 Welcome back to the seaport in Boston, cities of buzz, Bruins tonight, Celtics tomorrow night. We're all excited, but we're talking open source, which is a very exciting topic. Every company is using open source. I mean, it is the main spring of innovation. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host Paul Gillen. And you're watching theCUBE's coverage of Red Hat Summit 2022. Raj Wikramasinga is here. He's hybrid and emerging platforms lead at Accenture and Guido Greber, who's Red Hat's business group lead at Accenture. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Thank you. So Raj, we saw you in the keynote up there today with Stephanie, she's coming on tomorrow. Rockstar, Stephanie, Chiris, also a Boston sports fan. And we've got to work that in. But talk about the history with Red Hat. How long you guys been at this? And give us a journey update. Well, first of all, thanks for having us here. Yes, we are big fans of Red Hat. And especially Stephanie, I had the pleasure of working with her very closely. Our relationship with Red Hat goes many, many years, decades I think. And, but Paul Cormier will tell you that, you know, we've been focused a lot with the formation of our new business unit in cloud first, around migrating to the public cloud. But now, as we focus more and more around how our clients begin to operate in the public cloud, in the cloud ecosystem, hybrid is coming much more into focus. And Red Hat is very much a key partner of ours. So we go way back, but this is all about us doubling down and increasing our partnership and deepening it with them. So Paul Cormier talked today about hybrid cloud is everything. And it seems like a couple of years ago there was, the focus is more on moving to the public cloud, on getting off of private infrastructure. Has there been a change in the ways in which customers are thinking, are they going to be hanging on to their private infrastructure longer perhaps than that was expected a couple of years ago? I think the, first of all, it's a very different industry by industry. If you look at retail or consumer goods, I think there's a big movement in terms of percentages of workloads that are getting moved onto public cloud. If you look at industries like banking or utilities or government, more regular financial services, more regulated industries, I think we are finding a much larger percentage of their workloads because of regulatory reasons and security reasons, et cetera, are need to remain either on premise or in private cloud. So I think it very much depends on the industry, but regardless, especially with the movement to edge now, hybrid is going to be permeating everything. So I think by industry it depends, but the edge is driving a whole new flywheel. You know, we started theCUBE in 2010, so the cloud was, you know, modern cloud anyway, it was, I'd say, four years into it. And at the time, you know, to your point, Raj, financial services, it was an evil word. No way we're ever going to the cloud. No, that's changed, obviously. But then when the financial crisis hit, you had, so initially it was a lot of tire kicking experimentation, when the financial crisis hit, you had a lot of CFOs saying, okay, let's shift CAPX to OPEX and so that was sort of a bridge. And then after we came out, it was like this spate of innovation. And then we saw that during the pandemic where cloud migration was a high priority and or it was, you know, the lifeline. And now it sounds like customers are kind of rethinking to your earlier conversation, what is cloud? It's that operating model. So I wonder if you could sort of, can you confirm that's kind of the journey that customers are taking? Where are they today? What does it mean, you know, the operating model? What do they consider cloud? Yeah, actually, you see it, it's like, that it's really a drive forward to the cloud. But where it was in the beginning, it was also in the high part, public cloud, they become more and more aware that, hey, it's hybrid because they have to bring the legacy system and process into the cloud as well. And it takes more time than actually they have fought before. So it's like, there was a process of learning and also like in the steps moving forward to this operating model, because they also understand I cannot operate a cloud like I was operating in a classical way, like I have my old data center and everything, it needs all the capabilities, it needs all the skills, and especially then if you go in a hybrid world, it needs a hybrid operation between the classic, traditional, but also the new ways of how you operate into a cloud. And you really see also in financial services now, we had, I mean, Roger presented it at keynote, we had a client in Germany, he made a decision, a very traditional financial services client, providing IT service to German saving banks and they did this decision and I would say if you have spoken to them 10 years ago, they would not go into the cloud, but now they went to the cloud via a private cloud and now they got the confidence about how to operate in it and now they move forward into a public cloud, but from a private cloud into a public cloud, so they have the security, they have upscaling on skills and people and they understand the process and what's really required and needed in order to have such an environment. Generally, what's the strategy with regard to modernization? Are organizations more building like an abstraction layer with microservices and then connecting to the cloud or are they actually rewriting applications to make them cloud native? What are you advising clients from a strategy standpoint? I know it depends, but is there any patterns? No, no, it's a great question. I think the genesis to that strategy is how they view infrastructure, right? So everyone has this kind of, I don't know, there's this almost mythical opinion out there, with cloud you don't need to worry about your infrastructure, all the providers will worry about it and you just need to move it there, but the opposite is true. It's really critical what your infrastructure strategy is as you move to the cloud, because depending on what workload you have, it can be on any one of the continuums that you described. So the first thing is where do you want to house your workload is the question and that will drive what do you want to do with your application, whether you want to just maintain it the way it is, do you want to simply modernize it, keeping where it is, or do you want to completely re-skin it or even eliminate it? So I think the entire, basically the answer to your question around what do we do with the application is fundamentally driven by what is your infrastructure strategy and what that workload needs to do for you? So I know you want to jump in, but I got the follow-up is, you're saying hardware matters, because we heard Paul Cormier today talk about this hardware renaissance. I'm actually, I just ran a power panel called does hardware still matter? You're saying it matters. Yeah, and infrastructure doesn't always, I mean, now that you can do infrastructure as code, right? I mean, I was at the Dell Summit last time and RedNet is a huge partner of Dell now, right? Which was much more partnered with VMware, but I think the whole ecosystem is opening up and even the hardware providers are looking at this in a much more nimble way, but yes, it's very much part of the conversation. They haven't gone away. During your keynote, you outlined sort of your strategy going forward is called Cloud First. Yes. What does Cloud First mean? Well, we want to make sure that when we talk about transformation of business with our clients, so Accenture always goes with the idea of an industry lens of solving a specific problem for a client. What is the business problem we solve? And increasingly, what we want to message and drive to our clients is if you're thinking about, regardless of what the business is, technology is absolutely critical to whatever transformation you're doing. And when you look at technology, you have to think Cloud First because that's where all the innovation is happening. That's where all the investments are being driven whether it's a software vendor, whether it's a hardware vendor, whether it's a, right? So you have to think Cloud First when you think about transforming your business. How does modernization play into that? A lot of vendors are throwing a lot of resources at the modernization market, VMware, Tanzu and IBM and such. How interested are customers really in modernizing legacy applications? Hugely, right? Because fundamentally I think everything is now driven by our experiences what we now are used to in terms of interfacing with applications or interfacing with function sets or interfacing with technology. So there is a lot of inherent legacy technology that doesn't have that experience. So when you think about transforming you have to come at it from an experience point of view and when you think in those terms modernization or even rebuilding the same, even if it's the same function set, re-skinning it and when modernization is critical for the purposes of engagement. Gita, what's the number one challenge that customers that you're working with face in terms of modernization? Is it trying to figure out like Raj is sort of laying out the portfolio? What do I do with it? Do I modernize it? Do I retire it? Do I let it just die on the vine? What's their number one challenge? Mainly it depends also on the industry but it's I would say for the highly regulated certainly regulations. They always have an own interpretation of the regulation what regulation means for them but normally it's not really what they understand. But I think this is more and more coming to an ease and more people understand what it really means. But it's also what we see a lot they think first about technology but not what kind of the business problem they want to solve. So it's like instead of having a technology neutral discussion it's really they want to achieve to have really start and decide and then having this discussion away which obviously it's one of the key one because they start to the cloud even without having a strategy without having a vision. If you have a clear vision if you have a clear strategy you know where you want to go and then you can make your business case you can make your architecture and then you decide on technology. And then of course on this journey all the things about security compliance come into the play. And I think that's the easiest approach but clients struggle to understand of course. I mean the technology is changing rapidly even new products, new release cycle, new life cycles the complexity of all the tools hardware we mentioned before network is changing new wording coming up it's really hard to keep base or keep up with the base of the technology and what's happening even for us and then you understand the complexity and bring this complexity back to a simplicity but not without losing we have this also key note the efficiency and the flexibility for an engineer because that's what he needs. Do your clients have the skill sets to do all that? I mean it's such a self-serving question to you guys but no do they? I mean is this skills shortage? Is it a battle for talent? So how are they dealing with that? I mean it's obvious the battle for talent is here I mean everybody's looking for the best talents and if you need a full-stack engineer for example it's very hard to get a full-stack engineer on your ground you call really cloud native so you have to upskill people, to reskill people there's also a change coming into it and the change is not to forget so it's what we say most of the time the technology is an easy part but the change, change the organization change upskill the organization that's the hard part because you need to change from one mindset to another and we know from the past what change is people are not open to change in general so we need to change the mindset. I want to go back to hybrid cloud because Ashash Badani from Red Hat was on earlier and he said Edge is really redefining the definition of hybrid cloud it's a more complex architecture and it's changing the nature of how we think about hybrid cloud, are you seeing that with your customers? Are they changing their thinking about what hybrid means in that context? Yeah completely, you know I was, we did a bunch of research recently and I just wanted to make sure I code this I mean there's a Flexara report that came out that says 80% of all enterprises now are on hybrid 89% multi cloud Red Hat did a report that said 80% of our businesses are expected to increase their use of open source, right so yes hybrid is everywhere Edge is driving it but there's another critical element to that movement the complexity of our clients' estates are increasing because whether it's hybrid or whether it's Edge or whatever they are now given if you're a CIO or a CTO your estate is really complex now so one of the things that we now need to do is how do we simplify that? So we think, and we've been talking with Red Hat about this we need to come up with a clean we keep calling it single pane of glass for an enterprise that allows them to look at their estate in a way that allows them to then simply make some innovative decisions across the entire state so yes Edge is driving a hybrid but the key thing that we now need to overcome is how do we manage that complexity? We got a new chairman, I call it super cloud but the Shashen's a better word, it's metacloud that's going to stick when I think of Accenture I think of deep industry expertise of course we have that but with the partnership from Red Hat it's very, it's horizontal in the sense that it can go anywhere so how do you guys work in terms of within Accenture plugging into your deep industry expertise and how does that horizontal Red Hat fit? That's a really good question So one of the things, first of all we came up with an announcement today about our expanded relationship with Red Hat one of the key elements in that announcement is how we are looking and bringing in Red Hat into our industry business motions so we actually have decided to pick a certain number of industries financial services is one telco is another, we are thinking about utilities in Europe public health is another one that we are looking at and as we come up with our offerings you heard me and Stephanie talk about joint offerings earlier on the keynote these offerings are industry offerings but in those offerings we have embedded and we are there powered by Red Hat technology that allows these industry solutions to drive innovation through their technology Yes, Red Hat can be for the most part a horizontal cross industry technology but you have to really bring them into specific industry solutions because of the way we go to market and I think Red Hat brings innovation in a way that these industries haven't seen before So I mean how do you stay out of their way? Does they have a services operation that they are trying to grow and that's your business as well so where are the lines of demarcation? Back to your question I don't think there's a limit in opportunity Red Hat, Stephanie, me, Paul, we are all talking about how do we collectively increase both our armies? Yes, there might be occasional overlaps in the trenches but when you look at the bigger picture it is not a problem at all Yeah, I wouldn't think so I mean the way you're describing it, Raj is exactly the way it should work you lead with the business figure out the business problem how are you going to solve that the technology will take care of itself the technologies come and they go and you want to use modern technologies obviously but if you don't get the business piece right forget that no technology is going to save you Exactly right and the complexities of what the businesses today are facing is getting more and more difficult and I think actually technologies like Red Hat their whole concept of open source I think is very creative around driving innovations from the market I want to ask you about that because of Paul Cormier's key of the story was sort of an homage to open source how much do customers really care about open source? Customers care about innovation and anything that drives innovation to their business whether it comes from technology whether it comes from crowdsourcing whether it comes from marketing doesn't matter I think when you look at the key hunger for innovation and how open source drives innovation it becomes part of the business conversation and I think that's been one of the mantras that Paul has had from day one about how this is such a great platform for innovation I think that's the reason Is it something customers ask for? They say we must develop this using open source platforms and tool sets It depends I think there are some technology CIOs or CTOs that are much more religious about what their technology stack needs to be there are others that are much more business oriented so yes there are if it's more in telecom field I think telecom or some of the more technology driven fields they will ask for open source in others we bring it through as part of our offering Here's the nuance that I see and you mentioned Paul Cormier Accenture especially I mean you look at your ascendancy as a company you for years would take known processes and codify them in software and you made a lot of great innovations doing that and people who made a lot of money Today this new normal he calls it I call it the new abnormal you don't know what's around the corner you have to build flexibility into your business and that is something that open source enables and so that's sort of this really not really we don't want to speak about it too much but business resiliency and flexibility is that is the new normal I don't see how you can do it without open source expertise I completely agree Dave and I think it's actually an asset so you know in some ways selfishly by having open source in our solution stack some of the innovation gets them much more democratized right so it can come from a much broader suite so the load is not only on Accenture but it can come up with all the innovation we can actually come up with a more democratized way of bringing that innovation in so I think that's a great- And it doesn't always go back to the community I mean Amazon built a 70 billion dollar business on open source but not all All right we got to go guys thanks so much for coming on theCUBE it was really good to have you here Thank you very much for having us It's my pleasure, all right and keep it right there this is Dave Vellante for Paul Gillan theCUBE's continuous coverage of Red Hat Summit 2022 from the seaport in Boston we'll be right back