ZKast with Bob Friday

0:00 [Music]

0:04 uh welcome everybody i'm zeus caraval

0:06 from zk research and i'm here

0:08 for another z cast video podcast as

0:11 always this is done in conjunction with

0:12 my media partner eweek i'm joined today

0:15 as part of a thought leadership series

0:17 with

0:17 bob friday who was one of the founders

0:20 of mist who's now actually part of

0:22 juniper networks who was

0:23 they were acquired a couple of years ago

0:25 now so bob why don't you say hi to

0:27 everybody introduce yourself

0:29 and give us a little background on what

0:30 miss does yeah thank you zeus and uh

0:33 thank you for having me here today you

0:34 know

0:35 my background has been mostly wireless

0:36 most of my career now i sent a thank you

0:38 letter the fcc every year for the

0:40 unlicensed you know

0:41 most my career has been spent building

0:43 mesh networks unlicensed wireless

0:45 controller type of stuff

0:46 you know i did airspace one time which

0:48 was really around wireless controllers

0:50 for the enterprise

0:51 sold that company to cisco and was cisco

0:54 cto for

0:55 six eight years uh and then left cisco

0:58 to go off to start mist

0:59 which is really around cloud and ai and

1:01 you know where i'm here with you today

1:02 to discuss

1:03 yeah and we all we we've kind of joked

1:05 over the years since uh you've been part

1:07 of

1:07 juniper that this was almost a reverse

1:09 acquisition where

1:10 uh well although juniper acquired missed

1:13 missed uh you can see the missed

1:14 influence

1:15 inside juniper now uh you know having

1:18 this ai

1:18 influence across the entire enterprise

1:20 portfolio so that's been kind of fun to

1:22 watch

1:22 i've noticed um the enterprise business

1:26 of juniper it seems like jim was almost

1:28 doubled down on the enterprise i think

1:30 in

1:30 during the last earnings call we just

1:31 had actually a um an analyst call

1:34 with some of the juniper execs and uh

1:36 romney talked about

1:37 enterprise being the growth engine he

1:39 actually predicted that pretty soon it

1:41 would be bigger than service fighter

1:42 which

1:43 i think a few years ago um no one would

1:46 have predicted that

1:47 right for for juniper to have an

1:48 enterprise business that's going that

1:50 fast so

1:50 can you can you expand on that you know

1:54 if you look what romney and the

1:55 executive team general are looking at

1:57 doing you know

1:58 juniper historically has been known as

2:00 kind of a high performance

2:01 routing company for service providers

2:03 you know romney and team are really

2:05 looking to diversify

2:06 juniper and really turn it into more of

2:09 a software company right

2:11 you know so you see a lot of things

2:12 happening at junior as it transforms

2:14 itself

2:15 you know we're extending the businesses

2:17 across sp

2:19 enterprise data center and security so

2:22 organizationally we're getting focused

2:24 around these four different business

2:26 areas and then inside those businesses

2:29 we're really starting to transform

2:30 ourselves from kind of the hardware

2:32 to more of a day zero day one day two

2:35 software company

2:36 you kind of see that because that's

2:38 where our customers are driving us to

2:39 right that's where customers are asking

2:41 for help as these networks come

2:42 become more complex you know they're

2:44 really asking for their vendors to

2:46 actually become

2:47 you know help them with the software

2:49 problem of how they deploy and operate

2:51 software and how we're going to operate

2:52 these networks going forward

2:54 so i think that's where you're seeing

2:55 romney and the team actually being

2:57 driven by

2:58 both the investors and and from the

3:00 customers that are driving us more

3:02 towards this

3:03 diversified company with more of a

3:05 software focus

3:06 yeah now one of the the principles with

3:09 which i conduct my research is

3:11 has always been uh that market you know

3:14 share gains an opportunity to create a

3:16 remarketing transition

3:18 and i think in the enterprise network

3:20 space it seems like

3:21 we're in this big transition where more

3:24 and more networking

3:26 is moving to the cloud right in fact if

3:28 you look

3:29 at the impact clouds had across all of

3:32 ikea

3:33 everything's moved to the cloud except

3:35 networking it's kind of lagged behind

3:37 so can you talk a little bit about

3:39 what's been driving them

3:41 yeah you know if you look at the origin

3:43 story from mist right i mean

3:44 sushi and i were at cisco when we

3:47 acquired meraki right

3:48 you know and that was really the

3:50 beginnings of how cloud was going to be

3:52 able to simplify

3:53 networking uh but what we started to

3:55 really hear from customers when i was

3:57 there

3:58 was really you know we're watching kind

4:00 of these wireless networks go from a

4:02 nice to have

4:03 to a must-have to really they're going

4:05 to business critical and i had a couple

4:07 of very large customers tell me bob

4:09 hey before we put any consumer

4:11 experience on our network

4:13 you know one you had to stop your

4:14 controllers from crashing you know so

4:16 they wanted better software reliability

4:19 two they wanted me to keep up with the

4:21 uh their mobile

4:22 you know digital transformation projects

4:24 you know they were building mobile apps

4:26 every month

4:27 you know the network was still being

4:28 updated every year type of thing

4:30 so they wanted to keep a speed and

4:32 probably third more importantly

4:33 was i call the paradigm shift from we're

4:36 not here to help them manage

4:38 access points or routers which is what i

4:40 did at airspace right you know there the

4:42 paradigm is helping customers manage

4:44 these ap

4:44 switches and routers really the paradigm

4:46 shift is really helping customers manage

4:48 the

4:49 end-to-end user experience what we call

4:51 client-to-cloud

4:53 and it's really they wanted visibility

4:54 you know before they put a robot

4:56 or a mobile app onto their network they

4:59 really want to make sure they have

5:00 complete end in connectivity

5:02 and visibility you know all the way from

5:04 that client device to the internet

5:06 and that was really the big trans market

5:08 transition that you know really

5:10 drove miss you know it's one of the

5:11 reasons sujay and i left cisco right

5:13 and we really took a bet that you know

5:16 networking required both like cloud

5:18 and ai architectural change you know and

5:21 if you were going to do this

5:22 you're really easier to do with a blank

5:24 sheet of paper because it's really an

5:26 architectural change that's happening in

5:27 networking right now

5:28 when people think of mist uh people

5:31 think of you know in fact i'm looking at

5:33 the little background behind you've got

5:35 little wi-fi symbols on there

5:37 and when you launched you were a wi-fi

5:38 company you're part of gartner's

5:40 you know wi-fi you know wired fire

5:43 martin's land

5:44 uh magic quadrant but in fact um

5:48 give the people watching this on on an

5:50 e-week in my youtube channel a little

5:51 more detail on what this is it's not

5:53 really a wi-fi company as much as it was

5:55 a cloud ai company correct

5:58 no that's correct that's what i'm saying

5:59 if you look at the origin admits

6:01 it was really around the thesis of you

6:04 know cloud is this fundamentally a

6:05 better way to develop maintain software

6:08 you know and that's why people are

6:09 starting to move more and more of their

6:11 applications to cloud

6:12 you know one is the innovation speed you

6:14 know the fact that we can build

6:15 software more reliably and at scale on

6:18 the cloud

6:19 and then the second thing is this ai

6:21 transition right

6:22 and that was really kind of the other

6:24 part of mist is you know can we really

6:26 build something on par with a human

6:28 you know and when i saw i know if you i

6:30 don't know if you remember watson you

6:31 remember watson playing jeopardy

6:33 yes yeah you know that that was kind of

6:36 one of the inspirations is hey you know

6:38 if they can build something they can

6:39 play jeopardy on par with

6:41 you know a jeopardy champion you know we

6:43 should be able to build something that

6:44 can really

6:46 play jeopardy on par with a network

6:47 domain expert

6:49 and that was kind of that you know when

6:50 i started to realize that you know

6:52 technology was happening right ai was

6:55 really going from this marketing story

6:57 into something that was going to be

6:58 useful for all different industries

7:00 including network right and beyond just

7:02 cars

7:02 you know we're going to see aai actually

7:04 actually make a difference across all

7:06 our verticals

7:07 yeah so how close is it right now if

7:09 you're uh you know if you think of

7:11 the big leap that watson took you know

7:14 winning jeopardy uh

7:16 if you were to put missed head-to-head

7:18 um in a competition with the

7:20 the best network engineers out there is

7:22 it slightly behind is it on par is it

7:25 ahead

7:26 yeah so i would say one thing i found

7:28 also missed doing this

7:30 you know there was the architectural

7:31 change of the us making sure we actually

7:33 could build the right architecture and

7:34 pipelines to actually process this data

7:36 in real time you know build all these ai

7:38 pipelines

7:39 but interesting the other thing we found

7:41 is organizationally

7:43 you know and this is what i tell people

7:44 is you know when you see big companies

7:46 start

7:46 asking their different business users to

7:48 uh work together

7:51 that's usually a sign something changing

7:52 architecturally in the industry

7:54 you know in this case what i found is i

7:56 was able to tie the customer support

7:58 team

7:59 right up with the data science team

8:00 right and that is where

8:02 for every ticket right every customer

8:04 support ticket that comes into miss

8:06 today

8:07 we basically have marvis answering those

8:09 tickets right now and we're

8:10 at about 70 percent efficacy that means

8:13 that

8:14 you know and these are hard tickets

8:15 right these are tickets like you know

8:16 why are

8:17 why is having a connection problem why

8:19 is the zoom not working

8:21 right so right now we're at 70

8:23 championship what i call championship

8:25 level

8:25 you know where i can answer about 70 of

8:27 the questions that come in our way

8:29 um i want to get that to 90. for to be a

8:32 champion my

8:32 criteria is 90 it's like you know we get

8:35 close to 90

8:36 i feel like you know i'm playing i'm on

8:38 par with network jeopardy

8:40 well the good thing about that though is

8:42 that uh when marvis does it

8:43 and as a former network engineer i'm

8:45 saying this uh nicely

8:47 marvelous rolls eyes of the user for not

8:49 knowing what the user is doing right so

8:52 um at least you know it it doesn't uh in

8:54 a nicer way i suppose

8:56 hey um since um juniper required

8:59 yes uh i noticed there was two other

9:02 acquisitions one was

9:03 astra who's an intent-based networking

9:05 company and 128 technology

9:08 um which is an sd-wan company so explain

9:12 how

9:12 i would take missed abstract 128t with

9:15 juniper put those together

9:17 um you know tell me about that story

9:20 yeah

9:20 yeah so you know when you look like when

9:22 we started mist right

9:24 the question we were really trying to

9:25 answer is you know why are you having a

9:27 poor internet experience

9:29 uh it turned out that the access point

9:31 provided about 80 percent of the data we

9:33 needed to answer that question

9:35 and that's one reason when we started

9:37 this that i decided to build an access

9:38 point

9:39 was really to make sure i can get the

9:40 data and needed to answer that question

9:43 so since we've joined juniper our

9:45 mission is really to basically

9:47 extend marvis and ai ops across the

9:50 juniper portfolio

9:52 and we're really starting that with the

9:54 enterprise portfolio so that includes

9:56 the access points the switches

9:58 and the routers and interestingly what

10:00 2128t

10:02 brings to the party is it brings really

10:04 two things one is they have a very

10:05 unique way of doing

10:07 tunnelless uh routing so they bring a

10:09 unique way of actually creating these

10:11 tunnels back to uh

10:12 back to gateways but more interesting

10:15 with their session-based routing

10:16 is they bring more granular information

10:19 about each session

10:21 as opposed to just having visibility of

10:23 the ipsec tunnel

10:24 we actually get visibility into each

10:26 user so what ipt

10:29 128t allows us to do is now really

10:32 allows marvis to answer

10:33 more questions about applications right

10:36 in addition to connectivity

10:37 i can start answering questions about

10:39 why is your zoom not

10:40 behaving properly and it starts to let

10:43 me answer questions with more

10:44 granularity right if you're having a

10:46 connectivity problem

10:48 i can now go down into the lan interface

10:50 i can now figure out

10:51 you know is your problem due to some way

10:52 on interface you know so that is the

10:54 vision of really extending marvis across

10:57 the juniper enterprise portfolio and

11:00 then after

11:01 is really around the data center you

11:03 know that's kind of the ultimate last

11:05 piece of the puzzle right you know

11:06 somewhere you know if you're having a

11:08 problem from the client

11:10 the other end point is in the data

11:11 center somewhere that's pretty

11:13 interesting because that brings an

11:14 end-to-end

11:15 aspect to networking that we've never

11:17 really had before like historically

11:19 like is it prior to being an analyst as

11:20 a network engineer and we thought about

11:22 web engineering

11:23 wi-fi there's data centers campus

11:25 engineers

11:26 but you just have one network now since

11:28 you're able to apply that it's all just

11:30 possible

11:31 yeah and that is really the paradigm

11:33 shift this is you know in networking now

11:35 you know

11:36 in the past it's really been about

11:37 trying to manage network elements

11:39 uh but going forward the paradigm shifts

11:42 you really want to manage the indian

11:44 user experience device experience right

11:46 that is the problem that most businesses

11:47 are dealing with yeah well i've

11:49 described that sort of as a bottoms-up

11:51 approach to networking where we start

11:52 with the elements

11:53 and we try and infer user experience

11:56 right versus the other way around where

11:57 we start with experience and then

11:59 we work plot down to try and understand

12:02 how each individual component does

12:04 so that's uh that you're right that is a

12:06 kind of an interesting shift that's been

12:07 going on now

12:08 now if if um you know missed was one of

12:10 the first

12:12 maybe the first network vendor to talk

12:13 about artificial intelligence

12:15 uh since then if i go to google right

12:17 now and google network

12:19 ai i'm gonna get you know 100 different

12:22 things that come up from

12:24 you know every vendor out there some are

12:26 ai and some aren't so if i'm

12:28 watching this how do i really know that

12:31 your ai versus somebody ai you know is

12:34 better what

12:35 what's ai and what's not at here yeah

12:37 you know what i tell people about ai

12:39 ai is a concept right it's not a um it's

12:43 not

12:43 machine learning is the algorithms ai is

12:45 really the concept of doing something on

12:47 par with a human

12:48 and what you know i tell people is you

12:51 want to look at

12:52 marvis and go how close are we to doing

12:55 something on par with the human

12:56 there's a lot of different fancy math

12:58 that goes under the hood to actually

12:59 make that happen

13:00 you know to make that self-driving car

13:02 there's a lot of map that goes on to

13:03 make that car

13:04 autonomous same in the medical industry

13:06 right when you're trying to do cancer

13:07 diagnosis

13:09 so that's my analogy for people it's

13:11 like when you look at ai

13:13 you really want to answer the question

13:15 have they done something that's really

13:16 close or becoming close on par the human

13:19 in our case

13:20 you know our vision is really can we

13:22 really get marvis to be

13:24 a member of the i.t team you know can we

13:26 finally get

13:27 marvis to the point of it becomes a

13:29 trusted member

13:30 and a system of your i.t team that

13:32 actually can do something on par with

13:34 someone you would actually hire to help

13:35 you help you manage and answer questions

13:37 on your network

13:39 all right now you've um you've mentioned

13:42 marvis a couple of times can you just go

13:43 into a bit of detail

13:44 what marvis is we didn't want to define

13:47 it up front

13:48 i'm assuming that uh you know it's

13:49 planned jarvis like from iron man but uh

13:52 uh you know how what is it how does it

13:54 work does it replace an engineer does it

13:56 augment them

13:57 yeah it doesn't replace engineers i

13:59 think uh best way i would say

14:01 augments engineers and you know if you

14:03 look under the hood of marvis

14:05 what you'll find is a bunch of different

14:07 algorithms

14:09 that are there to answer different types

14:11 of questions right

14:13 you know to your point of you know we

14:14 use marvis ever for every support ticket

14:16 that comes in

14:18 you know we have different techniques

14:19 like you know if you look over my

14:21 shoulder here

14:21 things called mutual information mutual

14:24 information helps us

14:25 answer one type of question that comes

14:27 in uh we have other algorithms like lstm

14:30 to answer anomaly detection algorithms

14:33 like

14:33 are you having connectivity problems

14:35 beyond normal

14:36 in your network you know and then we

14:38 have different algorithms like graph

14:40 databases and temporal correlation

14:42 that helps us correlate user experiences

14:45 with configuration problems right

14:47 if someone misconfigures a router that

14:49 also

14:50 stops uh mtu packets from you know large

14:53 packets from coming through

14:54 that will screw up your authentication

14:57 those are very hard

14:58 problems to solve so when you look at

15:00 marvis it's really a collection of

15:01 different machine

15:02 learning algorithms that are really put

15:05 together

15:06 to really do something on par with a

15:09 i.t domain expert and then on top of

15:12 that

15:12 there's a conversational interface

15:14 because i think when we look going

15:16 forward

15:17 you know we saw the transition from kind

15:19 of the cli

15:20 you know moving to dashboards i think

15:23 the next transition we're going to see

15:24 in networking is really to these

15:26 conversational interfaces

15:28 becoming a better way to interact with

15:30 the network get data

15:31 and basically avoid you know

15:34 the swivel chair problem having swivel 3

15:37 hundreds of dashboards to get an answer

15:38 to something yeah that's uh

15:40 that that's an interesting challenge

15:41 because it's uh everyone's getting used

15:43 to this for the chair management style

15:44 where i just

15:45 look across the dashboards and correlate

15:47 the information in my head

15:48 now you've um you talked about the the

15:51 seventy percent

15:52 efficacy i'm curious to uh know you know

15:55 how

15:56 accurate is missed and marvelous right

15:58 we i think when it comes to artificial

16:00 intelligence

16:01 there's always a lot of skepticism um

16:04 even with castles and things every time

16:05 they have an accident people freak out

16:07 and things like that

16:08 so you know where was it where's it

16:09 going and where do you think you can get

16:11 to

16:12 yeah you know you know if you look at

16:14 the journey of ai ops and marcus and

16:17 where we started right now

16:18 i would say the first thing is around

16:20 data right we probably spent a good year

16:24 just making sure that we had the data

16:26 necessary

16:27 to answer customer support tickets right

16:30 and so

16:31 and this is the power of the cloud right

16:32 because you want to make sure

16:34 that when you're trying to build this

16:36 that the data you need to answer

16:38 questions is in the cloud you don't want

16:40 to have to go the device

16:41 ssh log in or do any of that so that is

16:44 the first step towards actually getting

16:46 to that

16:47 jeopardy championship level uh marvis

16:50 plane

16:51 that's where we started i would say the

16:53 second thing we started with rounds once

16:55 we got the data

16:56 in the cloud it really became efficacy

16:59 you know having marvelous answer support

17:01 tickets coming in

17:03 and that is really where we started

17:04 working our way and we probably started

17:06 10 20 percent

17:07 you know four or five years ago to a

17:09 point now we're up to 70

17:11 and interesting that's the same parallel

17:13 if you look at jeopardy how long it took

17:14 him to build something to play something

17:16 on par with the championship level

17:18 jeopardy player uh so i think we're on

17:20 par to you know i think in parallel with

17:22 that we're on part of that right now

17:24 we're at 70 percent headed to 90 percent

17:26 right now

17:27 what do you think you get to 90 uh i

17:30 i keep saying as we get closer and

17:32 closer it gets harder and harder you

17:33 know you get close to the last five

17:34 percent

17:35 so i think we're still a year or two

17:37 away from the 90

17:39 range where we will basically have

17:40 marvis answering 90 of all the tickets

17:42 coming into

17:43 coming into miss yeah it's like a golf

17:45 swing you get better fast and then all

17:47 this in your plateau right so

17:49 and by the way i will uh tip my hand to

17:52 the good folks who missed i as a former

17:53 network engineer i'd say there is

17:55 nothing

17:56 harder i believe the speaker there's

17:57 nothing harder in corporate id than

17:59 solving wi-fi

18:00 problems just because there's so many

18:03 variables it could be everything from

18:04 dhcp to radius to people not configuring

18:07 them properly it's on the client

18:09 access point so if you can do that i'm

18:12 fully confident that you can do

18:14 you know you know sd-wan is pretty hard

18:16 too but uh you know i'm pretty confident

18:18 so there's a lot of interest in

18:20 artificial intelligence and machine

18:22 learning

18:22 i i think it's been positioned as

18:26 really the next wave of where i t is

18:28 going and in fact i don't think there's

18:29 any question

18:30 that i think he's going to have a bigger

18:32 impact societally than

18:34 maybe every anything since we saw the

18:36 internet but

18:37 there is a bit of a skills gap here so

18:39 if i'm a network injury and i'm watching

18:41 this and i'm interested in ai

18:43 what do i do to get started you know i

18:46 think you know

18:46 the interesting thing we are putting a

18:48 ton of pressure on the it

18:50 teams right now right i mean you know

18:52 we're asking them to go from cli

18:54 you know becoming you know routing

18:56 switch ap

18:57 experts you know we're asking now that

19:00 for them become python programmers right

19:02 you know because we're basically moving

19:04 into this cloud api

19:06 paradigm uh which is really forcing i

19:09 you know the future i t person really

19:10 become a good programmer

19:12 um as we move to ai ops which is really

19:16 another form of automation right it's

19:18 basically another tool

19:19 now for helping them automate how they

19:21 manage these networks

19:23 we're really really asking the it teams

19:26 to start becoming somewhat data

19:27 scientists

19:28 you know we don't need them to program

19:30 them but they at least need to start to

19:32 understand the basics of

19:33 the different data science algorithms

19:35 what they're good for so those are kind

19:36 of the basic skill sets you know

19:38 and it's really happening with python

19:40 right now right most of those it teams

19:42 are just starting to wrap their arms

19:44 around programming for apis

19:46 and automating with python scripts and

19:48 such uh

19:49 aiops is kind of the next step in that

19:51 evolution

19:52 of taking fancier ai up data science

19:56 algorithms

19:57 to actually actually all help automate

19:58 some of the more complex problems

20:00 they're dealing with

20:01 yeah in fact um this is an interesting

20:03 trend i've been watching because a few

20:05 years ago if you look at what i've been

20:06 writing on you know our network world

20:09 you know sites like that it was it was

20:10 about help urging network engineers to

20:13 become programmers

20:14 but i think i've taken a step back from

20:16 that where it's not really a programmer

20:17 per se

20:18 as much it is as kind of a software

20:20 power user

20:22 and through the research i've done it's

20:23 actually been pretty remarkable that

20:25 three cores of network engineers i've

20:27 talked to have never made a single api

20:29 right so we're trying to advance our

20:32 systems but i think there is a bit of a

20:33 skills gap here so it's a

20:34 it's a good time to be a network

20:36 engineer i think the opportunities in

20:38 networking have never been greater

20:39 you just need to change your skill set a

20:41 little bit and then doing things the cli

20:43 way is probably

20:43 rapidly kind of depends yeah most

20:46 definitely

20:47 i mean i mean you're looking at right

20:48 now right i mean almost every it

20:50 person i know is trying to learn python

20:53 right they're all

20:54 the next step is how to basically uh

20:57 leverage all the apis that they're that

20:59 are becoming available

21:01 all right well bob uh you know thank you

21:03 very much for your time it was uh

21:05 great talking about ai missed wi-fi all

21:07 those things i think

21:08 you know one of the uh you know really

21:12 fascinating things about wi-fi

21:13 is it's become this foundational

21:15 technology right it used to be the

21:17 other network uh but now it's the

21:20 primary network for almost everything

21:21 in-store shopping

21:23 uh you know every hospital schools

21:25 everywhere you go if you don't have good

21:26 quality wi-fi

21:27 you don't have anything so um so you

21:30 know kudos to

21:31 the good work you've been doing over

21:32 there at juniper uh anyways i'm uh

21:35 uh thanks bob uh for joining me in the

21:37 stock this spot leadership video

21:39 i'm uh zeus caravallo from ck research

21:41 and on behalf of my partner ewik

21:43 thank you for watching

21:58 [Music]

22:01 you