 Live from Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE, covering Google Cloud Next 17. Hey, welcome back everyone. We're live here in Palo Alto for two days of wall-to-wall coverage of the cloud wars, the cloud game conquering the cloud. Obviously this week in San Francisco, Google Next 2017 is going on. We have our reporters and our analysts in San Francisco. We call on them live in a short time. But we're here in studio in our new 4,500 square foot studio in Palo Alto, getting reaction to all the commentary in the news, the keynotes, Diane Greene's march to conquer the cloud in a Google-esque way. Our next guest is Joe Arnold, the founder and chief product officer of Swift Stack and CUBE alumni, member of the community, as we've seen a lot of all the different events, but you've been in the middle of all this stuff. Joe, welcome to theCUBE coverage. Thanks for having me, John. So I'm glad you could come on because one of the things that's really going on in the cloud world right now, I sometimes call it the cold war of the cloud. You know, there's like, there's the shifting going on, there's two games going on. There's the chess game and there's the front game, which is the sizzle on the glam. Google putting on all the glam out there, Diane Greene, laying out the pomp and circumstance at the event. It's sold out and okay, they sold it out. Okay, good job. But they're really doing a good job of marching down the road. They're serious about the enterprise. That's a non-story at this point. They are 100% serious about the cloud and the enterprise. The question is, what does it take to be a serious cloud contender? There's so much going on. There's a lot of certifications. You got security, you got IoT. Didn't hear anything about IoT. So that's all that stuff going on. That's evolution. But the battle is going on in the stack. Yeah, well, how do you get your applications into that environment? I think, I mean, they're doing something really smart where they're creating a lot of really compelling services, not just on the core infrastructure side, but then also some really just unique, very use case-focused services. I mean, I don't know if you've dug around in that, but there's even like genome-specific services that they have, video transcoding, things like that. But I think the real trick is, is going to be how do they get data and how do you get those applications into that environment? And I think they're moving like the battle of the clouds you mentioned, okay. Well, how do you go from an AWS environment, which is really specific, very purpose APIs that is unique to Amazon. You can't just transplant those things into Google. So I think it's pretty interesting what they've been doing around some of the Kubernetes technology in order to make applications portable. It's almost like a Trojan horse that they've been... It's kind of fun to watch. I mean, David, Jonathan and I were talking last night, I've been covering Google as a company since the founding of, in 1997, 98 timeframe, watch them grow. We've been watching all their cloud moves. We've been heavily watching Amazon. So we're very deep on Amazon. Microsoft has your watch that kind of cobbling together of their platform doing very well. But it's interesting to see the approaches. On one hand, you get the cloud definition of the commoditization of infrastructure as a service and all the stuff that goes on in the traditional cloud definition, infrastructure as a service, platform as a service. But what's happening now is, as the competitive battles have kicked up, they're layering SaaS on top of that. So if you throw 365 on Azure, the market share is amazing. They're kicking ass. Oracle's throwing their apps on there. And now you see Google with G Suite. So that's kind of a dynamic that's a red flag for me because I think there's two games going on. There's the enablement of classification and each vendor has their own approach. So yeah, I get the, you know, the manufacturer, the traction, but the real action is how do people write their apps as you mentioned? And let's break that down. Cloud native, what does cloud native mean to you? What does that definition mean? We had Scott Rainey on Venture Capitalist and last night at the cloud native compute foundation, it was multiple definitions. And then you have companies in the enterprise who have legacy apps who want to either, you know, wrap them up in a container or do something to make them portable or a cloud like cloud ready or cloud enabled. And then you have net new development going on in the cloud with legacy infrastructure. So all that is super complicated. Break that down for us. Yeah, I mean, okay, so you've got a spectrum, right? You have people who are, yes, all cloud native we're jumping in at feet first, you know, folks that are, you know, Scott Rainey is investing today, maybe that's entirely where they're living. But reality of most enterprises that are somewhere in the middle and they're still working their way to adopting cloud. So they're having to really bridge the gap. And I think the getting to multi-cloud, well, the first they got to get to hybrid cloud. And so they have, I think there's several steps in the journey that they have to take to make their applications be able to consume it. And look, you know, people don't need to be consuming the latest in containerization to do this. People have started to figure out ways to do that. At least, you know, in terms of like, you know, where we've been focusing, it's been about if the application is portable, how can they go and consume the data and how can you transfer data between on-premises and a public cloud. And then from one public cloud to another public cloud. And I think so with Google in particular, they've created a bunch of compelling tools and services to build applications. But how can somebody use a multi-cloud to build an application that's running in Amazon, but then sneak some data out to take advantage of some of those Google services? And I think that's kind of, I think that'll be some of the first chess moves that I think they can make. And that's why I mentioned Kubernetes earlier, because I think that- What do you mean that chess move? Break that down, because you're basically teasing out something that we've been looking at since KubeCon, which is now part of CNCF, which is that show name. But Kubernetes allows for a company to essentially have a workload on a cloud and then start doing stuff with other clouds that might have different services. Well, okay, you're building an application in an AWS context, and it's specific to the AWS context. Okay, well, that's a non-portable application. It's just like building an application that's to run on Windows. I mean, people don't want to get locked in again. So I think the investment in something like a Kubernetes or containerization of workflows creates this application that can be more ephemeral. You can run parts of it on-premises, you can run parts of it in Amazon, and you can run parts of that in Google. So now you have this application that is a little bit more portable that means you can do something multi-cloud or you couldn't before. Yeah, I got to ask you a question on this because I have a friend, I won't say his name because I don't want to expose the person, told me that he'd been running trace routes across multiple clouds with peering relationships, and the latencies are off the charts. I had another friend who told me that Microsoft Azure has multiple sets of services that are running multiple reverse proxies. So there's a lot of kind of like clues out there on this inter-clouding concept, which is where we think it's going, right? We think it should be that, hey, if I have a workload and some capacity or some sort of service I want to use at the end of the cloud, I should be instantly, seamlessly be able to move that service over in real time, low latency. Right, but that's so hard, it's hard, right? Yeah, so why is it so hard? Right, it's hard because of networking, it's hard because of data, it's hard because of the way that you have to move different parts of your application around. And so at least the problems that we've been trying to help solve for people, I think we're seeing a lot of desire to use clouds like the Google Cloud, but it's hard because either they have this big bulk of data that's on premises that they need to use up in that environment, or you have data that's in say an Amazon S3 and the portability of data is just so intense, especially when you see very large pools of data, hundreds of terabytes, petabytes of data. So let's get back to this, this is important, this brings the AI question in, portability of data becomes a big thing, so it sounds like what we're saying is, is that companies are taking a first step approach of here's an app, it's on Amazon, here's an app, it's on Google, different apps, here's an app, it may be on Oracle Cloud, if it's Oracle-related database. So you're starting to see apps domiciling on clouds relative to their SPAC or their code or their functionality. Okay, that's cool, that seems to be a safe bet, because you're on the stack, you're there. The interesting thing is to actually use AI is to share data. Yeah, because you- So, are they stovepipes like just stuck in the silos? Right, because then to figure out where that data goes, I mean, the storage system should go, hey, I know we're going to be using the data, let's figure out where it needs to go based on what policies for that type of data. Okay, let's break down the cloud native then, so my definition of cloud native is kind of a highest level abstraction is a application or company that is building all their infrastructure on the cloud, no on-prem. So the hardcore definition would be, like our SiliconANGLE media, we have no data center, it's all in the cloud, and we have Amazon and IBM cloud we use. So, okay, we're cloud native, I guess. Is that too broad or is it more specific because the CNCF meeting last night, they were talking about cloud native as you're using microservices, and now the new service list term is out there, whereas, so where's the distinction? What's your definition of cloud native? You know, and I think that certainly it's great to be using microservices and containerization and making these ephemeral workloads, and I think that only bolsters the adoption of these cloud services, but I think there is a middle ground where you're gonna see enterprises that they're not fully writing these containerized services in order to start adopting and using cloud and taking advantage of the services that are out there. They can take and run and use AI services, they can run very specific data services that are in these public clouds without having to necessarily convert every single application over. I think when you throw something out like cloud native and that is something that you must need to go down, that means you can't take advantage of the services that are out there, it's like, no. I think there's ways that people that are in the enterprise can use these services while they have their existing workflows, and I think that's- That's hybrid cloud. And I think, can you crank things over to say cloud native, and is that some sort of purity and virtue? No, people just need to get their jobs done. They need to build, they need to run their workflows. They need to produce content. They need security. They need security. They need, at the end of the day, they're doing a job, they're processing data, they're computing on it, they're serving applications, and there's not one size fits all for that. Joe, you think about product all the time. As the founder, you hand the CEO reins of your company to an operator who's gonna run the day to day. As I say, keep the trains running on time and grow. You're focusing on the product side because that's where the action is, and certainly there's a turbulent market, it's a great opportunity for you guys who are well poised for that. But as a product person, looking at the Google opportunity within the enterprise, specifically, what do they need to do? Where are they on the progress bar in your opinion, and what do they need to do to be successful going forward? Obviously, I don't want to compare them to Amazon, because Amazon's way out in front, but there is a long game here, and the enterprise is difficult. What's your thoughts and opinion on reaction to where Google is and what they need to do? Yeah, I mean, I am, as a product and kind of representative of Sustak, I mean, we're excited about Google, we're a partner with Google right now, and the reason is, I think, is because of the focus on use case, and I think that's the way for them to get penetration into specific industries is by focusing in on those use cases, building out the sales and go-to-market in those particular use cases, in those industries, and just crush them and then go wide from there. But they still have some work to do under the covers. What is that in your opinion? Security, we heard that on stage, but what's specific when Kubernetes is a nice, I think nice secret weapon there that might is going to come out of the woodwork, in my opinion, we can watch that, but where are they going to work on? What's the homework assignment for Google? Gosh, I'm not going to give a homework assignment to Google. I mean, I think, I mean, you have to have a lot of respect for both AWS and Google in terms of their product portfolios. I think it's clear they're doing different things. I think that Amazon is their more rapid response. They're broad and wide. I think Google is being very focused and they're creating core, strong technology pipes and things of different strategy, right? To say that one should adopt the other strategy is... Yeah, it's clear the differentiation's becoming clear. The horses on the track, if you will, are starting to show their cards, if you will, on what they're doing. Google, clearly going after using a tech advantage, AI and machine learning, clearly having a modular approach to building code. Right, they're not going down the path of, oh, we're going to take every single Amazon service and create exactly the same thing. This carnage that people try to do that, there's a bunch of dead bodies on the side of the road who try to replicate Amazon. So they're trying to change the game and use their products as an advantage. All right, so what news do you guys have? What's going on? What's your conversations this week in San Francisco as a company? Like I mentioned, we're a Google Cloud partner now, Swiftac is, and what that means from a product point of view is we can take on-premises data footprint and synchronize that with the Google Cloud. And what that means is people can put data, that they have workflows that they have on-premises, applications that they have on-premises, they can synchronize the data out to that Google Cloud and then they can use the array of services that are available for them there. And if they're cloud native and they're using microservices and have built containerized workflows with Kubernetes and they can burst from on-premises to public cloud pretty seamlessly. So give us your take for the enterprises out there watching it is a complex game. We have the inside baseball view of what's going on, but a lot of enterprise buyers and people who have the mandate to really architect their digital transformation plans are squinting through all this and trying to understand besides all the sizzle around AI which is pretty clear and obvious. What's your advice to them in terms of how to approach and use Google and get involved in some of the things that Google might have to offer and what would be a nice path for them to take? I mean, I think we're focused on how we can do multi-cloud data management. That's where we're ending up as a company. And that means taking the on-premises footprint, step number one is taking that on-premises footprint, getting it cloud ready and using cloud-based architectures and that's the work that we've been doing to make a public cloud storage environment be on-premises so they can ready their applications. Step two is to be hybrid and be able to use and synchronize their on-premises workloads with the public cloud and then step three is multi-cloud. Going between cloud environments and on-premises depending on the workloads they need. It's interesting, Joe Arnold here, the founder and chief provost of SwissStack breaking it down. Interesting, I wrote a blog post out last night or this morning I posted it of analysis around it and I just kind of wanted to put it out there to compare Amazon to Google and it was pretty obvious there's a big separation but we're going to be reporting here and then in my subsequent blog post kind of the difference in flipping around where Google's different from Amazon. You mentioned that they're not trying to copy Amazon so they really can't compare apples to apples there, it's apples to oranges. But you do see some fundamental architectural differences. Amazon, a building block approach, Google has a completely different architecture so one of the things that's come up and this is where it's important, I want to get your thoughts on that and the segment is Google are saying, well we don't need that because we're different so you can't compare what Amazon's doing because the way we architect it, it's just different so we don't need that. Therefore it's not a bad thing, it's actually a good thing but where people are focusing the criticism on Google on is that they can't put their data, they can't control where they can put their data. So from a sovereignty standpoint, if it's in Germany you see the availability zones. What's Google's answer to that? Is it the fact that everything's encrypted? Is it because it's not an issue because they have a different architecture? I mean I think they've been very vocal, I think, in stark contrast to Amazon in the adoption of hybrid cloud. I mean I think they have very publicly stated that as a thing that they are supporting and are of and I think that's their answer to supporting things like data sovereignty. They've built out a very vast wide network and they're certainly taking advantage of that with all the services they can go put on to that. And I think what that means is they're saying, look we can't, we're going to have fast access to the services that you need and if you need data sovereignty and we can't provide it then well we certainly have a very fast network connection to where it needs to be. And then by embracing the hybrid cloud that enables them to have some answers for that. Yeah it's interesting, certainly all this matrix of this and that and apples and oranges is going to keep the analyst super busy. So we love covering here on SiliconANGLE. Joe Arnold inside theCUBE, breaking down. Google Next, the opportunities. Watch the Kubernetes, watch what's going on with the data. This is a big trend, multi-cloud is real. We've been talking about it with Pat Gelsinger for many, many years and it's actually happening. It's a multi-cloud world. Look for the containers, look for the Kubernetes, look for the microservices. That's going to be the cool, fun area to see the apps come out of that. Joe thanks for spending the time, I appreciate it. We'll be back with more live coverage here on theCUBE after this short break.