Managing Kubernetes Environments – Bhaskar Gorti, Platform9

This is texturing TV. Hey guys. Thanks for the throw.

We're here with bascar. Gordy's the CEO for Platform 9. They just picked up 26 million dollars in additional funding vascara.

Welcome to show thank you. Thank you it a nice to talk to you. You guys have been at their Forefront of this kubernetes push and everything that goes with that and Cloud native.

What are your current Ambitions for the 26 million? What do you guys planning on spending that on? And you know, what's your perception of the overall state of the market right now?

Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, thank you for the call. As you said.

Yes, we've been in the market serving our customers for quite some time. So we have a lot of experience in across many verticals and the market in terms of transition and Adoption of container Cloud native Technologies is really now I would say cross the chasm. There isn't a digital code.

It isn't a corporation that's not trying to become more digital more cloud-native to build, you know, Innovative products and services their customers. So I think it's a market is the right time from terms of adoption. Now, there are of course macroeconomic conditions that are changing and that is actually for us it's an opportunity because it is a talents scarcity.

There is a tremendous pressure on cost. So in terms of really making sure that there isn't growth for the sake of growth but Or profitable growth. So when you look at those things you want to reduce your overall cost of digitization and your overall Opex and I think in that model, we are a platform as a service SAS offering to our customers.

So it fits very well. If it's very well for us and over the last many years, you know, even the last fiscal year that ended we have triple digit customer retention. We have triple digit customer existing customer expanding.

So so I think in this macro environment we seem to we are we feel very good position. So, of course, as you said it is a rapidly changing market in terms of raising Capital the fact that we were able to do that and not only have our existing investors participate but also attract a brand new investor quota Capital the round was led by Celesta who was an existing from our prior round is a testimonial of the market and more importantly our customer and our Innovative platform. Is the way people think about acquiring and managing it changing because if I went back in time history was, you know, I had a choice I could either have my internal itin.

Do it or I can Outsource the whole thing to some sort of managed service provider and now we're kind of looking at more of this as a service model. So is there more of a kind of a team approach where you know you were managing infrastructure, but I'm not completely out of the picture as my it team is still involved in managing aspects of the application and we're just trying to figure out where that hand and glove is Yeah, so I think it's very very well. Put Mike.

I think if you think about it, what are the different options if you're an Enterprise today, what are your options you to modernize and digitize your applications and your offerings to your customer one, you could say, you know what I'm just going to go with one of the public cloud and let them do the whole thing. Right? It's it's a huge cost issue.

The other one is let me go buy software products hire people bring the right Talent OR transform my existing Talent it teams to do it. That's another way long road. What we provide is a third alternative.

We say you leverage the infrastructure you have. Whether it's public Cloud infrastructure private or a hybrid we're perfectly fine. You can leverage your existing investment.

You continue to modernize and evolve your application yourself through your own team or through system integrators or other partners where we come as we are very complementary solution to our Enterprises that are trying to digitize is saying we will provide the platform as a service which is our core. And your core is building the applications on top of it. Right?

So it's a very symbiotic partnership with Enterprise digital organizations. And it organizations. We are not rebadging their people.

It's not a managed service. It is not we sell a license and say good luck go higher consultants and contractors to do it. We provide a manage.

We provide a SAS offering to the platform. We proactively manage it 24 by 7. Actually 50% of the you know bugs or undocumented features.

We and our systems identified even before our case customers do when we fix. So that helps our an Enterprise to really focus their resources, which are also Under Pressure right cost of it organizations is always under pressure is to focus on creating new Innovative applications and services for their customers. And let us provide a platform that enables them to do that in days and weeks rather than months and years.

Do you care what distribution of kubernetes anybody is using or are you open that to them all or do you have a favorites or how do I kind of decide which way to go? Look at the end of the day if you look at our platform, which I'm sure you have spoken to some of my team members is we think of the world in three concentric circles. Okay.

The outermost circle is the infrastructure the compute the storage the switching the data center. We are agnostic to it. We support any and all of the above, okay.

Then the second lens internal layer is the series of Open Source Technologies and distributions that are there. We leverage them. Our secret sauce is the control plane that sits in the right in the smack in the middle of it.

So, yes, we do follow the open distribution of different versions, but that is not our secret sauce. We take the open source and add the secret sauce to create a unified single pane of glass management across many many clusters or many many data centers. So that is where our secret sauce and our differentiation is Do you also think that a lot of people now as they get deeper into kubernetes or discovering that a lot of the add-on components are harder to manage in kubernetes itself.

So, you know is the whole stack just getting exceedingly complex and I might never have the talent in-house to master all of it. Yeah. I mean think of it as you know, the you draw you're flying a boing, you know, seven eight seven or an Airbus three, there's so many buttons in your cockpit.

Okay, right. It's not just with the distribution. There's so many other things.

They're security there's compliance that orchestration there is manageability. There's observability there's storage. So there's so many pieces that actually come together in the platform for you to actually go and then start building Cloud native applications.

So so you're right the complexity is there because of different different functions that come together. Right, but the complexity gets further and further. I would say multiplied by the talent challenge that everybody's facing.

Right you go today and say cloud native. You will get hundreds of resumes second call you'll realize there isn't a lot of depth. So I think that is where our engineering that our customer relationships and our proven at scale.

We're at 40 45,000 nodes right now, right? So we have the scar tissue of having gone through this so you're right. The complexity is increasing.

And therefore Simplicity the need for Simplicity is accelerating. The need for you know people to say okay manage this part. I just want to be able to focus on my customers my application my services.

And at the same time I can't throw away all the infrastructure that I have whether it's in my private data center or hybrid or in some cases. I want to use a public but I want to single pane of glass to manage it. I don't want to swivel my chair based on which infrastructure I'm using.

And I think that's what we bring to today. Do you think to your earlier point where a virtual machine running on Amazon is not Cloud native. So yeah, a lot of people abuse that buzzword but do you think people are drawn a line the sand and say look we're gonna manage our Legacy stuff the way we always did but the new stuff we're going to manage it in new model and a new approach and this kind of creates the proverbial.

Split in the road where they make a decision about how to think about it differently. Yeah, I mean anything I mean, this is something I said many many years all the time the word cloud and Cloud native is so genetically used so, you know at some point almost bottom line fashionable in the sense. So I think you know you start with you know, bare metal people are running, you know, a very dedicated then they moved to virtualization then they are getting becoming cloud ready and then they truly become Cloud native to be Cloud native.

You cannot repurpose. So think about yeah, sometimes I try to tell folks is you can't take an internal combustion engine and upgraded to be an EV the best you can do is make it up hybrid. Okay, you cannot make it easy put to make any of the about the entire chassis and the entire system and put a whole new.

You know electric frame and electric technology. So I think in our case customers are clearly realizing there are certain assets and applications that are there they want to maintain and keep the lights on. Okay, there's certain that they want to modernize.

Okay, so they're going through a step by step process to modernize them through, you know, virtualization and in some cases maybe just still doing openstack and then moving to kubernetes and then the most strategic ones are building things and reimagining Innovation from scratch. Hmm. What is your sense right now of you know, too earlier Point most companies are playing around with kubernetes.

But what's your sense of how much of it is in production these days and you know when we say we've crossed the chasm how far have we actually crossed? Hey, it depends right? Is that a large Spectrum?

Right? So you have to think about if you are completely born in the cloud native era. I you do not have the the challenge of Legacy or existing large customer relationships Global Footprints.

You are not going to start the journey, you know the old way you're going to start the journey and so you may be in the 70 80 90 percent in production. Okay, but then the majority industry has you know, a lot of infrastructure a lot of applications. Right, I would say give and take you could start saying there is somewhere between 15 to 20 percent of the AppSec to 60 70% of the AppSec are in that direction.

Nobody today is starting a brand new application or a service to serve their customer base. in the old way the challenge they all face is what percent of your budget like everybody what percent of your budget is spending and keeping the lights on and what percentage is spend in innovation. And that is where we come in and we help our customers, you know, maximize their existing investment in infrastructure and help them with the modernization and innovation.

All right. So as you look forward, what are your top priorities for the rest of the year and across almost in the 2023? So what's on your mind?

I think for us we have now proven. at scale our customer base. So we have customers running 3,000 nodes.

We have customers earning hundreds and thousands of clusters so far for us now is now looking at and saying what are some of the key I would say vertical or Market sub segments. That we can rinse and repeat. Is it retail?

Is it Communications? Is it banking? So I think now we we have enough now masks to say.

Okay. Now we're seeing a pattern. We're seeing a series of workloads.

Is it AIML? So for us now, it's about really honing in on a few of them. And getting the you know more of that vertical industry approach.

And also the other thing we want to make sure is you know, I think you asked earlier, you know, you raise around of funding what are some of the areas the big area of investment for us is our current customers and our product leadership that will be a biggest chunk. Those will be the two big areas for us to invest in is continued customer success customer existing customer expansion and and also continuously bringing more Innovation, which is easier for in for our customers to use in terms of go to market really focus ourselves on profitable or growth. We are not just going to really really do marketing campaigns and sales planes because we want to be very focused and targeted in certain geographies and in certain sub verticals and build a community of you know, a try or a community of people who are further along in the journey.

With all that said what's the one thing you wish that customers kind of knew about kubernetes or what's the thing that you constantly see them doing over and over again? And you just shake your head and go cheese guys. I wish we would find a way to move beyond that.

Look, I think that the video objective of this call my is you know many times we hear this so many times for us. One of our challenges is people to know, you know, who Platform 9 is Awareness. There is a third option.

There is an option for you not to kill yourself, but trying to do it all yourself and repeat the mistakes or have a challenge or there is an option to not just completely, you know, give the keys of your kingdom to somebody else at a very high cost. There is a there is a third option for you to get the best of both worlds. So for us You know one thing is if people are thinking about how do I become Cloud native?

How do I use kubernetes? How do I modernize my applications? Okay.

I know the big players, but who's emerging disruptor who's moving fast and therefore let me talk to Platform 9 All right, cool. Hey basket. Thanks for being on the show.

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for the time.

All right. Thank you guys in the studio. All right.

Thank you.