 live from Seattle, Washington. It's theCUBE on the ground. Covering KubeCon 2016. Brought to you by the Linux Foundation and Red Hat. Here's your host, John Furrier. Hello, and we are here in Seattle for KubeCon, Cloud NativeCon. This is the cloud event where all the developer actions happening here in the cloud world. I'm John Furrier, we're here on the ground. We got two great guests from Microsoft. Also part of the Cloud City Mafia, you got AWS and Microsoft Azure, you guys are welcome to theCUBE. We got Brendan Burns, a partner architect at Microsoft and Ross Gardner, who's the principal program manager of Microsoft, really for the open source, the container service. And Brendan, we know each other from Google now at Microsoft a couple of months in. Number one contributor in Kubernetes, you've been part of that Kubernetes ride from the beginning. We've had previous conversations, I'll just share that. But big moves by Microsoft, certainly Azure cloud is prominent, it's in the top three, depending on who you talk to in terms of, it's in the dialogue, it's the big four right now or big three Amazon, Google and Microsoft Azure. But a lot early days of cloud, Kubernetes is now a new spark we're seeing with massive growth around software development, orchestration, some of the things that we've talked about in the past containers. You guys just open source your container service. What does that mean? That's like a big move in the industry, your thoughts on that move, why you did it, motivations behind it. Some would say, why are they giving away the farm, Microsoft, they got the Azure stack, this could be a critical piece of the pie, but you open source it. Yeah, well I'll talk about it from a customer point of view and then you can pick up from the engineering point of view. So everything we use in Azure container service is open source. So we're consuming an awful lot of open source and we're leveraging all the innovation that happens there and contributing to the innovation as well. And we have customers who want to, they want to be able to change what we're doing in our published RP, our published API. And open sourcing the tooling that we use internally to build Azure container service means that we can work much more closely with customers in the community. We can close that development loop which brings us over to the engineering answer. Right, so I think that the other aspect of it is we really wanted to build a place where we could collaborate with people, where we could, you know, we have ideas about the kinds of things that we should build and the features we can get out and we go on customer visits and they say like, it'd be really great if you could build this feature for us. Well, you know, I think it's even better if we can have a community that helps us build those features so they don't just come to us and say, hey, this is what we would like, but they say, you know, we actually can invest in this, we can actually make this a thing. And I think that that's the, you know, I think that the real reason why the open sourcing wasn't because we weren't going to, it's because we wanted to find a good reason to do it and the good reason really is to build that community around it. Well, I have to ask a question because one, you know, my belief, I think open source and the collective role of the people creates faster velocity, faster code. So certainly a good move. I think it's a good move. It's a great strategy and we'll give you props for that. Impact the customers now is interesting. Now it's a community opportunity. How do you guys envision people using the tooling? Brendan, you're the number one contributor on Kubernetes, but this is not just KubeCon anymore. It's Cloud NativeCon, which is now going to, obviously Kubernetes is a big part of it. How does Kubernetes spread that love to other projects? Where's the action going to be developing? Well, I think it's always been, and I think Microsoft actually sort of maybe pioneered this, it's always been about the ecosystem. Right, it's always been about finding the collection of things that work well together and the people who are interested in building that ecosystem together. I don't think it's ever been about a single project. Right, and I think it's always been about finding the place where people with shared interests can collaborate because that way you build it once, right? You don't have 10 different people building the same thing 10 different times in 10 different ways. You build it once and you talk about it and you make changes and it becomes better over time. And so I think that's what we're doing with ACS Engine. That's what we've done in the past with other open source projects. Yeah, and to follow up on that, and ACS is not just Kubernetes. ACS is a choice of three orchestrators. We have Docker Swarm in there. We have DCOS, which uses Apache Mesos as well. And the reason for the choice there is because customers ask us for the choice. Some customers want Kubernetes. Some customers want DCOS. Some customers want the Docker native stack from top to bottom. And by open sourcing ACS Engine, we enable a broader collaboration across those different projects as well. And some of those tooling that Brendan's talking about the different tools on top, they work across different orchestrators. It's not just about one orchestrator or one set of tooling. It's about enabling the innovation across all of those different platforms. I was actually just talking to a monitoring startup earlier today about exactly that. Like delivering a monitoring solution that works regardless of the orchestration tooling that you get. So that's pretty powerful. Well, you guys know in the queue, we always try to, you know, squint through the moves on the chessboard. Yet it's more of a thousand flowers bloom. So I don't know if it's a chessboard or a garden we're looking at. So, but you know, the ecosystem is a huge deal. And I think that's important. And so if you look at that thousand flower bloom strategy, we're trying to understand the impact of what this means. Cause you got, you know, the incumbents like Oracle, we talked to those guys and Microsoft has a lot of legacy stuff. And some are saying, you know, they have that installed base. They're going to use that installed base and grab them into the cloud and you know, hold them in the cloud that way. So there's always that argument of Microsoft, their legacy business. Can you share some insight into the conversations you guys have around that FUD that's being spread around about that? Because that, you know, with open sourcing it and microservices and certainly Kubernetes, you can run anywhere potentially, right? Cause you guys aren't requiring anyone to come in on Azure. Yeah, yeah. And you're only on Azure with Kubernetes. You should clarify that the fear and certainty and doubt that's being spread around Azure in their open source strategy. I don't know, you want me to take a photo? Sure, so I mean, I think it's very clear from the get go that cloud and the growth of open source on cloud means that users are not going to accept lock in, right? It's just not, it's just not part of the game anymore. There are people out there who may still be locked in and they're going to continue to do whatever they can do. And many of them are evolving, right? I mean, I think there isn't, you say, legacy company, but I think actually most legacy, what you put in quotes legacy companies that we talk to. Well, Red Hat's a legacy company. They're actually, yeah, they're still evolving, right? Like everybody's still evolving. And I think at this point, the people who are coming into cloud newly, they know, they've seen what's come before and they know that they need to do it in a way that's agnostic to the cloud platform. And so I think a lot of what we're doing in a lot of the open source work is providing that platform and that choice that enables us to meet customers with the things that they want to use and that they can take away if they have to, right? It's a great challenge, actually, honestly, because it makes us build a better cloud platform, right? And that's it. And I think there is a lot of legacy there with Microsoft traditional, but what we're doing with Azure Container Service is not a typical Microsoft play. I mean, you just have to look at the people behind it, Brenda, myself and the team around us. Brenda's an open source guy. I opened up a few weeks ago as the president of Apache Software Foundation. I'm now executive vice president. I just stepped down a bit, but it's in our blood is to do it this way. See, you open up a project for Microsoft, so you can get demoted at Apache Software Foundation. There's no correlation. I can assure you I resigned. And stepped down, I should say, rather than resigned. But it's still active in those projects and still active there. And the key thing there is that, yes, there's a lot of legacy Microsoft products and we have a lot of customers, but cloud is not legacy. Cloud is new. Absolutely. And those legacy customers need to be looking at the hybrid environments, moving it into cloud as well as dealing with their legacy in the past. And we have to help them on that road. And exactly what Brendan said, that means we've got to build the best solution for our customers. I really appreciate you guys being candid on that question because that's the elephant in the room and you guys nailed it. And I think you're right. I think the market will not tolerate lock-in. That is absolutely the profound statement. Okay, go to the next level is the legacy environments, whether the customers got there through old tactics or not. And certainly Cisco and all the other incumbents have the same problem as that. I believe customers won't take lock-in as anymore. However, and they don't want to pat out, right? So Kubernetes, back to Kubernetes, is an interesting opportunity with containers. What is the playbook for customers? Who's like, hey, you know, I've been paying software licenses with those guys and these guys and I want to go cloud native. I see that future. How I get there on the timetable is going to be a function of how I execute that. Your thoughts on experience with the Kubernetes and the projects you're working with and customers. How do they get from where they are now to there? Sure. Full cloud. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that was always important from the get go was that if you went to Kubernetes, you could still use virtual machines, right? You still had a database that was on a machine. You could see that from your cluster and your cluster could interact with that thing, right? So you could leave the workloads that you wanted to leave behind, that you had to leave behind. You could leave them there, but they'd still interoperate and having that sort of gradual path forward. And I think what you're seeing with Windows Containers is another example of something where you can start moving forward, even if you're not moving, even if the platform is staying the same, even if the code is the old code, you can actually start containerizing it, start packaging it up and managing it in a way that is a little bit more modern. I think those are the two sort of things that I see happening. One is the sort of like, make sure you have the connective tissue. It's not a burn the boats kind of thing. And the other is, make sure that there's a gradual path. Make sure that the cloud is, gets a value fast, and that's the model to just get to value quickly and iterate. That's a cloud way. Guys, Ross in particular, what's your thoughts on the open source community? Because now you're seeing, and I want to get your thoughts on why now, this event, I've been to a lot of events with my career and very few moments you have that, hallway conversations, the sessions are great, it's packed, they're not letting quality people come in, fire marshals on everyone's butt there in terms of like, no you got to get, can't let anyone in. This really big energy here, why is this happening? Why is Kubernetes and the containers really galvanizing the app developer community? What's the, what's the aha moment for folks that aren't in the, inside the ropes? And I'm not sure that it is just now. This has happened before. It's happened many times. I mean, there's a different scale now because the cloud brings everyone together. It provides a monetization strategy for companies like Microsoft, which is different from selling box licenses. All I care about is selling compute. You know, and in order to sell compute, I need to enable solutions for customers, which means I need to work with the partners here. And so that model in open source has been around for a very long time. It itself is not new. What we're seeing though is new monetization. New environment. Well, I mean, the cloud is a new environment. So I would, I would agree. I hope it's been around this day now. Certainly Apache has led the way, has been a leader in licensing and packaging. But now with the cloud, it's an architectural shift, right? So you have, this is almost like a relief. People can see a path. Yeah, it is. It's people who were confused in the past about how do you leverage open source to the benefits of your business? Yes. You know, at the end of the day, somebody's got to pay for the code that's being developed. And so you need businesses behind these things. It's never been just goodwill. Yes, there's a lot of goodwill involved with open source, but there's always somebody putting food on the plate. And cloud and this change that you're talking about, the environment that you're working on has made it easier for people to look at different business models, ones that feel more comfortable. And that's certainly true for Microsoft in the Azure space. Microsoft's always been a platform company. It's always about enabling people to build software on top of what Microsoft builds. And as a result, they sell product. And the ecosystem is a big part to Brent's point. Microsoft's been a huge ecosystem play from day one. They nurture it. They reward it. People make money. There's good distribution. Exactly. And the ecosystem has moved. Exactly as you said. You know, the cloud is part of that ecosystem now. And so that's why our strategy with ACS is to just use open source because it means that we're maximizing the potential for partners to build and innovate on top of what we're building. We'll make sure we run it well. They'll make sure they innovate along with ours for customer need. Great. Congratulations, Brent. And my final question to you is, the developer community we're seeing and getting a vibe. And I kind of put my finger on it a little bit, but we're seeing a new kind of psychographic profile developing in the developer community. We want to see if you agree or validate or have a commentary on it. And that is the classic, you know, overused buzzword. Oh, the developer's getting closer to the front lines, close to the edge. Which is true, by the way, I believe that. But we're seeing a business-minded developer emerge. A whole new class of onboarding of developers, people who actually want to invent stuff. I call it the entrepreneurial world, it's called startups. But inside enterprises, there are now people who are saying, I want to go solve that problem. I'm going to lead the chart. So the developers are leading everything now, not just writing codes. So they're writing frameworks that will enable AI. They're doing all this cool stuff. So this notion of developers learning about the business side, and some just want to, you know, just write code all day long, some are much more business. Do you see that happening? Do you see the growth in that area? Do you see growth in general? What's your thoughts on the developer community, size, growth, psychographic? Yeah, I mean, I think that's definitely something I always try and push with my teams, right? Because at the end of the day, I mean, I don't know. I guess different people are excited by different things, but I'm really excited by people using the software that I write, right? So that means I have to write software that's useful and interesting and valuable. And I really encourage that with the team. My entire team, pretty much my entire engineering team is downstairs working the booth at the conference, right? And it's because, and that's unusual, right? I think that's not a usual thing that people do, but it's incredibly important to me because that's how they learn what's useful to the people who are gonna be purchasing this thing, right? That's the only way they can do it. And so, I mean, I guess it's a new model. It's the way I've always operated and it's always been the way I've tried to lead out teams. I think it's the only way that you build successful software, right? But I think on the other side, there's the abstraction, right? I assume that the virtual machines are there, right? Someone else is taking care of that particular part of it. So I'm building product on top of products that other people have built. I think the Canvas has seems to gotten bigger and I'm certain you might see that in the open source side of the projects coming in. It's like the Canvas is huge now. I mean, with the front lines in mobile and cloud, you could paint any picture, not just, hey, here's a HR app, or here's an open source project to do storage container. And I think that the notion of programming as a thing and the notion of building systems as a thing has just gotten sort of bigger and bigger and more well understood in the world. And so the kinds of people you get attracted into the profession are just, they're just more diverse than they used to be, potentially. I mean, there's still challenges to go there, for sure. There's more inbounds at Grace Hopper, 16,000 people, 15,000, one of 1,000 men that was there, but there was 15,000 women. So you're seeing the way that in tech is a huge onboarding of new talent coming in, so still bigger numbers needed. But guys, thanks for sharing, and certainly the Microsoft perspective, thanks for being so candid on the question that I asked, and thanks for your response. Appreciate it. Thank you so much for having us. No one tolerates lock-in, and that's the Microsoft perspective here on theCUBE on the ground. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.