Defining Private Cloud w/Greg Knieriemen - CTO Dose 077

Machine-generated from the episode audio and not hand-corrected, so names and technical terms may be imperfect. The audio is authoritative.

Hey, you're listening to you know, what we're just gonna start counting mark. I don't care what number this is I think we're still in the 70s ish You know, we're getting to the point where we're recording more of these and we have you know, kind of podcast pinned up now Yeah, that's a good thing. Yeah, it is. See, you know now I don't I don't have a I don't have a smooth transition for this so I'm just gonna come out and say We we have Greg near me so Greg we are not on the register.

This is not even We're the furthest thing from it and I think most people know you from that and you did a really great job on that podcast of not Hawking Hitachi and what you what you do during the day. This is the CTO advisor. So we're everything there's nothing Something if you need to if Hitachi Solves the thing that we talk about. You know what? We're not beholden to any That's good. That's right. That's a walk be a walking commercial either But you know the truth is as I haven't done well, I kind of turned over the keys of the speaking of tech podcast over to the kids back in September of Last year, so I'm letting them drive it.

So I'm probably as far away from speaking of tech as you are these days This might seem like clickbait and low-hanging fruit Because I know this is a topic that really gets you get your juices flowing I'm gonna say it private cloud On premises this public cloud so We'll get into my narrow definition of private cloud in a minute But what when someone tells you that private cloud is dead like what's your initial reaction to that statement? that they don't understand what the cloud is or they're locked into What I think are archaic cloud definitions because one of the things I've always got kind of hung up on and maybe this is my Achilles heel the argument is that We talk about especially in the context of private cloud people have like a laundry list of the five to six things that must be Included in there to be a private cloud or to be a cloud in general one of them for instance is chargebacks and for a lot of enterprises chargebacks for anything related to enterprise IT is not workable because for whatever political reasons for Structural reasons they have they just don't want that level of accountability To a department or to a person about who is utilizing IT resources now if you take out that one criteria Does that mean it's not a cloud?

To me that that it just seems like you know It's analyst speak where you get some Gartner people in a room that want to lock down a definition So they can measure it and that's fine for what they do, but in the real world I think there's got to be a level of flexibility about how we use cloud definitions that may not fit into a clean box And that's what gets everybody wound up because then they say oh It's just a virtualized environment down if it doesn't have chargebacks or showbacks, and it's a silly argument It really comes down to what are the tools that are necessary for an IT department to complete their tasks in a way?

That's as frictionless as possible so mark I Developed kind of this list of five attributes that people have more or less ignored What I call private cloud your your Definition you know how do you broadly define private cloud? I'm just oh man. That's that's a loaded question because I'm not sure that I do I You know when when cloud first became a thing when it was just the cloud and Then it became public cloud and private cloud most people I know in enterprise IT space just slapped Cat a service catalog in front of their VMware environment and said yay private cloud, and you know much fanfare was had beyond that I Just start thinking of cloud as a way of operating IT which I think you basically call hybrid IT and That is I think basically the definition right operating your IT in a manner where it's Seamless and easy and as transparent as it can be So we're recording this podcast right after all of the majors have reached their release their revenue reports Google the third place cloud provider we always wondered like how far behind AWS and Microsoft is Google Google is claiming a billion dollars a quarter in cloud revenue, and they define cloud as their infrastructure as a service you know Google cloud compute services as well as the Their their office productivity software g's their G suite That that that was interesting and then well, what's what's AWS like four point five?

I think they were close to five billion a quarter or something like that. They were they you know insane numbers They are they are a monster and then Microsoft if I remember correctly. I'm not gonna look it up, but You know it's another big number. I think they also claim five billion a quarter So you know what I'd really like to compare that against is the revenue of people who sell infrastructure I wish we had someone who sold infrastructure There are a lot of pink slips coming your way Greg Yeah, you guys sell a little enterprise Enterprise private data center stuff well look I If you simply boil us down to you know private enterprise Implementations, I think it's a disservice, but one of the things it's not just a Tachi I think if you look at Dell HP and others Let's not forget that the the biggest cloud companies in the world are also consuming our technologies, so It's not like it's not as black and white as I think some people would look that Any gain the AWS or Google or others have is that they expand at the expense of what's considered more traditional?

Infrastructure don't kid yourselves while a lot of what they're building is Homemade a lot of what they are consuming is also Things that you would find in traditional enterprises as well Yeah, you look at Azure Azure's NFS service is of all things when we I'm saying is with a straight face is on-tap Yep, yep And that's you when you think about it is amazing if anybody has the chops to build a cloud-based NFS service you would think it'd be Microsoft could do something from the ground up But they chose to go with a quote-unquote legacy vendor Hitachi is across you know a disclaimer I was a before I Started don't the CTO advised I was a Hitachi HDS customer so in a large one so the the I can without a doubt say that Legacy IT vendors quote-unquote and VMware is a great example of that partnership with VMware in AWS there is a rabbit Desire to support the workloads that were that work best in those architectures using that native technologies Yeah And you would be surprised and I think some of the best-kept secrets in this industry, and I'm not going to reveal any Is what is the technology that's underpinning some of those large cloud providers?

I think people will be generally surprised, but I think the conversation would take on a different context But I think in general terms I think Traditional vendors that aren't finding new ways to drive value for their customers are going to see their numbers slow down I think that's what you're what you're alluding to what's the impact from? public cloud services or cloud services in general To some of the traditional companies and the problem here with evaluating this and again This isn't about Hitachi because we're Hitachi Vantara is a private company We're subsidiary of Hitachi Limited, so we don't do quarterly reporting But there's other companies like IBM Dell and others and HP that do quarterly reporting and the challenges And you guys have seen this with Oracle as well is what do they lump in as cloud revenue?

And what is really the the apples to apples comparison to those public cloud providers. It's a bit of a challenge because Those numbers can move around quite conveniently To suit the perception that they want to have in the market. This is a I got into this Twitter conversation with Ken Hoy on Google's 1 billion dollar a quarter revenue. I mean some things just don't pass the sniff test We talked to enough of our friends to know who's using AWS Azure and services at scale and I don't talk to enough people.

Maybe you know that not like, you know, the CTO advisors reaches so big that you know We have a we don't live in a bubble, but it's enough that you're like, okay I know enough people who've migrated to office 365 and I look at Microsoft's numbers Yeah, I can see that versus how many people do we know that have gone? Full in in GCP Mark what do you think? Not many that have gone full in but you know, I'm wondering if some of that revenue is them buying from themselves Mmm, who else who's the biggest Google cloud customer?

I'm presuming Google. I Don't know maybe they count in that way or not, but I certainly think that and the sense that I get is is that there's a lot of Enterprises that are dipping their toes in the water with Google cloud And and kind of testing out functionality maybe some new greenfield apps kind of Dipping their toes in the water a little bit with Google, but I haven't heard widespread adoption either myself So let's go back to this whole private cloud discussion Which is I think generally all of us would agree our very own definitions of cloud Is that it doesn't look like a VM farm that from a private data center perspective?

you might look at And Greg, I know you mentioned this in the pre recording banter we might look at Dropbox and Dropbox famously, you know went from public cloud to a private cloud and Hey, I don't know what their data set is anymore. I have to say at this point it has to be hundreds of petabytes if not zettabytes of data and I'm pretty sure they don't do chargeback And a bunch of these methods that you know, we we nearly define private cloud And I don't think anyone would disagree what they have is a private.

Yeah, but I think we've got to look at them A little differently though. They're they're a what one product company Whereas if you look at enterprise IT when they have 4,000 applications, I don't think we can compare those things Well, I'm gonna assume that they've got multiple applications and under the hood there But I You know what whether they're considered a private cloud or you know They provide definitely providing a public service. You can look at them as a as a public cloud But this is what gets tricky about trying to apply, you know, very strict definitions over What is and isn't the cloud?

Yeah, you know, it comes down to consumption models and utility billing and performance and security Predictable cost, you know the features that we look at from a cloud perspective and it just bothers me that that We put a hardened definition Around something that is certainly more than just a simple virtualized environment But it doesn't check all the boxes off necessarily to what the cloud errati thinks it constitutes a cloud So I guess we cloud errati Cloud errati if you you've not heard listen to speaking to take that that is Greg Yes.

Oh, I don't know about that. That was that's been in the industry a while. Oh, yeah. I'm definitely not part of the cloud errati You know if you look on Twitter and you know The loudest voices in the cloud industry I would consider part if you look at 80 and Cockcroft and other those those guys Are the cloud errati? So I guess there's also kind of a serverless Yeah, but there's this, you know, we can look at their noisy bench to their noisy bunch and also, they have a very rigid definition for what is serverless so I can build the exact same thing that Google Compute and AWS folks have done with lambda I can build that in my data center But the serverless purist will say that's not serverless because my operations team is dealing with servers and The whole point of serverless is that the organ from an organizational level you're not dealing with servers But mark I can see easily in an organization like your day job how the infrastructure group could Create that service and for external For internal groups outside of your organization that you manage they consume that in a very much serverless That happens all the time even in the traditional, you know legacy stack where they just toss code over the wall and we deploy the code From their perspective.

Is that not serverless? Right, you know, it really comes down to Not not to the architects vision, but to the consumers vision of who's consuming those services and Again, I think it's the trap we fall into when we start putting these tight definitions at the end of the day It doesn't really matter because the guys that are making decisions the people that are making these decisions about How they want to consume and deploy Infrastructure don't care about that and and it to me Even this the public-private hybrid cloud debates that work, you know, we have in the industry.

They don't care they've got a set of criteria that they want to have to be able to develop and deploy applications and They don't really The rest of us in this industry they get all wound up and all spun up about what's underneath the covers and how these things Are spun up. I don't think really makes a difference at the end of the day Yeah, I think the only my only bone to pick with that approach is Definitions when I'm a customer and I go to I like to pick on Dale EMC or even HPE when I go to them and I say, you know what I need a private cloud and What I get is or you know what my favorite let's pick on Nutanix because they are Enterprise cloud company and we None of us will have a problem picking on Nutanix with this Fabulous technology.

I don't think anyone would disagree that when it comes to HCI they are the thought leaders in the market. Excellent platform Excellent platform, but as a IT as a CIO if If Daraj if I invited Daraj for a conversation, he's the CEO of Nutanix and I said I need a private cloud because my business has been clamoring for cloud What Nutanix offers today? doesn't answer that Requirement and that's the only there's no there's no marketing term to wrap What when the business comes to the CIO and says they want an internal?

Well for a lack of a better word an internal AWS, I know that's super oversimplifying it there's no way no, there's no easy way for me to schedule a meeting with a CEO of a small or medium-sized tech company to say come deal This is my this is what the meeting is about and this is the product that you say that is overkill But that actually happens a line of business. Yes. Come and say hey, I want a cloud Their requirements are nothing other than I want a cloud So they don't always come with requirements.

They come with an idea that they want to do because They heard about it. They saw it. They thought it up. Who knows Well, and then the conversation changes or it should change to okay. What do you want to do? What are your objectives and this is one of those things that were hardened definitions around a cloud? Don't necessarily fit that if you look at let's say a very typical enterprise environment where they've got application developers They've got legacy applications, and they got new greenfield applications that that they're developing There is the all the characteristics that they need to build the application.

There's also issues around data privacy data management And how they're going to leverage all these resources to make sure that they're operating with whatever, you know the swim lanes are for that particular department and it's that's where it gets when we talk about different types of Clouds it doesn't really address the objective of what they're trying to build and what restraints are trying to build that within and That's why I think it's very dangerous to kind of predefined even this the the silly serverless debates And trust me I got caught up in the cloud debates.

You guys saw this a lot and in the early days When Gartner was putting definitions what I thought were arbitrary definitions Around what constituted a cloud and what didn't constitute a cloud weren't really a reflection of how enterprises were consuming Infrastructure resources and so there's kind of a Disconnect there to what the objectives are to the tools that you use behind the scenes to deliver those So it almost sounds like you're saying a cloud is whatever a customer says it is It's some extent well No I because I would say and the people that push back when you give them a definition and well you're describing a virtualized Environment I totally get that but I think and there are a few unique Characteristics to cloud I don't think it goes no deeper than five or six items But sir, but it comes down to the consumption model right and in and you know How are you going to manage those costs for that service if you talk about traditional?

VMware environment You know you're back loaded with fixed costs for that infrastructure and the software and everything else that sits on top of that That's not consumable necessarily to the departmental level in a business some do that again But if you do chargebacks and other things But there's a way to build Systems that have a utility building model that don't necessarily fit a public cloud definition and flexibility the customizable This you know the fast scalability All those characteristics that we would think of that that define a cloud don't always necessarily fit into that traditional infrastructure So I would I would push back and say it's not You can call cloud wherever you want to There's certainly some some kind of baseline criteria of what a cloud is But I don't think things like chargeback should should define break or make the definition of a cloud and the fact that analysts do that Does it disservice to or it really is reflections or lack of understanding of how enterprises are consuming these services?

Yeah for most enterprises chargeback has that's because it's a mess That's a weird that's a weird requirement in my early days of looking at cloud management platforms I worked for Lockheed Martin and we were talking about charging back to external customers So in that sense it made that that made sense a lot of people were missing chargeback but you know internally like that customer wasn't going to then go will turn around and Charge accounting or HR Exactly, and this is the problem because if you're not if you're another back-office function you you basically Are another cost center and having a cost center charge a cost center is a you know problematic at best So, you know, it's that I think my loose definition for private cloud is that that they have this Frictionless experience with the IT services or the services provided by IT infrastructure As possible so very little friction and it's more or less API driven if if you get that then for the most part you're gonna check most of my My requirements for cloud.

Absolutely. I think you get a tendency in there too, right? Is it multi-tenant single tenant? yes, because as we get in as we've discovered now with the Intel chip flaws that makes a big difference whether you're a multi-tenant environment or not as far as what your your risk exposure potential could be And some people have argued you can argue both sides of this. Some people have argued that in a truly secured private environment that risk of specter Is going to be quite a bit different meltdown specter is gonna be quite a bit different in a true private environment Versus what that risk and exposure looks like in a public environment where you've your multi-tenant and you're sharing resource That can be more or less in a private environment.

You're more likely to have ability to upload code And a public environment that might be limited Depending on what you know what that consumption model is. So I think I had a question If we look at something which Azure is trying to do with Azure stack where they're trying to take the literal public cloud Look and feel of Azure Shrink it down and shove it in your data center I know it's not quite that yet But let's give them the benefit of a doubt and say they get there.

Does that change your definition of private cloud Keith Greg Well, I don't think so And in fact, if you look at what AWS is do with Greengrass, they're going that that's the direction they're going into There's not calling it a private cloud so It I I don't think it changes the definitions It goes back to some of the basic tense tenants of consumption model and As Keith was talking about the customer experience and being able to develop application on a common set of APIs. So let's wrap up Greg Tell us what's exciting and at the top of your list in your world You know, I'm looking forward to what happens with this Dropbox IPO That's coming up because is Been publicly came out a few weeks ago.

They confidentially filed their paperwork for the IPO the next step here is at some point they're going to Publicly share their s1 which is going to all their financial reporting and then they've got a 15-day window from then to actually pull the trigger on an IPO and it's gonna be interesting to see what happens here because part of the challenge and I wrote a white paper about this part of the challenge I feel with this is What constitutes a business or an enterprise customer The only way Dropbox is going to be able to succeed is from getting over their free or low-cost consumer level product and how they're selling their Enterprise and business product and they claim hundreds of thousands of businesses But is that an email address from somebody with a corporate handle or is that an enterprise seat license?

And how exactly and how is that defined and they're in the reports they've done in the past they've been very loose with the number of what constitutes a business user and I Personally, I think it I don't think it's completely transparent And I think they've got issues of being able to communicate how they're scaling how they're growing to Businesses and what the true revenue from you know enterprise seat licenses The enterprise file sync and share market is a very competitive market and even in a full disclosure Hitachi sells an enterprise file sync and share tool called HCP anywhere which is kind of an additional software product that comes with our Hitachi content platform and we have When we sell those we have enterprise seat licenses to big banks that have hundreds of thousands of seats That's an enterprise seat license, right that that's leveraging enterprise file sync and share It's not you know, the the small medium-sized business with with three employees that you know have a $50 a month plan There's a big difference My son works.

My son is a developer. He works for a small Multinational software company and They send him emails like every couple of months. Hey, do you have a secondary email address and you can register for more free Dropbox? True story and this is so And this is not making a statement on how my position on Officially where Dropbox is today, but I've never trusted Dropbox with my data period Yeah, they're they're they're DNA Security wasn't in their DNA They had some early security flubs that just painted me on them forever They control the encryption keys Let's not forget that you it's not like you can go and they say it's in my paper That I wrote if you go to their security disclosures, they tell you that they are Managing those encryption keys.

So if they can manage those encryption keys, they have the keys to your kingdom now as a caveat you can use third-party tools and Self encrypt your data before uploading it up there But now you're adding another step into the process that I do. I really want to do that as an enterprise I want whatever when I get a SAS solution, you know, what my number one requirement is that it just works, right? I don't want to have to throw a bunch of other stuff to make it work yeah, and as we're as we're saying as we're using Zencast or record and afterwards is going to Upload the the podcast to my free Dropbox account.

So there there's that so With that said Greg, where can people stalk you online? I'm at Nehrman and if you can spell that you get a bonus it's at KNIR IEMEN on the Twitters and You know, I'm not really doing any podcasting anymore But LinkedIn, I'm a LinkedIn champion. So there's that too All right, and mark as always you can find me on Twitter's at sensei storage All right, you can find me on Twitter at CTO advisor the podcast the CTO advisor comm Seriously guys, you you're not following direction.

This is why we get into these arguments over private cloud public cloud Go to your dad your daughter's your sister's pie catcher subscribe to the CTO advisor Rate us all fives. I don't care if you don't like the podcast Talk to you next CTO advisor podcast