 Live from Boston, Massachusetts. It's theCUBE, covering Red Hat Summit 2017, brought to you by Red Hat. Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and welcome back to the three days of live coverage here at Red Hat Summit 2017. The sixth keynote of the week just wrapped up. Everybody's streaming out. We've got a couple more segments. Happy to welcome back to the program a couple gentlemen we had on actually at the OpenStack Summit. John Alessio, who's the Vice President of Public Services, and Nick Hopman, who's the Senior Director of Emerging Technology Practices, both of which I've had. Gentlemen, great to see you again. Great to see you again, Stu. Good afternoon. Yeah, so a year ago, you guys launched this idea of the Open Innovation Labs. We're opening these labs, you know, this year you've got some customers. We actually had Optimon earlier in the week. We're going to have the easier AG guys on. I should say, I was correct earlier this week. I shouldn't say guys. We will have, actually, I think it's two doctors. And a woman that are on. Andre and Dorothy. Andre and Dorothy, so really amazing customer testimonials for working through. So John, why don't you start with, give us the update on the innovation lab program. Where it's open and innovation gets discussed a lot. Give us the real meat of what happens. So just maybe a quick recap. So Stu, we had about a year and a half ago or so. Our strategic advisory board tell us, Red Hat, we really are looking for you to help show us the way in how to develop software, but also kind of help us leverage this culture that Red Hat has in developing software the Red Hat way. And so we worked with about a dozen clients across the globe. Got a lot of great feedback on what they were looking for. We created an offering and then we launched, as you said, in Austin at OpenStack Summit. And now we've done many engagements in Europe and in North America across multiple different industries. We had here at the summit this week, actually two clients talk on the main stage, both Optum and Easier AG. And both of them have been through innovation lab engagements, very different industries, very different clients. But what it has proven in both cases is it's really been a great way and a great catalyst to kind of spark innovation. Whether it's within an existing IT infrastructure or building out some capability in a particular customer environment like we did with Optum, or kind of taking some ideas. And I'll let Dorothy and Andre tell their story when they come on and work with you. I don't want to take their thunder, but a great way to show you how we can work with a startup and really help them kind of take their vision and make it reality in an application. Yeah, Nick, we've done so many interviews about the various pieces, lots of interesting business. I look at, it reminds me of that kind of pipe lining that you talk about. One of the announcements this week was OpenShift.io, which helps with kind of the application modernization. Can you maybe help us put together how the products that Red Hat does and what you're doing in the open innovation labs, how do those go together and mesh and new stuff come in? No, it's good. It's actually kind of at the core of what we do anyway. So we are building on top of the foundation, the technologies of Red Hat's core platform, but in a residency with Open Innovation Labs, we are tying in other technologies, other things outside of the stack. But with OpenShift.io, what we've created was what was called the push button infrastructure. How are we showing with the process and everything to innovate on top of the Red Hat technology is how do we accelerate that journey? And so we created what was called the push button infrastructure to show that foundational acceleration and OpenShift.io is actually now kind of part of that core and adding in other components, other technologies that Red Hat has, whether it's our ISV partners, things in OpenShift Commons, all those things to accelerate the application development experience. And so I think with OpenShift.io and as Red Hat continues to evolve in the development kind of tooling landscape, you're going to see how we are helping our customers do cloud data of application development more so than ever before. Yep, and maybe to add to that too, Nick, and we were talking to a client this morning about kind of some of their challenges and their priorities for this current fiscal year. And that particular client was talking about Jenkins and a number of non-Red Hat technologies as well because at the end of the day, our customers have Red Hat products, have non-Red Hat products. And I think the great thing, Nick, and maybe you can mention this is, when we look at that push button infrastructure that we've built, it's not really a Red Hat thing, although it clearly is tied to the Red Hat technology, but it's even bigger than that. I think that would be important for the team to understand. We actually have online, it's what we call our tech stack and it allows the customer to kind of select the technologies that we've currently got integrated into our push button infrastructure and it's always evolving. So I think what we're trying to bring to the table from a technology perspective is our more prescriptive approach, but it's always changing, always evolving. So if customers are wanting to use X or Y technology, we're able to integrate with that, but even more so, you take that technology as the foundation and put a couple droplets of the Red Hat DNA and the culture is really where that innovation and that inspiration is kind of where it's culminating on top of it. So they're building out the applications like the easier AG examples. Yeah, excellent. It's great, I always love, by the time we get to the end here, I see some of the common threads. For example, Ansible was acquired a year and a half ago. Boy, we've seen Ansible weave its way into a lot of products. Was talking to Ashish just a short while ago and the OpenSat Commons, which reflected what you were just talking about is customers are coming, they're sharing their stories and it's not all Red Hat pieces. One thing, I think I go to a lot of technology shows and it's usually, oh, well we want to talk about solutions, but buy these pieces and Red Hat at its core, it's all open source and therefore, there's always going to be other pieces that tie in, how do you extend as to how much of this is driven by the Red Hat business versus the problems of the customer, I'm sure those mesh together pretty well, but maybe some learnings we've had over the last year that you could share on that. I think one of the great starting points to is what we try and do in every case is start with what we call as a discovery session. So it's one of our consultants, one of our solution architects really going into the client and having a discussion around what is the business problem we're trying to solve or what is the business opportunity we're trying to capitalize upon. And from there, we have a half day to a day kind of discussion around what these priorities are and then we come back to them with a deliverable that says, okay, here's how we could solve that problem. Now, there will be areas that we of course think we have Red Hat technology absolutely as a perfect fit. We're going to put it in and make that as a recommendation, but there's going to be other technologies that we're also going to recommend as well and I think that's what we've learned in these innovation lab engagements because often it's a discussion with IT, of course, but also a discussion with line of business. And sometimes what happens in these discovery sessions is sometimes it's the line of business and IT perhaps connecting for the first time on this particular topic. And so we'll come back with that approach and it'll be an approach that's tailored to that customer environment. One thing kind of pivots it a little bit from the topic of the technology, but I mean the culture and how we're doing this, I mean we are working with ISBs and things of how they could come through the residency to get things spun up into OpenShift Commons and get their technology and the stack are integrated with Red Hat's technical solutions. But on the other hand, really when they come in and they work with us, they're driving forward with looking at changes of their culture. They're trying to do digital transformation, they're trying to do these different types of things, but working with that cross-functional team, they're coming up with, oh wow we were solving the problems the wrong way. And that's kind of just the point of the discovery session and figuring out what those business challenges are is really kind of what we're bubbling up with that process. I'm curious, when I think to just open innovation, even outside of the technology world, sometimes we can learn a lot from people that aren't doing the same kind of things that we've been doing. I know you've got a couple of case studies here, customers sharing their stories, but how do we allow the community to learn more is when they get engaged in the innovation lab, are customers sharing a little bit more? We know certain industries are more open to sharing than others, but what are they willing to share? What don't they share? How do you balance that kind of security, if you will, of their own IP, separate from the processes that they're doing? Sure. It's actually kind of interesting, we had a story this week, we have an engagement going on in our London space, which will be launching in a week and a half, but they're going on right now and there was a customer that was kind of coming through for a regular kind of executive briefing, if you will, and we walked them through the space and they saw the teams working in there and they were before in the sales kind of meeting, they were a little bit closed-minded and closed-source, if you will, trying to not want to share some of their, the core nuggets of their IP, if you will, and once they saw kind of the collaborative landscape, and this is not even technology-based, but just the culture of an open conversation, I hate to overuse the sticky notes everywhere, the DevOps, I mean they were really doing a conversation with the customer that was engaging and all of a sudden the customer that was there on the sales conversation goes, I want to do this session, I want to go through this discovery session with you guys and so I think customers are trying to do that and the other thing is in our spaces and in our locations like Boston, we are actually having two team environments and we've designed it to try to create collisions, so they're basically on two sides, but there's also a common area in the middle where we're trying to create those collisions to inspire that open conversation with our clients as well. Some may be comfortable with it, some might not be as comfortable with it, but we're going to challenge them. Nick, Nick, I love that term collisions, there's a small conference I go to in Providence, I haven't made it every year, but a few times it's an innovation conference and they call it the random collision of unusual suspects. It's the things we can learn from the people we don't know at all. Unfortunately, we're too much, we know the people we know, we know a lot of the same information that we know, it's somebody outside of the like three degrees of separation that you might find that next really amazing thing that will help us move to the next piece. It brings me to the next point, you've mentioned London and Boston, how do you decide where you're building your next centers, what's driving that kind of piece of it and bring us up to speed is the two new locations, one of which if we had a good arm we might be able to throw a baseball and hit. Excellent, so let me just start by first of all saying, part of what we're doing here is it's this experiential residency is what it is and that residency can happen at a client location, at a red hat location, or even a pop up kind of third party location and quite frankly over the course of the last year we've done all three of those scenarios. So all three of them are valid. As far as it relates to a red hat facility, what we try and do is find a location if we can that's either co-located with a large percentage of red hat clients and or maybe red hat engineering because oftentimes we'll want to bring some of the engineers into these sessions. So Mountain View where we have a center today was a natural because we have some engineering capability out on the West Coast and Boston is of course very natural as well because we have a very large engineering presence here in Boston. In fact, I'll let you talk a little bit about the Boston Center because that's going to be our next one that opens here in just a few weeks. So maybe Nick talk a bit about what we're doing in the Boston Center which will be if you will our worldwide hub for red hat innovation center. It's not just going to be the Boston Center it's also going to be our worldwide hub. You would put in intended that it's in the hub that is Boston. You got it, you got it. Excellent. What are we doing in the innovation center and the engineering center and the customer briefing center all co-located in Boston? Yes, it's actually going back to your collisions. We've even tried to create collisions in our own organization. So it's actually basically an H shaped building. Got four floors or two floors on each side. So kind of effectively four floors. Engineering on one side on two floors and an EBC on a floor above the open innovation labs and the open innovation labs on the third floor if you will. And there's actually floor cutouts. So if they're coming in from an executive briefing they can see down, see what's going on there and then engineering on the other side. And the point there is that open culture just even within our organization working with the engineers across the board getting them over into our space working with us and solving the problems and showing I think the key point that I would hit on there is really trying to inspire customers what it's like to work in a community. So community powered innovation all those types of things. And so the space is trying to do that the collisions, the openness obviously flexibility but also what we're trying to do is create a platform or a catalyst of innovation and whether or not it's in the location or a pop up location we're trying to show the customer some of these principles that we're seeing that's effectively allowing Red Hat to drive the innovation and how they can take that back into their own. So the locations are great for driving a conversation from a sales perspective and just overall showing so showcasing it. But the reality is we've got this concept of innovate anywhere. We want to be able to take our technology, our open culture, everything that you would want to use and go be able to take that back into your organization because our immersive experience is only, it's kind of camp for coders or camp for the techies if you will. So that's working well, but that's not long-term long-term we have to show them how they can drive it forward with themselves. Where do I sign up for the summer program? Well, coming this summer. So Boston will launch at the end of June at the June timeframe we had, I don't know how many dozens of clients and partners and Red Haters go through in hard hat tours this week here at the summit. And then in two weeks, we'll open in downtown or really in the heart of London. All right, yeah, quick flight across the pond to get to London. Anything special about that location? I think just overall the locations all have a little bit of uniqueness to them. I mean, they're definitely, we did design them to inspire innovation thinking outside the box. So I think if you go visit one of our locations, you might find a couple kind of hidden rooms, if you will. Some other unique things, but overall, they are just hubs in general for the regions, hubs of technology and innovation. And so from the go forward perspective, I mean, we are trying to say, Red Hat is doing things different and thinking different and these are kind of a way to show it. So trying to find that urban location that is a center point for people to be able to travel in and be able to experience that is really kind of the core. So London will open in two weeks and then we're already working on Blueprints for Singapore. For our Asia hub and had some great conversations with our leader for Latin America about some very initial plans for Latin America as well. So we'll have great presence across the globe. We'll be able to bring this capability to customer sites. We've already done that. We'll be able to do pop-ups because even in some cases, customers are saying, you know, we don't want to travel, but we want to get out of our home environment so we can really focus on this and have that immersive experience and that intimate experience so we'll do the pop-ups as well. Driving changes, we are seeing that that's the best way, especially with this kind of, you know, the residency. It is time boxed. So if we get them out of there day to day, some of the things that, you know, sometimes they're the ones that things that are holding them up. Get them in the pop-up location, get them outside of their space. All of a sudden their eyes open up and we had a large retailer, international retailer that we did a project with on the West Coast and getting them out of their space, you know, got them coming back. The actual quotes from their executives and the key stakeholders were like, they came back fired up and they came back motivated to try to make change within our organization so it's disruption on every level. You can underestimate the motivation and the spirit that people come out of these engagements with. It's like a renewed sense of I can do this. And we saw that exactly with this retail engagement of really already working on preparing for, you know, Black Friday and putting some great plans in place and really building that out for them. John Alessio, Nick Hopman, we always love digging in about the innovation, absolutely something that excites most people in the industry. If it doesn't, maybe you're in the wrong industry. So we've got a couple more interviews. Stay tuned with us. I'm Stu Miniman, you're watching theCUBE.