 From Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering open systems. The future is crystal clear with security and SD-WAN. Brought to you by Open Systems. Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE. We are here in Las Vegas in the Cosmo Hotel in the Chandelier Bar, part of Open Systems Get Together, kind of a session of smart people gathered, all part of a big week here at Vegas Garden. We're having a big event, a lot of things happening. We're here at Martin Vosshard, who's the CEO of Open Systems, hosting the event. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Thank you. Thanks for joining me. Okay, so I got to get this out there. You guys are in Switzerland, headquarters. You just established big presence in Silicon Valley, and you're expanding rapidly in Silicon Valley. Congratulations. Thank you. Explain what you guys do, how you started, where you come from, and what's the story of Open Systems? Well, very originally, we started as a managed security service provider in managed security infrastructure, and we learned, especially if you do in the financial services security infrastructure, if you try to update, you need to go into those data centers and that's harder to get in there, like it's like entering North Korea. So we learned how to operate that stuff remotely, and that really brought us in more than 180 countries, especially with industry companies. Industry day manufacturing, they started to globalize their value chains, and that really helped us to globalize our footprint. And obviously to do that, we used SD-WAN. So we definitely came from the security space, but today we are the largest SD-WAN standardized SD-WAN platform with a fully integrated security status. So how big is the company, roughly people-wise? What's the... We are 200 plus people currently, and 50 plus million revenue this year. How big, sounds like the customers are really large, complex data centers with a lot of offices and facilities. Is that your makeup of your customer base right now? Our customer base really is, I think, I mean, obviously financial services, that's always, if you start in Switzerland, the company, the financial service is very important, but then also industry, manufacturing, especially companies with globalized value chains are very interested in our services because you have a serious complexity from a regulatory point of view, but also from an operational point of view to operate SD-WAN in a secure way. So this is really our sweet spot. So explain the difference between SD-WAN, old way, and the new way, because SD-WAN was simply connecting branch offices together, basic networking stuff, basically connectivity to today is much more complex. What's the difference between the SD-WAN environment today because there's a resurgence with SD-WAN, with cloud computing, with the internet, obviously with secure issues. It's a whole different ball game. Explain the difference between the old way and the new way. Well, the old way was you just connected locations and then you piped traffic through a VPN, right? And I think we learned a lot about what SD-WAN is really capable to do when we start to work for the NGO space, when you use a lot of satellite traffic. It's very expensive to pipe everything through the satellite. So you need to slice the traffic into important stuff, less important stuff, and then you decide what are you gonna route through the satellite and what are you gonna route terrestrial. And this is really where the whole magic of SD-WAN comes from. You suddenly have the freedom to route traffic application-based in a very different way. So you're not bound to protocols anymore, so you really can route your Office 365 traffic different than your Facebook traffic. You can route, you can prioritize. So you can differentiate between the traffic types first. That was the first discovery. That was important for us because we managed infrastructure and obviously you don't want to create congestion by managing infrastructure. So it is really about what traffic is important, what traffic is time critical, and route depending on the application needs traffic different. Cost is always a big motivator for innovation. It's always cost of performance, right? So I get that's awesome. And by the way, that's how startups figure out innovations that don't have a lot of capital. They figure it out by being effective in making things work. When did the security piece click in for you guys? When you guys saw SD-WAN, when was the moment you said, okay, we're going to do all these things to save costs and do this kind of routing, this kind of policy-based oversimplifying. But you know what I'm saying? When did security become important? Was it from the beginning? Was it a discovery? Was it something that was, you just caught the wave? Explain how you guys became so prolific in your product with security. I mean, we came sort of from the security space and the SD-WAN was something we used to operate security infrastructure. So it's maybe, we looked at it a little different, but at the end of the day, SD-WAN creates so much opportunities for companies and I believe the whole cloud movement is creating so many opportunities for companies to move fast, to create growth. Also, if you think IoT, it creates whole different business models for almost all enterprise organizations. Talk about the business model, that's important because, okay, finish your thought. Yeah, and now the question is, how can you embrace all that growth business and managing the risks? And that's what's happening right now. We help customers to combine the security. So one of the things we were here last week for Amazon re-invent, big event for Amazon Web Services and they announced an on-premise product. No one thought they were ever going to do that. So I asked the CEO there why they were doing that. Essentially he said latency kills. Certain latency is now the new problem. You learn that from the satellite situation where cost and latency are really important factors in determining how you architect things. But then you realize that the business models are shifting. So I got to ask you, as you have need for security and low latency, people are looking for direct connections. They don't want to route traffic through the internet. Who knows where it's going to go through China? There's all these hidden problems. Yeah, and I agree basically, latency kills. But I also disagree because there are applications where latency is not an issue, like email. I mean, you couldn't care less about latency but in fact don't deliver it. But at the same time, it's really important that a network understands not only how it routes, it also understands what it routes. And that's the power of SDUAN. So you really can route different applications in different routes. Right time, right place kind of thing. Exactly, and then it depends where it's consumed, where it's delivered and where do you route those? Talk about your business model now. You got a US, why the US expansion? Is it right for growth? Is it a natural progression? What's the strategy? Why a US expansion? Actually what we see, the US is moving very fast to the cloud right now. And this is an opportunity for us to really support that, I would call it transformation. It's really an industry transformation that's happening right now. And we just, in Europe, maybe to bring down costs and connectivity that's still more of a business driver. And obviously that's always exciting to bring down costs. But if you move to the cloud, you really have to rethink your network structure and also you have to rethink your security posture. So this is just the beginning of opportunity. Martin, I got to ask you, obviously I've been kind of checking around in Silicon Valley and you guys, you guys got a good vibe and good buzz. Certainly, pre-reputation in Switzerland, great product, great work. But you're attracting kind of new talent in the Bay Area, Cisco in particular. A lot of these high power people, networking guys, developers. Who are you guys looking to attract into your office and as you expand? I know you got a lot of openings. It's not a recruiting plug, but I mean, as you look to put the team together, what are you guys looking for? What's the kind of individual? What's the culture of your company? What's the kind of things people can expect if they work there? I mean, we are focused on, we just want to create the most amazing networks in a secure way and I believe this is very attractive. What we created the last couple of years and that's also attractive for talents in Silicon Valley. But obviously it's a competitive market, but it's all over the world. It's competitive market and I believe, especially going to the market and understanding what the world needs, that's very powerful in Silicon Valley. The ecosystem is very powerful. So for us, it's clear, we want to be there, we want to play our role. That's awesome, look forward to doing more content. Final question for you. If you could have to nail down the core problem that you guys are trying to solve as the world evolves, the landscape, threat landscape continues, the world's going global, you're seeing all kinds of needs, we're all kinds of intelligence. What are the top problems that your team is working on to continue to iterate on and solve? What are the big things that you're trying to nail down? We want to make it for a customer very easy to consume a secure SD-WAN. And that sounds maybe simple, but it's not. To operate an SD-WAN in a secure way is really a challenge. So most companies operate 40, 50 different products to achieve that and with us, it's like subscribing a service. Very simple. Quick plug, last minute, what's your product? Does your deal with multiple vendors? This is a SaaS product, on-premise cloud, what's that? It's a SaaS on-prem available and it's available in all major cloud for like Azure and Amazon. So it's in all cloud premises working. You're literally Switzerland, for the cloud. Yeah, I mean, yeah. They use that expression in the United States a lot. We're Switzerland, we're neutral. Yeah, we're neutral. We are actually very neutral. Yeah, but seriously, you can work with, if I'm the customer, I have multiple clouds, I have multiple vendors, I have a ton of security products. Can I use you guys? Right. Yeah, it's simple. And we are really a platform, so we use many, many security products and orchestrate so they work together. What are the common things you hear from customers that have been successful with you? And I don't want to say single pane, that's an old IT expression, but the world has to be smarter, faster, dashboard-oriented, hardened APIs, a lot of data traversal. What's the ideal end state for your customers when you guys are successful? You have to repeat that question. I'm a customer, what's the value proposition to me? Am I saving time? Am I integrating multiple devices? You save a lot of time, you save a lot of money. And I believe the most important thing is, we see ourselves as a weapon in the war for talents. It's just impossible for our customers to find the talents, to really operate that stuff in a good way. And we make that much easier. So, obviously, you cannot outsource security, but you can make security easy, manageable, and that's where we're at. And operational, make it work. And operational, and make it work. And that's, I believe, the key really. Well, Martin, congratulations on the expansion strategy. Real quick, what's going on in Vegas for you guys here, what are you guys here talking about? What's the big story here for you guys? Well, basically, obviously, we grow very fast, so we also use this to bring together people, but then also everybody's here right now. It's great to see vendors, it's great to see partners, it's great to see competitors. So, it's just important to understand the market. And it's also their worst place in the world to be. Build those relationships. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much. I'm here with the CEO of Open Systems from John Furrier theCUBE. We are here at the Chandelier Bar, the Cosmo. We're just getting started. Got a couple, bunch more interviews from the customers. Just had the FBI on, really important conversations around security, cybersecurity, enterprise security, and how to make SD-WAN work. We'll be right back with more. Stay with us after this short break.