Cisco & Wipro: Driving Business Growth in the Cloud

David Littman: [00:01:43] Hi, Dave Littman, Truth in IT. Welcome to today's webcast. Driving business growth in the cloud. Today's webcast is sponsored by Cisco and Wipro. We expect today's event to go about, well, I don't know, 30 45 minutes and we will be taking your questions and comments in the chat room. I think we have folks both from Cisco and Wipro in the chat room, fielding questions will be cueing some up and taking them at the end. As you know, we're doing an Amazon gift card giveaway, and here's how that works. Toward the end of the event, we're going to display an image directly over the video player that looks like this. When you see it, just click on it and it will take you to a page that looks like this. Just hit the Enter button. You'll find out immediately whether or not you've won and whether you have or you haven't come back. We're running these events all the time, so any questions about the giveaway or, you know, the audio or the stream quality, just chat them in someone from Truth in IT, we'll get right back to you. And of course, any questions about the technical content chat those in and someone from Cisco and Wipro, we'll get right back to you. So in just a second, I'm going to hand things over to Mike Matchett, you know? Mike Mike is principal analyst and CEO with Small World Big Data, and Mike will be joined by Lakshmanan Vaidyanathan, or we are affectionately referring to as Laks. And Laks is general manager in global practice. Head for Wipro's FullStride Cloud Services and Laks and Mike will be joined by Danny McGinnis. Danny is Senior Director of Product Management and Business Development for the Cloud and Compute Business Unit with Cisco. So keep your questions coming. We'll pull out some and get to them at the end. But for now, let me hand things over to Mike Matchett Mike.

Mike Matchett: [00:03:29] Thanks, Dave. Yeah, it's really exciting today because, you know, everyone's on the cloud transformation journey. Everyone is doing digital transformation projects, everyone has initiatives. Everyone's been trying to get to the point where they can really leverage cloud, the cloud utility model, the cloud economics model. But in reality, we've always been saying it's not going to be 100 percent public cloud. What we're going to have is a hybrid cloud situation. Eventually, inevitably, some applications are going to live on premise. Some are going to be in private virtual cloud. So we're going to be stretching out to the edge and really getting that balance right, figuring out where apps go, where data goes, how to do security, how to even move and migrate things around is very, very complex and involves a lot of moving parts. It's a difficult challenge for a lot of people today to do that. You know, which economic models do you use? How do you optimize all that? Just all sorts of questions. So we've got some really good experts to ask our questions of today. So welcome, Laks. Welcome, Danny. Great to have you guys here.

Danny McGinnis: [00:04:31] Nice to be here, Mike. Thank you.

Mike Matchett: [00:04:33] All right. Let's start with let's start with Danny here. You have some experience, obviously, with a lot of customers doing these cloud journeys. What is your perspective on this demand for hybrid cloud? What is the market telling you at Cisco?

Danny McGinnis: [00:04:50] Yeah. So there is a tremendous amount that you can unpack there. But I think if we start at a macro level, the biggest trend is and you just kind of touched on a little bit is that we're still trying to figure out what where we want to be and every customer is in a different place in, I would say, in that hybrid cloud journey. One hundred percent, no. Most customers. So I guess that's not a one hundred percent, but most large customers will never have one hundred percent of their workloads in any one location. So we are now moving back into this distributed model where there will be some applications that are a better fit in public cloud. There are some applications that are a better fit in on premise or in an on-prem private cloud, and there's a lot of workloads that are being distributed to the edge. The key in all of this is how do we manage all of that still in a simplified fashion and make it look and act and feel like it's a single place? So what's the I guess the magic question is how do we start to place workloads based on business needs rather than technology limitations? And I think the key to that is is really trying to figure out how do we unify and simplify this, this operating model, it really comes a lot down to an operating model. And then being able to choose, Hey, you know, on-prem is better because of security or performance or compliance or, you know, but having an environment that has the same attributes of public cloud is critical.

Mike Matchett: [00:06:22] So, so Laks. Do you see a demand for hybrid cloud from your customers? Do they do they recognize that for what it is? And are they are they looking for for help with that?

Laks: [00:06:31] Absolutely. Mike and I aligned with what Danny had mentioned that while there was a bit of a spike towards cloud first or cloud only kind of a strategy to three years. Ago, I think that hype cycle is just getting a bit of normalized, people have got to realize that if you get to get the best value for money, the best performers, the best realization of the value that cloud can give, then it needs to really have a right cloud approach wherein systems which are conducive, which really need the level of agility and flexibility can really take advantage of the public cloud of the hyperscale cloud. But if there are systems which need to be close to the business, like in a manufacturing site where the system needs to be close to the engineering machines or the manufacturing equipment systems, then you really need to have the ability to manage the performance at that level. So Edge really becomes such an important one. And then the third dimension is, hey, I like to close my data centers because I don't want to have management cost of data centers, but doesn't mean that those workloads just need to go to an hyperscale cloud.

Laks: [00:07:39] They can still go to a private cloud, maybe managed by a partner, maybe managed by a third party. Right. So while there's a lot of DC exits and closures, there's clearly distribution of workload between the hyperscale and cloud, a third party private cloud and an edge cloud. And that's that's kind of the hybrid cloud world that we are seeing to evolve. While while there are distribution of workloads across these three different landing zones, the demand from business has not changed. They are saying, Hey, irrespective of whether it is public or private or the edge, they still want to have consistency of services. Consistency of standards and consistency of operational maturity. So the demand from business is still the same level of sophistication and automation and an agility. But they still want to be in a place which is most giving the right to value for money, as well as compliance and security. I think that's where we are seeing Hybrid Cloud really taking its turn towards a much more right cloud approach from the customers.

Mike Matchett: [00:08:39] Is there an element of this that in particular for enterprise customers versus other size customers? Is it kind of across the board? What do you what do you see there?

Laks: [00:08:49] Danny, I can go first, I think we are seeing this as a pattern of different of maturity. There are some customers or some industries where the hyper scale adoption could be slightly more. For example, tech enabled companies, new startups full on tech companies could have a heavy dependency on hyperscale or cloud. But you, when you go through this sector towards a retail or a manufacturing or a health care, you would see actually a much larger adoption of a third party cloud or an edge cloud, and not so much of a hyperscale cloud. So it's a it's a it's a range spanning across different industries, but definitely each one of them have got their pockets of interest across these three clouds.

Mike Matchett: [00:09:31] Oh, interesting. And so, Danny, just just back to you for a second. When you're looking at the hybrid cloud market, obviously you have a lot of things in the umbrella under under Cisco. What what do you really bring in particular to help address hybrid cloud? What does what is Cisco known for here?

Danny McGinnis: [00:09:49] So I think that I guess you have to sort of take a look at the problem that the customer is trying to solve, and maybe I'll back into it slightly. If you think about it, it's kind of where Laks was was taking this is that, you know, a lot of folks have customers have moved their workloads into public cloud almost out of necessity in how do I accomplish something for the business that it really comes down to time to value? I mean, a customer is competitive edge is how fast they can execute, and their application is ultimately what brings them value to their business. And so a data center that hosts that application is a critical foundation to that. And so in many cases, public cloud was the answer to time to value or time to market. Mm hmm. And I think now what you're seeing is a large customer base having an opportunity to reevaluate that start to look and say, Hey, I'm either overspending here. I think I can actually do this cheaper on-prem or I have a security or a performance attribute that is, I could probably do better in an alternative place than in a hyperscale or in a public cloud. But now it comes down to how do I do that? Ok, great.

Danny McGinnis: [00:11:05] Yes, there's better ways, but now it's how do I execute on that? So I think in our world, it's it's trying to deliver certainly best in class hardware, but the software is really what has changed the game here. If you think about what you get in an AWS or GCP or an azure, it's not just the underlying hardware, but it's that automation in that orchestration capability that you can turn up. Network capabilities or server or storage resources fairly simplistically and even through APIs, if that's how you choose to develop. And I think Cisco has really, really been focused for the last few years on developing software that brings that easy button to it and then still have a support model behind it where you can either have a Cisco services piece or I think this is where a Wipro is become such a great partner in in this model because a lot of customers want some hand-holding. Maybe this is an area they haven't been able to develop in, and they're looking for that support model to do it on Prem. And so Laks, maybe you kind of complete the equation of showing how how your business modeling and your intellectual property can layer on top, because I think that's where these partnerships are so, so critical.

Mike Matchett: [00:12:23] Yeah, I'd be curious to know Laks, you know, when you take these hybrid cloud offerings to a customer, how does that help them move forward? I mean, where are they at today? And when you walk in the door, how can you help them accelerate with these things?

Laks: [00:12:41] Sure. So while there is a clear direction to go to cloud, there's still a whole lot of legacy infrastructure and technical depth for most of our customers. We did a survey of almost 350 plus customers, and we realize that there's a clear aspiration to take advantage of cloud. Danny rightly said to create systems which are a reflection of the business demands time to market all the niceties that they want. But when they look back at the shelf, they've got systems which are not ready yet to deliver that agility and and scale. There are compliance issues that are operating system issues, database issues, so helping the customers to take the right steps either. It's one big step, which could be a big leap of just shutting out what they have got and adopting something which is like a SaaS or a new age product just off the shelf from the market, or looking at a modernization approach that will not disrupt your business but still take the right step towards getting the value of cloud is where we bring in. So we see a lot of customers who. Need who need guidance and support to help them take the right trajectory of modernization, which could be the different factors, either you just rehearsed it or refactor it or replace it, whatever the right methodologies are, but help them with the right strategy to really reach to an ideal state, which gives the best value for money on the right returns of investment.

Mike Matchett: [00:14:12] So it's not just a technology switch that you turn on, right? It's something where you really have to go in and really dig in and understand that customers even particular vertical industry does Wipro have a lot of industry specific expertise to call on, depending on the customer?

Laks: [00:14:28] Absolutely. Our approach to the market is clearly business down, business top down. And when we see business top-down, we really need to understand what the industry is offering to the customers. What are these services that the industry is delivering to its business? And then look at what is the suite of services that flow down. There are core applications that are B2C applications that are OTC applications, understanding what are the different processes and then driving down what are the underpinning technology solutions, leveraging the right level of architecture, network security and operations that can deliver those business outcomes. So it's a business top down approach that we taken as part of our FullStride approach to customers.

Mike Matchett: [00:15:12] All right. We used to talk about, you know, having vertical knowledge and going in as a consulting service and helping someone get the right application going. But really, we have to go deeper now and say it's not simply the application, it's where the application runs. It's where the data is. It's the security around it, how we get data out to the edge or the business locations, how we bring it in back to the middle and store it and protect it. And all these all these layered things that have to go on. In some ways, it's got a lot more complex, I think.

Laks: [00:15:37] Absolutely.

Mike Matchett: [00:15:40] So I know Danny, you talked a lot about just now about, you know, providing the technology in the form of software in terms of software defined things and in that but you also, you know, have hyper flex. You also have some really good platforms. You also have a lot of really solid networking, obviously coming from Cisco. How do you enable I mean, what's your relationship with Wipro that you enable them to go to market and go to the customer? I mean, we've talked a lot about the end customer, but how do you guys relate a little bit?

Danny McGinnis: [00:16:07] Yeah. So I think I think that the key here is so underlying and everything that we just talked about from a technology perspective, you know, our our stance on this is very, I'll say, cloud neutral. We are not by any means trying to encourage people to move one place or the other. I don't think that would be a fair stance and customers certainly don't want that. So the key here is is to work with with someone like Wipro and develop a solution where or hardware and and software technologies that fit into their offerings and then have joint development certified designs. Knowing that when a customer buys today the type of persona that we're speaking of, they really want an outcome, right? They are. There are certain customer profiles out there that are do it yourselfers, and they're more than happy to buy the separate components themselves. They'll buy a server, they'll buy the software, they'll stitch certain vendors together. And that model works out really well for certain persona types. But there are others that are really fixated on spending most of their I.T. budget on developing their applications or their their their own staff personnel when developing applications and really need an income for their infrastructure as a service. And and then ultimately, you know, digital transformation type services like Laks said, a top, top down approach. So for us, it's working very closely with Wipro to make sure that we have validated designs, making sure that we have features and capabilities in our hardware and our software that are now allowing them to take and develop on top of that. And I think that's where the partnership is really strong. It's not just on, hey, here's more hardware, it's the fact that there's joint development efforts, joint investments being made, documentation, you know, sharing of of TAC resources and how to how to escalate calls into things can be resolved rapidly if and when there is a problem that occur. So I mean that I think is key. It's really a full lifecycle.

Mike Matchett: [00:18:16] I mean, just pulling back the hood a little bit and seeing, oh no, you guys do validated designs back and forth and you have these, these these technology transfer things, you know, I think everyone would realize, you know, Laks that Wipro would have certified Cisco experts on staff in trained experts and a lot of them. And you can you can tell us in a second here, you know just how how deep your bench strength goes on that. But beyond that, what's your perspective of working with Cisco in on this design center and picking your solutions back to them?

Laks: [00:18:46] Thanks, Mike. As I said, the way we want to take our services to customers is a full stack approach, an approach which says customers can experience cloud everywhere irrespective of whether it is in hyperscalers or in a third party or on the edge. That needs to be seamless mobility of data information in a secure and compliant way. So the network and security becomes such an important piece when when you're creating a puzzle of a multi-cloud and hybrid cloud and multi Duo distributed edge location. So Cisco obviously a leader in the network and security space. So they really come out extremely strong in creating new propositions, which gives the best and compliant solution for customers to access data from wherever they are, be it from their endpoint or the edge location to an to a hyperscale cloud number one to their portfolio on user experience products. The App Dynamics is a very unique proposition to help us take a story of end user experience management to our customers. When we say we are going to give a ubiquitous user experience in as much of anywhere, anytime, any device, access to applications, we really need to have visibility to where the word default is, where the blogs are, where the issues are in the event of a performance issue. So the entire portfolio dynamics really elevates the the proposition that we can take from an experienced management to the customer with a thousand eyes at a very interesting perspective of information security, knowing where the events and alerts are.

Laks: [00:20:26] It gives a much more assured portfolio to a customer to say the network is good, the security is good, visibility and observability of the platform is available. And whether they're hybrid cloud platforms, be it on the edge or on a data center, really elevates and you give a nice flow of hyper flex. Hci is the target architecture that you are seeing a prominent architecture for the edge, for someone to have an edge to cloud continuum. That's the right architecture that you're looking forward, and Cisco really complements that that space as well. So in that context, we compute and storage, be it network, be it security, be it user experience. I think that's a full story that Cisco brings to the table, and that really makes our proposition much more easier to a customer. All that we need to what Danny said, it doesn't matter who the hyperscale cloud is, are most likely customers are multi-cloud. Add them to the puzzle and that completes the narrative for a customer. So it's Cisco completely providing the technology stack. Wipro, providing the application and the services portfolio and the benefits of a multi-cloud really gives the narrative for a future hybrid cloud for our customers.

Mike Matchett: [00:21:34] So, so Laks. You sit in the middle, though, between the customer and and the technology provider in this case, right? You're getting you're getting pulled and pushed from both sides just between the two of you. I think our audience would be interested, who pushes each other harder to get the job done better and right? Is it is it you pushing on Cisco or pulling or Cisco saying, Hey, here's here's some leading stuff that we brought to the table. How do how do you feel about that?

Laks: [00:21:58] I think it's a 25 year relationship, so I'm sure there are times when we have pulled down. There are times when they have pulled us, right? I think one great thing with Cisco is their ability to create a cadence. They have a classic CTO office, which engages the architects and senior leadership from the partner organization to constantly feed them what the customers and business are wanting. So we as as integrators on the ground, we not only see Cisco, we also see other technology products at play. So we are able to bring in some learnings and insights of what other customers are perceiving a first time information to what the new age technologies is supposed to be in. And maybe Cisco is already inventing something on that space. So I think that's that's the level of cadence that we have. Being open, being creating a forum where partners can contribute to to Cisco's technology advancement and their willingness to listen and respond, I think has been fantastic. And then we were very proud to say in many of the products that Cisco had released. We have been an early adopter and an early deployer, either to our own systems. We have almost two hundred and fifty offices and three hundred thousand users across the globe. So for our own deployment, we make sure that we are testing those solutions and then take to our customers. So I think in that context, it's been a one fantastic run so far.

Mike Matchett: [00:23:22] Do got a customer number one and did you say 26 years you've been a partner? That's right. Yeah, that's yeah. Wow, that's that's great. You guys go really back pretty far. Danny, you know, you can address that a little bit too if you want. But I'm even more curious about what you're bringing to the table, kind of pushing the edge here. What of things? What what are you now? As Cisco saying, here is the forefront of what we want to bring along.

Danny McGinnis: [00:23:46] Yeah, so just on your previous point, you asked about who's pushing who harder, I think I think that the way Laks answered, it's it is definitely mutual. I think there's I meet with a lot of customers on a regular basis, and quite often I see that there's such a hunger for how do I do this in this lack of knowledge? And that's where having industry experts or having experts in digital transformation top down and then bringing in technology experts, I mean, we live, eat and breathe how to build the best hardware and software technology solutions in the world. But at some point there's a hand-off either to a customer or to a partner that starts to take that and kind of completes the rest of the application lifecycle. And I think that's where that push pull is, is really, really healthy. And in fact, the feedback and the expertise that Wipro can bring back and offers us to help develop is it's critical. So when it comes to pushing the boundaries, yes, of course. Like I said, we live and breathe technology, so we're always trying to push the envelope. And I think for us it, it's really around. You know, best of breed hardware has always been in our DNA and we have some incredible innovations. We're always pushing the limits on what we can do from price per performance and how much compute, processing and innovation we can do inside the hardware across everything, not just compute networking. But then I think that where a lot of the real innovative R&D is happening is in the hybrid cloud space, you know, Laks started to talk about at the thousand eyes, and that's really the observability side of that.

Danny McGinnis: [00:25:29] Then you got to get into where we are with inner site and tools like Iwo, which is intercept workload orchestrator, where now you're getting into the action ability. So it's hey, we we verified everything's OK. We think things are looking good. But hey, now we want to take action. Something has changed. And how do we easily start to be able to manipulate or orchestrate and automate across an entire on-prem data center? But then we're I think the real key to this is starting to expose that or expand that into public cloud into edge. We've been talking about hybrid cloud as an industry for years. I mean, I've been on stage at conferences for 10 years talking about hybrid cloud, but we're really just moving into a world where you know that it used to be. I have some on-prem application and I have some application in public cloud, but we're starting to get to a place where that's starting to look and feel like a single thing. It's the location becomes less important parts of the application, especially as we move into containers and microservices. Parts of applications now can reside in different geographical locations, but that's really the the the innovation, the software that's allowing that to happen both securely and cohesively across this fair environment. And so that's where I'm really proud of the innovation that's coming out of our GPUs right now

Mike Matchett: [00:26:51] Because at the end of the day, I mean, really, the word would be automation, right? And we want to automate like a hyper scalar because the hyperscalers really have the great economic businesses, if they can scale. So if we can bring that kind of automation into the hybrid world for enterprises to run, that's really kind of an ultimate goal here.

Danny McGinnis: [00:27:08] And that's the key, right? It's not just on Prem, it's not a replicate that automation on Prem, it's replicate that automation across every environment make edge on-prem and public cloud seamless.

Mike Matchett: [00:27:22] And make it look like it's your own service when you put it all together. I mean, I

Danny McGinnis: [00:27:25] Used to be more mobile. Don't let me get stuck in in a in one place that was right for my application when it was this big. But now when it grew to this big and I want to move it, how do I do that without it costing me? Ridiculous amounts of money or downtime or both. And I think that's where we're moving into into a more modern day hybrid cloud environment.

Mike Matchett: [00:27:48] So, so Laks, I would ask you, do you see as part of your business to help it at those organizations look like a service provider to their business and and provide those that that kind of, you know, cloud interface to their their departments?

Laks: [00:28:01] Absolutely, Mike. In fact, our go to market proposition is that the the service organization is a is an I.T. aggregator ability to provide an offering or a boutique of services to its business, leaving the business to choose which is the best for them in terms of cost and compliance, security and the able to seamlessly integrate, irrespective of where the data is residing, where the applications are residing and and the kind of security constraints that come between them. And Danny, thank you for taking cue on the Innosight. I think that's possibly the glue, which will help the organizations behave like that aggregator, a single pane of glass giving the complete lifecycle services for systems and applications from day to day one to day two scenarios of what activities that would happen in any business application, irrespective of whether it is in hyperscale or at the edge or in a third party data center. I think that that's that's where the value of Innosight is coming in.

Mike Matchett: [00:29:06] All right. So we've got a couple, a couple more things we could talk about as we're talking about this. I know one of the attractions that people want to do hybrid cloud isn't simply to get better IT services, but to also do it cost effectively. And that brings in the idea of, you know, we've got to do things efficiently, not just effectively, right? So tell me a little bit about how this shift to hybrid cloud for customer changes their economics. What kind of consumption models are they really looking for to hope to get out of this? A Laks, if you want to start with that a little bit.

Laks: [00:29:39] Well, yeah, I could. So when we are making a narrative to a customer that we are going to give you a public cloud like experience on premise, we have to be assured that it is not only from the technical sophistication and the automation maturity, but also the commercial agility that hyperscale could offer, right? If there is a pay as you go model, if there is a three year reserve instance or a fire reserve in a sense kind of models available in public cloud, can we emulate them on premise in a way that customers could consume the same technology as if they are consuming in public cloud? So we have to really work with our partners. It's just not about a simple financial engineering. It's just not about converting a capex into a five year opex and paying like an EMI. It's no longer that it's truly creating a model, which is a consumable as a service. It involves a lot of engineering at the back end, a lot of capacity management, a lot of logistics and warehouse management to be able to truly deliver that as a service capability in a customer premise or in a remote edge location. I think great job done by by Cisco with the launch of their as-a-service portfolio to really extend what customers will do as a click and buy, they could actually do a bit of it. You can buy even on the reg locations, even on their on-premise locations. I think that's where we were able to really wrap up the deal by saying it's not two different worlds one world which is nice and rosy, but as a service model, the other word which is good but put some residual value limitations and technical limitations. No, it's as good as what both could play on the same level. I think that's a that's a big shift in the way customers are looking at a hybrid cloud in the sense that we're happy.

Mike Matchett: [00:31:34] I'm really seeing I'm really seeing Wipro here as a hybrid cloud enabler, like you guys really have to be there to help someone put this all together and make that seamless across all those locations and technologies. Danny, you have talked about consumption models in the past and and I. How does that affect Cisco's go to market in business if the consumption models change things? How does that how does that change what you guys do as a as a business?

Danny McGinnis: [00:32:01] Yeah, I mean, to me, I think Laks said it well. When you talk about bringing a cloud experience or I often say cloud operating model to to a to a customer, to me, there's there's really three big pillars in that technology and simplifying and unifying the world of it and DevOps. That's the big shift that's out. And I think that's what we just talk a lot about. The second pillar is sort of that end to end experience day zero, day one day two and making sure that there's full lifecycle support throughout that, whether that's in sales when you're exploring or whether you're you're actually getting ready. To purchase and then really helping with your day to expansion, I mean, that's just as critical as day one. And then the third one is flexible consumption. You most customers today, they've frankly they've been spoiled by by that attribute of public cloud and that I only pay for what I need. And I think if you look back at it at Cisco, we've been very clear to to the to our customers and to the industry that this is an area that I mean, this is that at our our CEO and down throughout executive leadership that we're moving to a direction where pretty much the entire portfolio becomes available through as a service and whether that be direct or whether that be through our through our partners, you know, having that that capability.

Danny McGinnis: [00:33:24] But but with that, you essentially short, long story short is the risk needs to go back on the vendor. If if we're going to do business together, it is our job to now take that risk. Until you use hardware, you pay us for what you use and until you do, we'll try to enable that and allow you to have additional resources and capabilities on site. And when you're ready to use it, you pay for it. And if you don't, you don't. And so that's really that third pillar that that in my, in my view, completes that cloud operating model. So technology and end to end experience and then the right commercial models, whether that be through as a service or leasing or financing, whatever it may be. But being able to buy and consume the way you need to consume for your business.

Mike Matchett: [00:34:13] And is that simply an economic thing? It seems to me that's also shifts some risks back to both you and Wipro in some ways being the intermediary there in the service provider?

Danny McGinnis: [00:34:25] Yeah. And I guess it kind of has to. I mean, customers are demanding that that that's certainly an attribute that they have been learned and come to appreciate inside of a public cloud. And and so we've adapted to that. And I'll tell you, though, it's yeah. So so the risk does come back on the vendor. That's the the point I was trying to make there. But I think the other piece is the experience. And so it's not just about a financial model and Laks Laks alluded to this as well. There's also very, very sophisticated tooling that needs to come in place so that a customer and a partner, if a partner is the one delivering the service, understands the capacity usage, the certain thresholds of when more infrastructure should be ordered and available. What happens in a lot of On-prem models today is that customers tend to overprovision for the "What if?" I have my budget? I don't. The application team or the line of business hasn't told me exactly what they're going to. Their growth pattern is they can't forecast it. I don't want to be the one if I'm IT, I don't want to be the one that's going to hold up the project or say no. So I'll buy 20 percent more than what I think I need because I don't know what I'm going to get more budget and I don't want to have to hold up business. And that's what's going on with as a service models today from Cisco. Plus, this is our is our big intro to the market here in that that capacity, that expansion is always available to you. You know, the vendor is essentially leaving extra capacity on site that we negotiate in advance of the opportunity so that you can expand into that with very sophisticated tooling so that you understand exactly how much you're utilizing, understanding, simplifying your whole day to ordering experience and making sure that you can expand as your applications grow or flex down if you need to.

Mike Matchett: [00:36:16] I know Laks, it sounds like hybrid cloud gets gets more interesting and a little more complicated at the same time for for what you're doing right as you take this on. How do you see this flexible consumption playing out into hybrid cloud?

Laks: [00:36:30] I think, as I said, it really breaks one big iron wall where people felt that, hey, I could only move to public cloud and get the experience of agility right. And the moment I invest something in my factory or something in my premises, it's just going to stay where it is. And I'm going to give a good view that if I'm going to invest, let me invest with some headroom of 20 25 percent because I don't know when a sudden spike of demand will come and the business is going to show the night for me, right? So with a proper capacity management and we obviously use a fantastic tool from Cisco, the workload optimizer, which gives a good view of how the consumption is, how the demand has been in the last three to six months, what kind of projects are coming out with the proper demand management and capacity management, we can almost give in time resources to what the customers would want to consume, and that has really made us do the right set of tooling, right set of chargeback and chargeback mechanisms, even the commercials on what we charge to the client. Is very transparent, very clear, and even the supply side commercials are even a straightforward in that context. So there is no middleman constraint, which we used to have in the past of having a completely different sourcing model and a very different selling model. Now, pretty much the sourcing and selling model have almost become the same, and we just stop it up with our services on top of that. I think that a in a sense, has eased a lot of pressure for us, which we used to have in a very traditional model three to five years ago.

Mike Matchett: [00:38:14] I like that perspective. That's a great insight that shows how the industry has been changing, and maybe you guys have been affecting each other to get here as well as we talked about earlier. Let me let me ask you, Laks, as you're talking here, I've sort of been trying to put in my head a picture of the value that you really provide and what you do to the customer. How would how would you, though, say you're really differentiating from other service providers out there? What does Wipro really bringing to the market that people should sit up and take notice of?

Laks: [00:38:46] One, I think we give a consulting led approach to a cloud transformation journey for a customer or digital transformation journey for a customer. I'm sure you are following the the acquisition that we have done, which is CatCo, which is clearly giving us a business led transformation approach to our clients. So we start from that to understand what your priorities are, what your business direction is, what is a new age business demand that is going to come in. And if that's the business that you need to deliver, what kind of underpinning technology solutions of which infrastructure plays such an important role, a team. And then comes our application experience of working with all the leading partners, be the SAP, Oracle, IBM and a whole suite of products and even the New Age fintech companies and these the companies that we work with. It really gives us a flavor of an application experience to say what is the right size of application that can deliver value to you. And then comes are 40 years of infrastructure experience a pedigree of R&D to understand what is the right cloud, both in terms of design, build and an ongoing operation that can deliver value to the customer. I think that capability of a business alignment and application alignment and an infrastructure alignment gives a FullStride experience to a customer. I think that's where we present ourselves very different than many of the partners. And as I said, the infrastructure pedigree of ours dates back to times when we used to manufacture our own infrastructure in the Indian context, and that gives a lot of ground understanding of what technology partners like Cisco can bring in. And getting the best value out of technology is what we are sharing. I think what really differentiates us, and that's really the power of technology from Cisco really helps us student that better. But that's the story for carrying forward.

Mike Matchett: [00:40:43] Yeah, I like I like those pillars. You know, when you talk about having an expertise in infrastructure and expertise in applications and expertise and in making all the things work together, that's great. And it does sound like there is a lot of advantage that a lot of expertise there that end customers. Enterprises of all sizes could really take advantage of so that it would really accelerate them. And it's not simply, you know, cost to be born, to get to hybrid cloud. There's an opportunity there, right? Danny, let me ask you sort of the reverse of that question. They've been a partner for 26 years. What what? What do you see in Wipro? Why do you think that they're just a great partner for you guys? How are they really bringing value to you?

Danny McGinnis: [00:41:27] I think, you know, like I saying earlier, a lot of customers come to us with this need a need that's beyond just the technology space that we play in. It's it's getting into industry specific. It's getting into an entire digital transformation that brings in many other vendors than just Cisco. When you think about all the different applications that go into a fully automated sicced infrastructure as code type type pipeline. And I think that we're pro brings this level of expertise that not very many partners have, you know, the solutions that they've developed, the focus that they've had on not just being able to deliver at once, but to scale it in a way that's repeatable in a way that standardized in a way that brings in security, the way that brings in other automation tools outside. I mean, business automation tools and then, you know, adds in a fundamental infrastructure as a service capability to that. So, so many customers looking for a way to solve a bigger problem than just Cisco can solve. And I think that's where the real. Value comes in, the partnership is hopefully offering offering Wipro a very sound set of technologies across security, across automation, across observability, across action ability, across hardware and networking, storage and compute. But then being able to layer on the services that we don't bring in and integrate those together that that to me, is what's crucial and needed today.

Mike Matchett: [00:43:01] This has just been really informative. I think we're sort of running to the end of our time here. Any particular things that you would recommend people go do if they want some more information here if they're looking for. Find out more about Wipro or and Cisco particular Cisco plus that's coming out.

Danny McGinnis: [00:43:19] Yeah, I think there's going to be some good links that are added in here. So we have some, some great use cases for you to share. There's some, some websites that you can check out, both on the Cisco side and on the Wipro side. So be sure to. This is interesting to you. Be sure that you explore those a little bit more and then certainly we'll get you the right contact information here, David and team will. We'll share that with the with the group and, you know, feel free to reach out and starting and start engaging with your with your right team members. So thank you very much. Mike Laks Dave. Really appreciate.

Mike Matchett: [00:43:52] Awesome. Awesome. Thank you, Laks. Thank. Thank you, Danny. Thanks, Laks for being here.

David Littman: [00:43:57] All right, great. Yeah, we we do have a bunch of questions. If we don't get to your question today, someone from Wipro or Cisco, we'll get back to you. We're just going to go through a handful that we picked out. Then we'll get to the giveaway. So Laks, I guess that's one I would address to you. Question is, you know, you've spoken a lot today about consumption models and having agility of migrating between public and private cloud. But question came in regarding security, specifically regarding managed detection and response. And is this part of the services that you guys offer?

Laks: [00:44:25] Yes, we do. In fact, we are one of the leading security detection and response providers in the world. We leverage a whole lot of our suite of Cisco products. Obviously, we complement that with other third party solutions as well. But Cisco is at the core of many of our perimeter security application security, as well as endpoint security solutions that we take across. And as I mentioned earlier, when we look at a partnership with Cisco, naturally, it comes as a full stack beat at the edge or at the On-prem Laks or even at the cloud. I think that's a value that we take to the customers.

David Littman: [00:45:02] Okay, sounds great. Laks Here's another one I think would be for you as well is Wipro adding any, you know, beside consulting IP and the managed services itself. Are there specific pieces of technology in the stack middleware that you guys are adding?

Laks: [00:45:17] Yeah. Rather than calling it as a middleware because we don't, we are a software company, but we leverage a lot of industry leading automation products and overlay that on top of the Intersight, as well as the native capabilities that Cisco brings in. So our ability is to see that it's creating the a single pane of glass user interface so that the customer can integrate with their service management tooling with their business tooling or CRM tooling. And they have a unified experience not only at the enterprise grade of services, but also for the workplace services and the services that they may have. I think that's where we add value by creating that nice user interface which plans across these platforms.

David Littman: [00:46:04] Okay, great. Great. Two more quick questions, then some final thoughts we'll get to the give away. So I'm not sure Denny or Laks if this would be for you, I'll throw it out there. Maybe Laks, I don't know. This might be more for you, but question is, is there a service that's really sort of catered for state and local education or state and local government? Not necessarily, you know, a private business.

Laks: [00:46:25] Uh, yes. So we do address public sector and federal government as much as what we do for the consumer and the enterprise. Lastly, on the councils and the government, we see a lot of demand from the education sector where there is a demand for VDI remote classrooms and virtual infrastructure. I think those are classic use cases where we have a flagship product called Virtual Desk, which is built leveraging underpinning Cisco technology and the network and security platform to deliver a fantastic remote school experience for many of the government agencies. I think that's a classic use case that we believe public sector engages us for delivering value.

David Littman: [00:47:11] Okay, great Laks. Thank you. So last question and Danny, I don't know if this is for you or you can refer to Laks. So if if this particular entity is not currently a Cisco client, can they still benefit from the solution?

Danny McGinnis: [00:47:27] I mean, yeah, I can I can take that one, David. So certainly, I mean, of course, the answer is yes, and I think that, you know, in many instances, customers are. You especially not in a greenfield environment, and almost every customer is a brownfield type customer. Whether or not you're coming out of public cloud or perhaps you have another hardware vendor or software vendor inside your data center, you know, someone like a Wipro is really the perfect way to help consult you out of that. To make that leap, I see so many, so many customers and myself included, I was stuck. I used to be on the customer side and you know, you're looking for that way to convert. But you know, a lot of your business processes, your your automation processes, your security processes, the way you monitor. It's been developed over many years for your existing environment, and that's a while slowly working with and partnering with someone like a Wipro is is really that that that crutch, right? Or that railing to help you get across and leap into a more modernized. I call it that. I mean, that's the best way I could describe it is how do I get into a more modernized state? And often that means technology change. Whether or not it's Cisco, it's older Cisco gear into newer Cisco gear are coming out of a public cloud or both or even another vendor? Yes. I mean, I certainly think that that someone like a Wipro really, really helps with that.

David Littman: [00:48:54] All right. Great, Danny. Thank you. Mike, any final thoughts before we wrap things up?

Mike Matchett: [00:48:58] I know I've talked to a lot of people in the past couple of years about hybrid cloud. Hybrid cloud was inevitable as people took pieces of their environment, moved it into a public cloud or a virtual private cloud, and kept some things on premise. But the end result was kind of jagged. I would call it a jagged cloud because you had kind of things poking up between the different pieces of the hybrid things going on, and it wasn't all seamless layer. I think today we've seen a vision emerging powered by Cisco transformative technologies and things like Cisco Plus and those flexible consumption models and UCS. I know and some other things we didn't even talk about. And you know what Laks was bringing here with Wipro talking about, you know, really making programable infrastructure autonomous and bringing those layers so that the things run smoothly in hybrid cloud really starts to look like a cloud from the outside perspective to the end user in the business. I think that's really a key step that a lot of people really should consider today. And it looks like we have a team here more than capable of helping people with that journey.

David Littman: [00:49:58] So that's great. That's great. Okay, so it's almost like, you know, driving business growth in the cloud, almost like driving business growth as a cloud in some respects. So I want to thank our guests, Danny McGinniss with Cisco. I want to thank Laks with Wipro and of course, Mike Matchett with Small World Big Data. I'm Dave Littman with Truth in IT. Let's put up the giveaway. Good luck with that. Thank you again, everyone for coming. We want to wish you all a great day.