 Live from Boston, Massachusetts, extracting the signal from the noise, it's theCUBE, covering Red Hat Summit 2015. Brought to you by Red Hat. Now your hosts, Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman. Welcome back to Boston, everybody. We're at the Heinz Convention Center. This is theCUBE, we're at Red Hat Summit. theCUBE is SiliconANGLE Wikibon's live production. We come to the events, we extract the signal from the noise. Doug Fisher is here, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the software group at Intel. Keynote speaker today, Doug, great to have you on. Great to be back. So you talked about several themes in your keynote, really emphasized the ecosystem. You talked about really four pillars. There's sort of workload roadmap, rich workload roadmap, I want to talk about that. Standards to create dynamic resource pooling. The whole is all about the data, the analytics piece, and then of course the software-defined data center. Everybody talks about the orchestration piece. Those are really your four main focus areas and you're building out the ecosystem to really drive those innovation areas. I wonder if you could talk about that and the importance of ecosystem to Intel. Okay, this is going to be a long answer, but cut me off if you want. So starting at the core, we have a pretty broad roadmap partner in the, all the way from my job is horizontal across a broad set of vectors, including the data center and optimizing solutions on that. And so we have a deep roadmap in the data center to meet the needs of different workload capabilities. All the way from the low end to the highest end data center platform. Low power to super computer. Absolutely, so we compete in high performance computing. And so my job is to ensure really I light up the software on that platform. I get held accountable for ensuring that the critical elements on our data center platforms are optimized to take advantage of any unique capabilities. Like for example encryption algorithms, ANSI is an encryption algorithm that was built into our silicon. My job is to make sure that software that could benefit from that takes advantage of those instructions to accelerate that capability. We have a lots of examples of where that's happened. Virtualization technology, when that first came out, it was my organization's job to work with the software ecosystem and drive that capability into the market. It's a great example using open source when virtualization technology first landed on our platforms, we actually spun up a team in Zen of all things and optimized Zen to take advantage of virtualization technology then involved the KVM and then Microsoft and VMware and everybody using that technology. So at the core, that's my job, is to light up and enhance and make sure that anybody that gets our platforms, they can be assured that Red Hat running on it, SAP running on it, anybody running on our platform are fully optimized to take advantage of that. On the resource pooling, it's really our job to work with the leading industry players to put standard mechanisms and knowledge in place to how to build out data center compute storage and networking capabilities. And so we have organizations across Intel working with various leaders in the industry to make that happen. We talked earlier before we went on air about working analytics. We've made a deal as well known with Cloudera and really behind that is the work that we had been doing in Hadoop and optimizing Hadoop. We really needed a partner that could drive those capabilities into market quickly. So my job is to drive that stuff upstream, all the optimizations we do upstream. You can look back at our distribution we originally had in the market. We had amazing performance capabilities. We've moved those upstream as we always do an open source and now we're working with downstream partners, Cloudera, others absolutely take advantage of that. Hortonworks, MapR, everybody takes advantage of it. And so that's an example of how we build platforms and then we work with the ecosystem to optimize for that. And we're working across different software providers to optimize their analytics and simulation software. To, and I always describe it, you got 44 Zettabytes of data, 45 Zettabytes of data coming in 2020. It's really crude oil. Tell you mine that for value and really extract that value. There's not much there. And so that's why we really believe, and I heard Steve talk earlier, really believe and that's where the value is going to come. And so that's why we've invested so heavily because we think that's where the new digital service economy is going to be founded in that data. And that the 50 billion devices we talk about is going to be consuming that value. And then we go all the way to where we're talking about today, which is OpenStack and ensuring that you're going to do an open software to find infrastructure at the cornstone is OpenStack. And talking about that. So come back to that. I want to ask you about the investment in Cloudera. I mean, big investment drove a big valuation. A lot of people say, wow, that's crazy. But what I heard from you just now is you want pole position in that data business. Data is the new oil. You've got to be there. And I also heard that you're an accelerant for the industry. It's not exclusive to you and Cloudera. It's something that you want the industry at large to take advantage of. That's kind of an interesting position that Intel takes as the accelerant. You couldn't have described it better. I couldn't have described it better. It's absolutely that. It's about accelerating the market. It's about driving those capabilities into a dupe that are mechanisms to ensure that the adoption occurs. Intel benefits as that technology is adopted into the data center. We really believe in the value of it. We see the service economy. We know this is going to be at the heart of it. And so we want to ensure that that capability is deployed as quickly as possible. So it absolutely is about us accelerating that capability upstream and then having partners that accelerate the deployment of that capability. So anybody can do it. Doug, so I wonder if you could talk about how microservices are impacting your group's roadmap. This week at DockerCon, I know Intel was front and center around what was happening with the OCP and the new container strategy. We're really early, but where does Intel see its role there? Well, I think I talked a little bit today. I think the first step has been made, which is having the open container project is about building a common compatible framework, container framework, which was critical. But where we see us now working is in things like securing it. That's another industry concern, is how do you secure these containers? So I talked a little bit about today is some of the stuff we're doing around securing the containers. We spun up a lightweight VM, which allows the software to take advantage of the virtualization technology already built into our platforms. And now you have that security, but you have the other concern of can it be brought up in the timeframe you'd want containers to be. And so we showed 150 millisecond bring up time for a VM. It's basically a container usage model using a VM. And so we're looking at ways to bring containers to the market, not us bringing them directly, but working with partners that are bringing containers to market, but doing it in a secure way and using capabilities like that. We have great technology in our hard work. We need to be able to reach in there and take advantage of it to secure the containers. I also talked about our kernel guard technology, which is a way to again, take advantage of the technology on our platforms, virtualization technology, to better secure the host kernel. So we're looking at different areas of security around our platform. That all drives upstream. So our objective is to get that upstream, get those capabilities in there and work with the broader ecosystem to look at these, evaluate them, partner with us, and then deploy them if there is real value in doing so. Yeah, I'm curious. Can you speak about how Intel looks at, not just partnering with somebody like Red Hat, but how does the open source ethos fit in with kind of the day-to-day life of what happens at Intel? Yeah, you know, I mean, you heard it earlier. Yeah, it's like saying, to say it's not going to exist is futile. Open source, in our view, is one of the tremendous innovation platforms. Everybody can participate. It's not owned by companies. It's not owned by anybody. And so it really is about contribution. And so from our perspective, I utilize open source to ensure that the technologies that we deploy in our hardware platforms are exposed as quickly as possible. We have great relationships with Microsoft and others, as well as the open source vendors. And we use open source as a mechanism to drive that. I talked about Zen, how we use that to drive virtualization technology. We will utilize open source to accelerate innovation. And so we look at it as a standard way of doing our work. We are, arguably, we vie in a friendly way with Red Hat, being the number one contributor to Linux. That knowledge, that capability of moving that ecosystem to really benefit from Intel platforms, works all the way down into the mobile devices. You see the work we do on Android. I think we may have talked about that before. Linux is Linux, it's one kernel. All that work rolls into the broad set of capabilities we have from the data center, all the way down to the Currie, Currie, which Brian Krizanich, our CEO, showcased at CS. So that's where we see Linux playing is, and any open source. I'm the chairman of the Linux Foundation. We drive open source capabilities. And so it doesn't just, it isn't just Linux, it's any open source capability that we feel there's a mechanism to take advantage of capabilities on our platform. We will participate. You talk about NFV. I gotta admit, I'm not really, I don't really get NFV. It seems like a hardware problem that the telcos have that the industry's trying to solve. But what is that all about? What's, I mean, what's going on in the telco industry? Well, I think, you know, it goes back to what Paul said in his keynote. We're moving into a world where the data center is going to be software-defined. That's the efficiency that we want to bring. And so there are projects around compute storage and networking that are designed to help accelerate that capability to give a software-defined infrastructure so that you can have compute pools that allow you to move workloads based on characteristics that you want to drive the solution to. And so that's just one another of the projects that's helping bring that forward. We have great relationships with a broad set of players in this marketplace. And one of the movements, obviously, as you described earlier, is the movement is software-defined infrastructure. And so networking is part of that. Yeah, I mean, okay. And you also talked about, well, actually, before I go there, I want to talk about OpenStack, because I'll come back to Open, if I could. In the spirit of accelerant, you gave some examples of Walmart, Disney, BMW, kind of early. They've been sort of the poster children for OpenStack. What are you seeing, OpenStack? What gives you confidence that it's going to really get hold in the enterprise? Yeah, that's a great question. If you take a look at the indicators, indicators are the number of members. We have over 25,000 members. That's clear that there's obviously great interest. Somebody cares. Somebody cares. Over 519, 20 companies involved. That's a measure of interest. The deployments I talked about, you just mentioned, is clearly a measure of Fortune 100 companies participating. This isn't small companies. These are major companies seeing the value there. But I think what's most exciting is the level of contribution. We struggle with how to measure that. We talked about the active contributors greater than 1,300, it's probably bigger. That's a three month old statistic. But you really have a deep level of active contributors. And so I'm confident in the fact that now we have the foundation driving working groups to really focus that. We always talk about it until there's a difference between speed and velocity. And speed is where we were headed with this. Lots of capabilities, lots of features, lots of improvements. Velocity points you in the direction of priority. And that's what we're doing now with these working groups is really ensuring that the vector we're heading on is really the most important vector in harnessing that capability to do that. And so we talked about the things we're doing on on-ramp. So improving the hardening open stack that can be utilized by Red Hat and then the OEMs I talked about participating. One of the other working groups that you talked about was the diversity working group. And I wonder if we get some details on that. I mean, it sounds like Motherhood and Apple Pie. Who's against that, right? What is it? What's it all about? What do you see as the mutual benefits to those who participate and to the community? Yeah, let's just start with the benefits. I think you heard about Intel's move in driving really a change in the entire ecosystem as we describe it and how we look at diversity. And we felt there was no other way than Intel doing it itself. Role modeling, what it really means. And when we first started talking about it, there was this common way of speaking about diversity, which is sort of the right thing to do. But if you really tease that apart, yeah, there's an element of that, but really what's more important, things don't, we believe you cannot sustain these type of efforts if there's not benefit to your shareholders. And if you look at the data, there's real benefit in diversity. Having diverse work groups really does generate better products which leads to better profits. And so we wholeheartedly believe in the value, not only the right thing to do, but also in the value it brings to our shareholders by ensuring diversity in our workplace will deliver better products to our customers. We feel the same way in OpenStack. We were one of the people that, one of the companies that pushed for the diverse working group, diversity working group, is because we feel that the innovation that's going to happen in OpenStack will be much more rapid and much more capable if you have a diverse set of players in that environment. And so it really is about creating a safe and a collaborative environment so all can participate. And that's what we're all about. It's all about inclusion. We talk more about inclusion than we say diversity. It's really about including. Everybody should be included and allowed to innovate. And so the data speaks for itself. It is the right thing to do, but it's also very good for business. So how do you measure diversity? Is it people of color? Is it women in tech? Is it a combination? Intel has its metrics that we focus on. We focus right now. You could take a broad sweep, but we really focus on technology. Women and underrepresented minorities in technology. So we're being very prescriptive. And this is the area that needs the most attention in my view. And so we've been very prescriptive about and measuring it and holding management accountable internally. So I'm held personally accountable for achieving certain objectives around underrepresented minorities as well as female, technical females that meet a criteria that they are technically contributing. And you measure that with, how do you measure? Is it ideation? Is it products that come out of it? Well, no, I mean, we measure, we know the success will be upon itself in the market. We measure this by determining our hiring rates for candidates, the overall population of our candidates, and we want to drive that to be representative of the available workforce. Yes, sorry, no, I mean, in terms of the other point you were making is there's got to be economic benefits or it's not sustainable. So how do you measure those economics? Is it the number of ideas that come out of it, the productivity of the working group? I am personally not aware of us taking specific measurements on that. We've looked at previous data that shows this. If you take a look at the marketplaces we've started participating in, one great example is in the wearable space. We learned a lot going in as technologists, going in and not having a diverse work environment or diverse project team, going into those markets. We quickly learned that not having that was a real challenge for us in understanding how to meet the market needs of things like a wearable device. You can see that going through all of our product lines when you look at the diverse capabilities of a workforce really can add value, not just on wearables but in our user experience, for example, that we're driving in the marketplace on our standard PCs. All those different segments will benefit from that kind of diverse mindset. Okay, so we're out of time and I know you got to run but so I'll give you the last word, sort of the future of Intel and Red Hat and what it means to the customer base. Well, we've been involved with Red Hat for over 20 years. We've built capabilities in the enterprise together, carry grade Linux, enterprise Linux, all moving lockstep with Intel platforms. We've grown together in this industry. Paul talked about how relevant it is in the data center and we're going to continue to do that and we're moving forward on the on-ramp program with Red Hat to really ensure that we drive deployment. We're going to drive the readiness but what's critical, we drive the deployment of OpenStack capabilities into the market and we're working with Red Hat and then the partners I talked about earlier, Dell and Cisco. All right, Doug Fischer from Intel. Thanks very much for coming on theCUBE and telling your story, really awesome production over the last couple of decades and we'll be watching for the next few. All right, thank you guys. All right, thanks very much. Keep it right there, buddy. This is Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman. This is theCUBE. We're live at Red Hat Summit. We'll be right back.