 Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Couchspace Connect Online 2021. I'm Lisa Martin. I have a first timer here on theCUBE. Priya Rajgopal, the director of product management from Couchspace joins me next. Priya, welcome to the program. Thank you, Lisa. Thanks for having me here. And glad to be here, first timer. So really excited. Yeah, we'll make sure that you're going to have fun. We're going to talk about edge computing. And what I'd like to get is your perspectives on what's going on and the evolution in the last 18 months. I'm sure so much has changed. But talk to me about edge computing, what's going on and how mobile relates. Sure. So I like to start off by defining edge computing because there's a lot of literature around there and different interpretations. And the way we see it at Couchspace is it's a distributed computing paradigm that brings compute and storage to the edge. And what is the edge? The edge is the location where data is generated or consumed. And so the edge, again, the taxonomy is varied, but it's really a continuum. So it's not a tank, right? So it's a location. So it could be a single device or it could actually be a data center. And so it's getting a lot of traction with the proliferation of a lot of applications around ARVI, IoT, and mobile devices and mobile applications because it delivers on the promise of ultra-low latency access to data because the edge is where the data is generated and consumed, data privacy, governance, resiliency to network disruptions, low bandwidth usage. So to your question on how does mobile fit into the space of edge computing, in my view, mobile application, mobile devices are a classic example of edge computing because when you think about mobile devices, right? I mean, they're generating data, they're processing data, applications are processing data right there on the devices. You can store data in offline mode on these devices. So it is a classic edge device. And of course, the data doesn't have to be generated on the device itself. Those mobile applications could sort of be gateways to other external variables, for instance, and other IoT devices, which can connect to these mobile applications and these mobile applications could process those data, that data. Got it. So thank you for sharing couch-based's definition and it's a good point to do that as so many times, there's so many different terms and solutions and technologies that can be interpreted and explained many different ways. Let's now go through couch-based's role in edge computing. Help the audience understand where you fit into that. Sure. If you recap the definition, right? I mean, edge computing is all about storage and compute to the edge. So clearly your database has a key role to play in this model, right? Or in this paradigm, because when you think about it, a classic application architecture, you've got three tiers, you've got an application tier, it includes your business logic, some of the UI elements, it's optional. You've got your database tier, which drives your application because the application needs data, it's driven by the database tier, and then you've got the infrastructure tier, that includes your network storage compute. Now, when you're talking about an edge computing architecture, you're talking about distributing all these three tiers, your application tier, a database tier, as well as your infrastructure tier. And couch-based is a fully distributed NoSQL database solution. So it fits in right into this paradigm of edge computing. Now, when we're talking about distributing storage, that's just one aspect of it, right? I mean, you have to distribute it to these edge devices, you may have to distribute it to edge data centers, but then there is this notion of data movement. You need to be able to sync or move data between these distributed cloud environments, right? So data synchronization is a key component of the tier of edge computing architectures. And then finally, there's data management. That's all about enforcement of policies when it comes to data privacy. You know, what data needs to be resident at the edge, what data can be transferred to the cloud for processing, what data needs to be filtered, what needs to be aggregated. So you need a solution that can provide those hooks that allows you to enforce those policies. So a database like couch-based has a critical role to play in this tier because it has a fully distributed solution that can be deployed in the cloud or it can be deployed at the edge. And again, the edge could be a data center or it could be a device. So what about device? We have an embedded database solution for mobile desktop and embedded platforms. And then of course data movement which is enabled through our comprehensive data synchronization technology. Let's go through specifically some of the capabilities, database capabilities that are required for businesses in any industry to be successful in edge computing. Sure, absolutely, right? I mean, to sort of reiterate or reinforce the three concepts, right? Data storage, data movement, data management, right? And couch-based technology because the stack consists of couch-based server, flagship, fully distributed, no SQL data platform. It can be containerized. It could be deployed in any public or private cloud. It could be deployed at the edge cloud. And then you've got couch-based light. Again, no SQL embedded database full-featured, right? Anything that you can do with a standalone database, you can do it with the embedded database. Now you can embed that within your mobile applications, within your other embedded applications or desktop applications. And that's great, right? That's the data storage part of it. And that's one part of it, but what about the data movement? And that's where you've got a data synchronization technology where we facilitate high throughput, high performance, highly scalable data synchronization between the edge and the cloud. And of course, as I mentioned, data management is a critical aspect of all this, right? And so the synchronization technology has got components that allow you to set filters, access control policies, and there's a lot of hooks when it comes to data governance. So for instance, if an edge goes out of commission or if there's a security breach, for instance, you want to isolate the edge. You can do that. The data that was previously synchronized to that edge, you want to be able to purge that data. So we have options that automatically purge the data if the device is no longer in the hands of the right recipient, for instance. So those from a user's standpoint, those are the critical aspects. Of course, the overarching theme is security, right? And that goes hand in hand with encryption of the data addressed, encryption of the data in motion, then authentication, authorization, access control. Security is even more important in given the events of the last 18 months where we've seen a massive rise in ransomware, we've seen a huge rise in DDoS attacks. Let's double click more on the security aspect of what Couchbase is delivering. Sure, absolutely. So when it comes to security of data at rest, right? Even when they with Couchbase Lite, which is our embedded device, all your entire database is encrypted, yes, 256 encryption, data encryption. And then data when it leaves the device through a data synchronization protocol, everything is encrypted. And of course, when it goes through a sing gateway, the sing gateway is sort of, as I mentioned, the middle tier component that is responsible for data synchronization between the embedded devices and a Couchbase server, that entity is responsible for enforcement of access control policies. So you are guaranteed that only users who should have access to those documents or data are granted access to that. And in fact, we are no SQL JSON database, which means everything is modeled in the form of documents, JSON documents. And so when we're talking about read, write access control, read access is at the granularity of the document. And write access can be enforced as the document at the granularity of a property within the document. So you may have access to an entire document, but you may only be allowed to update a certain property within the document. So as I mentioned, when it comes to distributed computing, architectures like edge computing, security is even more paramount, right? I mean, you have devices going offline, coming back online, and you might have a breach point at one edge environment, whether it is a data center or an edge device, you need to be able to ensure that you have isolated all the other edge components from that breach. And as I mentioned, when it comes to data governance and so on and great data retention, for instance, even if it is not a security breach, let's say you do have, for some reason, the owner of a device should no longer have access to that content, you know, their role has changed, they have transitioned to a different company, for instance, then you will have a way of automatically purging all that data that was previously synchronized to the user's device. Got it, okay. Let's continue talking about the events at the last year and a half, because we saw this massive scatter 18 months ago of, and then explosion at the edge when everyone went, a lot of people from the office to this work from home, work from anywhere environment in which we're still in. So how has the pandemic and the events that related to it changed, mobile apps and edge computing, and what are some of the new requirements that customers have? Sure, well, as you rightly said, right? And in fact, if anything, the relevance of mobile devices and applications has just grown in significance through the pandemic. And it's kind of interesting, you know, there are some surveys that have suggested that through the pandemic, people have been using their mobile devices as the primary communication device for accessing the internet. And it's kind of interesting because you think, well, everyone is cooped up in their homes. They probably will have access to other forms of data consumption, but no, it's mobile devices. That's what they've primarily been using. So with that, there's also a new range of use cases and applications which are driven in large part by the events of the pandemic. But I think that's just made things much more efficient. Customer satisfaction, user experience is paramount, is number one. And I think a lot of that is here to stay even following our post-pandemic because it's just made things a lot more efficient. And we've seen that through different industries, right? Healthcare, I mean, there was always telemedicine, but now for non-essential care, it's always telemedicine. Yeah, of course, specific to the pandemic, there was the tracking, the contact tracing application, right? I mean, and that's enabled through technologies like Bluetooth and GPS. So they track the whereabouts of infected persons. But then even if you arrive at your doctor's office, right? You wait in your car and you get notified when the doctor is ready to check you in. Then in the retail sector, e-commerce, right? Of course, everything was moving online, but everything is overwhelmingly mobile first. People are shopping online through their mobile devices than the traditional web-based applications. And you order on your phone, you pick up at the store, right? So curbside pickup, you pull into the store. The store clerk is notified of your arrival. They come out to the curb with your order. And here's the interesting bit. You know, it's kind of intuitive that it's going to be e-commerce applications. They got a huge boost through the pandemic. But interestingly, even the experience when it comes to retail in-store, that's undergone a transformation because it was all about, how do we make the process very efficient? So customers are in and out of the store really quick, right? I mean, there was a reason for that, but now we can translate to making the whole shopping experience much more easy. So you walk into the store, you meet sales associate who can bring up information about the catalog inventory, right there on the iPad. And so if you have any questions whether something is available in the store or an accessory you're looking for, they can give answers to you immediately, right? And then of course there are companies like Walmart, they have been rolling out applications, mobile scan and go sort of applications, which is all about, you know, you scan items as you walk through the aisle, you self-check out totally contactless experience. And you know, the list goes on, right? We talked about healthcare, retail, same thing in a restaurant, right? A curbside, you know, delivery and pickup. You can now track your delivery order because now it's just a huge surge in order deliveries. And then the same pickup concept, curbside pickup concept. You arrive in your car, the kitchen is notified of your arrival and they come out with your order. Very streamlined drive-through. You've got people now coming to your car, taking the order right there from the car on the tablets. That's synced in real time to the back-end kitchen, your order and you get notified when your order is ready. So I think all of this is about making things a lot more efficient. It's about customer experience. And edge computing is a big role to play in that. And so I think it's, if anything, it's just propelled the growth of mobile applications and use cases. Yeah, that propulsion is something that we've been hearing a lot about the acceleration in the last year and a half. You did a great job there of painting a picture of some of the positives that come out of this accelerating the efficiencies that we all as consumers and in our business life expect to have and this explosion at the edge that's really become even more of a lifeline for millions and millions and billions of people globally. I've got to ask you that from a connectivity perspective, that's another area where we have this expectation as, again, consumers are in our business lives that we have connectivity. Where does all the talk about 5G, where does 5G fit into edge computing? Sure, that's a good question because 5G and edge computing sort of go hand in hand so much so that they have been used synonymously in some cases and that's inaccurate, okay? So because every time people talk about edge computing, there are folks talking about 5G in the same breath, right? But really 5G, as we all know, is a next generation cellular technology promises ultra low latency, very high bandwidth. Now we talked about this huge surge in mobile applications and new sort of use cases where a lot of the data is generated at the edge, IoT applications or just data intensive applications, right? Gaming apps and so on and all of these applications, they demand ultra low latency, right? And they're generating a lot of this data and all that data needs to be processed in real time. So if you have to send all that data back to the cloud and then you get the responses, that's a really bad experience. So that's what 5G is here to solve, right? I mean, it's like low latency, high bandwidth, high concurrency. Now that's all great. But then the coverage of 5G, it terminates at the edge of the mobile operator network. So you have all these massive influx of devices generating all that data and all that stuff is transmitted under very low latency conditions over a 5G network. But then if all the data from the mobile operator network has to be backhauled to the internet, to the backend servers, then you kind of defeat the whole purpose of ultra low latency applications. So that's where edge computing comes into play because edge computing is really an architecture, right? It's a distributed architecture. So now what mobile operators are doing is deploying what they refer to as MECs, but it's effectively micro data centers at the edge of the mobile operator network. So you have all this data coming in over the 5G network, great. They get analyzed, they get processed locally at the edge of the mobile operator network and you get real-time responses. And of course, as needed, that data in aggregated form or filtered form goes back to the cloud. And so that's where the two relate. So in my view, I think edge computing architectures are important to deliver on the promise of 5G, but 5G has propelled the relevance or importance of edge computing as a solution, as a deployment architecture. So very interrelated. Very interrelated, very symbiotic. And of course the need for real-time data, real-time analytics in every industry became very prominent in the last year and a half. We had this expectation that we're going to be able to understand things in real-time. And that's often a huge differentiator for businesses. We're out of time, but I want to ask you one more question, Priya. And that is, how can customers go to get started with CouchBase? Oh, absolutely. So CouchBase servers in Gateway, you can deploy that. It's available as software. You can download it from our website. CouchBase Lite is available for all your mobile applications. So it is available as a download, but you also have the classic package management systems through which you can download CouchBase Lite. And then of course, as I said, you can deploy this standalone, but you can also deploy it in the cloud. So we have marketplace offerings for both CouchBase server and CynGateway. So if you want to deploy it on AWS, Azure, Google, you can do that as well. Excellent. Priya, thank you so much for joining me on the program, talking about CouchBase, the evolution, the changes, the opportunities with edge computing and mobile and how CouchBase is involved. I appreciate your time. Thank you very much. And thanks for having me. For Priya Rajgopal, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of CouchBase. Connect online, 2021.