From around the globe, it's The Cube with digital coverage of AWS re-invent 2020, sponsored by Intel, AWS and our community partners. Hi, and welcome to The Cube's coverage of AWS re-invent 2020. I'm your host, Justin Warren. And today I am joined by two lovely gentlemen. We have Brian Cahill from a company called Frogslayer which is interesting. And we also have Chad Kenny from Clumio. Gentlemen, welcome to AWS re-invent 2020. Chad, it's been about what a year since I think we last spoke at re-invent last year. Why don't you catch us up on what's been happening in the last year of the quarantine times? Awesome. Well, excited to be here, Justin. Thanks so much for the introduction and hosting us. So it's been an exciting action-packed year, I will say. We've had a bunch of new innovations. I think last time we talked, we were just getting our first native solution inside of AWS for EBS. And since then we've evolved the solution dramatically. Clumio is a secure backup as a service offering for the enterprise. And this allowed us to be able to scale from just EBS into being the industry's first platform to go across public, private and SaaS all in one service. And we innovated within AWS a ton. So we expanded from EBS to EC2 and RDS. We brought in one of the most native services outside of Snapchat. So we kind of progressed the enterprise from the traditional Snapchat primitive into a true AirPrize class backup and built in a time series data lake that allows enterprises to decouple their data from the infrastructure and really be able to provide tons of value into the future. So it's an exciting time for us to really bring new innovative solutions to the market. That's an impressive amount of work given what else has been going on in the last 12 months to be able to ship that much stuff. You've been really, really busy. And you brought Brian on. Now Brian, Frog Slayer, tell me a bit about the background for the name of the company there. Frog Slayer, the name actually came from an initial founder who was trying to protect the animals, wanted to take care of nature and stuff and accidentally stepped on a frog. So he got nicknamed by his buddies Frog Slayer and that then became the company name. So tell us about Frog Slayer. What is it and your role there? What is it that Frog Slayer does and what's your role there? Frog Slayer does business consulting and then we developed custom software. So our goal is to help businesses get past a hurdle. So a growth business that's kind of stuck, make them more efficient, more productive, so they can kind of move to the next level. And my role here is the head of IT that custom software we build, we host for our clients. And so we try to offer it to them as a SaaS solution. So it's not either custom software but it's kind of offered as a SaaS solution to them to consume. Terrific. So how long has the relationship with Clumio been going on? It's been about four months now. All right. And how did you get introduced to Chad and the team in Clumio? We'd started with AWS writing our own backup scripts. And then as we started to move more of their past services like RDS and then RDS went to Serverless and Aurora, you just had to keep upgrading and changing and tweaking your scripts. And so we started looking around to say, hey, is there a software we could use instead of doing this ourselves? And so through a VAR we got connected with Clumio. We were checking out a whole bunch of solutions and most of them were snapshot managers just using the APIs to do the same things we were doing. Whereas Clumio was doing it totally differently where they would actually take a snapshot and then rehydrate it, take that data and then make it more like a traditional backup where you could deduplicate it and save on costs and stuff. Right, okay. So Chad, is that something that you've been, is that one of the many features that you've added in the last 12 weeks or is this something that a little more fundamental to the way Clumio works? It's very fundamental. I think what we're doing is both doing efficiencies around the data itself. So dedupe compression and of course security around encryption, but we ingest the data index and catalog it and then make it so that customers can get fine grain granularity for how they restore even down to the database record. And so one of the big things that we've seen especially in cloud first customers such as Frogslayer is they're really trying to use either the native tools to start with or build your own type models and the costs increase dramatically. The complexity of not having a catalog and index make restores incredibly hard. And it just becomes a much more painful model of hidden costs left and right. And so what we wanted to do is really provide a unique simplicity to be able to protect all of the AWS accounts and even all of the data assets across clouds in one single pane of glass and give a user experience that was dramatically different than having to run various scripts or build your own or have a tool on-prem and have a different tool for this cloud versus another cloud. And by having this consolidated index obviously drive a ton of value around leverage from the data. Interesting. So Brian, you mentioned that this is your relationship with Clumio has been only about sort of four months. That sort of smack in the middle of the pandemic that's been going on here. Was that a trigger for you looking at alternate options or is this something that you've been planning for a while? No, this has been on our roadmap for a little while. Just as we started using more AWS services and trying to figure out, yeah, how do we scale what we're doing? We're looking for more of an enterprise backup but then as we looked around most of the backup solutions you end up posting the software, upgrading the software and maintaining things. Whereas Clumio offered us this back solution. And have you noticed a major change since you've been using Clumio? Yes, what Clumio offered was the ability to because it's a fast solution, it's a, there's an air gap between us and the backup. So I'm not posting the backups or the data. It's in a separate account and I can't even delete it. So there's kind of a protection level that someone in our end can't accidentally delete the stuff we're backing up. Right, and one thing that I've noticed is in the news a lot more over the last couple of days but it's certainly been hitting a lot this year is the idea of ransomware. So a lot of customers that certainly that I speak to have been quite concerned about what's going on with that. So how are you, Brian, addressing that within your organization? Do you feel comfortable that you're well protected and what else are you looking at that you're trying to protect yourselves from? Right, when it comes to ransomware, we try to have our client data in such a way that no one person can access or delete all of it. And so that's where we initially had separate AWS accounts for every client. And with Clumio, we now have Clumio maintains that separation. So they're keeping that air gap for us. And then, you know, we're doing our own stuff internally just to make sure we don't get something but the backups in Clumio are kind of that second step for say something gets past all of our safeguards because we've got another safeguard in place. That sounds pretty prudent, so Chad, is that something that you're hearing from a lot of customers, the need for this separation of powers within the system? Yeah, it's coming out quite often. And I think one of the big challenges here is to deliver an air gap solution with other types of data protection products, whether it's on-prem or in the cloud, have a ton of complexity to it. Whether you're buying a separate appliance and you have to create a network air gap or whether you're actually replicating from one AWS account into another AWS account, the cost just doubled. And so what we built in was a system that not only is immutable, but as Brian mentioned, there's no ability to actually delete the data because the time to live for the data that's persisted is defined by the policy. And so if a bad actor was to get into the environment, there's no way that they could potentially go into our system and actually delete anything. But if you look at like AWS as an example, if most customers are storing snapshots inside their account as a whole, and there's vulnerabilities even beyond ransomware and just an accident or a bad actor even inside the environment, that's not even ransomware. And so protecting that is one of the key capabilities of the platform where we're outside of the service, outside of the cloud in many cases to protect the customer's data and make sure that they can restore it to any account in the event that even a bad actor gets access to it. Yeah, so Brian, one thing that I like to ask customers about particularly around cloud services is they've changed the way that we do things and why we started using cloud is often not what we're actually using it for today. So with respect to Clumio and your services that you're running in cloud, what's something that you've noticed that you're now doing that surprises you? One of those added bonuses that you weren't really expecting, have you seen anything like that as you've managed to start using Clumio that did everything that you wanted it to do and now you're finding there's these new opportunities? Yeah, one of the big advantages of Clumio was when we took snapshots and replicated them out of the source AWS account, it's like in the source account, there was deduplication enabled. Once you replicate it to another AWS account, it rehydrates the snapshots so everyone takes up the full amount of space. And to start hitting this like, how much data do I retain versus like, oh, this is really expensive. I should like, lower my retention. And we just, that totally went away with Clumio. And then as far as the cloud as a whole, what's cool is that as they're coming up with more past services, so RDS, where I don't maintain patches in the OS or on the SQL or Azure's application service where you're not maintaining the OS, that's kind of moving it the next level up as far as less that you're maintaining and you're more maintaining your code and your application. Right, and how important is the cloud native capability of Clumio? There's plenty of backup solutions around and we've had them for many years because data protection is not a new idea. A lot of what are now cloud native, we try to put things into the cloud first. How important is it to have something which understands cloud native? It basically means they're totally aware of what we're doing and so they're not trying to take an old solution and make it fit in the cloud. They built it for the cloud from the ground up. So when you get in their user interface, there's not all of these old buttons and knobs and stuff. It's very simple. It's a policy, a tag, and then inside the account, the tag grabs objects. So they've made a very simple user interface that saves a lot of time on implementation. Excellent. What are some of the things that you're looking to do in the future now that you've bettered things in and you've now got four months of solid experience with the product? What are you anticipating that you're going to be doing next? We're excited about, we're starting to put some of our customers in Azure's cloud, which Clumio is developing capabilities for that. And then Clumio is also working on capabilities for some of our business applications. So the idea of having all of our backups in one place and last separate buckets you've got to go manage is exciting. Yeah, so Chad, multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, they're words that have caused a bit of controversy over the years. It does certainly sound like a lot of customers are using or at least exploring multiple different options. And certainly for yourselves, you'll have customers who exist in one cloud and others that will be in a different one. So how are you addressing the idea of hybrid cloud and multi-cloud? Yeah, great question. So our belief is that data is going to disperse itself more and more, especially as time goes on. And there's multiple phases to this kind of cloud adoption that we see. We see kind of the initial lift into public cloud which kind of created that first hybrid example, then there's the optimization within the cloud. So they're looking for cost reduction and operationalizing. And then it's kind of like looking at ways of, how do I utilize different clouds for different things that may be more operationalized or more optimized than others? And so we really believe in this world of creating a single platform or fabric that goes and expands across all clouds, consolidates an index and catalog into one view for the end user and allows them to be able to push data to any cloud that they need to longer term. And at the same time, protect it. The fun part about migrations is, yeah, you can move data, but when you're protecting it at the same time too, it allows you to actually keep your production up and running, restore a dev environment somewhere else to play around with it and do it in multiple different potential clouds and then have that initial data that's still fully protected in your environment. And so I'd say that the protection side is a really cool one. The second one, as Brian mentioned, was the whole data lake concept that sits behind where we decouple the data from the infrastructure. And with pass services, this is incredibly important because let's say a year and a half from now, the database engine's not even supported with the snapshot that you have left over in your account you've been retaining. You've not got to go through the process of upgrading and getting it up to the Rev to actually even get it working. In our world, we create logical backups of those datasets and they're instantaneously available for direct query access even right in the GUI. And so now this decoupling of infrastructure brings significant value right now. But into the future, this opens up opportunities to be able to do ETL pipelines and actually leverage the data well beyond backup into other use cases. So to finish up, looking forward, always like to have a bit of a view of what the future holds. It's one of my favorite parts of being at re-invent as we get to see the new technology and what the possibilities are for what we could use, take something, take it home, have a bit of a play with it and see what we could do for next year. So maybe Brian, we'll start with you. What are you looking forward to in 2021? What are your future plans? Looking forward to migrating more of our stuff to platform as a service offerings, where we're taking advantage of the fact that the cloud has built some of the base layers and we can just build on top of that. And then the second one that's been exciting is the scalability. So with AWS as serverless and the other Lambda and different things that are running out where we don't need to run physical EC2 instances or always on databases but things that can scale up and down based on our client workload. That's just exciting as far as our infrastructure and just the ability for cost savings, but also that just in time scaling for our customer demand. And Chad, yourselves at Clumio, what can we, can you give us a hint of what we might see in 2021 from Clumio? Yeah, so the first thing I'd say that I'm most excited about any new year is just seeing the advantages customers get with the platform, right? Like we did a lot of innovation during this time. I said COVID had some benefits and some downsides from just company growth and not being close together and having that feeling but we innovated incredibly quickly and we were heads down and highly efficient. And so I'm excited about really showcasing a lot of the innovation that we built during this year. And I think our customers are moving to the cloud faster than ever. And so I'm excited to see a lot of that. What you'll see from us is more and more innovation outside of just the traditional realm, changing the user experience dramatically with new innovations, which sounds kind of broad but think of it as creating more and more of that fabric. We're gonna get into new public clouds. We're gonna get into new SaaS services. We're gonna expand the user experience in the core platform for recoverability, for security, for enabling easy workflows for various different use cases. And so I'm excited about taking the data and really leveraging it into multiple different use cases outside of data protection on into the future. Well, it sounds like we have a lot to look forward to from Clumio. I personally look forward to hearing more about it. Hopefully we get to catch up a little bit earlier, not quite wait the full 12 months between re-invents but if not, we'll definitely be seeing you again next year and hearing about all of the new innovations that you've managed to come up with. You've got 12 months, there's plenty of time. Definitely, awesome. So thank you very much, Brian. Rylan Cale from Frogslayer and Prachad Kenny from Clumio, been my guest today. I've been Justin Warren for theCUBE and all of our coverage here for AWS re-invent 2020. Do check out all the rest of the videos and we will see you next time. Thank you.


So if you think about a strategy, you really need that strong leadership and you need to take into account your culture and your operations. What are you good at? What motivates your people? How do you get them to do something? And when you have that leadership, you really can get an organization to implement any strategy you want and it actually ends up feeling exuberant as opposed to stressful.


Manche-Tajnaited entry manager Ralph Ranknick confirmed he said that he will stay at the club in the Constituency Row, Cozontan-Ciro-Rader, when Dutchman Eric Tenhog replaces him on the bench at the end of the season. The German who took over at United following the Sacken of Ole Gunnar-Suske in November had an agreement to work as a Cozontan for two years when he took the job. Reports in Austria said the Australian food poor federation was hoping to appoint him as their new national team coach, but Ranknick declined to comment when asked about that prospect. Tonight is our game against Chelsea and I don't want to speak about anything else and please accept that and respect that, so please only ask questions about tonight's game. Let us speak about the game. What I can tell you and confirm is that I will definitely continue with my consultancy role at the end of the season and for the next two years and I'm very much looking forward to that. Well, we haven't spoken, Eric and myself, but we have spoken with the board about the content and the profile of the job and the content of that consultancy role. We spoke about that and that's why I can now confirm that I will definitely continue with that at the end of the season. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's event. My name is Elana Tahan and I'm the curator of Hebrew and Christian-oriented collections at the British Library. Today we are presenting a lecture by Professor Mark Epstein on the strange and unusual world of Hebrew manuscripts. This is one from a program of events supporting our exhibition, Hebrew manuscripts journeys of the written word which is running at the British Library. The exhibition provides a snapshot of the range and richness of Hebrew manuscripts in the British Library's collection and reveals the power of the written word to bring people together. Just a little housekeeping before we get started. If you have any questions during the event you can submit them using the questions box below. A selection of questions will be taken by Professor Epstein at the end of the event. Use the menu above to provide us with feedback on the event and also to donate to the British Library. The British Library is a charity. Your support helps us open a world of knowledge and inspiration for everyone. You'll find social media links below the video in case you want to continue the conversation on other platforms. You can also find out more about this event and read a short biography of the speaker. Now without further ado we return the time over to Professor Mark Epstein. Good evening.  I'm honored to be asked to speak in connection with the stunning exhibition of Hebrew manuscripts currently on view. If you haven't seen it you must. And I'm delighted that my presence here was encouraged by the great Dr. Ilana Tahan, a dear friend whose kindness and helpfulness are legendary and sustaining. Her intellectual and practical support have been a mainstay of my scholarship over the years. I'd also like to sincerely thank Jonah Albert, Becca Godley, and John Steathridge for their organizational and technical support and for their tolerance of my various ticks, eccentricities, and quirks. This evening I want to try to get at a part of Jewish history that is difficult to access. It's a deep dark place where archives and documents will avail us little. I want to get at the inner dimensions of Jewish consciousness and to do so by looking at aspects of book culture that are often ignored or discounted or discarded as peripheral or marginal. Together we'll interpret those sources as exciting clues on the trail of new discoveries and innovative observations about Jewish history and society. We'll be exploring two manuscripts made in the late 1320s in the late Constance region of what is now Germany, the Duke of Sussex Ashkenazi Pentateuch on the left, and the first volume of the tripartite Macher on the right, both among the stars of the British Library's unparalleled collection. We'll be examining aspects of what I call their internal iconography. Now when I say that we'll examine internal iconography in these manuscripts, I mean the relationship between the spectrum or the hierarchy of monstrous hybrid and human figures in the manuscript. Let me say at the outset that I'm aware that monsters, hybrids, or distorted facial types that we explore here have parallels in manuscripts made for non-Jews. These creatures, however imaginative, were not invented from whole cloth. They emerged from model books of particular workshops which were involved in the production of manuscripts for both Jews and Christians. Now if you're interested in historical questions concerning style and its genealogies, I think you will find that they've been covered with admirable comprehensiveness by Professor Sarit Shalevani in her wonderful study of the late Constance School of Manuscript Illumination. The question for me, as it always is, is how monsters and hybrids are used in particular manuscripts made for Jewish patrons relative to the other images in the same book. I mean look at the contrast here for instance between the noble knight and the horrible monster. Also for the purposes of tonight's talk, I will begin with the assumption that all avoidance of the image for religious reasons in art made for Jews have as their origin interpretations of halachot, Jewish religious laws stemming from and relating to the second commandment which famously prohibits certain types of image making. Now as with any commandment of Torah law, the ambiguities of the second commandment led to a variety of approaches to the avoidance of the image. Here you see the opinions of two sages who were born about a century apart regarding what was forbidden and what permitted in the representation of human and animal forms. Rabbi Ephraim of Bon at left was more lenient overall allowing animal forms whilst prohibiting the human face. The maharam about a century later at right was less lenient prohibiting all human and animal forms. And the various approaches to images in turn influence the variety of ways in which the avoidance of the human form and or the incorporation of the animal form was handled from manuscript to manuscript meaning of course from community to community from patron household to patron household. Now if you're interested in the halachic the legal parameters and their effect on art made for Jews you really must read the extremely thorough and convincing analyses of Dr. Jofia Budda and Professor Eva Fromovich. Building on all they have taught me I'm developing a working typology of the trajectory of Jewish attitudes toward the refusal of the image in the late 13th and 14th century. One group of interventions involves the erasure or distortion of human faces. In one of the earliest surviving examples of medieval Jewish manuscript commissions the Munich Rashi or the Würzburg Rashi of 1233 human faces were completely erased and this was after the manuscript was received by the patron. They are replaced with nothing else blanks erasures. This is of course quite a radical intervention. A milder version of this practice and one that was not undertaken post facto but premeditated on the part of the people who commissioned the manuscript is the distortion but not the erasure of facial features in some later manuscripts. So erasure to distortion. In another group of manuscripts human faces are erased and replaced with other faces animal or hybrid. It seems that once the patrons had the aim of facial erasure they took and ran with it using the erasure of features and their replacement with other features not only to satisfy the legal strictures but also to say something about particular characters in the narratives they depicted. In the Griffin's Head Haggadah illuminated probably in mind around 1300 there are both blank faces used for Gentile characters and lion eagle hybrid or griffin faces used for the Jews. The blank and replaced heads are deployed in order to articulate ideas about entire groups of people Jews and Gentiles in a manner much more efficient and effective than could have been accomplished by other means. I'll elaborate further on this idea as we proceed but now on to The Monsters. This is the opening page of the book of numbers in the Duke of Sussex Ashkenazi Pentateuch. Here four knights hold banners with the symbols of the major tribes camped around each of the four sides of the word Vahidaber and God spoke the visual manifestation of the logos the divine word and thus the divine presence which stands in here for the tabernacle in the wilderness. Of course the most bizarre images here are the grotesque hybrid monsters that threaten but cannot harm the unarmed Israelite knights. They interestingly represent a number of ethnic types. We have a fair blonde head maybe English, Germanic or Scandinavian. We have a red-headed florid-cheeked Celtic fellow. We have a dark-skinned head with African features and hair and we have a dark-skinned figure with a face with a sort of Phrygian cap associated with the east perhaps and Arab. The human heads that comprise this little pocket ethnography are actually relatively naturalistic. We can after all recognize the ethnicities that are intended. Their expressions however are mocking grotesque disorderly and the fact that they are fixed to monstrous bodies makes these various non-Jewish types mirrors of the sort of monstrous anti-Jewish images one finds in art made for Christians in the period. Jews could be represented with animalistic faces in art made for Christians.  But this type of visual slur was so well known that had it been simply adopted in Jewish manuscripts there would have been confusion about who the animalistic faces were intended to represent. So when Christians are depicted as monstrous they are very clearly reversals of these anti-Jewish types as you can see. But in order that we identify them as the non-Jewish pursuers of Jews they are typically shown as hunters or persecutors as here with this demonic hunter with his matching dog kind of looking like a Dr. Seuss character chases after the Ayelet Ahuvim the the beloved doe, Matnat Sinai the gift of Sinai the Torah or by association the Jewish people and their singular treasure. In the case of the image we've been discussing in order to make clear the non-Jewishness as well as the particular ethnic variety of the Gentile adversaries it was necessary to allow them fairly naturalistic facial features limiting the monstrosity to their facial expressions and their bizarre bodies. There's thus a strong contrast between the negatively caricatured and stereotyped Gentile monsters in this illumination and the more noble characterizations of the Israelite Jewish types. The images of the Gentiles are monstrous disorganized and mocking. The images of the Israelites are not only human but exemplary noble and dignified types. The four faces of these knights of the tribal chieftains as knights contrast with four rather grotesque faces in the tripartite moxer a manuscript made by a workshop very closely allied with the one that made the Duke of Sussex Pentateuch. Here the grotesque heads represent the four winds blowing into paradise from the four corners of the earth. The images of the heads are thus personifications of the far reaches of the globe depicting races who live in quote-unquote the each corner of the earth. There are two lighter skinned heads and two redder skinned ones. Now it's unclear which races these figures are intended to represent in fact they seem to have been meant more generally to epitomize others peoples at a distance at extremities from the viewer. The same manuscript includes many figures that combine non-European ethnic features with monstrous bodies. I'm working through them all as part of my project on race and otherness in the margins on the extremities as I term it of medieval manuscripts made for Jews. So we have an appropriation of anti-Jewish imagery and its reformulation as monstrous anti- Gentile caricature. This occurs both in the tripartite moxer as you see and in the Duke of Sussex Pentateuch. The images have come full circle. We have a perfectly understandable flinging back of visual denigrations in the direction of their origin. This is not the sort of thing we teach our children to do but it's completely natural in the context of being a persecuted minority. Here art rather than imitating life imitates art with the result uncomfortable for modern progressive people to witness that monstrosity could cut both ways and that those medieval Jews were capable of giving as good as they received. That monstrousness as we've been observing often involves hybridity but it's important to note that though hybridity may seem monstrous to us not all hybrids are monsters. Some hybrids serve to reify and externalize traits of collective characteristics that could not otherwise be represented among a group. In my forthcoming book People of the Image, Jews and Art, a substantial unit traces the trajectory of the development of the hybrid in art made for Jews. Following the research of Professor Eva Fromovich I begin with the legal parameters as well as the sociological conditions that seem to have occasioned the post facto erasure of human faces in the earliest surviving illuminated manuscript commissioned by Jews from Christian artisans the Munich or Vortsburg Rashi of 1233 here the faces were erased as I said after the manuscript was received by the patrons do it seems to concerns about portraying the human cabinets. I then move on to a discussion of the use of hybridity to obviate facial features while at the same time moving toward a way of reifying the characteristics of individual persons. Here at the opening of the book of Esther in the Ambrosian Bible of 1236 to 38 we see a hashfarosh king of Persia. His face has been replaced with that of a bear the rabbinic symbol of the Persian empire. It's interesting to note by the way that the bear face itself was later erased or defaced let's say at a later time when halachic that is Jewish legal trends had again shifted and animal heads as well as human features were deemed to be problematic so in the afterlives of these manuscripts we can glean a lot of sociology and history of law. Now this trajectory naturally concludes in the development of hybridity to externalize aspects not of personal but of national character. The crusader era Jewish martyrs and murdered of Mainz were described as being lighter than eagles graver than lions to do the will of their creators. For this and other reasons I've discussed elsewhere Jews were depicted with lion eagle hybrid faces in the griffins at Hakata which was created as I mentioned probably in Mainz around 1300. Now I take it you can discern the problem to which the use of the lion eagle or griffin hybrid was the solution. Think about it how would you characterize all Jews in a given work of art? How would you visually distill some sort of Jewish essence in order to emphasize that all persons depicted were Jewish? I mean of course without the money bags hooked noses hunched backs or avid avaricious expressions I mean if you wanted to avoid this sort of negative stereotype. The problem is that without the negative stereotype there is in fact nothing in common which would visually identify all Jews. All the people I'm showing you right now are Jews for instance there's no uniformity or commonality among them that characterizes them visually. So the solution of the patrons who commissioned the griffin at Hakata was to use the lion eagle hybrid that is the griffin image to externalize and reify collective or national characteristics that could not otherwise be represented among a group that concentrated essence of that group. They sought to show that Jews as a group of people were noble and spiritual and that they were members of a holy covenant with God. For medieval people using symbols was the clearest and most explicit way to accomplish this even if the resulting images seemed bizarre and difficult for us to read in 2020. Now a different approach to facial aviation, substitution, hybridity and Jewish covenant in holiness is proposed in the iconography of the tripartite moxer. This monumental manuscript containing poetic interpolations of the liturgy for the high holiday and festivals was illuminated in the decades after the griffin's head Hakata in the Lake Constance region as I said before. As its nickname the tripartite moxer suggests it's now divided into three parts and housed in three different collections. I'll be looking primarily at part one which Ilana has in her expert care at the British Library. This is a volume more than any other fetish object I can think of that I have often fantasized about taking home for the night. At first glance the manuscript's authorship appears to have taken the most lenient Jewish legal approach we have yet witnessed to display in the human countenance since it allows the depiction of complete normal individualized human faces. Yet a closer look reveals that such faces seem to be permissible only as long as they are male. The face of nearly every female figure in the manuscript has been replaced with the face of a beast. Now to the 21st century I the griffin-headed Jews and the griffin's head Hakata may be puzzling and the violence implied in the blanking out or erasure of the faces of non-Jews in the same manuscript can be disconcerting. But these animal-headed female figures in the tripartite moxer, especially when contrasted with their human-headed male counterparts, are shocking. Indeed the authorship of this manuscript seems to have been makil or lenient on halacha, that is Jewish law around the use of images, but makipid or stringent on misogyny. The iconography is a true puzzle and the various solutions proposed by excellent scholars fail to satisfy entirely. When analyzing art made for medieval Jews, our alterity, our distance from the historical context that gave rise to the images, makes the meaning of some of its iconographies difficult to decipher. This is especially true for strange or unusual iconographies such as that of animal-headed humans. Now this is of course compounded when the zoosephalism, the animal-headedness, is limited to particular here female figures. As a result, any interpretation is open to debate. Still regardless of any potential interpretation, the simple fact that animal heads are applied exclusively to women in the tripartite moxer seems indisputably misogynist and intended to impugn their very humanity. Given that the male figures have normal, noble, and for the most part handsome faces, whereas the human countenance of the female figures is replaced with animal heads, one is hard pressed to conclude that anything other than inferiority associated with animality is included to the women depicted. Now in People of the Image, I describe a hierarchy within the iconography of the tripartite moxer. It's rich, it's complex, and I like this part. It's not entirely watertight. Some of it I feel I've solved. Of course that's only until one of you solves it again one day. In other cases I'm close, and in still other cases I'm perplexed. There are a few elements that are anomalous that don't fit into the hierarchy so neatly. So if you're familiar with the manuscript and you miss a discussion of a certain iconography, rest assured I am working on it. Again, I could not have done this work without recourse to the masterful research of Dr. Jofia Buda and Professor Sarit Shalev Eni. The hierarchy, as I understand it thus far, looks something like this. The main cast in terms of frequency of representation consists of monsters and monstrous human hybrids, and then of figures representing the biblical Israelites in the narrative scenes from Scripture illustrating the various liturgical poems in the manuscript. The monsters are wonderful, by which I mean they are hideous, deformed, disordered, hybrid, oppositional. They clearly represent the forces of chaos, lawlessness in the sense of the lack of Torah, and demonstrate a lack of spiritual refinement. At the other end of the spectrum entirely are the Israelite men who receive the Torah on Mount Sinai. They have completely human faces. They're purposeful, graceful, beautifully accoutred, and by context and their prayerful and attentive behavior pious and spiritually refined. And hovering somewhere in between the grotesque monsters and the dignified Israelite men, we have the Israelite women. These are human animal hybrids. They are not, it is important to stress, human monster hybrids, but human animal hyrids. Through them, the patrons explore a means of characterizing women as a collective, as a group of people. The fact that in the tripartite moxer, animal hybridity is reserved for women alone, makes these figures more ambiguous and much more ambivalent than those in the griffin set, where there are both male and female griffin-headed humans. Then there's the supporting cast, so to speak. The first of this category are the two female figures who represent the sign of lirgo in the two sets of zodiac illustrations. The countenances of these personifications are obviated or obstructed, but no facial substitution is made. You see, not being women of flesh and blood, symbolic females do not merit the negative commentary that animal faces would represent. As mere signifiers, they're not subject to the physical quote-unquote frilities of women, nor do they possess the potentially damning seductive power that disgraces and defames real women, and causes real women, even the holy women of the biblical narratives, to pose a mortal threat to men by, as Jophia Buddha has said, their gaze and our gaze, male gaze at them. The rabbis of the Talmud created a myth involving the imagined capture and imprisonment of the personification of sexual desire. Rather than destroy desire, they decided that since the sexual urge was necessary for the world to continue, they would blind desire and let it go. So, too, these figures are also blinded and let go, so to speak. They're slightly disfigured by the removal of an eye or the effacement of the face, but they're allowed to exist on the page as female personifications. The figures of the laborers, peasants or villains, being male, required neither obviation nor substitution, but being underclass and real rather than personifications and symbolic, they are graced or, shall we say, disgraced with distorted, rough countenances, bulbous noses, slitted eyes, protruding lips. In this manuscript, such distortion is the common fate of a class, the peasantry or laborers, whether Gentiles, as in these examples from the laborers of the months, or biblical Israelite men, as in the scenes from the Book of Ruth. Their Israelite blood fails to trump their underclass status. Note the contrast between the more refined features, pointed nose, thin lips, blonde hair of Boaz, and the lumpy-featured, thick-lipped, dark-haired countenance of his workers. Now, the tripartite moxer also depicts contemporary, that is medieval Jewish men. First, many of the biblical Israelite men are shown with the Judenhut, the Jewish hat, and contemporary garb. They are meant to do double duty, as it were, representing the contemporary Jewish man as his own biblical ancestor. I recall from my youth in dim antiquity, a somewhat ribbled comic song titled, I'm My Own Grandpa. This is a variation, I would say, on that theme. But there are two other Jewish men, dressed in contemporary garb, who are not meant to be biblical Israelites. One has had his head replaced with that of an eagle, but it's unclear when this was done. The illustration of suspiciously reworked and requires further examination. The other figure, which is in much better condition, has a completely human face and sports a Judenhut, a Jewish hat. The contrast between these two figures is one of the anomalies I mentioned that I discuss in the people of the image. But the bottom line here is that contemporary Jewish men are not depicted in the tripartite moxer as monstrous. They exist somewhere on a spectrum between the symbolism of Jewish transcendence represented by the eagle head in parallel to the figures in the griffin's head. To the completely human and consummately dignified. As the kids today so annoyingly say, it's all good. Okay, so much for contemporary medieval Jewish men. Only one final group remains. Now, it's a group that could easily escape notice because, well, it's not there. The group I speak of is contemporary that is medieval Jewish women medieval Jewish women contemporary Jewish women in this manuscript were neither a faced, nor were their faces replaced with those of animals. They were simply excluded completely and thus erased. It's admittedly difficult to retrospectively distill pizche halacha halachik that is legal judgments from the art we see before us. But the iconography clearly depicts certain things and avoids others obviates certain features obfuscates others erases some things, replaces others. This evidence seems to point to the idea that it was only identifiable female biblical characters with whom the patrons felt compelled to deal in the creative manner of facial substitution. Neither the symbolic female zodiac signs, nor the contemporary medieval Jewish women seem to oppose a similar threat. Now contemporary Jewish women, as you see here, were well represented in other manuscripts. For instance, in the griffin's head, we have at left couples at contemporary Passover tables. The man and the woman sit at each extremity of the table. The women are not involved by and large in the ritual. But we also have this amazing depiction on the right of the Seder, the Passover Eve celebration at home of messianic times, complete with the restored Passover sacrifice at the far right below where women and men are not separated but sit together and where women lift the ritual wine cups along with the men. But there appears not to be a single representation of a contemporary woman in the tripartite moxer. Contemporary women are thus neutralized by simple omission. The discrepancy between the approaches the griffin's head and the tripartite moxer is further proof of my oft-repeated contention that there can be no single unified theory of zoosephalism of animal-headedness in medieval art made for Jews. Indeed, each and every patronage context is different and unique. So here, in the tripartite moxer, while all female faces must always be effaced in some way, even those of symbolic females, it is the female figures that appear as particular women within narratives that occasion the strongest negative characterization. Women are animals, with all that that implies, as both rabbinic sources in antiquity and contemporary texts from Franco-Germany, from Ashkenaz, warn us they are primitive, servile, capricious, intellectually defective, and lustful. And yet, alongside this shameful negativity which pushes the female figures into the realm of the non-human and additional messages conveyed, these women embody certain values oppositional to that symbolic expression of inferiority. They are ingeniously, we might say, transparently depicted in such a way as to allow positive human traits such as beauty, order, emotional sensitivity, and piety to shine through the animal guises in a manner that actually acknowledges the human nature of the figures. They're not static masks or emotionless, hieratic heads, like the animal-headed gods, excuse me, of ancient Egyptian pantheon, nor are they reifications of the way in which the Holy Spirit overshadows and eclipses the human qualities of the evangelists in Byzantine and Insular Art. As in the Gryphins head Hakadah, the artists have allowed the human expressions to shine through. These are human animal heads, truly hybrid. Clearly, the patrons felt a mandate to obviate the faces of the Israelite women due to what Dr. Jofia Buddha has described as the problematics of the female gaze and of gazing at women, so they charged the artists to depict these women with animal heads. But these female human animal hybrids, unlike the monsters, are neither brutish in their aspect nor erratic and disorganized in their behavior. And frankly, given the many foley monstrous depictions we've been examining, the women could easily have been depicted as totally monstrous, hideous, deformed, disorganized, undignified, oppositional. But let me be crystal clear, the positive humanity of these figures does not counterbalance their negative animalization. The primary message of the iconography indisputably remains that women's nature is inferior to men's nature and that women are in some sense non-human. Yet in spite of their disgraceful and disfiguring status as women slash animals, they are graceful. They cut beautiful figures. They are orderly, emotionally sensitive and pious virtues that would be highly complementary for men are actually applied to these women as well, making them qualities that transcend gender into the realm of the potentially universally human. So in the midst of the retrograde misogyny of showing women as animals, the authorship, the patrons, and the artists they commission somehow rally to depict women as humans. I'll tell you another thing. Although contemporary, that is medieval Jewish women appear to be absent, as I said, from the iconography, given the fact that Jewish women are rarely depicted with any special Jewish garb, except for covered heads, in the case of married women, which is common in the depiction of most medieval women, Jewish or otherwise, it's entirely possible that these animal headed women are meant to do the same sort of double duty imputed to the Israelite men at Sinai. They might represent both biblical Israelite women and contemporary women, which makes my closing modest observations even more interesting in my opinion. It might just be that these biblical Israelite slash contemporary Jewish women are represented as being, so to speak, ahead of the men in some ways, even as they stand modestly behind them. Although they rise neither to the level of the priesthood is symbolized by Aaron's larger size and Bishop's miter, about which many have written, nor to that of prophecy is indicated by Moses' elevation. They stand physically on the same level as the male Israelites, and this I think is important. While the eyes of the male Israelites are directed forward toward the mediation of the divine presence through Aaron's priesthood and Moses' prophecy, the Israelites say to God, speak not to us, but speak through Moses to us, lest we die, right? So they're looking toward a mediated experience. The eyes of the women are directed upward toward the source of revelation. The first woman in particular is situated directly below and is gazing upward at the enormous golden aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, of the word adon, Lord. In both rabbinic literature and the mystical literature of Ashkenaz, the aleph represented revelation itself, Anohi, the first principle, the voice of God, in particular the unmediated experience of the ineluctable divine presence. This figure is holding a book, which has been noticed by several scholars and variously interpreted. But to me what's important is that she's not looking at the book. Her eyes instead and significantly are on the original, not the mediated source of revelation. Her eyes, to paraphrase the great Zora Neale Hurston, are watching God. In this sense, she resembles the virgin Anunciate, who deliberately turns away from the text on the lectern in favor of the direct experience of revelation and in doing so is overshadowed, indeed impregnated by the Holy Spirit, by the Word of God. The prayerful hands, the uplifted eyes of all the beastly women here bespeak this sort of direct connection with divine inspiration. One woman gazes directly at Moses and Aaron. I think that this is deliberately intended to mitigate the idea that women do not receive revelation through quote-unquote the usual channels as well, right? But perhaps, as my wife suggests, she's just looking at the men, which would mitigate the idea that all women are pious and focused only on the divine. I love the fact that images like this can be read in so many ways. Regardless, the body language of the majority of the female figures does impute to them a special, albeit provisionally spiritually refined status in spite of their omnipresent female animality. This is confusing to the 21st century mind. For us, evil, whether it's racism or anti-Semitism or misogyny, for instance, deeply and irretrievably taint everything it touches. How can we view the films of such and such a director when we know that he's coerced women or listen to the music of a 19th century composer who was an anti-Semite? How can we live in proximity with statues and monuments that celebrate so-called heroes who were, in retrospect, racists and imperialists? Furthermore, and if you know me, you know I don't shy away from contemporary analogies, how many Jewish women have been told by their pious and arguably well-meaning Orthodox friends that although those Jewish women seem to be legally disadvantaged in traditional Judaism, they are in reality treasured and valued because they have an inner spirituality that men just don't have. And that's why women don't need to perform the commandments. Men have mitzvah's commandments, they need them. Women by way of contrast get their spiritual sustenance directly from the source. Folks, I don't advocate this sort of justification for keeping women just disenfranchised from full participation in Jewish life and ritual religiously. But what I believe is beside the point here, the point is that Jews in early 14th century Ashtonize, Franco-Germany may have been telling their women and their communities and themselves the very same Bubbamyces, the very same fairy tales that one might hear in Golders Green or Stamford Hill in Muncie or Crown Heights today. This image may represent just such an apologetics. At the end of the day, the graceful, beautiful, orderly, emotionally sensitive, pious, yet animal-headed women of the tripartated Massar are a testimony to a particular paradox of the medieval mind, which in the normal course of things maintain that it was possible to hold two seemingly diametrically opposed interpretations of a single symbol at one and the same time and without contradiction. In the Palm Sunday sermon of the 12th century theologian Honorius of Autan, for instance, the devil, who according to 1st Peter, quote, skulks about seeking whom he might devour, is figured as a lion, seeking to undermine divine sovereignty to open persecution of the weak and defenseless. Yet just a couple of folios further on in the Speculum Ecclesia in his sermon for Easter Sunday Honorius tells us that the lion signifies Christ, who's called the lion of Judah. So which is it? Is the lion the devil or is it Christ? The answer, both simultaneously and without contradiction. I am not valorizing the observation that to the medieval mind contrary or contradictory values could be held in equal and simultaneous esteem. I'm not covertly suggesting, for instance, that we in the 20th century, 21st century, use the idea of an inherent women's spirituality to keep women down and out of full religious participation. I'm merely reflecting upon an aspect of medieval consciousness. Like Honorius' lion, hybrids and art made for medieval Jewish audiences could assume positive or negative valence, depending on the context and the intent of the iconography. And they could sometimes bear both kinds of meanings simultaneously. And female hybrids in particular, specifically those in the tripartite moxer, could express positive values in spite of their animality. As humans inhabiting a complex and confusing world, it behooves us to learn to live with and appreciate uncertainty, paradox, contradiction, and alterity. For it is in the interstices, the gaps between the things we know and understand and can relate to, and the things we don't know, don't understand and can't relate to, that we can glean the most cogent and lasting insights about our culture, our religions, our histories, and ourselves. Thank you very much. I'm now ready to answer some questions. So, let's see. Okay, we have a question from, from Julie Harris. Hello Julie. If there's no unified system of so ascephaly and medieval Jewish art in Ashtonizing manuscripts, can one speak of a Jewish visuality? Right, I think you can speak, it's an excellent question, of course. Julie's another one of my great heroes. One can speak, if not of a Jewish visuality, then of a provisional and pragmatic approach. In other words, if the first manuscripts had faces erased because they were received and the patron said, oh my god, there's a face here, we didn't intend that, right? And then patrons started saying, well, if we have to erase faces, can we replace them with something else? How you replace them and what you replace them with would have been ad lib, right, would have been up to each patronage configuration. So, I think it's, you know, there is Jewish visuality, but is there a Jewish visuality? Is there a singular sort of approach? I would say no. Okay. In the book, do you propose any further solutions for the ethnic monsters? Good question, also. I'm thinking about the ethnic monsters and trying to sort of tally where they come from, which ones seem African, which ones seem European, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm trying to place each of them in its proper context. I'm even interested, by the way, in the Duke of Sussex Pentateuch in the Four Knights around the Tabernacle, because they seem to me to be manifesting four distinctive facial expressions, which might be associated with the humors, right? So now I'm doing a study, a sort of layered study of the way mystical texts in this period and place looked at the four humors and whether they were correlated with the various, the four major tribes camped around the Tabernacle. The difficulty is that when you look at images that are, that portray emotion or are meant to depict the humors, let's say, human characteristics, they are A, abstract, and B, it's subjective what you're seeing. So that area, the area of emotion, I have a unit in my new book on emotion in art made for Jews of the Middle Ages, is a tricky area to navigate. On the other hand, if we claim that it's all speculation, we shouldn't say anything, then we're stuck in a morass of interpretive paralysis. And at my back, I always hear times, winged chariot hurring near. If I have something to say, even if it's speculative, I'll say it, I'll bounce it off you, the public scholars and others and see where we take it together. Okay, another question. Does the Phrygian hat nullify the normal face? Because the Phrygian hat on that Arab monster, the Phrygian hat is used very often to indicate foreignness or even monstrousness. I would say that the Phrygian hat is just a placeholder to differentiate between the Arab, the African head, which shows close cropped hair, or kinky hair, right? And the Arab head, which has a similar complexion, right? But this way, we sort of situate this person in the east rather than the south of Europe, the extreme east rather than the extreme south. I think it's a place marker for that. Are the women in the tripartite moxer shown with animal heads to prevent the male viewer from becoming aroused? Or, you know, on the other side, from invading there, that is, the image is privacy. So, you know, I quote, I mentioned and quoted a lot, Dr. Jofia Budda, as well as Professor Sarichalov-Ani and Dr. Professor Eva Firmovich, each of them, to some degree, has dealt with this question. The most developed treatment is in Budda and Shalev-Ani and it really, it's clear, it's obvious, I think, from what they wrote and from your own observation, it would be natural to think that both, you don't want to gaze at women, right? And that women's gaze, and this was, I think, an innovation of Dr. Budda, women's gaze itself is a dangerous thing. But this idea of invading their privacy, that the male gaze would be on the woman, the biblical woman, and therefore would be inappropriate from her perspective, even though she is just shown in two dimensions, is both a very smart, a very sensitive and a very charming suggestion. So, I like that. I mean, I, look, the protagonists are no longer around to be interrogated. So, we're never going to get answers to these questions. All we can hope to do is to build up what I call a plausible constellation of possibilities. And in a plausible constellation of possibilities, you can have two things just as an honoris existing in the same time, interpretively as well. So, the woman gazing at the men might just be a reminder to us that women also get revelation through the normal channels, don't think they're all, you know, these spiritual giants, or it might be as Agi, my wife said, right, you know, that women like to look at men, especially in synagogue, right? And those things are not contradictory. They may exist at the same time. Okay. Oh, question.  Okay. Robert Marcus is the animalization of the feminine face, the way of diminishing the lustful nature of the male gaze. Yes, I think we've covered that. I talked a little bit about emotions. Monsters have a very limited range of emotions. Someone asked about emotions. Monsters have a limited range of emotions, right? They range from, you know, insane to ferocious, right? But these women you see, and the men too, they have an inwardness, they have a reflectiveness, they have a directedness in the Gryffindor's head, it's fabulous. Everybody in spite of these bizarre Gryphon heads is going around, you know, with consummate seriousness, doing their business, interacting with each other, smiling or frowning. It's remarkable what this relatively simple art can do when it comes to the expression of emotion. Jason Lieberman. Jason, hi! I've never met Jason Lieberman, but we've had an extensive correspondence, and he is one of the smartest people out there, although he's not an academic. Good for you, Jason. Okay. In the Duke of Sussex manuscript, can you explain the seemingly nonverbal communication going on between the Israelite Knights, right? So they're each looking at each other in a certain way. So I've postulated in a little article, I think I published it in Mosaic or something, I have to dig it out, but it's certainly in the book about the emotional, the inner emotional life of these figures. And they are, they are engaged in some kind of interaction with each other, but I don't think it's a conversation going on as much as each is in their individual realm, acting out a certain kind of personality, right? Or humor, sanguine, choleric, melancholy, right? You know, each of these is represented by a different facial look, and you do have that. The monsters on the other hand are mocking each other, and they're amazing. I have to give a shout out. I have to say something. I don't know how many people are here or what, you know, if it's mostly academics or mostly laypeople. Jason Lieberman is one of these people who wrote me out of nowhere. He lives in Florida. He works, you know, he has a business, right? And started making observations about manuscripts. We've had a correspondence, mostly him, because I don't get back as often as I should, where he makes these observations that I never could come up with. The more eyes on something, the better. And that's the great thing about the British Library and about digitization. Anybody anywhere in the world can get on the website and make, if you have a pair of eyes, make as cogent observations as we've made here.  And you must keep on looking. That's, you know, I say to my students, looking good, meaning you're looking well. You see things well. Okay. Other questions? Anything? Nothing at the moment comes through. I have to say, the first time I walked into the British Library and met Alana Tan, and she guided me through the, you know, all the requisite applications and, you know, requests, et cetera, et cetera. It was such a thrill and a pleasure to be able to interact with somebody who's not only knowledgeable about what's in the collection, but interested in what's in what's in the collection, right?  But to be interested in iconography, I mean, her book, Hebrew manuscripts, which was published in the British Library series with one on Christian, one on Islamic manuscripts is really a masterpiece and very, very thoughtful one.  It's like being in the penthouse apartment of a one-story building. Like there's like six other people in the world who are interested in this stuff. But the truth is that as I hope I demonstrated here, and you know, just listening to your questions and comments, it opens up worlds to be able to look at something that so many hundreds of years old and understand that it's not just about dates and style and color and hand shapes and eye shapes, right? But there are human beings. There were human beings behind all of these things.  We're very, very distant from them in many ways. But looking at the work that they commissioned and the commissions themselves, Jews ordering manuscripts for non-Jews, collaboration, right?  So you all have my email, maepstein at vassar.edu. And I sincerely hope that if you have further questions or you just like to get in touch or you have observations, no observation is too crazy for me. I'm very, very interested in what people see in manuscripts. I often miss stuff. You know, I've missed stuff for 30 years and a student will come and say, this is, you know, did you notice? I'm like, what? No, I didn't notice. But now you have, right? When I first started writing about the Griffins head hug that time and published it, someone wrote me this email that said, Professor Epstein, after 100 years, you seem to have definitively solved the mystery of the Griffins head hug data. And I shot back an email as one does on email, kind of annoyed. And my email said, no, I've only solved it until you solve it again. And indeed, that is what we should be doing as scholars of medieval art made for Jews. We should be seeking, we should be humble about what we don't know, seeking solutions and inviting others to come and solve it again after we've even apparently solved it. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for joining us today. A very special thank you goes to Professor Mark Epstein and also to you, our audience. We have an exciting range of events linked to the Hebrew manuscripts exhibition. Do please keep an eye on the what's on pages on our website for more information. Thank you very much again for joining us today.


Hi, this is Stu Miniman with Wikibon. Here with the SiliconANGLE TVs, live continuous coverage from EMC World 2013 in Las Vegas. We're in the brocade spotlight on data center network transformation. Joining me for this segment is Chris Wetzel, who's the director of enterprise storage products on Rackspace. Chris, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks, Stu, good to be here. Great, so first time guests on theCUBE. Chris, what we try to do is we go out, we find the smartest people we can find, the hottest technologies, especially those technologies that are disrupting technologies and Rackspace, of course, is driving innovation. We were at the OpenStack Summit a few weeks ago. Tell me, what brings you to EMC World? So, happy to be here, and EMC World for us is all about EMC as a partner. They've helped us with our storage piece, through joint partnerships with brocade, all the fiber channel networking that we do, is really about what we're doing to kind of put that together for our end customers. So, we talk about transformation, it's absolutely in the middle of all that right now for our customers, so it's an exciting time. So, Chris, you're on the enterprise side of the house for Rackspace, can you explain to us what that means, really, in Rackspace's different businesses? Yeah, yeah, correct. So, on the enterprise side of it, we have our enterprise business unit comprised of, it's our bigger customers in general. We offer our entire portfolio to all of our customers, so enterprise customers can consume our public cloud, consume our private cloud. Our hybrid hosting is the connection of all those elements together. So, that's where a partner like EMC can come in, and we can deliver VNX based or ISON based storage, those customers along with a public cloud offer and a private cloud if need be. So, we're on that side where we kind of work a lot more with partners, but our, the offers go to the public cloud. Right, so Rackspace, everybody knows, I think you're one of the top three vendors when it comes to public cloud, and what has been interesting to watch is Rackspace taking what you guys do, kind of your operational model, and you've been putting that in the private cloud, and it might not be your group, but I also saw that you're going to be offering that to service providers so that they can offer that too. So, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And when we talk about transformation and data center transformation, it's for us, it's the walls of data center coming down, right? So, private clouds run on premise, private clouds run at Rackspace based on open stack, customers that need to have legacy applications running on a VMware base. We're open to all of that and helping provide those solutions and stitching it together. I think our, where the fanatical support piece comes in for us is our ability to help those customers figure out those journeys. And every journey is different, and some customers have the symbol, I want to move a legacy out, that's easy. When you get into data center consolidation or the horizontal scale, that's when it really gets to be challenging, and Rackers and our partners help kind of put that together for our customers. Yeah, so let's drill in a little bit on the applications. You know, I think back to over the last decade what we've seen in virtualization, virtualization started in test dev environments, moved into certain applications, and you know, close to 100% of all applications can really be virtualized today. Where are we with solutions that are kind of based on open stack and what you're doing at Rackspace? Yeah, you know, I think we're still in the early stages. Customers are showing great interest in it. I think what we're trying to do is help build the community so we overcome the interest and actually get into actually consuming it. So, you know, the technologies is there and can do it. It's just more leading customers down that path. And that's where, you know, Rackspace being kind of a founding member of that, we're very excited that our skillset allows us to help customers figure that out. And what's nice for us is it opens up our reach to those customers and say, whatever the best solution for you is. If it's on-prem and it's an open stack base, but we're good with that. You know, if that's right for your business, we can help deliver that. If it comes into our four walls, you know, we have the same technologies that can work with both. So it's all about figuring out what's the best piece that is, but it's still pretty early in general. Yeah, can you talk a little bit about that skillset?  Yeah, yeah, that's an interesting challenge for us. A lot of what the skillset that we need doesn't exist.  So a lot of the activities we have internally, just educating rackers, teaching rackers about, you know, the DevOps model, how to work it internally, getting them comfortable with our, we call it Rack on Rack, which is our Rackspace running our own systems on our cloud. We've moved our, one of our critical, mission critical systems, we actually moved over to our cloud group to put into a DevOps model to help kind of accelerate that learning. And then we broadcast it out. And, you know, every Racker obviously is on a different pace, but they have kind of centers of excellence internally that we can leverage on as we kind of grow that base. So. Okay, can you talk a little bit about how the network fits into this environment? Yes, absolutely. I actually, I view kind of the network and storage are both the areas that, for me, everything starts with your storage, right? You want to do something, you have to know your storage is at, the network is the ability to get it from one place to the next. Inside of Rackspace, you know, we've got, you know, large data centers and our ability to make sure we can connect the right compute with the right storage for the customer, grow those environments and whatever pace they need to be is an incredible challenge. We've had several occasions where we bumped up against design limitations on hardware from, you know, EMC or Brocade. What's powerful to us is the key partnership and helping us figure out what those design limitations are and engaging with the right product teams to help overcome them is something that we value very much and how it translates is our scale. You know, customers might do it once or twice. We're going to do it, you know, hundreds or thousands of times. So we'll be able to overcome them and kind of provide solutions together quicker. You know, once again, we're referencing back to kind of the virtualization wave. Virtualization rippled and broke storage and networking and for cloud oftentimes the network is seen as the bottleneck for kind of configuration and innovation. So, you know, is the network kind of getting past that and no longer being a detriment to getting to the cloud? Well, I think it's improved. I think it all depends on kind of where you're at in that journey, right? You know, as we talk about storage growing from, you know, terabytes to hundreds of terabytes to petabytes, you know, there's a constant evolution of how we have to grow the network. The ability to move the data is a problem today and it's getting better, you know, every year. I expect we have another, you know, couple of years of fixing that or at least kind of continuing to raise the bar, which I think is a good problem to have because when you talk about things like, you know, big data and disaster recovery and all those kind of things customers want to do, it becomes a lot about is the data where it needs to be and if not, how does the network help us do that? Okay, so in your involvement with Brocade, is it Ethernet only or is there also fiber channel in that? It's fiber channel. Okay, is it just fiber channel? It might say mostly fiber channel. Oh, okay, fiber channel. So talk to me a little bit about where we are with fiber channel in your estimation. Is 16 gigabit is kind of the latest speed that we're at, but you know, why are customers using fiber channel and what are the requirements from your standpoint when we look at cloud? Yeah, and what's interesting from our standpoint on, I'll use the enterprise storage side using our shared sand. The nice thing is we've maintained pace that I actually view our fiber channel network based on the Brocade directors is an advantage for rack space. You know, we can deliver the performance well above what a customer needs at a cost that you know, you can't touch with a dedicated device and it just works. And that's kind of the power behind it is that we don't spend a lot of time talking to customers about the performance of it, what do you need? It's more about how many ports do you need? We've got that capability. They can grow beyond it. We can go into the dedicated switch if need be, but that's when you talk about kind of how is the evolution of it? It is not one of the topics that we talk to customers about, which is powerful for us, because what your fabric switching is is not really what should be relevant to your business. It should be what are you doing? What application are you running? We'll make sure the infrastructure can deliver. Yeah, so maybe you can dispel some myths. People have said for years that fiber channel is expensive, it's hard to manage, and you know, to data center technology, maybe it doesn't scale. Is fiber channel a fine solution for kind of private and hybrid clouds? Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I view it in some cases differentiating for us. You know, when we talk about what the performance characteristics we need for some of our storage, fiber channel is one of the best ways for us to get it. So now, is it complex? Yes, to a degree, is it, you know, sometimes more costly alternatives? Maybe, I think it depends on what your solution is, but for the use cases for how we deliver it, it's very, very effective for us.  Okay, well, no conversation with Rackspace can go on without talking about fanatical support. So, you know, how does that fit into the whole private cloud discussion? Yeah, yeah, if I look back to the kind of the transformation, one of the exciting things for me as a Racker is when you talk about customers' transformational journeys, you know, fanatical support is all about that, helping you figure out where are you at today and where do you want to be. And if that is something, as I mentioned earlier, something as simple as a legacy app, that's great, and we've got a portfolio for that. When you get into the more complex solutions, how do you get there, what do you want that to be? We provide our frontline Rackers have the expertise, we've got partners that we can bring into the game through professional services and advisory services. So, it's really kind of forcing our hand to get better at delivering that, you know. What years ago might have been okay, being reactive, now involves kind of being proactive and being in there with the customer. But step, the first step is to understand what are their goals and then where do they want to be? And then we kind of help stitch the rest together, so. Okay, great. So, we're here with Chris Wetzel of Rackspace. Chris, we want to talk about the competitive angle some. We've been talking a lot about OpenStack and while it's been said that OpenStack isn't necessarily competing with Amazon, when I think of Rackspace, I do think of competition with Amazon. So, are you competing against Amazon in a lot of environments? And if so, how do you compete with Amazon? Yeah, I think yes and no. Yes, we compete with a lot of companies. Many of the companies that we deal with are going after, they use Amazon. And in many cases, Amazon's the best solution for them. And if it is, we want to encourage that. That's about solving the right problem for the customer. And what we believe in one of that, I think the powers in the Rackspace offer in solutions are it doesn't have to fit into a public cloud if that's not right for the customer. If your first step in the journey is bare metal, we can help with that. If it's a private cloud, we can help with that. And I think that's kind of what differentiates Rackspace from a lot of our competitors is that breadth of portfolio, we don't have to make it fit into one solution or the other. We can have that consultative engagement and really find what's best, so. Okay, so Chris, when people are coming in to look at your solutions, what are some of the pitfalls? What would you recommend that people do when they're kind of looking at that journey in the cloud before they come talk to you that might save them some time going forward? Yeah, it's a great question. And I think, I don't know that I have just one answer for that, but I think just think in general, where do you want to be? And it's about, is it a buzzword that comes from the CIO? We need to, everything needs to go to the cloud. Okay, how do you get there? What are your, we have the ability and services that can help you do like an inventory of your existing applications? And which ones are cloud ready today? Which ones aren't? What order do you want to do them in? I think it's a little bit of homework on internally to say, how would I do that today? And then engage the Rackspace team to figure out what step we want to do first. What we have learned is trying to do it all at one time is complicated on both sides. I think re-architecting applications to work in a horizontal cloud is hard and it takes a lot of work. So maybe that takes a backseat to some other applications that are up for a legacy refresh or whatnot. It's really about that understanding your environment well enough that you can have that productive discussion and Rackers bring to the table the expertise of we've seen this before, we've done this before. What do you think about this? How would you have you considered taking this approach? Okay, so one final question I have for you is when you look at what customers now do differently when they go to a Rackspace environment, how does it help customers kind of drive innovation and transform their business? Yeah, absolutely.  If you look back over the years, whether it was payroll, whether it's email, whether it's backup, those aren't really high value add functions of your company. So finding ways to take those resources and redeploy them on other areas that you are. It is your business and innovating in those areas is really what separates and differentiates you. So for our model, that's kind of where we try and add to your IT to do that for you. The more time you can spend on making your app better and more efficient understanding your business through analytics, that's what every company should be trying to do. We'll run the infrastructure for you. We're really good at that and we can deliver that with a fanatical support promise every time. All right, well Chris Wetzel, we're with the Rackspace. We appreciate you coming on the cubes, sharing how customers are transforming their environments in the cloud. This is Stu Miniman with Wikibon. We'll be right back with our next guest after this break.


Davey first adding of the spring. How'd you feel out there? I was feeling really good, you know excited to show my my pitches You know and give my 100% was there anything in particular you were working at today? Or is there something this spring that you're working on today? I just was trying to stay aggressive, you know and Execute execute those pitches and you know throw my fast But you know when I when I got my fast, but like I use a lot I just wise I just was trying to do that today. I spoke to you earlier today and you had mentioned your confidence that it's back You feel like the picture you were in 2018 and in 2019. How were you able to find that confidence again? Si me siento es realidad como dije esta mañana como cuando yo pichaba en el 2018 2019 me siento en confianza Como dije anteriormente tengo mi recta que es un gran soporte para mí cuando yo sé que puedo usar la en cualquier conteo y La puedo acudada la uso mucho eso me da mucha confianza también Yeah, I think it has to do with confidence, you know, it is just having that that mentality we were talking about 2018 and Trying trying to emulate what I did then, you know, so and like I said use my fastball, you know use my fastball be Be consistent with it and then just try to execute. Okay. Got some teammates. They are watching you. They make any nervous Thanks for the time. Thanks Marlon. Thank you


Everybody forced here a bit of box up 21 22 prism basketball fast break for tea Chan appreciate you tea Chan Let's see big Photo variation, maybe a big auto big colored all of the above And a photo variation on the optic Big color big disco color. I guess her big auto be nice I was thinking a prism fast break This is pretty fast break. Oh, dude. I'm losing my mind. I'm tired. Yeah, just tired So, yes, big photo variation disco for the Nets Deandre Jordan. I've said to disco Aaron Gordon nuggets fewest disco Ben Wallace and an S cancer disco Pink disco Darius Basley. That one's numbered 42 of 50 and a red disco Pat Patrick Beverly 17 of 100 Is a Todd Kevin Garnett and Davion Mitchell a mark Aguaier fast break auto Zach Levine disco Joshua Primo rookie base fireworks disco Anthony Edwards Disco Chris Weber. They are on sharp rookie base Lamello prismatic disco Derek White on the disco here Kate Cunningham rookie base Paul Pierce Wide screen disco Steph Curry Josh Richardson disco Wise campus or Franz Wagner base mindset LeBron James disco a shake Milton disco Zaire Williams Jason Williams prismatic disco Kawhi Leonard a Blue disco Devonte Graham Vonte Graham 102 of 150 Zegarowski Gary Payton. There's a Zaire Williams rookie photo variation disco a Dalano Banton rookie disco Mama Kelly Shveely and Tyler hero and that'll do it for the box. Thanks again T champ. We'll get the cards right out to you


Hi everyone, Joe for Jaspy's casebreaks.com coming at you with 2023 Panini Donneress football Three hobby boxes random team break number two one spot gets you two teams all Cardship looking for downtowns looking for the rated rookies looking for all that fun stuff big thanks to this group for making it happen Let's double you up. Oh double up. Oh, oh And there are the teams right there all teams are in let's roll it randomize it three into two five times We're named in teams one two three four and five Paul down to Paul three into two five times for the teams one two three four and five After five we got the town's down to the pets All right, Paul with the Houston Texans Tristan with the cold Joe you got my raiders Nick Commanders and Panthers Sal with the Steelers David with the Buccaneers Nick with the Dolphins Royce with the Jaguars David with the Vikings Lucas with the Giants Chad Da last bottom mojo with the Buffalo Bills Royce Titans Tristan with the Packers Adam with the Ravens Joe with the Cardinals Tristan with the Broncos and Cowboys Ronnie with the Chiefs Nick with the Eagles Brown Saints Sal with the Chargers Ronnie with the Rams Nick with the Falcons Chad last bottom mojo bears Nick with the Patriots Tristan with the Lions and Bengals Luke's with the Seahawks Adam the Niners Paul with the Jets Excuse me Joe with the sneeze and Paul with the Jets. That's it Why my allergies are firing up here. So there you go Let's alphabetize by team and We're gonna pause video one when we come back. I'm gonna go grab those three boxes will come back See if there's any trades then we'll have the break those take around B. R. B All right, so no deals were done So the list remains the same there was a little bit of trade chatter, but nothing happened. It's all good You're on a Friday. Thanks for spending your Friday night with me. I appreciate that I just don't work on Fridays, but here I am Switch with Jason. I was out of town last weekend And we're back here. All right. Got a little Australian open tennis on the background we're in the like round of 16 probably getting into Quarterfinal action soon So Polly Shore is gonna play Richard Simmons in a movie and now Richard Simmons came out in a rare statement So he gave no permission for the movie. I met Richard Simmons once In a life before Jasky's I was working at a high-end consignment store There with an assistant looking at stuff. It's very nice. Yeah, I mean flying boy and dude Super super nice though but I mean You know can't stop people from making content about you though it will just be an unauthorized, you know biopic of Richard Simmons And you can see it. Well, I didn't know if it was like, you know, you never know if it's like an act You know, if you're turning it up for the cameras or not, but I think he was pretty true to form So we're looking for one autograph and one memorabilia per box on average There's Khalil Shakir Six out of ten. Nice low number there. Nice low number This might be This player might be the key to the bills of success. This is gonna go to this weekend. It's gonna go Chad We do have a poll a Twitter poll we loaded up if anybody wants to to vote there you can Vote on our Twitter poll we've got polls up for all of the playoff games this weekend Nice Jameer Gibbs the rookies. We'll see him in action this weekend Tristan with the Lions Save flowers could blow the top off that Texan secondary Dorel Rivas legend series Bennett Devonta Smith CD Lam Audrey Stevenson is numbered it is to 500 Patriots new look Patriots next year maybe No more ballot checks. So they're just really new coach. Let's see if What they'll do in the offseason. Are they gonna get a quarterback? There's all sorts of direct things that need to do on that team Sam LaPorta rated rookie card for the Lions and Devonta Adams dominators autograph. Nice My Raiders signing officially Well taking the interim tack off of Antonio Pierce. He's the head coach now Guys like Devonta Adams will be happy among others 43 out of 50 Joe with my Raiders Raiders have quarterback questions to Sam LaPorta will go to Tristan. There should be a relic in here somewhere Raheem Moser to 500 and we got all pro Kings Quinn and Williams 321 out of 399 J ETS Jets Jets Jets Paul with Jets Tank William Isaiah Pacheco to 100 will be a big key For the Chief they want to have some success in Buffalo. Let's take a look at those Twitter polls Let's get an update. I don't think much has changed since the morning even though there have been some more votes Texans at Ravens Who does everyone have there the voting public says 75% say they're on the Texans It's a lot I'm on the Texans plus nine and a half Am I fading though? Am I should be fading the public? This is not a good sign. It's not a good thing. It's not a good sign Like they'll be a little bit of I don't see the Ravens are gonna lose obviously, but I think I could see like I Can see like the Texans making a Backdoor cover like in the fourth quarter, you know, they're they'd be down by 14 or something like that Down by 20 or something Couple garbage touchdowns here and there maybe maybe the Ravens You know take the foot off the gas a tiny bit Texan can kind of sneak in there That's my that's my game story This is the old fourth quarter back to our cover Probably be Down most of the game and then some fourth quarter points will help him out Zay flowers.  Hey Bryce young nice That's for Carolina. That's gonna be for Nick Stover. I Don't think we saw any Bryce youngs in the first few boxes. We did so we'll let us as well Gotta hang on to those QVs Jalen waddle Royce with a Titans and a Brock Purdy 7 out of 50 gold Brock Purdy nice Adam with the Niners Well, that is the next game we can talk about it's all right on right on cue Brock Green Bay in San Francisco Spreads nine and a half sixty four point seven percent on Green Bay plus nine and a half Who is that matchup? I think same thing with the Niners. They've they they've had a week off Packers seem to be A lot tougher than the people may think, you know, so I think different kind of game script though. I think I think they will be kind of close throughout the game I think maybe the Niners will end up pulling it off towards the end, but Might come down to Whoever has the ball last. I think it might be one of those games You know, I feel like maybe the Packers will start out fast Niners will start to catch up We'll see what happens there. Oh Rex your life is complete Green Day Did a thing with Jimmy found the subway like he does with the band Billy Joe looked like David Spade So you tweet it out and David Spade liked your tweet or or his assistant did The assistant that runs the Twitter account, where's where does Russell? Where does where does Russell Wilson go?  There you go Dave. Nice Roquan Smith Tyree Kill Deuce Vaughn Billy Joe must be younger than David Spade, right? That's why they're like, yeah I do look like a young guy 48 out of 50 Fred Warner Niners at and Jersey Kings nice to Vante Adams had his auto earlier and now a piece of his Jersey to 399 Joe with the raiders all the raiders need to do get a nice offensive coordinator You know refresh the the team and the defense in the draft maybe some offensive line help Maybe they got a quarterback In the draft You know and keep building you know this guy will have another year of experience under his belt on all of that and then profit like the Like the underpants gnomes. All right third and final box. Good luck the third game That's on a Sunday. So we got Houston at Baltimore early game 1 30 p.m. Tomorrow, then we've got Packers at Niners Then the early game on the first game on Sunday Buccaneers at Lyons 70% of voters Laying the points with the with the Lions minus six and a half maybe I should be betting oppo these these plays That's the old thing bet against the public. I might have made really square picks here So playing time to vote ladies and gentlemen, I've scheduled these these polls if I did it right I scheduled these polls to end right around game time, so Retweet it share with share it with your friends all that sort of stuff and the final game of course is chiefs at bills 73% take taking the bills minus two and a half. All right third and final box. Good luck ladies and gentlemen Let's try to end with a Something monstrous here a low numbered CJ Stroud would be nice There's his teammate will Anderson That's numbered car words. There's Josh Allen If you look at the break schedule that nightbot just dropped and go to the it'll take you to a Google spreadsheet This car loft is to 100 and then on the bottom. There'll be a tab that says Joe's picks if you click on that You'll see my official NFL picks or let's find some more Anthony Richardson's here's a grid iron King's Anthony Richardson That'll be for Tristan and the Colts Tyree Wilson for my Raiders DTR Michael Wilson for the Cardinals We got Brian Robinson, Jr. To 500 Nick and the Commanders Sam the Porter rated rookie card Saquon and Hunter and fro autograph throwing that around power plus auto. So you got two Raiders receivers Joe Now I don't know what happened with Hunter and fro I feel like Josh we Daniels broke Hunter and fro 31 out of 99 the season before We were caught here. We were his nickname was third in Renfro Always be count on to convert in a third down passing situation You know What can there's always videos of incredible footwork and routes that he would run to to To trick people in the red zone. He almost had a hundred catches I don't something that but soon as Josh we Daniels came on board and for initially I think Raiders fans were excited because they were like, wow Josh we Daniels has you know has worked wonders with you know with with white receivers, right? West Welker and Julian Edelman stuff like that. So like there was obvious like comparisons there and I don't just never material. I didn't like him for some reason. I don't know what happened There's gonna be have to be a fun 30 for 30 or something like that that that Comes out and just tell it Maybe after some of these guys retire well, you know, we'll tell the true story about what happened in those that years that season and a half but But I think he broke them and obviously they were kind of still running that You know, you can't really do a full new Playbook install, you know in the middle of the season. So I think they were still kind of running the Josh McDaniel plays I guess that still hate those places still hate Hunter and fro Forget what his contract situation is. Maybe he's a candidate to be traded at this point Maybe it was never that good in the first. I have no idea, but Like you deserve another year with the Raiders give that a shot, you know and see what see if we can Bring him back to his old form. That'd be great for everybody that opens Opens up space for everybody There's Travis Kelsey 349 out of 399 down here for Kelsey, but You know, maybe he's just just gonna turn it on for the playoffs. That's gonna be for Ronnie and the Chiefs But yeah, I mean if they can 100 Renfro can be unlocked that would be great because You know, you guys know football. It's a pretty obvious it opens opens up space for everybody Devonte Adams has room to operate Trey Tucker has room to room to operate stretch the field Right while Michael Meyer and the tight end and Hunter Renfro work underneath in the flats Josh Jacobs balancing out that offense. I mean, I Don't know why the offense has struggled as much as it did last last year, but you know, hopefully they'll figure it out Hey, little little little refresh via draft and oh nice KJ Henry out of 50 for Nick if they can refresh the team a little bit in the draft and through free agency and Maybe some trades here and there Get the right offensive coordinator, hopefully it'll it'll work itself out And that's that boys and girls three box of 2023 puny down the football Hobby edition in the books one spot gets you to another three box in the store. I'm Joe I'll see you next time for the next football break. Bye. Bye