 From San Francisco, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering Console Connect Live 2015. Sponsored by Console, there's your host, John Furrier. Hey, welcome back everyone. We are here live in San Francisco, the Masonics Center in Nob Hill in San Francisco. This is theCUBE, SiliconANGLES flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGL, show my co-host, Jeff Frick, general manager of our CUBE business. And again, Console Connect Live 2015 is the event. This is where the action is happening. It's not, it's a very nuanced event, but all the big under the hood, down and dirty, in the engine room of innovation of the enterprise infrastructure is here, while Apple's having their big event in San Francisco underneath is where it's all happens. Our next guest is Craig McKesson, executive vice president of T5 data centers. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you very much, good morning. It's a pleasure to be here and excited to be part of theCUBE. So Jeff was and I were talking on the intro about, this is the engine room, a lot of innovation happening. Very nuanced, not a big fanfare in terms of volume, people interested. It's a boutique community of geeks and engineers who are building out the next generation transport, packets of being hijacked by China, DDoS attacks. We all know about what's going on in the press, but real innovation happening in this modern era of cloud computing, customers want connections that are reliable. And the old days was like, hey, just connect to your wide area networks end to end, put a box and you're done, not as easy. That's exactly right. I mean, this really is where it's all happening. You know, these are the technologies really that enable companies to stay in business and evolve with the speed of modern business. Obviously you mentioned the Apple event, amazing company, great products out there right now, but without technologies like this, the apps that you pull up, the apps that allow businesses to function every day, really wouldn't work. So the Apple kind of teases out through what I call the Netflix factor. People get used to the preferred experience of APIs, always on apps, pulling up iOS, Android, kind of diversity of new software, hence packets. And so, talk about T5, your business and what are your customers looking for? Because now they're thrust into this, hey, your old and stodgy siloed networks, that's not what users want. They want diversity, they want the iOS apps, they want APIs to their data from, whether they're a Salesforce data or enterprise data. What is the new environment that your customers and what are you guys doing around this? That's a good question. So T5 data centers, we're actually positioning it as not your traditional data center environment. What we are here to do really is enable our customers IT environments and IT strategies. So we have a national portfolio of data centers across the US, serving primarily the larger enterprise segment. As you know, with the emergence of cloud technologies, the way our customers are buying IT is definitely changing. They're not necessarily doing as much of the large dedicated suite type infrastructure, but looking for smaller deployments and the ability really to deploy in a hybrid environment, connect to the public clouds, like AWS and the Googles and the Microsoft Azures, things like that that enable their architecture. And so that's really why we're here and why we're a proud sponsor and partner of console, is really to allow our customers now to enact on those strategies that are going to make them successful in the future. And what do you see that they can do now with console, the promise of console that they really couldn't do before? Why is this an important moment in time? So with the emergence of cloud technologies, companies are really evolving more into an on-demand type of culture, right? So instead of having to pay for a lot of dedicated hardware and resources, technologies like console will allow them to create virtual connections into different environments, on-demand as they need it for whatever workload they're trying to support, whether that's big data, or if you're in a certain vertical at T5 or really starting to look at focusing in on the media and entertainment vertical, that business historically has been very project-based and there's been a disconnect between the project-based nature of their business and the way data center, compute and storage services are sold, right? So we're looking to utilize technologies like console to better align our service offering with our customers' needs and really, that's how this is becoming a game changer. What is the new requirement? I mean, it sounds really easy. The old days was connect boxes end to end. Why is console, and why is console connect important? Is it the ecosystem? Is the fact that people want multiple clouds, not just one data center, private clouds, how do we hear VMware talking about unified hyper cloud? What's the big thing that's tying, making all this work? I kind of like to use the analogy of Baskin-Robbins, right? There's 31 flavors at Baskin-Robbins for a reason. There's hundreds of cloud opportunities and options out there for customers as well, depending on the type of workload that they need. And so for a company to invest the time and resources to allocate and connect into all of those different types of environments really isn't feasible. So technologies like console really allow companies to make those connections that they need when they need them and how they need them. And so, I think, again, that's really what's exciting about this and how it's going to change the landscape. Do you guys see hybrid cloud deployments in a lot with your customers? We do, we do. I think if you can step back and think, yeah, IDC I think has said that 50 to 70% of enterprise users now have some type of cloud deployment, right? The majority of those really are hybrid environments, right? So there's always going to be a need for your difficult on-prem type of environment, but certain workloads are then bursting into the public space, or they're setting up their own private environment. And so it's intuitive that anytime you have a pendulum swing from right to left, it's going to settle in the middle in more of a hybrid type environment. So is the console ecosystem and the whole value proposition a cost driver or enablement of new capabilities, or both? It's really both, it's really both, right? So if you step back and think, console itself is going to enable a whole lot of efficiency within the market. But it's also going to, because you're driving efficiency, you're also going to minimize costs as well. So from a pure networking perspective, instead of purchasing dedicated circuits between points A and B, that you may be utilizing 20, 30% of the time, console will enable you to create those circuits and utilize them 100% of the time that you actually have them dedicated to you. Craig, you mentioned that there's hundreds of cloud applications out there. And I think we spend so much time kind of focusing on the big ones, right? We focus on the big public cloud providers, we focus on the big applications that everybody knows, Salesforce, et cetera. But talk about how kind of there is this growth of so many other specialty applications, smaller applications that are cloud based that we don't necessarily see, they're kind of below the radar that really speaks to having this ability to have this multiple direct connect environment. So if you think about all of the different ingredients and functions that there are in a typical business environment, right? Each of them may have their own types of applications that are needed. And so, from a software as a service perspective, it's much more efficient and scalable to offer those applications on a software as a service head model, right? As opposed to selling the individual licenses, right? And so, as a result, you're seeing rapid, rapid influx of those types of offerings out there. And again, console is going to allow the companies to pick and choose which applications they need when they need them. So I got to ask you about IT, IT transformation, something we hear about all the big shows, IBM, VMware, Oracle, all the big older vendors, HPE, you know what I mean, they're all out there. But now, private and hybrid cloud, well, on-premise and private cloud, and you have public cloud, creates hybrid cloud, which we found from asking every guest is just like distributed computing. It's an outcome of engineering. So I got to ask you a question. What do you say to the folks out there that are kind of on the sidelines? I'm doing it the old way, I got my data center, we're doing zero cloud, maybe some shadow IT out there, on some Amazon for some test and dev, nothing critical, but I got to evolve. I have old antiquated, WAN links sitting there with remote branch offices and I got to really do something. What is the direction? What do you tell that customer? What is the message to that IT, CIO or executive? Well, I think that's a good question. It's fundamental to the T5 data center's service offering, quite honestly. So we build enterprise grade, high quality, highly efficient, highly redundant facilities, right? So the data center's that they would build themselves. And so, but we also then give them the opportunity to create that hybrid environment and kind of stick their toe in the water, if you will. So we tell them that we will give them all of the security and the trust and the reliability that they're used to having on their own, but the ability to enable their future business needs. What's next for you guys? What are you investing in in your data center and your products? What's the key investment areas you guys are looking at bringing to your customers? So we're always looking at new markets, right? So we've got seven projects around the U.S. now. We're looking at establishing a broader footprint both in the U.S. and internationally. Within the data center, we have recently partnered with console, right? So we're looking again to what technologies can we bring in to help enable our customers? We're focusing on certain industry verticals. For example, we have large data centers in Los Angeles and large data centers in Atlanta. Report just came out that Georgia and Atlanta region is now the third most important media entertainment hub in the country between Los Angeles and New York and Atlanta. Georgia is number three. Number three, given the number of state incentives that have happened there, a number of TV shows and studios being built. Interesting. And so what that's creating is a lot of trouble, right? And issues between onsite and out-location activity going on in Atlanta and the need to get data and compute and storage resources back and forth between New York, Atlanta and LA, right? We're really excited to utilize technologies like console to enable that kind of collaboration and ultimately cost savings to that segment of the customer. Most large enterprises, like super large, you know, Uber large, huge, they basically can afford to have direct connections, my finance, their own fiber or whatever. Where's the line for console's market? Is it small, medium-sized enterprises at large? How would you describe, how would someone know, and I'll see if they're paying for it themselves, but where's the threshold where someone says, hey, build my own or go do it with console? See, that's the excitement, right? So it's really leveling the playing field. So those small, scrappy entrepreneurial businesses that didn't necessarily have the resources to buy all those dedicated circuits back and forth, now can jump in the game and roll up the sleeves and compete with the big boys, right? And conversely, the big boys can also evolve their businesses and act a little bit more nimbly as well and better compete with the smaller, up-story companies. So it's disruptive. It is very disruptive. So you see some entrepreneurial activity coming out of this. Oh, very much so. Very much so, yes. All right, final question. For the folks watching who aren't here, what is this show about? I mean, this will be watched by all the press, analysts, it's very nuanced market. What's this all about here? Is it an easy, a whole new market category? Is it an opportunity for new revenue, customers? What is this show about? Well, you mentioned it before. It's really about the ability to establish ecosystems, right? And when you are able to allocate resources from a lot of different directions and a lot of different perspectives into a certain problem, the probability of solving that problem is much greater. And so technologies like console are definitely a disruptor within that space. And we at T5 Data Centers are excited to be on the forefront of it and I'm just really excited to be here. Greg, thanks for coming on T5 Data Centers. It's a hot day in San Francisco. The jackets are off, first time on theCUBE. We have the jackets off all day, no AC. 100 degrees of San Francisco. They're rolling in packed cows behind us. You can see console connect live is going to be a great show. Again, this is a thought leader, the real leaders in networking and technology bringing whole new modern infrastructure to the table. We expect to see great things from this and as you know, the cube always breaks down the hottest trends and we're bringing that to you more. Live from San Francisco after this short break.