 Okay, welcome back, everyone. We're here live in San Francisco for the Red Hat Summit. This is Silicon Angles theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events, extract a signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder of Silicon Angles. I'm joined by my co-host, Duke Miniman, chief analyst at wikibon.org and cloud and infrastructure. And our next guest is Doug Fisher, VP and GM of software and services for Intel. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. We just had Cisco on earlier talking to software. We love DevOps. We've been covering big data cloud infrastructure. This is our fifth season with theCUBE. We love going out to the events and talking to people who are in the trenches. We've got a lot of experience talking to customers, giving the keynotes because software is so central to all the action right now. It's just, it really is mind-blowing how much it's leaking out. Pat was saying, yet in her keynote, you know, it's everyone's a technology company now, which means that the discipline of software, software development, agile, elastic, these are now going to be buzzwords that will be permeating throughout the business marketplace. That traditionally wasn't necessarily every corner of the world. So I want to get your take. Red Hat's 10 years for this show, obviously Red Hat's brand is phenomenally enterprise, kind of has a fresh perspective with cloud and almost a full portfolio. How is that changing the software world? And from your perspective as Intel and an abler of great things, and you guys have been innovating on software at many levels, how does that all come together? Give us the take on that. Yeah, you know, if I look back when I first started in software, there was almost an unconscious separation between the work you do in software and hardware. Even though there was key interactions, the conversations were oftentimes separate, and it's becoming very difficult to have separate conversations with software and hardware. It really is about the system, the elements that combine and the combination between the two. Whether it's in the client side, all the way to the small wearable devices, to handset tablets, all the way up into the enterprise, the conversation needs to be together because the intimacy between the software and taking advantage of the hardware aspects is so critical in exposing all the value we're putting into our platforms through things like Red Hat's enterprise Linux, enterprise virtualization or their OpenStack platform. Any of those type of things, you have to have a combination of both. So I'm finding more and more, I'm participating, as you heard Paul announce, my involvement has been much more public because they really are tied together. Talk about the evolution of OpenStores for a second, and then we'll go right into the disruption aspect of where the disruption points are. OpenStores is generational, some will argue we're in the sixth generation, third, fourth, but the maturization of OpenStores is really at a level that we've never seen before. I see the old expression standing on the shoulders of others before you, et cetera, et cetera, but it's a whole different ball game now. Talk about the dynamics of OpenStores today and how that leads into the key disruption areas. Well, you know, as you well know, Intel participates with, we're a platformer choice, port of choice, have you described. So we were involved in every aspect of software. When it comes to OpenStores, the thing I talk about is the innovation that's occurring. Whether it's in the data center or even in the small form factor devices, you're finding a tremendous amount of innovation occurring in the OpenStores because small companies, whether it's through Maker or Hackathons or other ways, are starting to participate in innovate around their solution. And OpenStores is a simple way of having the ability to drive innovation into your devices. So I see it as the rate at which innovation is occurring, as accelerated in the open source community from when I first started participating in it. Doug, I'm wondering in your keynote, you spoke a lot about OpenStack. And so, you know, Intel has a lot of touch points. Seemed like you were in almost every single project. I mean, talking about compute, network storage and orchestration. You know, what does Intel see its role in OpenStack? Red Hat talks about they're the leading contributor. You know, where's Intel's seat at the table? Yeah, so it's a hard. My job is ensure that all the great advancements we put into our platform, whether it's a Xeon, E7s all the way down to even the atom-based platforms, whatever innovations and capabilities we bring into our platform, that it gets exposed. This is the ability to get that value into these solutions. So I work with the OpenStores community and partners like Red Hat to ensure that we get those innovations driven into their solution so they're not just hidden from that capability. And that's what I talked about in the orchestration layer is that it has to have the ability to reach in and take advantage of new security capabilities we're building, new instructions. So my job is ensure that happens. In addition to that, we see this as a great opportunity to extend the cloud environment in the enterprise. And so we're gonna work to ensure that we bring ease of deployment, security, enterprise capabilities. We're gonna help participate with the OpenStores community to ensure we bring those aspects to OpenStack as well as ensuring that it runs best on Intel architecture. The combination of those two is really what our role is. That's why you find us involved in so many different projects is because there's a lot of projects that touch either our platform or that mature the overall stack that we care about. You know, in many ways Intel's one of the ones that really kind of led some of the convergence in the data center. If you look, you know, you've got pieces across the network it seems, you know, the entire data center can be a chip. You know, can you give us an update on where that stands and you know, also, you know, what is the role of, you know, OpenSource in, you know, kind of the future of your product line? Well, I mean, just like the work we do with Microsoft, working OpenSources is critical. We realize there's multiple operating environments that are gonna be critical to data center. And so we ensure that our solution satisfies all the needs. And OpenSource specifically, back to what I said, we take what we see happening. We have deep expertise in a broad set of the software elements. And so we take that information and knowledge and our involvement in the software community and we drive that knowledge back into advancements in our architecture. And so the kind of things we do in our platform are not things solely driven by just our desire to put new capabilities in our platform, but they're built on the desire to solve future problems we see or future opportunities we see in going into the marketplace. And there's no difference in what we see with early stages of OpenSource software in the operating system to what we see happening in OpenStack. We're gonna take what we see, where the direction is going and bring that capability into our platform. Virtualization's example I used where we put VT technology into our platform. We used OpenSource to expose that value as quickly as we could to bring that to our customers. And so you're going to see us at technologies and capabilities and enhancements to our platform that are driven by the knowledge we have of where the software ecosystem is going. Doug, I want to ask you a question about Linux. Talk about how Intel supported Linux in the past and what we can draw from that today and what's different, what's the same, what's evolving, what's the tweaks. So you guys have a deep experience obviously in abstracting away complexity, whether it's at the hardware level, and that's what people want. I mean, they don't mind proprietary if it's abstracted away, if it's invisible. But Linux is an open frame. What have you guys done in the past? And how does that compare and contrast to what's happening today and what can you share? Okay, I'll try to keep this short. We've had such a long history here. And at the heart of it, I would say that at the heart of what we do in OpenSource has not changed. The norms and the expectations and how you work in OpenSource is the same today as it was in the very early stages. We were an early investor in Red Hat, we participated from the very beginning and helped build out the capabilities in OpenSource. Where it's a move today is very, the heart of where it was today is still being used in capabilities that are relevant in these new type of devices. So we've talked a lot about data center today, but if you look at where the growth in some of the handset space, the wearables, the tablets, at the core of that is Linux. And this is why we ensure that we invest resources to optimize that stack for our architecture because it's the heart of a lot of innovation in these small form factor devices just as much as it is innovation in the data center. But at the heart of it, there's still one kernel, there's still one Linux. And so, and the norms have not changed. So as much as you see happening. The game is still the same. The way you work in OpenSource, it's still based on meritocracy and it's still based on contributions. And that's the beauty of OpenSource. It really is those two things. So Dave Vellante and I always talk, and Dave's not here. So shout out to Dave Vellante, my co-host who's filling in for him this week. He's back on the East Coast. We always joke about the modern business models of today in OpenSource. I want to be the red hat of blank, red hat of blank. So we even joked we're the red hat of media. The cube is OpenSource content. So we don't sell subscriptions, maybe we should. Maybe it's a new business model idea. So Dave, if you're watching, write that down. But there's a post out there from Peter Levine on TechCrunch that said, there'll never be a red hat of anything going forward. What does your take on that? Because red hats business model has been very viable. Gordon Works takes that same position. Cloudera takes a little bit different perspective in the Hadoop world. But OpenSource is not going away. There's a lot of verticals, a lot of omni-channel kind of open source products out there. Is the red hat model old? Is it still around? Can someone be the red hat of something? You know, it's funny, there is a big debate. I've been in a lot of conversations where the statements made and the debate ensues. It's not important where the business model ends. I think, will you see, in my view, will you see OpenSource being used to build value-based solutions and deployed to the industry? And yes, you'll absolutely see that. Whether companies going forward will do exactly what red hat did, build the exact same model, or be as successful as red hat, that's to be seen. What's more important to me is that the norms and how you work in OpenSource remain unchanged. That's the beauty of OpenSource. It drives innovation, and it drives the ability to participate. And from an internal perspective, it allows me to be able to ensure that we get the value out of it that we have in our platforms. And so, the business model is a debate, and I'm not going to tell you who's going to be next. Come on, take a position. Yes, just say yes, it could be a red hat. Red hat's the red hat. There is an opportunity for everybody to participate in that business model. It's, you have to be seen as something that's going to be successful, but I can tell you at the heart of it, it's not changing. Let me ask you about social media. And we had Padra on earlier talking about digitizing interactions. So, OpenSource has always been about communication transparency and openness. Obviously, that's not changing. But now, with social media, everything is high velocity. Someone's a little gesture or code push for something that is now amplified. Does that change the game a bit? And Miltcher, do you have a take on that? Do you have any perspective? Well, I think what you see now is, in a lot of these areas, the agile type of software development has really taken hold. How you develop software and how you push it out is really accelerated. A lot of companies, I won't name them, you all know who they are, use that, and they have a constant update capabilities. And so, I'd say absolutely yes. The need to be able to innovate quickly, put new capabilities in quickly, and then get them out to your customers quickly is absolutely critical, and you have to build the infrastructure to support that. And so, as we look at some of the things we're doing in our software platforms that we deliver optimizations to, we're ensuring that we build that infrastructure to get our customers, our OEMs, customers, whoever delivers the final solution, get the capabilities as quickly as possible. So, it is impacting health, the rate at which you deliver innovation to customers absolutely has changed. So, Doug, when we look at the public cloud, I wonder if you're surprised at what a large lead Amazon has in that space, and do you think that's a sustainable lead? Well, I think that a lot of talk today was about ensuring that the infrastructure is optimized and improved for the cloud providers. In addition to having the enterprise have the capability to deploy those. I think there's always gonna be a need for both. I don't know if there's one world versus the Amazon, others are doing fantastic job at delivering those services to customers. Still capabilities that need to be in the enterprise for all the reasons I talked about. There's elements around compliance or security or whatever your corporation holds as a requirement or governments or regulators. There's gonna be need for that. And I think the challenges for the enterprise guys is to be able to deliver that type of experience in the enterprise. That certainly the role model, the showcasing is being done by the cloud providers today. So, if we look back the consumerization of IT, Intel was one of the big winners in that hall trend. I mean, the wind tell wins that happened there. I'm curious what your thought is just on kind of the commoditization of IT that's going on today. If we look at, for example, in the server market, the Taiwanese companies are growing quite aggressively. And no matter who sells it, whether it is kind of an HP IBM or those Taiwanese, Intel is still one of the winners. So I'm curious if you have a commentary on that trend. We used to take offense to the way our platform was described. And we don't any longer because it really is a standard building block. I don't see as a commoditization as much as we're seeing people enter into the market to see tremendous opportunity to participate in the server space. And so we're seeing new entrants come in. That's an opportunity for us to grow the markets where we participate. And so for us, we don't see it as that. We continue to add capabilities I talked about today, whether it's trusted execution technology or other things like ANSI, things that drive performance optimization for these new type of workloads. And so I think you continue to see innovation and value brought into the server. What you're really seeing is people recognizing there's opportunity and real value they can bring. And so we're seeing growth in the enterprise. I don't see this commoditization. Doug, I want to ask you about the ecosystem. Obviously ecosystems are critical. Intel's no stranger to ecosystems. You guys have thrived in the PC generation through the history of the company. Now cloud ecosystem is totally forming. You're seeing the public, hybrid, private, essentially the data center infrastructure. All that stuff's happening. The genie's out of the bottle, as they say. So how is the ecosystem changing in your mind? You got to be like IBM was on stage last night, 10 years with Red Hat. You guys have had generations of success with Red Hat. Cisco's the first time putting their toe in the water here, which is a big statement of for Cisco. So validation, but what does this mean? I mean, what does the new ecosystem look like? And how does Red Hat and others stay current, relevant, and still rise the tide, if you will? You know, right now it reminds me a bit of how it was when we went from Unix to Linux. And everybody participating in that. And at some point there is some harmonization in that space. I see some similar characteristics of what we're seeing in things like OpenStack. As everybody's seen it as an opportunity to bring that cloud based environment into their space. And so I see a lot of activity and energy. What it really comes down to for me is, it's a positive move because the investment levels are at the stage and growing. They need to happen to mature and deliver that capability. And so I think you're going to continue to see advancements innovation. And it's going to take time to see how this all settles out. The layer above OpenStack and other elements are being delivered is going to have to provide a capability where everybody can participate in a common way. So I think it's going to take time to get to that level of maturity. So I think we're at an early stage of where we were with Linux. There's a lot of jockeying going on. Certainly at the past layer we call it the battleground for the cloud. Approaches are different. You have bloated approach and you had a thin approach. I mean, democratization, meritocracy you mentioned. That's in play. What's your thoughts on that, that battleground at the past layer? Well, I think you cannot define every workload the same. So I think you're going to have a predominance of workloads that you would say would be solved by a, I don't want to say bloated but a full enterprise solution. You're always going to have players that are going to find areas where a streamlined solution meets the needs of the customer and so they're going to slim down some capabilities to do that. We see that all the time in open source where we build tools and capabilities to allow that to happen. You're going to see that consistently going on even as things like OpenStack mature. But I think the focus is going to be on the main element of OpenStack, maturing it, securing it, make it easy to deploy. That's going to be the main focus I think for the next few years. So Doug, final question I have for you. If we think about Intel as a software company, what is the one takeaway you would want people to know about Intel's software strategy? Well, I tell software strategy hasn't changed for the last 20 years. It's just grown and evolved. Our strategy has always been to ensure that core elements of the software stack take full advantage of our platform. That's what I've been saying in the previous questions. It's really about looking at the layers of software and ensuring that they take full advantage of what we build. And those layers have changed over time. Look back and I remember when Java came out and our activities around Java and optimizing that and it's evolved to other runtimes.net, Dalvik, other runtimes in the marketplace. And so we'll always follow those trends and ensure that we optimize that. We've moved forward and taken investments in things like where we see opportunities in Internet of Things. We've acquired a company called Mashry and Epona which allow you to securely connect and provision those 50 billion devices I talked about in 2020 to this data center and deliver value between those two in and out of your enterprise. So we are going to continue to invest in software where we feel it helps deliver value in the spaces we want to grow which is like things like Internet of Things. And of course we see security as probably the biggest shift we've made. Security is one of our main pillars. We've invested in acquired McAfee and the combination of hardware and software together we feel is going to move Intel into the forefront of delivering secure platforms. So where it matters like that, we'll invest or acquire and of course our cloud error where we see big data being absolutely instrumental. We invested in that to ensure that we accelerate the adoption of those capabilities. And again, we have other examples. So it really has to be tied to where we see the industry going and our need to help either grow that market or ensure our values. Intel's a force. Intel's a force. You guys have, you guys have a $2 billion software company. Biggest software company that no one talks about because you happen to have hardware and chips that go along with it. A lot of software involved in that as well. So you guys have an invisible hand in the marketplace. You've always been a bellwether in the tech business. So, you know, the folks out there that don't know that would be surprised not to. But you mentioned cloud era. That's a big part of the big data ecosystem certainly within Hadoop. Endorsing them with the investments. One thing, does that, and some people ask is that alienating others like Hortonworks? Can you comment on the Intel's role? Because you do have a lot of influence in the industry. Are you picking someone to go to the dance with with cloud era? Or is that just an investment? I'll see we heard from Mike Olson and cloud era on his blog. Plus there's a lot of strategic roadmap going on. Does that alienate others in big data space? You know, it's a great question. I actually think if we didn't have the rich tradition that we do in working in open source and participating in the open source community you could have it that situation. But those who know Intel and know how we work in open source know how we participate. Know that this is how we're gonna do it in Hadoop. All the stuff I talked about today all the stuff we talked about going forward all the elements that we're driving are all gonna be driven upstream so that all Hadoop distributors take advantage of it. And so certainly we're invested in cloud era. We look at them as a ability to drive those capabilities into the market quickly but there's nothing that we're holding back that we won't drive. You're not foreclosing something upstream. No, we want, no, that's our nature. That's our DNA. We're going to drive those capabilities upstream because we want everybody to take advantage of our platform architecture. Analytics is big. You need processing power to do analytics. Visualization is hot too and that's an area we'd love to get to spend more time on. But we're out of time. This is theCUBE. We're here with Doug Fisher, VP general manager of software inserts at Intel. We have force and software committed to open source as usual. Congratulations. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. This is theCUBE. We'll be right back with our next guest.