 Live from the Sands Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada. Extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE covering AWS re-invent 2015. Now your host, John Furrier. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live at AWS re-invent in Las Vegas, the CUBE SiliconANGLES flagship program. We go out to the events and expect a signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier. We have two special guests here. Albergio, CEO of IIX. Also, Consol, Inc. and Paul Gamby, CTO of IIX and Consol Inc. It's kind of complicated, we'll flesh that out. Welcome back to theCUBE. Good to see you guys. Thank you. So I saw you guys last night at the VC event. You guys are support fully coming to the NEA. They had a little event with Highland Capital. Great to see all the entrepreneurs out there and all the VC's mingling here at re-invent. Almost kind of like the calm before the storm. Like, oh, damn, this thing is going to be, Amazon is really doing some serious damage. It's real. It's enterprise-grade ecosystems developing and flourishing. You guys are now participating in that ecosystem. So I got to ask you, what is Consol doing? What's IIX doing? Explain to the folks the difference and then the relationship with Amazon. We basically, well, to your point, it's undeniable. I mean, just to see the attendance here, enterprise movement to the cloud, the use of the cloud. It is real and it's growing. I mean, it's just phenomenal to see the amount of activity here. Obviously, as we continue to grow towards the cloud and as organizations use that, people are looking at ways to, hey, how can we have a secure connection, a consistent connection to that. And how we work with Amazon AWS is we're one of their direct connect partners, but we really took it to the next level with Consol. We created the ability to fully automate what an organization would need to do to directly connect, both from the connection perspective but also from a provisioning perspective, network connection. We've basically created a platform that would extract all of the complexity to make it one click and allow them to bypass public internet and directly connect. First is what alternative? The alternative would be to use the public internet, which if it's something that's business critical, you may not necessarily experience a secure, definitely not private, but not a connection that will be consistent in terms of access to bandwidth, that consistent stable connection. And many enterprises want to have a private connection to their business critical information and applications that they use. And so with that, we basically assisted those companies in being able to leverage our platform to get access something like that with a click of a button. So, Al, you're the CEO, so explain what IAX is and what Consol is. So IAX is a company that was founded in 2011. It's essentially our company. And we went through an evolution along a path of interconnection and helping it evolve. And Consol was really our software development effort that we kept in stealth mode, built a platform and then recently unveiled it to the marketplace. So it's a sub-branding issue. It's sub-branding, yeah. It's no separate company. It's all one company, IAX, Consol, the brand. It's a unit within our organization. So IAX, Consol, all big one company. Okay, that's cool. So we got that cleared up. The marketplace, Paul, you've been doing internet connections, going back years, right? Decades, back in DNS days. You understand what it takes to connect people. You know, Mark Zuckerberg, I want to connect the world without a Facebook application, but there are actually physical connections that need to be made and logical connections. What is the real technical and product feature that you guys are delivering? What actually is the product? Yep, so the primary thing that we're doing is aggregating all of the traditional layer one, layer two and layer three technologies into one click and point solution, which we can get access to via the Consol platform. So the layer one's still there. You need to have a physical cross-connect to our network, whether it be in a data center via our data center partners or via our network service provider partner program. So we kicked off those two partner programs to lower the barrier of entry. So the enterprise can now work with data center operators that they currently have a relationship with or network service providers they have a relationship with to get that layer one. And from there on, that's where the software defined networking or the software defined interconnection that we built really comes into play. So an enterprise has not normally dealt in this world, right? They're not normally dealing with layer two configurations and they're certainly rarely dealing with participating in layer three. Al talked about this back at Consol Connect Live where he mentioned that there are 70,000 autonomous system numbers that have been issued and only 50,000 show up in the internet. That's really such a low number when you consider the number of enterprises that are participating. Where's all the enterprises? There's more than 70,000 companies that are obviously more than that. So I love your business model. I've been publicly supporting out of the cube in the past the idea of connecting and bypassing the internet to have suppliers or businesses to have diverse businesses connect and have secure services. So that's cool. But I want you to now go to the next level with me and unpack the impact of Amazon Cloud because Andy Jassy was here in the cube saying our ecosystem's flourishing. They have a multiple revenue model where the ecosystem makes a lot more than Amazon makes. So the money's starting to hit the table. What that means is people are going to start building businesses on top of Amazon. That means more services will be exposed, APIs, DevOps, than ever before. Is that something that you guys are targeting specifically? Because if I'm a knowledge enterprise, I might want to connect with some startup that's on Amazon doing some bad ass DevOps, have a great product. But now I want to make sure it's secure, but they might be a smaller company. Maybe they have 20 people, 200 people. It doesn't matter if I like the product, I want to connect to it. If I'm going to bring that into my enterprise, isn't that the security challenge? Am I getting that right? Explain that whole cloud phenomenon, how the trend of AWS impacts your product and ultimately value proposition. Yeah, I mean whether in the AWS cloud or in a cloud, enterprises wanting to directly connect, we can absolutely help with that. Our platform essentially is the only platform of its kind that allows the ability for complete automation and access to something. You asked the question before, what's the alternative? Beyond the internet, an enterprise would need to become a global network operator to actually connect because the reality is all businesses don't live in one building or one location. So cloud company A, SaaS company B, whatever is business critical for your business and you want to directly connect to it, you would otherwise need to become a global network operator. And for most organizations, that's not really their focus. And so as they're looking to the cloud, cloud infrastructure, cloud services, SaaS companies and so forth, console's a natural partner for them to be able to alleviate the need to become a global network operator and directly connect. And certainly if you're running packets over the public internet, like I said, it's like having tinted windows, you don't know who's in that car, evil guys are in there, you have the bad guys running around, spoofing packets, all kinds of dangerous things are happening. Yeah, DDoS attacks, so forth. DDoS attacks, spoofing, all the things that you guys are seeing, right? But the question I'll ask you is, I'm a network naysayer. Whoa, hey, you know, I don't need these guys. I'll just run encrypted tunneling on MPLS link. Why not just do that? So at the end of the day, you know, you can have a phenomenal solution or use status quo, but if there's no ecosystem, right, you're going to connect to nothing. And so part of the core focus of console- So in a way it's a lock-in spec. Yeah, we basically- You're locking in a path that you may or may not have to unwind, right? But we've created this also this marketplace of cloud- Explain the marketplace thing. So essentially it's a nondiscriminatory platform. Anybody that uses console as a part of that ecosystem, in other words, you could be a cloud infrastructure company, you could be a SaaS company, a manufacturer, it doesn't matter. You know, it's nondiscriminatory. You become part of that. So your business critical partners see that you're there and have the opportunity to connect to you. And reversely, you on the platform can go out and seek cloud partner, whatever's business critical, and click away. Kind of like a social platform, right? Based on your self-defined criteria, you'll click buttons and send out connection requests and they're accepted and now you're directly connected. It's a similar concept to that, what we've created with console. We've made it literally that easy. So it's really easy to get in one click to get in. Paul, I got to ask you the technical question because now you're talking about systems and network engineers. Yeah. Because at the end of the day, what customers are, what we're hearing in theCUBE this week is it's about the data, right? You know about the packets, you know, the car and example. It's about the data they want to secure. That's not the network guy's problem. They're like, whoa, I don't own the data. I just do the network. So in a way, the data is exposed over the network. So the network engineer now has to be mindful of the fact that I got to architect and build these networks with now a nondiscriminatory opportunity. That's an interesting value proposition. Yeah. So what does that mean for the network guy? Explain, talk to the network guy out there and what does it mean for him? His skills, does it change his game at all? What does that all mean? Absolutely, I think it changes his workload immensely because it's now data in transit. The traditional network engineer is dealing with data that's on premise, right? All of your critical applications or your critical data is inside your firewall. Now that world's changing. There's huge economic advantage in moving to virtual machines. Let's face it, Amazon, you know, we're here at AWS re-invent because virtualization has empowered Amazon to deliver massive compute power at a fraction of the cost. And the enterprise you mentioned earlier about how the money is flowing in here and it's because it's delivering economic advantage to the enterprise. So what that done is it's extended the perimeter. The network engineer now has, his perimeter is in AWS. His perimeter is the remote engineer that's dialing in. And that's put a lot of load on them. That's a- Certainly the internet, the cloud is unsecured, it's perimeter less. Exactly. So why would you run out of the internet and have unpenetration? Well, and you have limited control and power. Basically, the minute it goes on the internet, you lose control, essentially. To the extent that there's an issue, it's very difficult to troubleshoot because it's traversing through so many other networks. It's not your own network. And if it's your own network, you have control. We essentially give an organization, essentially their own global network. We hit a point about data in motion. Merv, Adrian, and Gartner last week in New York at the Duke Summit, a big data NYCR event on theCUBE said the big trend last week was data in motion. Yes. That's up and down the stack. That's spark and memory now down to the network, as you were saying. So now the network guy owns the problem too. So what is the network guy's role now? How do you guys come and speak to him to say, hey, new model, is it a changeover? Are they going to be scared? Are they going to embrace you guys? How do you talk to that new guy? Because he now has to be, he's more powerful. The network engineer under your scenario has more power to implement change for security. Yeah, and I think what that network engineer is is a partner that understands the space. Somebody who's going to have your tradition of being involved in extending the network and then helping promote interconnection as a means to get direct connectivity, the VPN's not enough. An internet overlay isn't going to solve your security problem. You need to have a partner who understands and has a global network that allows you to get direct connectivity between you and AWS or Azure or other cloud providers that you have. And, you know, console gives you that. It also gives you a user interface that allows you to see in a way that you've never had that opportunity before. So you've got transparency. Not only can you point and click where you want your network connected, you've got the visibility into the health of your network. So we see ourselves as empowering the network engineer. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, use the phrase at our event, the 10X WAN engineer. It empowers that engineer to do the work of 10 now. I mean, a lot of companies, you know, engineers are, depending on their organization, wishing they're having more resources, more peers, so that they get more done, but they're expected to do more with less. And so we basically, you know, console helps empower them to essentially do more for their organization and shine in many respects. Well, I think that's the key thing. The 10X engineer was a concept that was coined in DevOps world for full stack developers, kind of the ninjas, the rock stars, whatever you want to call it, the elite. Network guys are pretty elite. I mean, they're going to be cocky too. We know a lot of them. I know a lot of friends, they're smart as hell. We know that. So now a 10X network engineer has to say, okay, I've done my thing. And usually they're kind of away from the value. Now, what you're saying is they now can contribute directly to the business value. Because now when you're talking about a marketplace, you're now connecting suppliers, customers, services, products. If you believe the integrated stack on Amazon model, people are going to be pulling services from multiple vendors really fast, not like get a massive service agreement, do all this stuff. They want to lock in maybe some shadow IT kicks in. Absolutely. The network engineer now is involved in that. That's what you're saying. They're helping fuel innovation for their organization. And that's really key. It's take the iPhone. You put it in the hands of people, innovation starts to happen. And that's what we see, sort of the future. Give them the tools and then amazing things start to happen. And definitely network engineers with the right tools can help fuel further innovation, not just for their organization, but for an industry. And we're hoping to play a big role in that. I like you guys to both comment on my last question. We're running out of time. But I want you guys to share with the audience what's some of the feedback you're getting. Because your startup still, I mean, you're growing. You have some good funding. I'm sure you'd have another round coming from what I could tell last night. Sworn with the VCs around you. What's the feedback here at the show? You guys got a good boot location. What are you hearing for business opportunities? Al, and what's the technical comments from? Because it's a super geeky show. So what's the, what are you hearing? Yeah, from a business opportunity, we're definitely, I mean, the end customer activities, phenomenal here. But in addition to that, there's many, many partners that, and prospective partners that have approached us wanting to partner with console. So this AWS re-invent has been a phenomenal opportunity in that respect to really help us not grow just our customer ecosystem, but our partner ecosystem in. And we're really, really happy that we're here. How about the technologists that swing by? Yes. There are alpha geeks that would see this right away. Oh, absolutely. So I think the top and bottom for me, we're seeing engineers working at SaaS companies approach us and saying, look, we're getting customers asking us about getting direct connect. Is that something that you do? Do you understand BGP? Yeah, absolutely. That's our core domain that we can help you with that. So the sophisticated DevOps, the 10X DevOps guys come to us and say, we need a partner who can help us get now. They get you guys right away. Well, they see us as a solution. Yeah, yeah. So they understand it, they see value. And the second, at the bottom of the stack, we see the network engineer saying, hey, you're behind the Cloud Router project? That's super cool. We want to have an open source community that's helping us innovate network technology. And so the Cloud Router project's been really successful for us, adding value to the network engine. We're running out of time on it, but I want to get extra time. Explain the Cloud Router project. That is a really super project. Yeah. And getting great feedback here at AWS on that. Just share with the folks. Give a plug for that. Yeah, so Cloud Router is now available in the Amazon Marketplace for free. So feel free to spin up in VM and have a play with it. It's available in Docker, Rocket, variety of other container and VM formats. We're really focused on adding, there's a lot of technology around software-defined networking. Open Daylight, ONOS, Smart Monnet, projects that are just not making their way into the traditional Linux operating systems because they're sort of focused up the stack. We're focused down the stack. We want to make this the best open source community for the network engineer. And there is an open source community in this market in your area. Absolutely. Just a further plug. Or you can go to cloudrouter.org. Yeah, cloudrouter.org. Sorry, cloudrouter.org. Okay guys, IIS, which is consoles, the brand name. I think you're a really innovative opportunity. We've seen exchanges in the past, but I think now with the cloud, with APIs, with services that are going to be diverse and all over the place, persistent, secure connections. I mean, I don't really think people care about using the internet. They want the SLA around security. So I think you guys had a big opportunity. Good luck with everything. Great to have you on theCUBE. And thanks for stopping by IIS console here inside theCUBE. We'll be right back with more after this short break.