As I look back, I see that the devil deceived me and he deceived many, many thousands and thousands of others into believing that we could be happy. You know, that's the deception that this is a happy life.   We are happy. None of that is true. None of that is true. I began to organize social events for lesbians of color at the time. Myself and I had two other business partners and we were a perfect fit.  And women would come from all over the region. And on any holiday night, the group was called Hospitality Atlanta. It would not be odd to have seven to eight hundred women exclusively packed into a beautiful restaurant with, we hired police at the door and would not let a man in. And from those events, we had softball leagues and softball teams and major, you know, picnics and whatnot. It was just a great, at that time we thought organization, we made a lot of money. And we did that for nearly 10 years. And when we got older and decided we didn't want to do it anymore, you know, decided what are we going to do with this male list? And from that male list, I decided to launch a magazine. The gay and lesbian political community began to pay attention to the fact that we could bring numbers of black lesbians and gays together through the work that we were doing. And then when the magazine was launched, surely we began to get contacted by HRC, Human Rights Campaign, and the Victory Fund, and many of the gay organizations who were doing a lot of work right now. And we were, it was a very important part in the early 90s of the work that they were doing because at that time they were being told by local politicians or regional politicians and national politicians that, okay, you guys are rich.  And you wanted to change laws just for you know. We don't see a coalition of people here.  Look at that through the pages of Venus magazine. So we were important part of what they were trying to present. The strategy is always to get one little foot in the door when in fact the plan means we're going to take over the whole thing. Well, why don't we just get a statement, Mr. School Board President, in your school board policy that you simply acknowledge the fact that we will not fire a gay teacher or that there may be some gay students that we're going to be okay with trying not to be prejudiced toward them through our policy. We just want one little statement in the booklet when in fact the plan is to take over the whole school system as we see now 15 years later is happening. There's always just, you know, that's the strategy just to get in under the wire and then once you get enough of our people in, then to do some major work. I was asked to help with domestic partnership, get the domestic partnership bill passed in Atlanta, Georgia. And they helped to train me to go in and speak with council people and to speak with the mayor. And of course they chose not only people of color but also people who were landowners. Of course I owned a home at that time and people who had a good strong voting record. That was also very important. And so we would go in under the wire and basically what we were trained is that don't talk to anybody else about this. All we want to do is get in, talk to the council people. We don't even want the church folk to understand that this vote is coming up soon.  That's the strategy. That's the strategy. They were able to infiltrate media. And even people, you know, I look at people who started out even with my small publication. People who started out with Venus Magazine and were able to take, you know, tear sheets from our book are now working for some major newspapers. Working for Bloomberg, working for the New York Times, working for Kandey Nass. And so it's so true. It's like they, you know, they, gays and lesbians run major media in this country. They just do. And I'm not sure how many, the church really read. Well, maybe the evangelical church realizes that. But gays and lesbians really are at the forefront of major media decisions. And so then sitcoms, every sitcom they, you know, I've heard that every sitcom is going to have a gay character and it's coming true. It really is. And of course now gay characters have major talk shows. They really have taken over media. Why? Because media speaks directly into the minds of young people. And that's how you change society by changing the mind of the youngest person. I hadn't planned on shifting out of it. I was doing just well.  I was doing very, very well. And at the top of what I thought was my career, my mother passed away. And that chain that was the beginning of the change that God was setting up for me because I'm the oldest of two. And now my grandmother, who is Alzheimer's, becomes my responsibility. Here I am in the middle of a 10-year relationship with another woman. And we're living together in New York. And my grandmother is now living with us. And my life changed in so many ways. I wasn't able to get to all those functions I used to run and go to. I was barely getting Venus out. But God was showing me what eternity looks like. Because when I had to bury my mother, I had a decision to make about a plot to buy, OK? My mom, my grandmother is my responsibility.  But I bought a three-grave plot in our family cemetery. And it was a huge reminder to me when I would go and put flowers on my mother's grave that that's where my mother's going to be. That's where my mother is. This is where my grandmother's going to be. And this is where you're going to be.  And I was forced to think about that and having, again, that seed of righteousness that was way down in me from, again, that 12-year-old God's-save experience. And being forced now at 42 to say, where are you really going to spend eternity just getting buried in this ground? It's not it. It's not over. What's going to happen after that? And that may come sooner than you think.  Now did I continue to publish the magazine? Yes. And I went to some, you know, events, yes. But I saw that people were not paying attention to the ever after. In fact, they avoided it. And I could never, I was never one to go to a gay church, you know, that just never sat well with me. I knew it wasn't real. I knew that was not the God of my understanding, the only God there is. And I could not get in line with that. So I just didn't go to church very often, except to a family gathering a function. But facing my mortality, looking at my mortality, forced me to begin to think about things that are spiritual. And then there were times, you know, in my soul that I wanted someone to share with me how I could get out of this captivity that I was in. I mean, it certainly I had the knowledge of Christ, but I did not know that I could be free in my flesh again. I always struggled with that. Can I ever be free in my flesh? Can I ever not want a woman? Can I ever not look at a woman and desire her? Can I ever break free of that? That is how I struggled. And one day, again, here I am in New Jersey, and a pastor happened to call me on the phone, wonderful woman of God. And she asked me, she said, surely, you know, we discussed our business and I guess there was just something that prompted her to ask me, where are you in the Lord? And I said to her, you know, in my spirit, I wanted her really to help me with this dilemma. How do I get free in my flesh? I said, but if you discuss the flesh with her, the kind of flesh you're talking about, this woman-woman thing, this woman is going to run and hang up the phone and never talk to you again. But that's not what happened. That's not what happened. She listened to me go on. And then something, my pride kicked in. And something said, well, just tell her about all the accomplishments you've also made as a lesbian. You've published. You've traveled. You've done this. You've done that.   And she allowed me to go on and on. And she said, let me tell you something. She said, I can see in the spirit that you want to come back to Christ, but you can't figure out how to be, you know how to get free, but you can't figure out how to stay free. And you feel as though God can't use you because you've been so public about your lesbianism. She said, God intends to use all of that. And something began to unlock and unravel just at that time. And just that stony ground began to break up so she could get some word in me.  I was speechless for several minutes. I could not speak. All I could do was listen and tears just flow down because she just hit something that was so true. I wanted to be free in that moment.  And even as an unsaved person, I recognized the hand of God moving. My God, that had to be God. I couldn't have done that myself.  I know that it was God. And I'm like, God, why? And I thought to myself, he's doing this for grandma. You know, it was never for me because I certainly didn't deserve it. But God showed me it was me doing that. And that's how he wins us by the loving kindness and compassion he has toward us. And I said, no, I'm going to choose you today, God. And of course, the enemy is speaking in the other ear. Well, what about, you know, what about your income? You can't stop publishing Venus magazine. You know, all of my debt loo was built on, you know, a certain income coming in every quarter from the publication. I have mortgages. You know, car notes. I have all the debt that is associated with your income. And I said, you know what? I don't know. I don't know how I'm going to do it. All I know is I've got to trust God in this moment and I've got to choose God in this moment. Oh, yeah. Well, what about the speaking engagement that you're already been paid to go to New York City to the Schaumburg, New York City Gay Pride? You're going to have to do that. What are you going to go there and say, you can't get saved today? Is what the enemy kept saying, you can't get saved today? And I'm like, you know, I don't know what I'm going to go there and say, but I know that I'm going there as a safe person because I'm choosing the Lord today.  And then tears just began to flow. And I felt the overcoming of the Holy Spirit in me like I have never felt before. The very next thing after getting saved that Tuesday was that I went on to Schaumburg. And this was about two weeks later. I went on to the Schaumburg, I didn't call ahead and let them know that I was going to have some, you know, I had a change of life. I just said, you know, God, you're going to show me. And he'd already shown me in just a passage of scriptures that, you know, don't worry about what you're going to say. I will give you the perfect timing and I will give you the perfect word to share in the perfect moment. And then, but on the other side of my mind, I'm like, yeah, but I know the gay and lesbian community.  And I won't I won't say that I wasn't frightened because I was. Now I was part of a panel discussion. I wasn't a keynote. And these were all publishers. These were people who I had traveled with before every time we would go to a session, you know, we knew who each other. There was a book publisher and the magazine publisher and the one who just got a new book out. So we're all sitting there. We're all sharing about our experiences. And the host, of course, would ask a series of questions. I think the first set of questions was how did you all get started and certainly shared how Venus got started and everybody else did. And how did you gather the audience that you have now? So I was able to share that. But when he the last question he closed with was where do you see your publication going now? And I knew that that was that the door that got open. This is where you tell them. And so I began to say, I said, you know, the direction of Venus is going to change 180 degrees. We're going in totally in an opposite direction. Our mission up until now has been to encourage gays and lesbians to stand up and be who they are, you know, in the community and come out of the closet and be proud and let your parents and neighborhoods know we're going down the opposite direction. We want to let gays and lesbians know that this is not what God intended. And I tell you that you could hear a pin drop. In that auditorium, the host, the other I wouldn't look to the left or the right at my friends and I tried not to see faces. You know, I try like Jeremiah, I don't even look at their faces. Just say what God says and let it go forth and let the chips fall where they may. And I said, this is not what God intended. And Venus is going to now instruct people on how to get out of homosexuality and not only that, but you can't just get out on your own that it takes a committed relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is what he's done for me. And, you know, it was time for all of us to speak. But it was like, you know, it took a while for the silence to break up. And I just I let it sit. You know, there's nothing wrong with silence sometimes. And I didn't say anything and they didn't say anything for a minute. And the host, when he finally got over the shock of it, went on to the next speaker. But then a little fright set him because, of course, there was a reception immediately immediately afterwards.  Don't go to the reception. Run to your car and to get back to New Jersey real quickly. Don't take any questions. Just go. And the Lord began to say, you know, if this is your ministry, then this is where you begin.  And I thought, OK, well, they're going to be pretty ice cold to me.   But that didn't happen either. As I stood at that reception, one by one, a person would come over to me and say, you know, I used to go to church and I'm not happy in this life. And I want to get out, too. I had another woman come over to me and say, you know what? I used to be a minister and I backslid. And that's the only reason I'm in this life. One by one, souls begin to come and say to me, thank you. For sharing that, for saying that, for being bold enough to say that in this setting. And I knew then what God had in store that he was going to raise up. Not only mine, but there are many. He's raising up a new nation who has experienced this thing. And so now these people can't look at me the same way they might look at a Baptist preacher or a Pentecostal preacher who's not walked in those shoes. They can't look at me and say, she doesn't know what she's talking about. She's just being prejudiced against me. They know I was in the same thing that they were in.  But I am free. There's a song that my pastor is teaching right now in our choir. It's called The Lord is in this place. Oh, my soul. Oh, my soul. He's in this place. And it's not talking about a building. It's talking about this place of your soul.   And so he will only come into a clean place, a place that you allow him to clean. And so and I say that because I have in mind those gays and lesbians who believe that they can be Christian and gay at the same time. That is one of the lies that Satan is keeping people trapped in. That is an untruth that the Lord has sent me to tell you about. You cannot be Christian and gay at this or lesbian at the same time.  You cannot be Christ can't live in you while darkness lives in you at the same time. It can't happen. But and I want you also to know the other the other lie he wants to say to people who understand that is that Satan wants to say you can never be free. You can never stop wanting women. You've been going with women for 30 years. I stand as evidence. That the Holy Spirit can and will change you if you give God your whole heart. When you when you pray, pray that God will come in to your whole heart and change your heart, not just to take the gay thing away, not just to take the lesbian thing away. It doesn't work like that. You have to give God all of you. He's changed many things in my life, not just the lesbian. Is I have, you know, an anger problem.  So many things that we have in our lives that have to be turned over all of us.    And I said, I agree with you, sister. He does love you. I remember feeling that God loved me even when I was lesbian. I knew he loved me, but I also knew that I was sending.  But he's waiting for you to love him just like he is. He is a certain way. He is holy. He has created an order and whether we like it or not, that's the order he created. He's waiting for us just to love him just like he is. And when you decide, choose, and that's a wonderful thing he gave us choice.  That's what I have. I have a piece that people don't understand. I don't understand myself. I have a piece and a joy that was not there before. I have a piece and a joy that that people want after having watched me and people who knew me years ago. I got letters from people early on when my testimony first came out. I actually ran my testimony on the cover of Venus Magazine. I figured Oprah could be on her own magazine. Every issue I could certainly put myself on the cover of one. But so when my testimony came out there, people wrote some very angry letters.   Now you're going to, you know, harm our community like this. That same woman two years later wrote me back and said, I never thought that I would be the one writing you back this letter to let you know that I decided to come out of lesbianism and to give my life to Jesus Christ. And that makes the whole suffering worth it all.


Hello and welcome to the Cube and this Cube conversation focused on Infinidat's latest announcements about the Infinibox and the SSA platform. I'm Rob Streche, Managing Analyst with the Cube Research and today I'm very excited to be joined by long-term friend and real big friend of the Cube, probably a prolific amount of times you've been on over the years. I have Eric Herzog is on who's the CMO of Infinidat. Thanks for coming on. Rob, well, thank you very much. We love being on the Cube and you guys do a great job of informing the industry and informing the end users and the channel partners of what's going on. So you guys have an incredibly valuable service that you delivered everybody. Well, I appreciate that. I think let's jump into it because I really love what you guys announced just a month back here with the SSA platform, what you're doing with Infinibox, all of that. So what was announced? So we did sort of a three-part announcement. The first was our SSA Express software. So we have both an all-flash array that's very large and we have an all-hybrid array which has both flash in it, DRAM cache, and mostly hard drives of course. So we've done develop a software technology that allows you to assign certain workloads and applications to only come out of our flash layer. So all of our hybrids have flash in them, but they have mostly hard drives. So you could take three, four, five applications. This Oracle workload, this SAP, this Mongo, and you could tell it on a hybrid array, make sure those workloads either come out of our DRAM cache, which is our neural cache, which is what gives us our incredible speed, whether it be in the all-flash or in the hybrid. So it either comes out of the DRAM cache or it will only come out of the flash. So it behaves, although it's a hybrid array, those five, six workloads that are assigned into the SSA Express layer perform exactly like our high-end all-flash array, which is 35 mics of latency or better, 95% or better coming out of the DRAM cache, so it behaves like it's an all-flash array. Think of it as akin to having up to 320 terabyte all-flash array embedded inside of a hybrid. I mean, it makes sense that this would give you a really great price performance because I think when you start to look at it, not every application needs that kind of performance, but people like it to have that performance, so you can go and embed that in there and pin some applications that really do truly need that, and that would make sense, especially with the new applications that are being built, microservice-based applications that need that kind of low latency. Well, the advantage, a couple advantages, first of all, the software is free, so we don't charge for it. Secondly, it works with 95% of our installed base. Now, with some of the installed base, you might need to buy a flash upgrade kit because the older models didn't have as much flash as the newer hybrid models do, so you might have to buy some, but that's it, and obviously all the newer models last couple of years, you don't have to buy anything, and by the way, even on the older models, you may not have to, so think about this. I've got a three-year-old Infinibox, and I created a 320 terabyte all-flash array inside of it for free. Now, why would I care? Well, aside from the actual performance angle is, as many analysts have noted, with a lot of the other array technology, we don't slow down. There's one other vendor that doesn't slow down, but usually as you fill an all-flash array, you slow it down. So for the highest-performing workloads, you get a small all-flash array, and you put one or two, or one or two, or one or two, and the next time you see, when you look at your data center, you have small all-flash array proliferation. You've got them everywhere, and they're only running one or two workloads. So in this case, you get rid of that, which saves you on watts, slots, power, floor space, give you a greener IT configuration. And guess what?  And whether our autonomous automation, as you've seen from our public references, they talk about how they run themselves for three or four years, they never have to touch it. So you get that advantage versus having this all-flash array sprawl. Now, by the way, when you really need it, we have our all-flash array SSA2, which was the second angle of our launch of what we did in that platform as well. Yeah, and I think this is where, again, scale and being able to scale is really important to a lot of people. As they consolidate down, they want to be able to scale out as they can spend more. I mean, we've seen, again, with IT spending being what it is, people want to be able to reuse their investment. So A, the free software and getting an all-flash array for free with an OS upgrade is pretty impressive. I think that really is one of the things that can lead people down this path. But then you're talking about the scale aspect of it, too. What was that second part? So what we also did is, in our all-flash array platform, our Infinibox SSA2, which is our second generation, we have doubled the capacity. Now, we did the same thing last year on our hybrid array, the regular Infinibox. So this year, we doubled the capacity on our all-flash array, which means you're up to 6.6 petabytes of effective. So why do you care? First of all, because we don't slow down, you can load the thing up with 80 apps, 90 apps, 100 apps, because we don't slow down because we derive most of it out of our multi-panded neural cache, which runs out, of course, the DRAM. So you can fill that array to four petabytes or five petabytes. Benchmark it against when the array has literally 100 terabytes. And it's the same exact performance, 35 mics of latency or better. So that consolidation allows you to, A, get a greener data center. B, it allows you to dramatically cut capex and op-ex. It allows you to, essentially, free up that money to spend it on AI or other things. Remember, I've been doing storage for a long time. I'm almost 70 years old. And trust me, I have never met a CIO who used to be a storage admin. Maybe there are one or two. But I've never met one, and I've met with at least 1,000 CIOs. I've been doing this so long. So CIOs know they need storage, but quite honestly, they hate it. So if you can give them a path to dramatically improve the environmentals to cut capex and op-ex and basically take budget that they were going to spend on storage and move it to the hottest thing, which right now would be AI or cybersecurity, you're like a fricking hero, and we can do that now by doubling the capacity. We have, for example, a real customer in the Fortune 50. And they bought the All Flash a couple of years ago. And we had basically half the capacity. And they've got 35 of them. Well, if we had the bigger model, which we do today, guess what? They'd have half of that. So they'd have 18 because they got 35. Well, think of all the watt slots, power, floor space, and operational management. You are saving if you go from 35 arrays down to 18 or 40 to 20 or 50 to 25. And we did that just because of the bigger capacity. We're not even talking consolidation of other arrays. We have one customer. They consolidated 24 arrays from three different vendors onto four infinite boxes. So talk about how much easier that is to manage. And then quite honestly, think about the long-term ecological effect. So as you know, all compute devices are filled with toxins, all of us. And it is what it is, right? We all want to have our iPhone. We all want to have our mainframe. We all want to have our enterprise storage. We all want to have our networking. So all of that gets recycled. And it's expensive because of the toxins. It's not like recycling your newspaper or recycling your cans. So the problem is, if you've got 24 of them, you go to four. You still have to recycle the 24. But on the next pass, when you go to the Infinibox SSA fourth generation for sake of argument, you're only recycling four arrays. So A, that's more ecological, but it's also more economical. I call it E squared. Ecology and economy at the same time. E squared, that's what we deliver. And that double capacity helps you do that. Yeah, I like that. I think, again, it's part of it. How do you do more with less, right? Less power, less cooling, less space. All of that makes a lot of sense, especially. It also helps with administration. I mean, again, I think more consolidation that you can have. And to your point, people are looking at Gen AI and other AI and ML and bringing so much more data and data growth. And I think being able to manage it all in one place and not having it spread out all over the different multiple arrays becomes a really huge advantage for those customers. Absolutely. Now, the second part of the all flash is we introduced a scale up architecture. So historically, you had to buy an array fully populated. So now what you've done is come up with a strategy we can scale up. So instead of being 100% populated, you could get 60 or 80. And then as you need more, you buy more. And we do it in 20% increments. So if I have a 60, so let's say Wikibon, Silicon Angle theCUBE, your three companies decides we're getting an Infinibox SSA2. But we only need 60% of the capacity. So you buy 60%.  Maybe you say, okay, six months from now, you say Zoggin store, we need more. Okay, guess what? We sell it to you six months from now or a year from now. We don't sell it to you upfront. So now we have a 60% populated that can scale up and 80% populated to scale up. And you can still buy the 100% populated if that's what you need.  You still can consolidate. It still has, of course, our cyber resiliency with our award-winning Infinisafe technology to help you recover from a cyber attack. Well, I was gonna get at that because it is Cyber Security Month. So I mean, they don't have to go and re-license that or anything like that. That comes with it as part of it. So part of what we've always done at the company is the software, which is really our magic fairy dust. We don't do any custom hardware unlike, and I came from IBM and EMC as a senior exec. There's all kinds of custom stuff they do in hardware. We don't do anything. We use off-the-shelf servers to run as array controllers. We don't even have array controllers. You just run our operating system in regular servers. We get J-bods and J-boffs to have the shelving and that's it. So our magic is all in the software. So that's our InfuseOS operating system. We have a cloud edition now, which allows you to have hybrid cloud technology, move data back and forth. But that InfuseOS architecture, whether it be our AIOps product, InfinOps, Infiniverse, which monitors the arrays and does proactive, by the way, tech support for us. We have public references that say, they called me and told me they had a problem with the power supply before everyone knew there was a problem with the power supply. But that's our AIOps technology, our Infiniverse. At our Infinisafe, the cyber technology also comes included at no charge. And by the way, we guarantee the cyber. We guarantee A, the snapshot is in fact truly immutable. We will guarantee that in writing. We also guarantee the recovery time. And we do that on both our Infinibox platforms, both the hybrid and also the SSA all flash, but also our Infiniguard purpose built back up, which by the way, has an embedded Infinibox inside of it. So the same operating system runs on everything. The cyber is guaranteed on everything. And the recovery times are incredible. So for example, we did an end user demand generation.  Now, after the fact, yes, but not during. So we have done six, probably eight, actually cyber resilience webinars. And we do recoveries live, live. So we recovered 20 on our Infiniguard, 20 petabytes, 20 petabytes, not gigabytes, not terabytes, 20 petabytes, a Veeam backup repository in 11 minutes and 55 seconds. The Veeam guys can't believe it. It's like, what? And so the Veeam CTO actually had me on a webinar last week with him talking about their stuff and our stuff working together. On the Infinibox platforms, whether it be the hybrid or the all flash, we guarantee recovery in under one minute. And we started doing that last year. Coincidentally, one of my former employers, which I'll leave nameless, they actually just announced it three weeks ago, a year after it fitted and announced it. And only two companies have a guarantee of RTO, basically, on primary storage, us and this other vendor. And of course they copied us basically 14 months after we already had announced it. So during that demo. Well, it takes a while for hardware. So during that demo, we did, of course, the backup first with Veeam, but that could have been Commvault or Veritas, IBM Protect doesn't matter. Okay, any backup vendor, we work with everybody. And then we did it on primary. We recovered 175,000 video files, 200 terabytes in four seconds. I kid you not, four seconds. So we, and we guarantee all that in writing. So under a minute on primary storage, whether it be the Infinibox or the Infinibox SSA, under a minute guaranteed. And in the secondary storage backup, if you will, on the InfiniGuard under 20 minutes. However, when you talk to the backup guys, someone with 10 or 20, they can't get anywhere.  So 11 minutes, 55 seconds.  The worst case in the live demo was 12 minutes and 50 seconds. So between 11, 55 and 12, and we've done it like eight times. And it always comes out to be the same. And it doesn't matter whether it's an Infinibox, InfiniGuard, by the way, a lot of people use the Infinibox for a secondary backup repository as well. So the InfiniGuard gives you that data reduction technology, but the Infinibox hybrid is often used because they want to use the data reduction that comes from the backup software vendor. And we don't care. It's not as fast and it's not as efficient as when we do it on our side. But some people just say, no, no, no, I've got an Infinibox, let me just buy one another one, or let me take buy a new one and take the old one and turn it into a backup target device because it's older and slower than the newer ones. And we'll let them do that as well. So a lot of different ways to skin the cat with Infinidad, but it's all built around application workloads and use cases. And yes, we can talk bits and bytes about latency, IOPS and bandwidth and ice guzzy this and Q-depth that. And you know what? While the storage admin really cares about that, we can certainly talk storage geek and nerd with them. I can even talk to them about TPI and BPI, which most people don't even know what that means anymore. That's true. And that's great, but when you start getting to the VPs, even if they're infrastructure-centric and absolutely the CIO or the CISO, they don't care about any of that stuff. They want to know what's the SLA. They're looking for the SLA, they're looking for what applications, how can they guarantee that that application is going to be performant for that, especially as those applications scale and as they grow and a lot of times, especially with these cloud-native applications, they don't even understand how the performance is going to go over time. And I would assume that the software that you package in there with the AI IOPS, type the InfiniOPS, helps them understand what are the workloads of all these different applications as well. Right, and we do a performance guarantee on the two InfiniBoxes. Now on the InfiniBox hybrid, if you run the same workload and then you do it on the SSA, the SSA is going to have a better performance guarantee. So we do that, so we have performance guarantees on primary storage. We have 100% availability guarantees on primary storage and we have, if you will, the two cyber ones, one on resiliency, AKA immutability and the other on recoverability in how fast we'll recover. And we put all that stuff in writing. As we publicly announced, we do 25% of the Fortune 50 use our stuff and we're way smaller than my former employers or the other people, but we're scrappy, we're tough and we've got the largest enterprises in the world buying our technology. Yeah, why do you think that is? Is it because of the guarantees? Is it the fact that it just performs and it's easier to manage? What do you think is the... So in addition to those which are pretty straightforward, right? We do have more SLAs than most of the other vendors. They're better. I mean, clearly all the cyber stuff is way better than everybody's. Most people, only one or two other vendors will guarantee 100% availability. They've got seven or eight nines, but if you want 100% availability, one of them in particular, you can get a guarantee but you have to buy some extra software to do it and some consulting services. So for us, it's just embedded. You just get it. But I do think one of the key things to our magic fairy dust is also our incredible support and service infrastructure, our white glove. We include a technical advisor who's not tech support. So we have regular tech support. First of all, we provide level three. There is no level one and level two tech support. You go right to level three because they're large global enterprises, they're cloud service writers, they're Telco, they're financial institutions, they're major university hospitals. That's who we sell to. So there is no level one or level two. Let me go through that thing. Like if you are, I call Microsoft, not that I don't love Microsoft because I do, I use all Microsoft apps, but we get level one, then level two, then level three. That's standard, right? We don't do that. Right to level three. So that's our tech support. Technical advisor's job is to optimize for application workload and use case. That's what they do. So if there's a tech support problem, do they know about it? Yes, but that's not their job. We had got a whole tech support team to do that. So that white glove support and service, and again, the autonomous automation, the fact that we have multiple public references, probably 50, let's say we haven't touched the thing for two years or three years. There's one that was done through another analyst firm and there's, literally says we haven't touched the thing for eight years. And they happen to be a Fortune 100 account saying that. So that matters a lot to other end users, but that white glove support and service goes along with what I'll call the base technology that offers a solution. And then the white glove support and service is something, and by some of the other companies do offer technical advisors, but they charge for it. We do not. So ours are just embedded in the cost. It's just easy. We don't charge for all the software stuff. Do we have support maintenance? Yes, but when you, having worked at two of the other largest storage companies in the world, I can tell you a typical invoice on a non-complex deal was three to five pages of row after row after row. When you get an invoice or our partners, because obviously we sell a lot of our stuff through the channel partner community globally, it's four to five line items on the invoice versus 50, and I've actually seen some at my old companies, like 200 line items. So we just do everything to make it easy, not just the technology, but doing business is what we do. It's a business, think of it as a business strategy, not just a technology strategy. I was gonna say that must really endear you to those channel partners. And what has their reaction been since the announcement of this? So it's been exceedingly positive, obviously for the installed base, they wanna go out there and in some cases they will sell a little flash, but not a lot. The main thing is they don't, you know, they get complaints about the small array flash sprawl. So they sell, we don't have a small all flash raise, so they'll sell one from a competitor, then they gotta sell another another, and then the guys are complaining, say wait, now we gotta manage all this stuff, and by the way, it's taking up rack space and we have to power and cool it, well wait. And now they, so they can go that. And then on the SSA too, it's all about how can they deliver better financial value by going to the end user and saying, oh, you've got 42 arrays? Well, guess what, what if I could take that to eight? Okay, and deliver you 35 mics of latency, which is faster than anybody else in the industry, and compared to a couple of the guys that are way bigger than us, almost five times faster.  And so I'm, we actually encourage our end users to time it with a stopwatch, literally run an Oracle workload, turn on the stopwatch, and then run it on same version of Oracle, same servers, all you do is swap the storage. And in fact, we have a public reference, which I just reviewed today, cloud service provider in the U.S. And in it, their CIO said we saw a 15 times performance increase in real world. Now remember, they're doing backup as a service, storage as a service, and infrastructure as a service. So for them, every time they got that, they're billing somebody. So for them, it translates directly into revenue for them. If I'm a global enterprise, what it translates into is an SAP workload that takes five hours, taking 20 minutes. And that has real value when you look at it from an application workload perspective, if I'm in a global enterprise in the CSP space, it's directly translated into immediate revenue because of how they charge, right? Yeah, keep the factory busy. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. So where can people go to find out more about this? What should they do? Where should they go out? First of all, your favorite reseller, if you'd like to do that, www.infiniteact.com. We of course are very active on Twitter. I can't say X yet. I know I'm supposed to, but I'll say Twitter slash X slash Twitter and on LinkedIn. And of course, you can always follow ZogginStore. You can find me on Twitter and LinkedIn. No longer ZogginStash, much to Dave's dismay. So Dave Vellante, the founder, when I grew my mustache back, literally tweeted and put on LinkedIn the ZogginStash is back. But I did shave that off, so. Well, you can tell I like the facial hair.  I get it the opposite if I shave it off, she complains, so. Hey, it's been great having you on. I really thank you for coming on and sharing this and really keeping us up to date with what's going on and it's into that. It's always good. Always good. Well, thank you very much. And again, theCUBE is one of the most valuable resources in the industry. And I don't say that just from the vendor side. End users say they look at your stuff all the time. And that's what matters most. What do the end users do? And what do the channel partners do who take care of those end users? And they both commented multiple times on the value theCUBE delivers to them to really understanding technology, not just in storage, but in all the other areas.  Well, we thank you for that. We appreciate it. And we thank you for watching and really appreciate you watching this. And remember, for all things data and storage, feel free to visit silkenangle.com as well. And thank you for watching this episode with Infinidat and keep watching theCUBE, the leader in high tech news and analysis. Thanks and stay tuned.


From Los Angeles, it's theCUBE, covering Open Source Summit North America 2017. Brought to you by the Linux Foundation and RedHash. Okay, welcome back everyone. Live here in Los Angeles, this is theCUBE's special coverage of Open Source Summit North America. I'm John Furrier with Stu Miniman. Two days of wall-to-wall coverage. Our next guest is Ed Warnacky, who's a distinguished consulting engineer with Cisco. Welcome to theCUBE. Glad to be here. Thanks for coming on. Love to get into it. We love infrastructure as code. We love the cloud. Developers, the young generation loves it. Making things easy to use. All sounds great, but there's still work to get done. The networking. So what's going on here at the Open Source Summit? This is the big tender event when there's a lot of cross-pollination around projects.  Give us the update. Networking is still a lot more work to be done. It's a very strategic part of the equation. Certainly making it easier up above makes it programmable. Yeah, no, I mean you have to make the networking invisible when you get to the DevOps layer. There are certain things they need from the network. They need isolation and reachability. They need service discovery and service routing. But they don't want to have to think about it. They don't want to be burdened with understanding the nitty-gritty details. They don't want to know what subnet they're on. They don't want to have to worry about ACLs. They don't want to think about all of that. And the truth is there's a lot of work that goes into making the network invisible and ubiquitous for people. And in particular, one of the challenges that we see arising as the world moves more cloud-native as the microservices get smaller, as the shift happens towards serverless, as Kubernetes is coming on with containers, is that the network is really becoming the runtime. And that runtime has the need to scale and perform like it never has before. So the number of microservices you'd like to put on a server keeps going up. And that means you need to be able to actually handle that. The amount of traffic that people want to push through them continues to go up. So your performance has to keep up. And that brings a lot of distinct challenges, particularly when you're trying to achieve those ins with systems that were designed for a world where you had maybe two nicks on the box where you weren't really thinking when your original infrastructure was built about the fact that you actually were going to do a hell of a lot of routing inside the server because you now have currently hundreds, but hopefully someday thousands and tens of thousands of microservices running there. Yeah, Ed, I think when we've been talking about the last kind of 15, 20 years or so, I need to move faster with my deployments. It always seemed that networking was the thing that held everything up. It's like, okay, wait, when I virtualized, okay, everything's great and everything and I can just spin up a VM and do that up, but I need to wait for the network to be provisioned. What are the things you've been working on? What open source projects? There's a lot of them out there are helping us to really help that overall agility of work today. Absolutely, so one of the things I'm deeply involved in right now is a project called fd.io, usually pronounced FIDO because it's cute and it means we can give away puppies at conferences. It's great. And what FIDO is doing is we have this core technology called DPP that gives you incredibly performant, incredibly scalable networking purely in user space, which means from a developer velocity point of view, we can have new features every three months. From an extensibility point of view, you can bring new network features as separate plugins you drop as .so's into a plugin directory instead of having to wait for the kernel to rev on your server. And the revving process is also substantially less invasive. So if you need to take a microservice to network as a user space thing and rev it, it's a restart of a process. You're talking microseconds, not 15 minute reboot cycles. You're talking levels of disruption where you don't lose your TCP state, where you don't lose any of those things and that's really crucial to having the kind of agility that you want of the network. And when I talk about performance and scalability, I'm not kidding. So one of the things we recently clocked out with VPP was being able to route a terabit per second of traffic with millions of routes in the forwarding tables on commodity servers with no hardware assistance at all. And the workloads are starting to grow in that direction. It's going to take them a while to catch up, but to your point about the network being the long pole, we want to be far ahead of that curve. So it's not the long pole anymore. So you can achieve the agility that you need in DevOps and move innovative products forward. And one of the things that comes up all the time, I want to get your reaction to this because you're at an important part of it, is developers say, look it, I love DevOps. And not even ops guys are saying, hey, we want to promote DevOps. So there's a, there's a mind mel there, if you will. But then what they don't want is a black box. They want to see debugging. They want to have ease of manageability. So I don't mind pushing Dev. From an ops guy to send the Dev down, but they need a path of visibility. They need to have access to debug fast, to get access to some of those things. What do you see as gates, if you will, that we got to get through to make that seamless and clean right now? I mean, obviously Kubernetes, a lot of stuff going on with orchestration and containers are providing a path, but still the complaint and nervousness is, okay, you can touch and program the infrastructure, but if something happens, you got to be reactive. That gives you exactly to the point because the more invisible the network is, the more visibility you need when things go wrong. And for general operational use. And one of the cool things that's happening in Fido around that is, number one, it's industrial scale. So you have all the sorts of counters and telemetry information that you need from a historical point of view in networks to be able to figure out what's going on. But beyond that, there's a whole lot of innovation that's been happening in the network space that has yet to trickle down all the way to the server edge. A really classic example on the visibility front has to do with in-band IOAM. So we now have the technology, and this is present today in DPP, to be able to say, hey, I would like an in-band trace on the flow through the network of this flow for this customer who's giving me a complaint where I can see hop by hop through the network, including in the edge where VPP is, what's the latency between hops? What path it actually passed through? And there's even a feature there where you can say at each hop, please send the capture at that hop to a third party point where I can collect it so I can look at it in something like Wireshark. So you can look at Wireshark and say, okay, I see where this went into that node and came out that node this way, node by node by node. I don't know how much more visibility than that is actually physically possible. And that's one of the kinds of things that the velocity of features that you have in DPP is made very possible. That's the kind of thing that would take a long time to work into the traditional development line for networking. What's the Cisco internal vibe right now? Because we covered the DevNet create event that Susie, we put on, which is kind of like a cloud native, cool event, kind of grassroots, kind of guerrilla, I love the mojo there. But then you got the DevNet community, the Cisco developer, which is a robust killer developer community on the Cisco side. How are those worlds coming together? I can imagine that the appetite for the Cisco DevNet teams or DevNet developer community is looking at cloud native as an opportunity. Can you share some insight into what's the sentiment, what's the community vibe, what's going on for folks that are, it's got to run the networks? I mean, look, this is like serious stuff. In the past, I've been like cloud native when you're ready, we'll get there, but now this seems to be an onboarding of cloud native. Talk about the dynamic. There has to be because cloud native won't wait, right? And there's a lot of things that the network can do to help you as the run time. The IOM example is one, but there are a ton more. We are, again, cloud native won't wait. They will find a way. And so you have to be able to bring those features at the pace at which cloud native proceeds. You can't do it on six month product cycles. You can't do it on 12 month product cycles. You have to be able to respond point by point as things move forward. A good example of this is a lot of the stuff that's happening with server measures and Istio, right? Which is coming really fast. Not quite here, but coming really fast. And for that, the real question is what can the network do for DevOps, right? Because there's a synergistic relationship between DevOps and NetOps. So you're saying that you're saying, I mean, let me try to get at the point. So yes, are you seeing that the DevNet community saying, hey, we love this stuff? Because, I mean, they're smart. They know how to adapt. Moving from networks to DevOps. To me, it seems like they're connecting the dots. Can you share some color? Are they? Yes, no, maybe? They're absolutely connecting the dots, but there's a whole pipeline with all of this, right? And then DevNet is at the short pointy end where it touches the DevOps people. But to get there, there's a lot of things that have to do with identifying what are the real needs, getting the code written to actually do it, figuring out the proper innovations, engaging with open source communities like Kubernetes so that they're utilized. And by the time you get to DevNet, now we're at the point where you can explain them to DevOps where they can use them really cleanly. I mean, one of the other things is you want it to come through transparently. Because people want to be able to pick their Kubernetes Helm charts off the web, take the collection of containers for the parts of their application they don't want to have to think about, at least right now, and have it work. So you have to make sure you're supporting all the stuff that's there and you have to work to be able to take advantage of those new features in the existing APIs or better yet, just have the results of those APIs get better without having to think about new features. So they're ingratious, not a collegious, not friction. No, no, no, no. It's pretty much synergistic. Network guys, get the DevOps equation. No, we get the DevOps equation, we get the need. There is a learning process for both sides. I mean, we deeply need each other. Applications without networking are completely uninteresting, right? And this is even more true in microservices where it's becoming the runtime for the network. On the same side, networks without applications are completely uninteresting because there's no one to talk, right? And what's fascinating to me is how many of the same problems get described in different language and so we'll talk past each other. So, DevOps people will talk about service discovery and service routing. And what they're really saying is, I want a thing, I don't want to have to think about how to get to it. On the network side, for 15 years now, we've been talking about identifier locator separation. Basically, having an IP address for the thing you want and having the ability to transparently map that to the location where that thing is, without having to, it's the classic renumbering your network problem. They're at a very fundamental level, the same problem, but it's a different language. The game is still the same. There's some language nuances that I think I see some synergies. And I see people getting it. It's like having learning two languages, okay, the world's come together. It's not a collision. But the interesting thing is, networking has always been an enabling opportunity. I mean, this is a fundamental nuance that if you can get this right, it's invisible, as you said. That's the end game. Absolutely. I mean, that's really what you're looking for is you want invisibility in the normal mode and you want total transparency when something has to be debunked, right? Because the classic example with networks is, when there's a network problem, it's almost never the network. It's almost always some little niggle of configuration that went wrong along the way. And so you need that transparency to be able to figure out, okay, what's the point where things broke? Or what's the point where things are running suboptimally, right? Or am I getting the level of service that I need? Am I getting the latency I need, and so forth? And there's been a tendency in the past to shorthand many of those things with networking concepts that are completely meaningless to the underlying problem. Like, people will look at subnets and say, well, for on the same subnet, we should have low latency. Bullshit, right? I mean, basically, if you're on the same subnet, the guy could be on the other end of the wind in the modern era with L2 overlays. So if you want latency, you should be able to ask for a particular latency guarantee. Yeah, it felt to me that it took the networking community a while to fix things when it came to virtualization. But the punchline is, when it comes to containers and what's happening in Kubernetes, it feels like the networking community is rallying a lot faster and getting ahead of it. So what's different this time? You've got kind of that historical view on it. Are we doing better as an industry now? And why is it? So a couple of things is the Kubernetes guys have done a really nice job of laying out their networking APIs. They didn't get bogged down in the internal guts of the network that no DevOps guy ever wants to have to see. They got really to the heart of the matter. So if you look at the guarantees that you have in Kubernetes, what is it? Every pod can talk to every other pod at L3, right? So L2 isn't even in the picture, right? Which is beautiful because in the cloud, you need to worry about something that's like you need a hole in the head, right? The, then if you want isolation, you specify a network policy. And you don't talk about IP addresses when you do that. You talk about selectors on labels for pods. It's a beautiful way to go about it because you're talking about things you actually care about. And then with services, you're really talking about how do I discover the service I want? So I never have to figure out a pod IP. The system does it for me. And there are gaps in terms of there being things that people are going to be able to need to do that are not completely specified on those APIs yet. But the things they've covered have been covered so well that it's, and they're being defended so thoroughly that it's actually making it easier because we can't come in and introduce concepts that harm DevOps. We're forced to work in a paradigm that serves it. Okay, great. So this will be easy. So we'll be ready to tackle serverless. What's that going to mean for the network? Serverless gets to be even more interesting because the level of agility that you want in your network goes up. Because you can imagine something in serverless where you don't even want to start a pod until someone has made a request. So there's an L7 piece that has to be dealt with but then you have to worry about the efficiency of how do you actually move that TCP session to the actual instance that's come up for serverless for that thing and how do you move it to the next thing? Because you're working at an L7 where from the client's point of view, they think it's all the same server but it's actually been balkanized across all these microservices. And so you have to find an efficient way of making that transparent that minimizes the degree to which you have to hairpin through things all over the cluster because that just introduces more latency, less throughput, more load on the cluster. You've got to be able to avoid that. And so by being able to bring sophisticated features quickly to the data plane with something like FIDO and VPP, you can actually start peeling those problems off progressively as serverless matures because the truth of the matter is no one really knows what those things are going to look like. We all like to believe we do but you're going to find new problems as you go. It's the unknown unknowns that require the velocity. All right, so it sounds like you're excited about serverless though. Hugely, yes, definitely. So I love serverless too and I was just talking about it. So what is your opinion, the confusion?  I don't think it is personally. I think it's nirvana. I think it's what people want, right? Most developers want. I mean, there's always, there's a server behind it. I mean, it's not serverless per se. It's just from a developer standpoint, you don't have to provision hardware or containers or VMs or any of that. I personally think it's a good thing. It's just a better naming convention. I mean, give the people, what's the nuance? Why are people confused? I think it's much more fundamental than just the naming convention, right? Because historically, if you look at the virtualization of workloads, every movement we've had today has been about some workload run, some runtime technology. VMs were about virtual machines. Containers are about containers that run time technology. When you get to microservices and serverless, we've made the leap from talking about the underlying technology that most developers don't care about to talking about the philosophy that they do, right? And just- Their runtime is their app. Exactly. Their runtime assembly is their code sandwich. Not necessarily the network. Just as in serverless, I don't think anyone doubts that the first run of serverless is going to be built on containers. But the philosophy is completely divorced for them. So I'll give you an example. One of the things that we have in VPP is we have an ultra-high performance, ultra-high scalability, user-space TCP stat. I mean, we're talking the kind of thing that can trivially handle 10 million simultaneous connections with 200,000 new connections coming in every second, right? And right now, you can scope that to an isolation scope of a container. But there's no reason with technology we have you can't scope it all the way down to a process. So you control the network access at the level of a process. So there's a lot of headroom to go even smaller than containers, even lighter weight than containers. But the serverless philosophy changes not a wit as you have that improvement come in. That's beautiful. Ed, thanks so much for coming on the queue. Really appreciate your perspective. I'd like you to get one final word in to end the segment. Describe what's happening here because the OS, I mean, I'm sorry, the OS summit or the open source summit, North America, it's the first of its kind. It's a big tent event. What's your take on it? What's the purpose of the event? What's your experience? Share it with the folks who aren't here. What's this event is all about? So it's really exciting because as much as we love the Linux Foundation and as much as we've all enjoyed things like LinuxCon in the past, the truth is for years it's been bleeding beyond just Linux, right? It is actually, I don't see the OS summit so much as a shift in focus as a recognition of what's developed, right? Last year we had the open source summit here, we just called it LinuxCon. The year before we had the open source summit here, we just called it LinuxCon. And so what's really happening is we're recognizing what is. There's actually no new creation happening here. It's the recognition of what's evolved. And that is open source as a tier one reality. Absolutely. That goes way beyond Linux, which is by the way, super valuable, the kernel. Oh no, we all love Linux. All Linux apps, all the apps are such a Linux apps. Which is, but it's a bigger thing. This is a growth and scale that's coming. Yes. It's unprecedented. I think a lot of people still are pinching themselves. Stu and I were commenting that what's coming is going to change the face of software development for generations to come. I mean, just on the exponential scale of software libraries coming on board. Yeah, up to 400 million was forecasted by 2026. That sounds conservative to me. Well, I mean, just look at the scale. So there's going to be some leadership opportunities for the community in my opinion. Absolutely. And this is where the open source summit actually, I mean words matter because the shape the way we think about things. So where I think the shift to the open source summit has huge value is that it starts to shift the thinking into this broader space. It's not just a recognition of what's happened. It's a new load of software here for the community. This is not a marketing event. It's a recognition of what's actually happening. I love that quote, open source summit, brilliant move by the Linux Foundation. I think it's created a big 10 event for cross pollination, sharing of ideas. This is the ethos of open source. Ed, thanks so much. Such a pleasure. Coming on theCUBE live coverage from the open source summit in North America, formerly LinuxCon and all the other great events here in Los Angeles, I'm John Furrier. Stu Miniman, more live coverage after this short break.


Welcome to this virtual celebration of your graduation from AUS. We know that this is no substitute for being together and we look forward to seeing you when circumstances permit. In spite of the difficulties, you have persevered and have been successful. As you make the transition to life after graduation, I am sure that your ability to persevere will serve you well. The University is proud of your accomplishments and grateful for the contributions that you've made to enriching AUS as students, as campus leaders, and as role models for your peers. I wish you continued success as you join your fellow alumni to make the world better. Congratulations again. I hope that you enjoy this video intended to celebrate all that you have accomplished. Congratulations. On behalf of His Highness, Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad al-Qasimi, member of the UAE Supreme Council, ruler of Sharjah, president of the American University of Sharjah, members of the Board of Trustees, the faculty and staff, congratulations to the Class of Fall 2020. Much has changed since the first day you stepped onto campus and the world has changed in unexpected ways. AUS has expanded facilities, launched new programs, enhanced research opportunities for faculty and students, and renewed the focus on student success, including an increased emphasis on the transition to university life. Due to the foresight and the extraordinary vision of His Highness, AUS today is not only characterized by the incredible buildings that we enjoy due to his generosity, but the campus is much more. It is a diverse academic community enriched by the students, staff, and faculty who contributed to the advancement of the academic mission of the university. While the change that has occurred at AUS has been significant, it pales in comparison to the change that has taken place in the world. The pre-final exam anxiety that you experienced just a short time ago may seem minor when compared to the challenges ahead. However, my confidence is restored each time I speak with AUS students and graduates who are confident, capable, and prepared to face a complex future. At just as you have successfully negotiated the challenges associated with pursuing a degree, I am confident that you will rise to the even greater challenges that lie ahead. Education is a gift that comes at a cost and sacrifice, and we should not forget to thank those who have supported you in order to make today possible. Please join me in recognizing the family members and friends who have supported you through this journey. Given what you've accomplished academically and as contributors of the AUS community through class discussions, community service, initiatives, leadership roles, performances, extracurricular activities, and research and teaching assistance, I am confident that you will continue to make a difference in the world. Congratulations graduates. I am delighted to join you, your families and friends, in celebration of this major milestone in your lives. A degree from AUS is here finally. It's indeed a distinct honor for me to share the excitement of this moment with all of you and to express the sense of pride that everyone in the AUS community feels for your accomplishments. We all know that you have come to this point through a great deal of dedication, persistence, and hard work. That is always the case for an AUS graduate, but the fact that you have done so and the severe restrictions mandated by the current pandemic simply adds to our pride and to our admiration for your achievements. It should also be a source of great joy to all of you. Rejoice in this your day and please accept my warmest congratulations on your graduation and my best wishes as you embark in a new phase in your life. Our dear graduates, this is to congratulate you on your graduation from the American University of Sharjah and to congratulate and thank all those who supported you along the way, your families, your loved ones, sponsors, and of course my colleagues here at the University. At the time of filming I'm staring into a camera, imagining your proud beautiful faces that I've been looking forward to seeing. Again at the time of filming the world is going through a global transient. In our global fight against and defense against the pandemic we have postponed face-to-face meetings. So this is the message. The world is going through a transient and some are talking about going back to normal when it's becoming clearer and clearer and that that's not the case. And some are too eager to define the new normal. Take them with a grain of salt for it is you who will define the new world and it will be anything but normal. In defining your challenges and rising up to them it is with great pride that I know and I hope you do that you have strong roots and strong wings so fly high, fly far and don't forget your roots. We're here for you. You have all the strength you need with the new world. Proud of you, looking forward to always staying in touch with you. Thank you. Greetings to everyone and a hearty congratulations to the graduating class of 2020. Graduating today are some of my closest friends colleagues and the students I'm used to seeing in the halls of engineering building. No matter how we think we performed during our time at AUS we'll always cherish the memories of being part of such a prestigious institute and such a challenging college. And I'm sure you'll agree with me that our time at AUS has been incredible and certainly not enough. Let me remind you all this batch has experienced some of the history-making moments of the College of Engineering. You started your journey in the cozy engineering buildings and witnessed the inauguration of the new and advanced engineering and science building. Your batch is the first batch to attend classes in ESB and a very lucky batch to experience having the first female C and Dean of the region, Dean Chirin Thakini. And not to forget passing your senior year in a pandemic and making it to this day regardless of the many obstacles. We acknowledge your hard work and dedication and wish you all the best. Today you're leaving AUS with so much more than a degree. You're leaving with memories, friends by your side and the experience of a lifetime. Congratulations again and I hope you enjoy this day. The world needs you and AUS will continue to need you. You along with the 16,000 alumni that you join will continue to remain an important part of the AUS community. Just as I hope that AUS will remain part of you. I look forward to the time we can gather to celebrate your graduation. Until then I wish you continued success. Congratulations proud AUS. Friends, faculty, fellow graduates. We did it! We accomplished our dreams and our major steps that we took in this journey. I hope that wherever our future takes us we allow it to take us somewhere and even beyond. The past four years were more than an academic journey. I would definitely miss my morning rides to Sharjah and I would miss the ITF room at SBA but I'm definitely prepared for a career in corporate finance. Besides quality education, AUS gave me friendships and memories that I will forever remain grateful for. It gave me the opportunity to represent students in the student council for one year which I consider one of my greatest achievements. In the future I hope the type you simply represent AUS as an alumina and make it and its community proud. After graduating high school I always went with the quote that says be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire and this quote has governed the life I live for the majority of my academic and social speech throughout my time in college. To thank you to my MCM department and faculty that shaped me to the woman I am today that you guys are looking at and of course my friends that turned into my family. I can't wait to see what the future holds for me and each one of you and take all that AUS has taught us over the four years patience, commitment, hard work and kindness. Here's to our next journey of adulthood. AUS you'll be missed. Thank you once again.


Good morning. I've traveled with props. I always like to have props whenever I go to do a speech somewhere. So this is not ad hoc. I'm not just lugging around my handbag for the sake of it. This is actually some props. Okay. We were pleasantly surprised over and over and over again during our 10 years living in Asia and Africa. Oh, by we, I mean myself. I'm Nadia Manning Thomas. Hello. And also my husband, David Thomas, who I've left back in London. But I have to give him some credit as part of this story as well. And I'm happy to be here today in Warsaw at this youth session that's part of the Global Landscapes Forum to tell you my story, which is also the story of other young people. But actually, maybe it's to tell you more of my story, because if you happen to have read my blog piece that was on the blog before, I charted previous chapters of my River of Life. So hopefully many of you have read that already. So this is a continuation of my story. And if you haven't and you want to get the backstory, make sure you go to the website and read not only my blog piece, but also the blog pieces of a number of these speakers that was meant to tease you into coming to this event. So if I'm to sum up my story, a story of only 34 years, I've already put it out there, then it would be one characterized by changing course to keep with my River of Life theme. Changing course when needed, changing course when I saw the opportunity, and changing course when I wanted to do or achieve something better. But this changing of course along my River of Life has not at all been frivolous or ad hoc, but rather has been characterized by my goals, passions, and dreams, and supported by equipping myself with strong but diverse set of skills, knowledge, and experiences, and having the courage and belief in myself and in what I'm doing to make the changes when the time came. So after many twists and turns in my River of Life that took me from Barbados, which is where I'm from, to an archaeological dig as part of my studies in the middle of a drought in Tanzania, which influenced me to make a decision to pursue development studies instead of archaeology and to work in Namibia, to then realizing the need for good research, getting good knowledge to influence actions, to then throwing my efforts into finding and encouraging good knowledge sharing. I found myself most recently working on knowledge sharing to support agricultural research for development in the CGIR in Africa and Asia. During this time, we did an interesting project through one of the programs I worked on, looking at finding inspiring youth working within the agricultural sector. This was called Growing Talents, and we highlighted 10 youth with interesting roles in agriculture. And I'm really happy to see that one of our speakers today, Stephen Kovet, who we'll be speaking later, was one of our Growing Talents. And across all of these Growing Talents, there was one overarching theme, the way that all of these young people adapted to change, they adapted to their surroundings and made themselves into something different to adapt to their situations. And it was during this time, while stationed in Sri Lanka and Ethiopia, that my river was to change its course yet again. So back to my original story, we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of materials, innovative design, and wonderful stories behind the many beautiful products that we encountered in various countries in Africa and Asia, countries most often known for poverty, degradation, war, and natural disasters. Both as shoppers ourselves, particularly me, more so than my husband, but also through our work in agricultural research and development and in business development and microfinance. We got to know a number of producers, many of them women, many of them young, and their good handmade and skilled processes. And we were exposed to the value chain from raw materials to production to market that they were all part of with its great challenges and opportunities. Our pleasant surprise turned into passion, which was soon followed up, luckily, with market research, writing of a business plan with many iterations and consulting others, to finding investment, asking friends and family to support our idea, and the development of an initial set of supply chains. And soon, a business and a brand were born, Danica, which means to be pleasantly surprised, a derivative from a word in an Ethiopian language. Danica is a business focused on ethically produced personal and household accessories, some examples here, which are retailed through a boutique in the trendy Portobello Road in Notting Hill area in London, an online shop and also through other businesses. Danica Will's Chic, our longer name, combines a unique commercial approach to sustainable development that links quality products made in developing countries with customers, particularly in Europe, but also increasingly further afield. Drawing customers in with luxury products with simply striking designs, the Danica brand offers an opportunity for others also to be pleasantly surprised by the intriguing stories of where and how the products were made, which accompany every piece in the Danica ranges. Our brand is built on a foundation of three things, ethical principles, quality and design and fair prices. Firstly, ethical principles run throughout the whole of the Danica business, from products to services to overall design. For example, our logo and branding were designed by a young Tamil artist in Sri Lanka. Danica works with small scale, mostly women led enterprises in developing countries that take pride in raw materials and their own processing skills, providing them with fair payments and ongoing supportive relationships. Quality and design of Danica products comes from using good and locally important raw materials and inputs. Strong craftsmanship and creative design to produce beautiful and functional pieces. Quality inputs like leather, so I brought a couple of examples here, silver and silk are backbone of every product, which makes them beautiful, strong and supportive of local industries. Our leather items, for example, play a key role in the Ethiopian context with its heavy reliance on agriculture and 85% of the population involved in agriculture, but with small markets and industries for making use of the byproducts, for example, from cattle and sheep, which is leather. Striking unique design elements using iconic cultural artifacts help to distinguish our products. And finally, fair prices to both the producers and customers allow us to achieve the ethical principles, high quality and design, while making products accessible and keeping the business sustainable. Supporting these three key elements is our attentiveness to innovation, trends and user experience, which helps to continuously shape and strengthen the brand. We work very closely with our suppliers, all of whom are women led enterprises and some of whom are also young people trying to manage resource responsible and ethically principled production processes. We support them in their efforts by embracing their ideas, especially around design and new products, but also through mentoring, especially on business matters. Take Heimannut and Tagist, for example, two young Ethiopian twins who, after a rough start in life, run their own business, sourcing local beads, leather and woven cotton, which they make into some of the most striking jewelry you have ever seen. Their talent and vision are matched by their passion and dedication to their own business. Danica sources jewelry from them, which provides them with an international outlet for their products, broadens the reach of their business, and creates reputational value for them and for Ethiopia. Many people are pleasantly surprised when they come into our shop and see a piece of jewelry and say, yes, that was made in Ethiopia. Now they run their own shop in Addis Ababa with their business on track to offer further employment opportunities for other young people, but already creates a positive role model. Through Danica, we are trying to do our part to support sustainable environmental and economic development in a climate changing world. We saw a need and decided to adapt our skills, our ideas and our way of working to it. We changed our course to follow this. So as the global landscape forum and COP 19 continue, I see an overarching theme of change and adaptation, making changes in community, making changes in practices and changing knowledge. In my river of life, there's also been an overarching theme of change. In my experience for the changes to be positive, for my change to have been good, I've relied on three things. Being equipped with strong but diverse skills, knowledge and experiences, or being prepared to get the right ones when necessary. Being open to opportunities and being creative and flexible in addressing challenges and obstacles. And finally, being brave and confident enough and having the convictions to make the changes in course that have been required or desired. And when we go to business meetings, trade fairs, even London fashion week, or to meet the Ethiopian ambassador or trade ministers, they are pleasantly surprised to see that it is young people that are behind the face of Danica. So I hope you were pleasantly surprised by my story. And as a final word, we've created a promotional code. So anybody who's interested in sourcing any of our products can go onto our website at www.danica.com. And if you put into the discount box, COP 19, all in small letters, we're offering a discount on all of our beautiful products. Thank you very much.


And Joe Girardi back in the game with the Philadelphia Phillies. Yeah, I look at that graphic and the two managers at the top of it. Beltran obviously getting the job for the first time. He's going to have a lot to deal with with the New York Mets who have expectations. They think they're ready to try to win, so he's got a team that's ready to go. Maybe they'll add a few, but Joe Girardi going to the Phillies. Obviously Yankee fans remember what he did for the Yankees. That experience old school manager gets another opportunity. And I wonder if that's going to be a trend moving forward. Our good buddy Buck Showalter had some interviews. Dusty Baker had some interviews. Joe Girardi gets that job. And I think he hits the ground running in Philadelphia with a team that's ready to improve. But I'm going to watch Beltran a lot, especially early on. Probably going to have to deal with some of this Houston Astro fallout from the cheating scandal and a team that's ready to go in the biggest city of New York. Right, and he'll have to deal with that right out of the box. Whenever Major League Baseball eventually decides what kind of punishment the Astros get. Does any of that trickle down to Beltran? And how does he handle that? Covered him as a player when he was on the Mets. Covered him as a player when he was on the Yankees. I was always very impressed with Beltran. And just the instant respect that he commanded in the clubhouse. The fact that he's bilingual. I think that's another thing that works in his favor. And I think that the Mets in hiring him are betting on a stock almost. The guy who hasn't been a manager yet, but it's one of those rising stocks. If you look at baseball smarts, baseball acumen, the ability to connect with people. All of that is great for Carlos Beltran. But he hasn't done it yet, which is why I think having a savvy bench coach helps. Hensley Moulins, a former Yankee from way back when, is that bench coach. You know, we look at that graphic of the new managers or with their new teams. I wonder how many of those guys are thinking tonight about their first meeting during spring training, right? And Jack, you mentioned that instant credibility and respect for Carlos Beltran. As he walks in that clubhouse, that first meeting, he knows the players are going to respect me. Joe Girardi comes in with a track record, Madden the same thing. But other guys like Sheldon, Tingler, Ross, they're thinking about that first meeting. And how are these guys going to accept me? Because as players, you're looking to your manager and you're looking for that first impression. You only have one chance to do it. You wonder if they're kind of sweating about that first meeting. He's listened to a lot as a player. Let's see how it translates to a manager in that first one. All right.


Okay, I think this is number four in a series on SED. There should be an annotation on the screen showing you a link to the full playlist. I recommend watching the first three videos before watching this one, and today we are going to be playing around with SED and we're going to see what the ampersand, which is the little end symbol, does. Basically it takes whatever string you're trying to match and replaces it in the string that we're trying to replace it with. You'll see. It'll make more sense once I show you it. So we've been working with this file that I made just for the tutorial. Just has some random stuff in it. A couple lines just for us to mess with. And we're going to use SED and we're going to again do substitution. SED does do some other things other than substitution, but it's probably the main thing it's used for. And here we're going to look at, if you remember our last tutorial, this says look for all numeric characters. I'll just do this and have nothing between the second and third forward slash. It's, oh, again you got to give it an input file. That's just removing those characters. So our zeros, our ones, and our fives in this case all were removed just to show you that. And of course we can replace them like we did with whatever string. I'm just going to say asterisk there like that. But let's say we didn't want to necessarily replace them, but maybe put something around them like maybe a parentheses around every number that it's in our file. So it's simple enough. We know that there's a 10 in that file. We can say 10 and we can say replace all 10s with parentheses 10, but that doesn't get our five and our zero. And so I mean we could go and do other characters because if we were to do this zero through nine, it's not replace, it's not putting parentheses around the five. It's putting a 10 in parentheses in its place. So what we can do is say look for all numbers in this case and put parentheses and the ampersand as representing the match strings. Now we can hit enter and you can see we have parentheses around every number. But we kind of did split up our 10 here. One solution for that and won't work in every instance, but it's one that I know of off the top of my head is if I remember correctly, if I say again this, so again if I do this, we're saying look for a number followed by another number and there's only one instance of that in our file, which is our 10. So we're still missing out on our five and our zero. Now that would work if you were trying to put parentheses around all two digit numbers, but we're not. We're trying to put it around all numbers. And the technique I'm going to show you right here is going to work for all one and two digit numbers. I'll have to look up maybe next week, I'll show you a better way of doing this, but if we were to put an asterisk after that. What this asterisk is saying is look for this or this and this. Basically it's looking at whatever the first part of the string is, whether it has that or one more character after it. So I'm going to hit enter now and in our particular instance, we have parentheses around the 10, around our five, and around our zero because again the ampersand here is saying what string did we match? Put it in here. So we don't have to just do parentheses, we can do whatever characters we can say, oh surround all numbers with three asterisks. There we go. And again, this is saying find either a single digit or a double digit. So again, if we had a three digit number in here, this particular technique would not work. And right now, I'm not sure. I know how to do more than one. I'd have to look that up. Maybe that will come in a future video. Again, you can also use the ampersand more than once. So here you can see we're doing asterisks 10 and then asterisks and then 10 again because we put the ampersand again there. We can also, you know, do ampersand ampersand and that will just double every number, not double it mathematically, but double its characters on the screen. So what do we look at today? The main thing we looked at is the ampersand will take whatever match string we have and put it into whatever we're replacing it with. We also looked at a way to find two characters or one character. You can also do three characters. I guess since I brought that up, we might as well look at it. We got time, right? So let's say in our file, we've got a couple of TH's here and a couple of T's. So if I did T, let's say let's replace all T's with a couple of zeros. So all capital T's. Oh, sorry. I put the asterisk in there. That's not good because it's looking for the T or anything else because there's only one character there. So I can say TH here. That would be an example. And we replaced all TH's with four zeros, but if I was to put an asterisk there, it's going to replace all T's with four zeros, but it's also going to replace all TH's with four zeros. And as you can see, it doesn't do, doesn't replace the T and the H. It's replacing the TH or the T. I hope I'm explaining that well. And if I was to do THR, you can see that it no longer modifies the capital T's. It's modifying all the TH's, capital T, lowercase H, and all the THR's. So the asterisk is basically saying, and I've only used this asterisk a little bit, that's why I'm hoping that I'm explaining this well and properly, it's saying look at whatever this is with and without the last character in it. So I hope I explained that well. It wasn't the main focus of the tutorial. The ampersand was, but I kind of got into that, which is a subject I'm not too familiar with. So it's another thing I need to just learn more about. Anyway, I thank you for watching. My website is filmsbychrist.com. That's Chris with a K. There should be a link in the description. I ask that you check that out. If you enjoyed this tutorial, be sure to give it a thumbs up, like it so that I know you like it. And also it's just really nice to know that people like it. And also, again, there should be an annotation on the screen to the full playlist. This video is being put out on Monday. There's going to be a new said video every Monday for the next couple of weeks. Mondays are always my shell script or Linux general tutorials, and next couple of weeks we're going to be working on said, as if you're watching it now. If you're watching this two years from now, well, hey, these videos are already up. The playlist's on the screen and I might be doing something else on Mondays by then. But be sure to check out the playlist annotation on screen filmsbychrist.com Chris with a K. And again, I hope that you have a great day.