 From Seattle, Washington extracting the signal from the noise It's the cube on the ground at OpenStack Day Seattle 2015 Now here's your host John Furrier. Welcome to Seattle. This is a special cube presentation cube on the ground OTG we call it on the ground we go out to the event and talk to all the thought leader I'm John Furrier with the cube I next Aaron Dell who is solid fire and also the famous cloudcast podcast great to see you again I know good to see you John cloudcast is a hot Podcast all the thought leaders are listening customers are listening you guys are really the signal out there on cloud And also solid fire growing. You know it's all flash storage. You got to kick in some butt there I'm always keeping tabs on you guys new approach to cloud. What's going on with cloud? Give us the update of OpenStack What's the bottom line? I mean is it failing is it winning? Is it growing is it stalled? What do we expect to see? Yeah, no So it's at an interesting point because it absolutely is growing, but it still has some operational challenges That's the number one thing we're seeing right now is Actually, just talking to some folks in the hall of common theme is you're still trying to figure how to upgrade it easily still figuring how to operate it easily right and the Gentlemen from canonical made it made the the reference to you know catch up right everyone has the ingredients to make ketchup in your kitchen, but no one makes their ketchup, right? and I thought that was fantastic because it's you know, everyone's kind of looking for that easy button and It's starting to show up. You know, you've got the blue box folks. You've got the platform nine folks You've got some interesting startups actually coming into the open stack space Which shows us there is some definitely some innovation and some new things going on But it's because of the challenges we've faced until now the question is is the ketchup good I mean is that last ingredient gonna make it so that it's not too watery I mean is kubernetes is containers so truly is it good catch up and yeah, what's the next what's the key ingredient? Well, yeah, and that's that's a fantastic point because we are at this inflection point where Open stack was a necessary next step without a doubt We had to get that first step in the cloud native applications had to do it But where we're going with mesos and kubernetes with mesos con going on down the street Is that the true next evolution? Is it like the open stack morano project where you're kind of getting containers built into open stack? We'll have to wait and see Because that any time you talk kubernetes anytime you talk mesos that's it is so cutting-edge So at this point in time still Silicon Valley only so open stack I see meme of open second being dead is kind of false We saw some things happen last year It opens that SV some people aren't gonna be there this year that were there last year Yes, they either went out of business or executives have left But yet a lot of dynamics going on Paul Morris is stepping down as CEO of cloud of a pivotal cloud foundry claims a hundred million dollars in revenue I'd love to see those books, but but the quite analysis Amazon is doing their thing And but it's really a dynamic market right now. So so it's there. Yes The question is who's doing what in revenue? What's the numbers? Is it all professional surgery and cloud foundry a hundred million? That's a that's a huge number. I just is that all professional services. Do they actually selling product? yeah, and that's a fantastic point because On the cloudcast we saw this consolidation coming for a long time We really started covering open stack about four years ago And we were just waiting for at some point, you know when we first started there was 15 plus startups in the open stack space and There just wasn't enough customers there there wasn't enough revenue there and you just saw this natural consolidation come to a head last year and Yeah, some are no longer here a lot of them were Sucked up into the various vendors and what you're seeing now is especially at the open tech summits and like these events here You have a much more mature ecosystem. It's almost like the new legacy of You know all of these vendors are there. They're all mature. They're trying to play in this space They're trying to make money off of it and time will tell and then it's an evolution I mean, but you brought a point you brought up the easy button What is that easy button now? Is it just deployment in a box? Is it like just give me prefabricated open stack? Is it tooling is it management? We're hearing a lot of different things Yeah, and I think time will tell but I do think the preference We're seeing in our customers is definitely moving towards that easy button as a service if you will of Some of those companies where the operations of open stack because it hasn't gotten easier at the same level of the adoption People are looking to what is that next step if the operations were to get easier I don't think we'd see that market be as Popular as it is right now Is it is the market still in early adopter? That's the thing that's on my mind. Has it crossed over yet? I think it has I think we're at least in open stack context. We're beyond early adopter phase There is a lot of folks out there using it But what's interesting is is to kind of go back around to the previous question a little bit The distros haven't taken off like I think they probably should have most of the large customers I've seen are still roll your own and it is still that staff of engineers really keeping it up and running and Again because the what was the value added the distributions? We're starting to see the red hat distribution get a look you know to that point where we're we're getting good adoption of that We're seeing the Marantis one with all the fuel work. They're doing we're getting good adoption with that So the question on adoption is it's either not people aren't aware of it or the product sucks So is it mix of both? Is it awareness issue or is it a product issue? Oh, that's a great question I think it's a it's a question of differentiation. I don't know that it's differentiated enough At this point in time. It's it's you know, if you go build your own Versus you farm it out if you will completely big differences, right? But it's almost like shades of fear Third dimension it could absolutely be fear. Well, that's the thing You've been the interesting notion of operators. We're hearing a lot about operators So the question is if I'm an engineering team I might want to have my tire kickers go through the motions and that's not necessarily a proof of concept That's just core competency building. So that that fear could be an issue of core competence So maybe they're aware of it. Maybe the product's decent. Maybe it's just that their teams not core enough to do that Yeah, when it comes to the folks in house Yeah, again going back to the easy button what what we really need in the opensack community is That poc in a box and that's probably there today. Don't get me wrong but but everyone sees that poc in a box, but then they're afraid of Does that mean can I scale it out to a hundred nodes a thousand nodes and will it be as easy and It's almost gotten a reputation now of no And and so how do we get it to grow to hundred nodes thousand nodes? Whatever you want and do the business value out of I don't need a big staff of people and how do I get? You know the underlying infrastructure to be simpler at the end of the day It's like a little cloudcast we got going on here I mean, I think in my opinion my opinion I think it's just a matter of the customers having the ability to execute and and have the total cost of ownership equation nailed out I think there's still this Gray area of there's no straight and narrow on on the execution. What's my cost? I'm gonna be locked into that vendor What's gonna be the lock-in? Oh my god the shark fin the iceberg whatever metaphor you want to use Yes, no is that is there visibility on the ownership side of because downstream? What's the impact? Well, what's interesting there, too Is the biggest thing I'm seeing is again from an operations standpoint? How do we make this as simple as possible because what happens is you have this weird? Convoluted thing if you had the whole legacy apps versus client if apps and you take that put it aside for a second Right if we take that and put it aside. Well, what what do they really want? It doesn't matter what kind of app it is well The developers want API driven infrastructure you can call it cloud But the end of the day it's it's an infrastructure that's driven by API's and then as simple as possible You know being able to really guarantee the uptime guarantee the performance and that's where open stack at times It gets a bad rap. I don't and I'm not even necessarily agreeing with that might not even be worthy of a bad rap and that Agreed absolutely because there are known customers out there that are doing it and doing it very well But again, it's how do you get beyond that? Well, Stu Miniman and wikibon and Brian Grace Lee and now wikibon and and I were having a Conversation about this and I think Dave Vellante even chimed in and we were debating was off across the board different opinions Yes, what the hell is cloud native app mean, you know, is it is Amazon a cloud? Of course, they're cloud native Facebook a cloud native app. Okay, but what does that mean for enterprise? Does that mean that the app was built for just API? So to me it just doesn't seem there's been a lot of there's not a lot of cloud native apps out there right now What is it cloud? Yeah, and and it's a fantastic question and my opinion have always been You know, there's there was this kind of trend in the industry How do I take these legacy apps and make them cloud native? Well, the simple answer is you don't The way I look at it is it's really more of like a star of the old build the new mentality You you want to maintain those legacy systems But the same time as those kind of age off the books if you will you're gonna have to build a new Infrastructure so if you're gonna build new infrastructure, you might as well build it the new way But that has to happen over time. That is not something that happens, you know Most businesses out there today. They don't do technology for the sake of technology There has to be a business reason and a business driver if that legacy app is still out there making them money They're gonna keep using and on trigger point if you cloud native is the future the soil has to You know yield some fruit on that tree if you will so that's gonna take some time Exactly so so, you know, I very much see this as as a longer tail than most people would like without a doubt It is just a matter of of how are we gonna get there long-term? And yeah, there's lots of terminology in the cloud native and what does that mean big picture and Architecturally that's all solved. It's getting the businesses to rewrite the apps and really get there We're in Seattle right now on the ground so quickly describe to the folks out there. What's the vibe here? What's it like in Seattle? It's been it is so it's been interesting. I've been in here since Tuesday now, and I've done Linux con cloud stack day open stack day and mesos con All in the in three days now. So what did you learn? Yeah, it's been a world in 30 seconds I know yeah, so it the biggest thing is there is still a lot of confusion in Yes, people are starting to get legacy versus cloud native, but when it comes to which technologies do I use? Why would I use them? What are the actual business drivers? To actually go adopt some of these new technologies massive amounts of confusion around that And that's probably the biggest reason for you know trying to get knowledge out in the industry right now without a doubt Okay, we are OTG on the ground. This is the cube in Seattle. I'm John Furrier Thanks for watching and all the coverage here at open-stack innovation day. Thanks for watching