 Live from Santa Clara, California, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering Nextwork 2015, brought to you by Juniper Networks. Now your hosts, John Furrier and Stu Miniman. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Silicon Valley for a special presentation of theCUBE here at Juniper Network's Customer Summit. This is theCUBE, our flagship program. When we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise, I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE. Stu Miniman, lead analyst on infrastructure and cloud at wikibond.com. Our next guest is Ron Windwards, with server-central director of network engineering. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you guys. Great to be here. Before we came on, we were like, I can talk networking, let's talk networking, because Juniper is in the middle of a major transformation. Their horizontal scalable platform, really powering a lot of innovations. And they don't have their own cloud, but they're playing with all the clouds. But all the action right now is happening in that middleware kind of cloud data center market where I got an infrastructure that I need to architect for software-driven, server-centric architecture. What's your take on the landscape with Juniper and just the overall data center architectures today? So in networking and service provider, the old antiquated way was you run a cable somewhere if I have to reach somewhere that is across a data center, maybe across a couple data centers or a metro. I've got to get cross-connects. I've got to rely on people. I have to deploy. I've got to maybe deploy expensive equipment or maybe I have to reposition this into my cabinet. And that's, it takes a long time. It's expensive. It's not always viable. So now we're looking to the network to maybe be able to provision in infrastructure across the backbone, maybe not itself, but the ability to do that and reach anywhere in the network with the control of the operator, being able to build the network, click provision services across a metro instead of having to redeploy equipment everywhere. Talk about the dynamic over the past five years. Obviously the cloud movement you've seen with DevOps, software development now, since the iPhone came out, we just talked about earlier about mobility and internet things, really exploding with data, new types of applications, more service area for security. Talk about what's changed in the past five years because five years ago it was relatively stable and five years earlier, 10 years ago today from today, provision, rack and stack, things are clean, things are good, we've got our apps running, got off branch offices, now it's like, whoa. Yeah, so for a long time networking was very stale. It's very exciting again. And I think that that comes from the customer base. I think that it comes from the innovation in the service provider space and the providers of the hardware, the manufacturers. So the applications you talked about, apps have exploded and those people are server people who are used to, I'm able to see real-time analytics, I'm able to see real-time data and make insightful decisions based on what I can see out of the application. That hasn't really existed until recently in the network and we're starting to see that now. So the customers are driving the need for, I want to see metrics that I can use to make insightful decisions or maybe identify a problem more quickly and react more quickly or maybe use automation to react before I can even have a human look at something to mitigate a problem, let's say, or an attack, let's say. So the previous five years coming up to now have been kind of a feeling out where this stuff is gonna go and I think as an industry, maybe in the past year to 18 months, we really have started to grab hold of where we're going to go and now we're starting to see, now we're really starting to figure out what's going to be next. So, Ron, I'm wondering if you can sketch out for us a little bit about what your network looks like, how many people you have and what's kind of day-to-day? What are the activities that kind of keep you busy and where's the innovation happening? So, Server Central is a data center and co-location company. That means a lot of things to a lot of people but primarily it means we're a place to put your servers, your critical infrastructure, your critical data and a place to have it reliably out there on the internet on redundant power, redundant internet service and that's the start of it, right? So, then it's maybe you're a small business or maybe you're a multi-million dollar financial company, maybe you're somewhere in between or maybe you're a web startup. Server Central is a company that can really tailor to your needs for I can provide you with managed switch, I can provide you with managed firewall, maybe I'm providing you with transit and really complex BGP service or maybe I'm just a place for you with great power and great hands and you operate your own network. So, Server Central really does all of that. We are a partner of Juniper, we have been, we're a var of Juniper, we've been Juniper users for at least 10 years. We use Juniper MX as the core of our routing. Every customer who is a Colo customer connects with redundant connectivity to two diverse Juniper MXes. If you're a customer who has managed switch or managed firewall that's done on Juniper EX or QFX, firewall is done on SRX, so we really, if there's a need in the network and if customers are asking for it, we're going to look to Juniper to see if there's a solution that they can provide and we're a very strong partner and love the power of Juniper and Junos. Yeah, it's a really interesting space. So, you've got both the, you know, kind of bring your stuff and we can hold it or we can deliver you with service. Absolutely. In either way, it sounds like you're handling the network for them. I mean, one of the questions we have is, you know, some of these big network changes that are going on, getting the skill set to, you know, program it, automate it, you know, curious to hear what you're doing with SDN, but, you know, if I'm the average mid-range customer, it's like, that's probably a lot more heavy lifting than I'm willing to do. Yeah. And therefore, you know, I go to somebody that can handle it better. Exactly right. What are you seeing and what's the pitch to your customers? So, the pitch is, we are a provider that can provide you anything, you know, bespoke custom network solutions. That can be just internet, reliable internet access, but maybe, again, you're a web startup and you're full of developers, but you don't have anybody that really can build and maintain and monitor your network. That's where we come in. The same people who build our network can build your network and, you know, it can be that. Maybe you are a, you have a small project and you're a big company, and you don't have the time to deal with the build out or the, you know, the configuration of your equipment. My team can do that, you know, our company can do that. So, it really is, it is a very custom, you know, whatever you need, we can make something custom to fit the bill. Okay, and I'm curious, do you see customers starting on one side of the business and shifting to the other or shifting back? You know, what's that dynamic look like? Yeah, so, a lot of what we see, because we do offer managed switch and managed firewalls. So, customers who have stayed with us and grown with us for a long time, we maybe have deployed their initial infrastructure, but they learn more about networking as they go along, because these are very bright, talented people who are building great companies, right? And they're learning more about the network and learning, okay, well, maybe I can handle some of this myself. So, we're seeing people move to being able to, maybe they don't want to control the network, but maybe they want the analytics and the information that can help them decide the performance of their network and how to grow it, you know, going forward. We also do see metal, you know, traditional collocation, going to hybrid cloud, that's, you know, the past year and a half, two years, we've seen that. And so, people want that, I don't want to deploy metal servers anymore. I have my need for metal servers, I have my need for virtualization, and I need a way for you guys, server-central, to marry the two networks together. And, you know, that's been something that we're using, you know, specifically with some of the contrail and SDN stuff, too. Yeah, so, one of the big trends we see is customers are looking to access, you know, more in different types of data. So, some, what they own, some, they're tying into other cloud services, sometimes they're doing things in the public cloud. How does that tie into what they do? Yeah, yeah, so, again, it's back to that traditional infrastructure and collocation type model. But as you said, maybe I want to spin up 100 VMs somewhere in another cloud provider like an Amazon. We have capacity to those providers where we can provide them with a VPLS connection to our handoff to them and maybe get them dedicated service, maybe they just use our own existing connectivity to them, like maybe it's not a dedicated cross-connect, maybe you're just using our Amazon peering, for example, so, you know, to have the ability to get customers to wherever they need on our Juniper network, you know, it's Juniper that empowers, that enables that for us. So, about managed services, because this is a big deal now. You can manage cloud, I got managed infrastructure. The OPEX, CAPEX thing is happening, we know that. The economics are there, there's incentives. Cloud has economic deployment incentives. You guys are in that managed business, right? You help customers there. What's the big trend in that market? Is it just capacity by the clients to go there? Is it budget, timing? What's the need? What's holding the world back from having turnkey managed services? Almost like we have electricity today. Almost thinking like, soon it's going to be that way. Yeah. You're in the front lines. What are you seeing? So, we see people who maybe want to start out maybe with metal, or we see the other side of that. We see customers who want to start out with virtualization just to maybe put some of their applications or try some things here and there. And what we actually see is a combination of both. Eventually, people, there is a need for metal and there is a need for virtualization. So, customers will see grow into both sides of that and really create a fabric of both sides for customers. It's not that I'm used to exclusive metal and all this stuff's happening. But ultimately, they're kind of, I won't say groping, but they're engineering, they're iterating to ultimately a hybrid cloud market. Exactly. Which is not a product. You can't buy a hybrid cloud. You kind of engineer it. Yeah, sure. Yeah, so there is a challenge there when I have my metal infrastructure and I've got my cloud infrastructure and how do I connect the two together and make them on the same subnet and all that stuff that we rely on networking to stitch together and to make that ubiquitous access for everybody in the network. What about an open stack? What's your take on that? I just want to throw this. It's just popped in my head so it's thrown out there. Yeah, I think it's one of the technologies that is powerful in the market. We are not using it, but plenty of people are. Are customers asking for it or not really? You're not your wheelhouse? Not for us. We have a very specific type of deployment. It's not so much an open stack. There are open virtualization platforms that we'll use. There's some custom things. There's some VMware things, so there's, you know, it's... You guys have a lot of services. I want to just kind of take a step back. You got your products and you got some managed services. What's the hottest stuff that you guys have? What's the big sellers? What are people buying? So, A, people come to Server Central because of our ability to provide resilient networking, high performance networking, knowledgeable staff. And then the things that they're buying are the big virtualization platforms. They're buying managed switch, managed router. The classic stuff. The classic stuff, but I think a lot of it is also for our ability as a service provider and our care for customers. So it's classic stuff, but everybody's network is not classic. Everybody's network is unique to themselves. I would agree. What are you guys known for? A better question. What are you guys known for? We're known for reliable networks. We're known for knowing what we know and doing a good job of what we do. And we're known for uptime, uptime and performance. It's interesting. You become what you're known for. Yeah, sure. And so that's your company's DNA. Yeah, absolutely. How about the cloud? How do you see the cloud in the future for you guys? I mean, taking that to the next level. What are some of the challenges you guys see and what opportunities, what gets you excited? Yeah, so it's that room in the data center, right? Room as in where am I going to put things in the data center? I have a cabinet of hypervisors and then I have another cabinet of hypervisors and then maybe I have to grow into another computer room. The cloud is that footprint, right? I've got to stitch all of that together. So the things that we're looking at with contrail, contrails in our labs, QFX is something that we're using to build this, stitch this network together. So where are we going with the cloud? It's going to be how do I provide this, how can I touch anything in these huge data centers and make it one footprint, one thing that is an overlay that is invisible to the customer? My final question is share with the folks out there that are watching that have a data center. All this pressure, they need a partner. What advice would you give them to take that first step? I'm almost like, do they jump into the deep end and like lash around for a while? Do they go into the low end of the pool and kind of put their floaty on, go out to the networks? I mean, it's all kinds of different approaches and how they attack the future. Yeah, I say, what would you say? Interview the people that you're talking to, do some research, look at companies like Server Central, look at companies who will allow you to talk to their engineers, the people that are going to build your network, let them know. Put their toe in the low end, they were jumping the deep end, what would you recommend? Kind of different depends, right? Yeah, I say it depends. I say, go on data center tours, see the facilities that you're going to go, be partnering with, and I don't think that it's not a viable thing for everybody to just jump in headfirst with all of their data center needs into a place. So, when you do do that, get to know the people behind the company, get to know the people who will support you. My final, final question, I just want to just jump to my head was, Jennifer Blatnick said earlier that the new kinds of innovators are revolutionaries. You see those guys all the time because you're, again, you're in the front lines. What's the mindset of that revolutionary in the customer base? The ones who really want to make the change happen, the ones that are pushing, hitting that brick wall hard, breaking it down. They hold you accountable. They're the people who look to you as a partner and not your service provider. They look to you as your partner and if they hold you accountable if they need you and they look at you as part of their staff. If somebody signs up for a managed service, they expect you to act as an employee just like any of their other employees. So, those people who are the innovators, the really fun, interesting customers, they're going to hold you accountable too and we expect that and that's part of what we do. They expect what they want. They want their hard charging. They want you to be hard charging but reliable. Yeah, absolutely. Ron Wynward, thanks so much for coming on here, sharing the insight on the networking stuff from the trenches, from out in the front lines of the networks, this is theCUBE, sharing the data here at the Juniper Customer Summit. We'll be right back with more after this short break.