 Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Microsoft Ignite, brought to you by Cohesity and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite here in Orlando. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, co-hosting today with Stu Miniman. We are joined by Calvin Roland. He is the SVP of Business Development at F5. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. So, set the scene for viewers, what is F5? What are you about? You're based in Seattle, what do you do? Based in Seattle, founded in 1996, when public in 1999, we were known as the load balancer back then. We were the grandfathers that created that market space. We evolved it to an application-centric focus, so now known as an application delivery controller, ADC market, and we're the leader in that space. You were $107 million in sales in 2001, today, two billion-plus companies. A little bit of growth, a little bit of growth. It's quite a ride, but we're looking, we're not satisfied, we're looking to double that and more over the course of the next few years. Yeah, so Calvin, I've got a networking background, so obviously watch the ADC market. I might have been a little bit further down in the layer one through three stuff, but watch layer four through seven. I actually forgot that you guys are based in Seattle. There's been a little bit of activity over the last 10 or 15 years. Maybe you can explain how cloud's been impacting your space. Haven't this all done virtualized and all the cloud guys are just going to eat your business alive? So I'm glad you asked that, actually. So a lot of people have said, gosh, the public cloud, isn't that a problem for you? Is that going to be a headwind at best for you guys? And the answer is, well, if we don't continue to innovate the way we have since 1996, well then, yes, of course that's going to be a problem for us, but it's actually also a tremendous opportunity for us, and let me tell you why. So in the past, we were a physical product deployed in a data center. It had a floor, it had a roof, it had air conditioning. We put our product in a rack, and you had to buy all of the services in that box, if you will. And so then, even as servers and data centers virtualized, and we had virtual editions of our product, big IPVE, you still had to buy every feature that was in the product. But now, with the advent of the cloud, we have an opportunity now to disaggregate those services and then re-aggregate them in any number of ways that are bespoke or specific for a given implementation construct. So the cloud puts us in a position to get in front of more application workloads, to get to more customers, different personas like DevOps and AppDev that we would not have been able to get in front of. So it puts us in a position to deliver on this vision we have, which is supplying application services for every application anywhere. Calvin, it's interesting, there's another Seattle-based company posting a 30,000 versus Microsoft has been going through their own digital transformation. Correct, we think about Windows on the PC, Windows on the server, well, we've talked a lot about Windows 2019 and things like that, but Microsoft's gone through a digital transformation and it sounds like F5's going through a lot of those. Maybe help connect the dots as to the Microsoft ecosystem, how F5 plays into that. Okay, sure, well we have a long history of going to market together. It's a coincidence, but it doesn't hurt that we're across Lake Washington from one another, F5 in Seattle, Microsoft in Redmond. But back in the early 2000s, Microsoft and F5 started working together saying, hey, server constructs have moved to a three-tier architecture, being accessed through a web browser. There is a traffic management requirement to make sure that these applications, these servers are always available running fast and then more secure than they would otherwise be. We should be working with one another to make sure that we have best practice implementation guidance for our customers. And we focus on the enterprise, obviously. So it started there and as the world started to evolve, server virtualization, data center virtualization, and now the cloud, we've continued to work hand in hand. And so now, regardless whether or not you're deploying Azure Stack on-prem, enabling a private cloud, and it's probably an and statement, it's not an or statement, deploying applications in Azure, you get the same experience as a result of that collaborative cluster. So working hand in hand for digital transformation, you talked about the best practices, what have you learned, what emerged, what patterns, what behaviors that you have learned that you could also send to other companies? So the beautiful thing about the cloud, about digital transformation is now there is something that can satisfy that insatiable appetite in the marketplace for more and more applications, more complex architectures as well. The good news, the technology is there, the economy makes sense, but that introduces complexity, right? That can actually be a gating factor for the enjoyment of that digital transformation. So a best practice is implementing consistent methodologies for application and security services for the apps that you are standing up in this multi-cloud architecture. By having consistent methodologies, you actually give yourself an opportunity to continue that pace of innovation. So the beauty is you're deploying more applications than ever before, more capability, more productivity. You're also increasing the opportunity for things to fail, you're also increasing your exposure footprint, if you will. 53% of cyber attacks are focused on the application, for example. Having consistent methodologies for ensuring that you have an appropriate security posture is something that obviously is a table stake. And so F5 has been focusing on that as we go forward. Yeah, one of the things we look at is it's not just where things live, but a lot of times, how do I take advantage of what the new platform can offer? You talked about in the cloud, I can choose what features I need. As customers, they're building new applications, whether that's microservices, containerized serverless or the like, what opportunities are there for F5 to get in there more, I don't know if it's new features or the like, but yeah. So the thing that we need to do is, speaking a little philosophically, is we need to meet customers where and when and how they want to be met and with what they want to be met with. I can flip that around and say the same thing for the applications. In this new application capital economy that we have, the application decides where it should be deployed. And so we need to do the technology and business model, they both go hand in hand, innovation to ensure that we do just that, meet the workload where and when and how it wants to be met and with the features and functionality that it needs to be met with. And so we have iterated our product roadmap portfolio, so we still have our physical big IP product. We still have the VE virtual edition version of the product. We now have a cloud specific version, cloud edition. We are developing and will be available in our FY19, a DevOps CICD focused version of the product. We have a SaaS offering that is in development being incubated as we speak. So we are looking to attack all of those vectors. So at the moment of ideation and instrumentation and orchestration, we can be there to make sure that those personas know that they can take advantage of the application and security services that we provide. Kevin, I want to have you take us one level deeper on security, so obviously critically important, something we've been talking a lot about, trust with Microsoft and how does security play into the product line from F5? It has for some time. We're just now finally shining a brighter light on it. Because we were the indoor and outdoor for the majority of data centers, I'm dating myself by saving data center for applications in the past, our customers have said, hey, you're providing layer four through seven application services for us. This is an obvious place for you to supply security services like a web application firewall, access services, DDoS services, et cetera. And so we have done that. And we've become a leader, for example, in the web application firewall WAF space. And so you'll continue to see us now focus on standalone security offerings and take advantage of that footprint that we've established in the marketplace. With this multi-cloud construct in mind. So you've painted this picture of a landscape, a multi-cloud world, customers have so much choice. They're also struggling to keep up with the pace of innovation. I'm curious how you at F5 keep up with the pace of innovation and then also how you help customers do the same. There's no problem, it's easy. I'd like to say that we're better at it than everybody else, but we're in the pool swimming as fast as we can with everybody else. I used this phrase before. The market has this insatiable appetite for more and more applications. Now the good news is, well the bad news is there is not commensurately more human capital to satisfy that insatiable appetite. No different for us. Luckily technology and the economy for that technology has put us in a position to have a prayer, if you will. So, you know, CICD technology, obviously the agility that the cloud brings to us, the notion of being able to spread the tent that is DevOps to envelop the NetOps profession in a way that we now have coined this phrase, super NetOps. So we've given the traditional NetOps profession the opportunity to partner more effectively with the DevOps persona that is driving a lot of this innovation to say, hey, as you're instrumenting these applications you need to make sure that you're thinking about these layer seven services be they traffic management or security focused from day zero, and we can help you do so. So there's that on the implementation side and on the development side, I mean, you know, we're just hiring like crazy and changing our methodologies like crazy as well. Just like everybody else. So I want to ask you about the hiring. I mean, this point in time so many tech leaders really struggle with finding talent with the right kinds of skills and also the right kind of mindset because it is actually the people that drive the innovation. So how do you recruit and how do you retain the talent to make sure that they are there to make F5 a successful organization you wanted to be? I'm going to make me put on my amateur chief HR officer hat. I mean, it's a challenge for us just like it is everybody else. Now we're lucky. We're in cloud city. We fell backwards to being in the most amazing spot on this rock that's hurling through space. And so we benefit from the proximity to us being cloud central, if you will. And so almost through osmosis we've picked up the ability to have that cloud shining us to attract talent. But we have to diversify our R&D strategy as well. And so we're not just hiring in Seattle. We're not just hiring in San Jose. We're not just hiring in Spokane and Lowell, Tel Aviv. We have, like many others, we've stood up an F5 Innovation Center in India as well for us to help us continue to drive that velocity of hiring for, for TechTown. We're going to continue to make investments in the R&D centers that we have state side and in Israel and also in Warsaw, Poland. But for us to be able to continue to drive the R&D for the growth aspirations that we have, we're hiring in India as well. Calvin, this is actually the first time we've had theCUBE at this event. We've done lots of industry events in the infrastructure side, the operating system side, the server side, the cloud and the like. You've had a large partnership with Microsoft for years, so maybe help for people that haven't come. Give them a little bit about what they're missing by not being at Microsoft Ignite. What kind of the vibe is that you get from customers at the show, meetings you're having, people you're talking to. Well, I benefit from getting to be at Ignite and InVision as well. The business focus sister event, if you will. But specifically to Ignite, all I could say is if you could turn the cameras around, you would be able to see the energy that has taken place here. I actually feel like I'm shouting a little bit, so hopefully I'm not bursting the eardrum of the listeners right now, because it's loud in here. There's a lot of energy, there's a tremendous number of technology companies here, just like F5, that see an opportunity to be drivers of digital transformation. So people are curious about some of the challenges that we've talked about, and you're not here, well then you've missed an opportunity. Anything that you would differentiate, Microsoft and its ecosystem in this show and InVision too, the business side, compared to some of the other shows of the world. We go to invent and VMworld and the like. It's breadth and depth. So either you get a very focused, very deep technology subject that you're drilling on an event like this, or you get wide and shallow. And what I would say about here is because of the decades really of enterprise focus and innovation and forward thinking of Microsoft, you get the breadth, but you also get the depth as well. And actually, you're the first guest we've actually had that mentioned the sister event. Maybe give us a little bit of color of what goes on there. I'll oversimplify it. The planners of the events are going to cringe, but I guess the simple differentiation is tech focus at Ignite, business focus at InVision, if you will. So a lot of business leaders there that are being spoken to with the language that they need to be spoken to with, helping them understand the breadth and depth of the technology that's happening here at Ignite, but translating it into business transformation. So here we're focused a little bit more on technology innovation over at InVision. I don't even know if I'm pointing in the right direction. Business model innovation. So if F5 were to have its own conference, its own Ignite-like event, what would you want to communicate about the vision and the strategy and the product services that F5 provides? I've touched on it, so I'll just reiterate it. We are excited about the phenomenon that is multi-cloud implementation constructs, digital transformation. We're excited about being a driver for that phenomenon, enabling it to happen at a pace that it otherwise would not be able to happen in. And so the innovation that we're doing from a technology perspective, the product portfolio that I described, BigIP, VE, Cloud Edition, BigIQ, our management and orchestration platform, our CI-CD focus, cloud-specific implementation, our SaaS, our managed service offering that is silver-line. All of that technology innovation we're tremendously excited about, along with business model innovation, licensing models like enterprise license agreement, subscription, et cetera. All of this puts us in a position within the Venn diagram that is digital transformation to actually achieve that nirvana, which is providing application services for every application anywhere. And so if you come to our event, that's what you're going to learn about. Actually, F5 Agility was in our backyard in Boston. Just missed it, just missed it, just missed it. Yes. Excellent, excellent. We'll be there next time. Counting on it. Don't say it if you don't mean it. Great. Well, Calvin, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was a real pleasure having you here. It's a pleasure being here. Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. We will have more from Microsoft Ignite and theCUBE's live coverage in just a little bit.