UPDATED 13:55 EDT / NOVEMBER 15 2013

More services make the cloud more attractive | AWS re:Invent 2013

At this week’s AWS re:Invent 2013 conference, Nima Badiey of Pivotal sat down with SiliconANGLE founder John Furrier and Jeff Kelly, Principle Research Contributor to Wikibon on SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE.

Pivotal made a bit of a splash on Tuesday when they announced Pivotal One, a comprehensive, multi-cloud enterprise PaaS that runs on top of Pivotal CF. According to the company’s PR, they claim this new platform will aid customers in innovating faster than they previously could. Development teams will be able to update and scale their applications across both public and private clouds, instantly expanding and upgrading with no downtime.

Pivotal CF, mentioned above, was the subject of another announcement by the company yesterday as well. In a full page advertisement the company announced their cloud foundry would, for the first time, be commercially available to enterprise clients.

Badiey stated the focus of Pivotal is not to be an IaaS provider. He cites the competent companies in the market that offer that service as the reason their aim is to be one of the premier PaaS offerings on the market. “We are at the intersection of applications, data and analytics,” he said. The environment going forward will require enterprises to consolidate all three of these into one workable operation.

Furrier noted the unbundling of Pivotal from VMWare seems to be an important factor for the future success of Pivotal. “It was like the island of misfit toys,” stated Badiey. Forming into Pivotal has been key to their current position. “No one has gone after this market with all three tools in one toolbox.”

Pivotal Hadoop has inherited a dynamic, competent, stellar team of enterprise data scientists from EMC. According to Badiey, they are great at looking for and finding pockets of data, identifying the source of truth and helping the enterprise analyze and evaluate that data. This ability allows the client enterprise to create new applications which in turn generates more data.

As an example, he cites how GE turbine engines generate a terabyte of sensor data on one five-hour flight. Pivotal helps them to examine that data and place it into actionable context.

“It seems silly today to talk about the data generated by aircraft and automobiles and to ask how many apps you’ve installed on your car. In three years, this will not seem silly.”

And this is because the emerging unit of currency in the enterprise is really the application, not the VM, he notes. The CTO or VP of Ops is no longer the key enterprise player. The business unit owner is now the focus. If his IT can’t give him what he needs, he will find it with AWS, Verizon, AT&T or other providers. The business unit owner operates on a faster timescale than ever before and must be able to provision VMs and servers nearly instantaneously.

Badiey cites conversations in the hall at the conference when he says the question on everyone’s mind is should it be AWS and OpenStack or AWS or OpenStack. According to Badiey, he believes the answer should be and. “Everything is completely additive. We are agnostic. We play well with all of them.” He continues, “It’s not about picking the right horse. It’s about figuring out which one is best for your needs.” Pivotal sees this philosophy as a means of achieving significant market expansion. They intend to be ubiquitous across all emerging patterns in the industry.

“I have a computer. I don’t care how it plugs into the wall. I just need electricity. If I go elsewhere, I can build a converter. That’s how the consumer cloud market should be.”

Concluding the interview, Furrier asked Badiey to sum up what the bumper sticker on the car leaving the conference would read. His answer? “More Services Make the Cloud More Attractive.”


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