigger issue, right? You can't just be global overnight. Could you share with us, because you guys are a lot of global customers. You mentioned some of the folks from British Telecom and Jewish Telecom. Yeah. What's the globalization playbook look like for a customer? Yeah, so, you know, I think about some of our fantastic enterprise accounts are what we call the top bank of America, et cetera. And when I think about what those CIOs are dealing with, they're dealing with how can I, it's almost like, it's almost like the power company of the past, right? They want to make sure that they have a lot of install base they're dealing with, a lot of history, and that makes them such, that install base makes them unable to meet the future needs of the business, right? So globalization means, how can I spin up in a country something quickly where you can do that in the cloud that is replicating all my business practices, security policies, et cetera. And actually, this flexibility won't allow them to do that. So this inter-cloud fabric, I'm just going to do some Google search while we're talking, we're multitasking, tweeting, crowd chatting. Is it a term you guys use? Yes. Is that like the formal name? It's called the fabric. You mentioned ecosystem. Is there a unique thing behind the word fabric or is it just the name for the ecosystem? I think the unique thing is inter-cloud. The term you'll hear us talk about is the inter-cloud ecosystem, the inter-cloud technology. What that does, that allows the public to private migration of workloads. So the inter-cloud is actually, and fabric is also an important term, but inter-cloud is what will hear us talk about. Okay, so sorry if I'm going to ask this twice, but bring it up twice. Can you rewind the sequence of the big announcements so you announce it at your partner's summit? Yes, and Cisco Live, which is actually here in Moscone Center this year. So this announcement for me today is a follow-on momentum to that. So at partner's summit we announced our cloud strategy and we announced it at partner's summit because we wanted to reiterate with our partners how important they are. Sometimes when a company announces their cloud strategy it means they're going to go direct. And then we followed up at Cisco Live with all of the inter-cloud announcements and we announced Telstra there. We followed it up. We announced Telstra at partner's summit. We followed it up with dimension data. Very long standing partner bars at Cisco Live. And then this is a follow-on to say see more or signing on to the promise of air cloud. So this is the momentum. So there's some more names. Is there any product updates here? Or is there simply more people joining in? Yes, one of the product updates is the inter-cloud fabric is shipping. Okay, so GA? It's available. It's available. Or direct-in availability or general availability? I don't, it's a good question. It's shipping. Okay, we'll follow up on that. So sometimes good direct-in availability. Yes, I understand. On these big movements there. Okay, so fabric is shipping. Got more names. Yes. What's next? I think what's next is you're going to see innovation and more services come out of this. Cisco cloud services, Cisco powered partner services. We believe opening this up and making it everyone's cloud will really spark the innovation versus saying, hey, I have a cloud. Here's the service. I have a cloud. Here's the service. And how does someone get involved as developers? Does it have to be big service providers? What's the target audience for you guys? It's a great question. So it's a mix. If you look at the 40 plus partners that were part of this announcement, we have everything from Deutsche Telecom who's going to spin up inter-cloud data centers that they're going to use and we're going to use all the way through to Longview, which is a fantastic Canadian based partner that's been with us a long time. They have committed to take their Cisco powered service to the inter-cloud architecture and they've committed to sell whatever services will come out within the inter-cloud fabric. Well, we really appreciate you coming on theCUBE. You're a very busy person. 65,000 parts. I love that. Maybe I'm much recording it because we didn't really get approval, but is that a legit number? It's theCUBE. It's theCUBE. Things just happen. We share data. We're a data sharing vehicle. We are theCUBE. Extracting this into the noise. I'll give you the last word and share the folks out there in your own words. What are you really excited about right now with inter-cloud, some of the technology inflection points going on in the industry? What's exciting? So I would say that I am very excited about the choices that we're giving our customers and the partners that serve them. Innovation is the limit. Sky's the limit on innovation. So you leave a VP of corporate partner marketing, big job. You guys enable a lot of success. You guys were probably the first enabling platform in the internet with TCPIP. Exploding, as you know, the history of the internet-working world. Now you have inter-cloud, which is an extension, I guess, of internet-working. It is. We're connecting the clouds. Hey. So let's hope we can get that up and running. It's shipping today. Inter-cloud forever. This is theCUBE. Extracting this into the noise. We'll be right back with our next guest after this short break.