 Live from Austin, Texas, it's theCUBE. Covering OpenStack Summit 2016, brought to you by the OpenStack Foundation and headline sponsors Red Hat and Cisco. Now here are your hosts, Stu Miniman and John Wall. And welcome back to Austin, Texas as we continue our coverage of the OpenStack Summit of 2016 here on theCUBE. We're very pleased to welcome in a couple of guests from Red Hat with us. John Alessio, who is the Vice President of Global Services, and Nick Hotman, who's a senior director as well of Global Services. And gentlemen, welcome to both of you, to theCUBE. We appreciate the time. John, I'll start with you. You think about Global Services is about consulting and training and a lot of business facilitation, if you will, with your partners. What's your vision? How do you couch all that? And what do you see as being the next steps or the broader vision for Global Services? Sure, John, great question. So when we look at Global Services inside Red Hat, first of all, there's really three key parts to the overall organization. It's our training and certification business, which we've had really since the late 90s. That's grown, had a nice trajectory and growth in our modality of education, as well as the breadth of our training. Our consulting team, and we have a global team across all of our major geographies for consulting, as well as our partner enablement. And we look at our kind of foundation for our overall Global Services business. Really, our focus is in on client success, deep expertise in Red Hat technologies, as well as driving our emerging technology agenda. And so everything that we do within my organization is focused on those three key pillars, client success, expertise, and our emerging technology agenda. And as OpenStack now has become more prevalent, obviously, in your offering. Nick, have you seen within your client base an heightened interest or need for education, training with particular, with open source and architecture and how all that comes together? Yeah, very much so. I mean, obviously with open source, but OpenStack is a good example of where, as we see the demand continue to grow, we see obviously the demand for the resources and the skill set. And so, I mean, John can probably talk some about the specifics around the training and the enablement, but the number of, I guess, we're enabling our people internally, but the number of the ecosystem that we need to enable and provide other capabilities for is just growing exponentially over the years. And this last year, I think we saw, you know, probably that curve continue to grow even more and more. Yeah, for sure. Maybe I can make a comment. So if you look at kind of some of the investments we've made over the last year, specifically to OpenStack and training and enablement, we've refreshed the entire curriculum. So we now have a three-level curriculum OpenStack, you know, 110, 210, 310, that offer certification, both a system administrator certification, as well as a certified engineer certification around OpenStack. And that's all been completely refreshed over the last year. Through both our customer and our partners, we've trained over 10,000 individuals, which is up significantly year on year. And then in the certification space, which is our performance-based certification, that's up 130% from our fiscal year 16 over our fiscal year 15. So we're seeing a lot of demand from customers, partners, individuals, looking to get OpenStack training over the last year. So John, 10,000, I mean, that's a great number. Congratulations on that part. Couple areas I'm wondering if you can expand on. So, you know, number one, I guess it speaks to the maturity of OpenStack if you can train that many. Number two, how much is it a Red Hat training and how much is it something that's just general OpenStack that I could use Red Hats? You know, there are other options out there. You know, so if you could speak a little to those dynamics. Yeah, I think it's a great question. So our focus, there's a lot of training obviously in the industry around OpenStack. Our focus has really been around training our clients and our partners on the Red Hat version of OpenStack. That's what they're looking to come from Red Hat and that's what we think is one of our key differentiators. So all of our offerings are specific to the Red Hat technology and all of the certifications that go along with it are also specific to the Red Hat technology. Now one of the areas that we've seen some really great uptake in is customers who are looking for OpenStack training are also looking for adjacent technologies and so we've also completely refreshed the entire cloud management portfolio as well as a whole new set of offerings around Ansible, one of our more recent offerings. And we've introduced this through a new modality called Red Hat Learning Subscription which actually gives our clients access to all of the Red Hat technology. And what's been really, really great to see over the last year is as we've sold Red Hat Learning Subscription and we kind of look at how our clients are consuming this because it's consumed online, over 50% of the consumption is in our emerging technology space, including OpenStack. So Nick, I'm wondering if maybe you can expand there's so much going on in this space. We've got containers, Kubernetes, which Red Hat is the largest contributor, not named Google for that. What are you seeing out there? How does that fit into the overall environment? Yeah, so I think it's interesting. I mean, what we've been doing in my focus is around the emerging technologies and creating these emerging technology practices and with all the conversations with our customers, they'll catch on to something, whether it's DevOps, whether it's CICD, OpenStack, you name it, and they want to go, oh, we want to do that or we want to build out the next generation cloud. And so we go into a lot of the conversations with the discovery session and really understanding what they're trying to do. And so I think that's one of the things that we're seeing with how does that lay into the entire Red Hat portfolio? Where do they need to adopt? Where do they want to adopt? How does it meet their goals and their business objectives? And so the discovery session is really kind of this use case driven business challenge conversation to try to map it into that. And as we do it from a consulting perspective, it's also looking at the services, obviously the products and also our partners and then bringing in, how are we bringing in all those different tools to the table to really solve their problems and deliver a real good customer success story. John, big day for you and all of Red Hat with the innovation lab being launched today. I know you made a fairly significant announcement in that regard. What is that all about the Red Hat innovation lab? You know, what was the genesis of it and then what do you look to get done there? What's the overall mission? Sure, so maybe I'll start with a few opening points then Nick have you kind of fill in some of the details. So the idea here was a lot of our offerings in the consulting world are by design custom to the client. And many of our clients were coming back and saying Red Hat, we're looking for more leadership around the application development agenda. What are some of the best practices around application development and how can you help us get up and running much more quickly, a much quicker time to value. So they were looking for a more prescribed offering. And so we worked with many of our clients on our strategic customer advisory board to define an offering. I'll have Nick take you through the detail but it's a residency style engagement that is prescribed. We have all the infrastructure pre-built ahead of time so that from day one you can begin getting some guidance and actually produce something at the end of the engagement that has real value to the business. So Nick maybe take them through the push button infrastructure as well as the idea around doing it on a client site or a Red Hat site. Yeah, sounds good. No, so I think from the kind of alluded to the discovery session, it's a similar kind of starting conversation with the customer what they're trying to accomplish but really being able to focus in on saying, hey, you know what, we have a more prescriptive approach to lay out all the infrastructure, all the technology. You know, Red Hat usually comes to the table with our technology. But we're also now coming to the table. If you look at kind of the innovation labs page and see the stack that we're bringing to the table, it shows other things that are not Red Hat specific. So it shows other tools, other technology and then we're really putting together the complete methodology. So we're not changing it and delivering it in that custom environment that we typically do but you know, customers really want to see what's Red Hat's best practices? How can they further and accelerate their adoption of these emerging technologies? Open stack being a prime example from an infrastructure standpoint. Ansible, open shift on our side, our entire middleware stack. And so through that kind of, you know, the initial discovery session, we really key in on some areas where they can take their existing applications or existing environment and how are they going to bridge it and move it over into their new modern contemporary kind of cloud native application development? Are they trying to build in that new, you know, mobile applications or a mobile infrastructure? And we're going to work with them during that eight week residency and show them how they can build that out in a very efficient manner. And kind of to your point, even before saying, you know, we want them to take this on long term. We're not trying to be there for the long term maintenance of it. We're not trying to be there. We're trying to give them the tools with our training. Teach them how to fish. Exactly. That's exactly the idea. And so through that, we can deliver it either on their site, you know, with our team. It's a collaborative cross functional team from their side and our side and even tying into our engineering team. And you know, either on their site or in our site. So it's kind of that virtual or, you know, onsite offsite presence. How is this different than from what you already are doing? Because I know you're very extensive in terms of the consultant work that you do, the training work that you do. You go onsite, right? I mean, you're in 35 countries around the world and obviously very ingrained in North American operations. Well, how is this different though? Or what is this doing to improve, I guess, what you're already offering? Sure. Do you want to go ahead and address it? Well, no, go for it. Sure. So I think first, from a training perspective, one of the things that's different is we, as we look to enable our team and grow our team internally, we came up with a whole set of skills assessment processes and best practices and how we would actually, you know, interview and skill our own practitioners within our organization. We've integrated that into this skills process for our clients that we bring into this engagement. The second part is some of the prerequisite training is exactly the same. So as part of a Red Hat Open Innovation Lab's engagement, a client gets access to our Red Hat Learning subscription and all of that same rich content. So it's integrated in by design upfront and then we offer the client a reduced fee on the back end if they'd like to continue to access that material for a period of one year. So that piece is very similar and it takes the best practices and leverages it. But the second piece is that makes it a thing very, very different is in a typical consulting engagement, we would work with the client's infrastructure on their site and we may have to build that infrastructure or platform out as part of the engagement. So with our push button infrastructure install, all of that's already pre-built and it's a pre-prescribed stack of software that includes Red Hat software, but also other industry software as well that we think are best practices across the industry. So we bring that stack and best practices to the client so that day one they can begin doing productive work. So in the open stack space, it reminds me that you guys purchase Enovons, which is kind of in the monitoring tool, gives the update on that, how that fits into the story you were just talking about. And maybe you talked about Ansible, how do all of these acquisitions that Red Hats do impact what's going on? It's a great question. So starting with the Enovons team, it was about two years ago now. And when the Enovons team came into Red Hat, they brought a very, very strong skill set obviously around open stack. And so some of the Enovons team were very focused on more development oriented activities that fit very, very well within the products and technology organization or engineering organization within Red Hat. And in fact, that's where many of the employees are. Today they're in that team helping to develop and advance the open stack agenda for Red Hat. Whether it's in engineering or product management, what have you. The services oriented individuals that were part of Enovons, we announced about one year ago, a little over a year ago now, we call our Red Hat Cloud Innovation Practice. And it was a global practice to help bring to Red Hat leading edge skills around open stack as well as agile development methodologies. And what that allowed us to do is then build in the Americas group to service North and Latin America, our Europe, Middle East, and Africa, and our Asia PAC group regional cloud practices that were then supported by this global cloud innovation practice. And so now those regional practices are fully up and running in APAC, AMIA, and in North America, supported by the best practices coming out of what was at the time the Enovons team today is called the Red Hat Cloud Innovation Team. I'm curious, Nick, for you, the fact that open stack is perpetually changing. And we're hearing this week, right? All kinds of different projects, releases, and all that's going on. What does that do to your team in terms of keeping up with the very latest, not only with what Red Hat's doing, but as you said with these adjacent technologies and all that's going on, I mean, you've really got to be on your toes, and you've got to be at the edge of the cutting edge, I would say. Yeah, I think the funny thing is, is quite frankly, that's what motivates most of our employees. I mean, really, what we're targeting is really the emerging technology, but the focus on, a lot of our stuff with our partners, we want to show them how to fish, we want to show them how to deliver on these things, but internally, our team, and like with the labs creation, everybody's sitting there going like, I want to work on that, that cutting edge, that N plus one implementation, that the first of its kind kind of implementation, and open stack really does just epitomize all that. So, one of the things that we're trying to do with Red Hat as a whole is really just expose people to the engineering, what it's like to work within the open source community, what it's like to be sitting there, how do you become an upstream contributor to the code base, how do you really do that? And that's what our consultants really want to become anyway. So, being able to do that, they're not just consultants, they're developers, they're engineers, they're operations people, they want to be able to do all that stuff. So, I think it's really just kind of giving us another platform to say, hey, how can you further your career? It's not about being consultant or professional services, it's about really just working within an open source community, community powered innovation, all those things really just drive the mission of Red Hat, but open source as a whole. And I think the other thing it's allowed us to do is kind of take a play out of the Red Hat book from a standpoint of community. So, one of the things we need to do is obviously move more quickly, more agilely, because the product is changing a lot, and quite frequently. And my clients, our clients are expecting the same service delivery capability around the globe in every country, because they're doing just as, they're doing complex projects everywhere across the globe. And so, one of the things that we created about, now, 15 months ago, is what we call our communities of practice. And so, what we have is like-minded individuals from those open-stack communities, or open-stack practices, or the CloudForms practices, or the CEP practice, all in these communities of practice, sharing ideas, sharing best practices, sharing work products coming out of engagements, so we're not reinventing the wheel and kind of rediscovering things across the globe. And what we've been able to do is get participation from our engineering team, from our pre-sales team, and our services team, all in these communities of practice, so that we're sharing these best practices across Red Hat, and that's allowing us to move a lot more quickly, and a lot more like a globally integrated organization. I hope you build a big lab. Yeah, I mean- We have lots of labs- We're talking about a huge tent. But, I mean, is it portable? I mean, can you take it to the client? Can you take it to the customer? The Innovation Lab I'm talking about, because that's one fixed site, but I mean, virtually, can you take it out wherever? Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about that. Open Innovation Lab's perspective, I mean, it really is around taking our tools, our technology, and our methodology wherever we want to go. Now we, I think that the physical site is where we're testing things out, we're playing with different things, where we're trying to say, hey, this is where we're proving out the capabilities of this innovation capability, this innovation space. Then from the technical aspect of it, it really is a shared public infrastructure, either in, you know, you can access virtually or remotely. So it's not really something we have to box up. It's not a stack that we have to go travel around. It's really the people. And the people can either be brought into our infrastructure and into our physical location, or we can go and work with the customer. And quite frankly, you know, we'll be able to even work from a virtual aspect, but when you're thinking about this kind of cross-functional collaboration and working together and mentoring as a team, you know, I think we want to try to keep the people together, either on the client site or on our site, but giving them the access to the infrastructure is going to end the technologies virtually. And Jen, I think what was interesting, when we did some kind of early discovery work with our customer advisory board, we talked to probably what, eight or 10 clients, something like that, represented virtually across every geography. And the feedback we got on this specific point of, you know, do you want to come into a Red Hat facility to do this, or do you want us to come onto your facility? It was completely mixed. And depending on the client, some said, you know, absolutely we want to come into a Red Hat facility because that will be better for us to kind of get away from our day job and just focus on this new methodology. And other clients said, you know what, in order for it to work, it's going to work much better in our environment. And we even had another client say, this sounds really great. We want to run through one of these engagements with you and see how it would work, but then we want you to help build a center of excellence that will be our own innovation lab inside our company. So they kind of wanted to do a bit of both. And so I don't think there's one consistent answer. And so when we built it, we built it to be flexible in the cloud so we could do exactly that. We could do it virtually or we could do it on a Red Hat site. And it's really not our focus to scale it out just for ourselves. I mean, it is trying to teach them and help them create that capability in there, so it's really trying to open it up. And I think the biggest thing is, you know, really just showing them how we're eating our own dog, but how we're engineering our products, how we can show you how to do that and really just be open and free with all the information around it. Well, it makes sense, right? Learn how to drive in your neighborhood or mine, but you're going to learn how to drive. And congratulations on a big day. Thank you. Good announcement. And thanks for being part of the show today. We appreciate that. Well, thanks for having us and enjoy the rest of the conference. We'll do. All right, we'll be back with more from the OpenStack Summit 2016 here in Austin on theCUBE. It's always fun to come back to theCUBE because, you know, the discussion is always interesting and relevant. It's not script.