Speaker 1: And we're live, so welcome back everyone to another episode
Speaker 1: of Adventures in DevOps. This week, it's Nathan Goulding, current
Speaker 1: SVP of Engineering at Vulture and with a previously long
Speaker 1: history of product and engineering architecture background.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Thank you, Warren. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I have to say I'm pretty excited because
Speaker 1: one of the things I saw on Vulture is that,
Speaker 1: and I hope you can give us a little bit
Speaker 1: more of the rundown here is all about high performance
Speaker 1: compute in the cloud. I mean, when I think about
Speaker 1: what your company is doing, it's infrastructure and on the
Speaker 1: back end, bar metal, et cetera. And that for me
Speaker 1: is a whole area of technology that I just really
Speaker 1: have never gotten into. So maybe you can tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit more about, you know, high level what
Speaker 1: they've been doing and how you got into it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So, you know, I guess maybe starting with how
Speaker 2: I got into it. You know, I actually started in
Speaker 2: the infrastructure space back in two thousand and one, and
Speaker 2: I ran a very small game server hosting business called
Speaker 2: East Coast Gaming Network, and very small. I was just
Speaker 2: out of high school. And you know, the one of
Speaker 2: the key features when you talk about high performance. There's
Speaker 2: many dimensions to high performance. Obviously, when you think about
Speaker 2: performance through some lenses, you think about high clock speed,
Speaker 2: you think about lots about you know, large amounts of memory,
Speaker 2: you think about the latest and greatest GPUs. Another dimension
Speaker 2: to that is latency, network latency, and you know, in
Speaker 2: the gaming industry specifically, low latency is incredibly important for
Speaker 2: the gamers who are you know, if you like you
Speaker 2: know Vulture we host the entire Call of Duty series
Speaker 2: and have for several decades. You know, the latecy of
Speaker 2: the end player performance, yeah, is incredibly important. And you
Speaker 2: know the no lag no frag is you know that
Speaker 2: that's the you know, like the the thing that gets
Speaker 2: said in the industry is like lag is the ultimate
Speaker 2: killer of game performance. And so building out a So
Speaker 2: so that's how I got my start, was delivering game
Speaker 2: servers and and we're lagazing. You know, network latency is
Speaker 2: incredibly important, and so you know, at Vulture we have
Speaker 2: a strong background in you know, multiple decades of operating
Speaker 2: cloud infrastructure with high performance you know, end users at
Speaker 2: the end of that. And so it started with network latency,
Speaker 2: you know, hosting game servers around globally for the entire
Speaker 2: like I said, the entire Call of Duty series, that's
Speaker 2: really evolved into offering a wide range of high performance options.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, the thing that we really lean
Speaker 2: on is, uh, you know, we talk about price to
Speaker 2: performance or price and performance. One of the things that
Speaker 2: we really lean on, you know, being an independent cloud
Speaker 2: provider is delivering better price and better performance. So you
Speaker 2: know when when you compare with with some of the
Speaker 2: other you know, the other cloud providers that are out there,
Speaker 2: and so being able to do that means that at
Speaker 2: every level of the stack, whether that's compute, storage, networking, latency,
Speaker 2: those are all aspects where we look, what are the
Speaker 2: things that we can do to deliver a better performing
Speaker 2: product uh than than some of the other providers that
Speaker 2: are out there. Because we understand that, you know, we
Speaker 2: are in a competitive landscape and we are an independent
Speaker 2: cloud provider, we have to make sure that we actually
Speaker 2: go above and beyond in many different areas to be
Speaker 2: able to demonstrate that value prop to to our customers
Speaker 2: and that and that's what we are are focused on.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's sutually really interesting because I've never been
Speaker 1: in software game development, and I never I never wanted
Speaker 1: to be, But there are lots of questions there that,
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, you know, Call of Duty, that that
Speaker 1: is like premiere first person shooter game out there where
Speaker 1: absolutely latency is a huge aspect to having it work effectively.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, no, I know it really is. And that's
Speaker 2: something where you know, those are can sometimes be You're
Speaker 2: typically your you know, your your loudest and most unforgiving
Speaker 2: customers are the ones who are in the middle of
Speaker 2: a game and expect, you know, one hundred percent of
Speaker 2: time with you know, no latency at all, and so
Speaker 2: you know that really is the proving ground of being
Speaker 2: able to deliver cloud infrastructure in a really robust and
Speaker 2: reliable way. That you know is these are not academic
Speaker 2: or theoretical problems that we are solving. These are very practical,
Speaker 2: pragmatic problems for customers who are very demanding.
Speaker 1: I always thought the Triple A Studios just ran a
Speaker 1: terrible data center in their own warehouse and made lots
Speaker 1: of mistakes. So I guess it's good to know that
Speaker 1: there are actually providers out there that are dedicated to
Speaker 1: solving some of the ridiculous problems of like server management
Speaker 1: and having dedicated servers for individual groups of gamers on
Speaker 1: at scale.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, for sure, and that's really you know, that's
Speaker 2: one aspect of what we do, you know, as a
Speaker 2: infrastructure provider. We we are a full fledged cloud platform
Speaker 2: and so you know, when you think of the a vulture,
Speaker 2: it's it's the you know, like modern hyperscaler is what
Speaker 2: we like to refer to us as you know, we
Speaker 2: have we do have bear metal, which is like the
Speaker 2: lowest level of kind of like cloud infrastructure that you
Speaker 2: can get. There's no hypervisor, You're just getting access to
Speaker 2: the raw metal and folks who who value that level
Speaker 2: of performance and single tendency. Sometimes there are compliance requirements
Speaker 2: that come along with that. You know that that's an
Speaker 2: area where we can deliver that in a cloud delivery model.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, with the advent of a lot
Speaker 2: of the you know, and this is not a new evolution,
Speaker 2: this is over the last few years of these much
Speaker 2: higher level services. You know that that people kind of
Speaker 2: forget that, especially when serverless as a thing became much
Speaker 2: more popular. Gosh was that eight or nine years ago?
Speaker 2: Serverletsts became a thing, you know, you kind of as
Speaker 2: a cloud infrastructure providing you chuckle a little bit, because
Speaker 2: it still runs on a server. There's still a server
Speaker 2: there that runs that. It's just that there's so many
Speaker 2: layers of astraction above that that you kind of forget
Speaker 2: about that or you don't have to think about that.
Speaker 2: And so that's one of the unique challenges that we face,
Speaker 2: especially as you know, I lead the engineering team. You know,
Speaker 2: we're hiring engineers to build the cloud, and so one
Speaker 2: of the challenges that we face is, you know, they're
Speaker 2: born in the cloud developers who've never been in the
Speaker 2: data center before. They've never accessed the lower levels of
Speaker 2: infrastructure before, and so you know, how do you find somebody.
Speaker 2: It's like a chicken into the egg problem. You know,
Speaker 2: if people assume that there is the cloud that will
Speaker 2: deploy their application, and the problem set that we're trying
Speaker 2: to tackle is how do you actually build the cloud?
Speaker 2: And that's that's something that is unique and something that
Speaker 2: you don't find in a lot of areas.
Speaker 1: I mean, it used to be the challenge of every
Speaker 1: company to requisition purchase capital expenditures for warehouse location and
Speaker 1: build up data centers. There are several blades and hire
Speaker 1: ops folk to run and over time, we find companies
Speaker 1: specializing in every part of the stack, and all of
Speaker 1: those experts have migrated to the cloud providers, hyperscalers and
Speaker 1: local country based cloud options for managing that. So if
Speaker 1: you you know, if you're interested in that, those jobs
Speaker 1: to exists, they're just working for our companies like yours.
Speaker 2: Exactly No, that's exactly right. And and you know, being
Speaker 2: able to you know, be able to find those you know, individuals.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, because what we are delivering
Speaker 2: is a service that allows other developers and platform engineering
Speaker 2: teams to consume that in a really really seamless way.
Speaker 2: Is you know, like that is the bridge. It's the
Speaker 2: bridge between the underlying physical infrastructure and providing tools that
Speaker 2: you know, DevOps and platform engineering teams can consume in
Speaker 2: very native ways. And and so that's it's a really
Speaker 2: interesting challenge to be able to do that and really
Speaker 2: you know, again abstract away the complexity and the difficulty
Speaker 2: and deliver on the promise of the cloud, which is
Speaker 2: you know, infinite amounts of you know, infrastructure very cheaply
Speaker 2: and very quickly. Immediately, you know, you need to be
Speaker 2: able to scale infinitely and you need to do it
Speaker 2: right now. So it's a it's no small, no small challenge.
Speaker 1: I mean, I like that you brought up server lists
Speaker 1: as an interesting comparison here. Do you find that your
Speaker 1: customers also have a challenge of dealing with burst based loads,
Speaker 1: which usually lend themselves to servilest solutions, or is it
Speaker 1: that a lot of them understand a lot of what
Speaker 1: their expectations are for volume of requests over time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really really interesting question, and I think that,
Speaker 2: you know, I've seen customers fall into two kind of
Speaker 2: like primary categories with respect to how they think about
Speaker 2: cloud infrastructure. And you know, on the one end, you
Speaker 2: have folks who understand and maybe have some sort of
Speaker 2: background in delivering infrastructure in some level, maybe they were
Speaker 2: a platform engineer, or they were an sre or they
Speaker 2: were somebody as part of the DevOps team, and they
Speaker 2: understand like the pieces that compose that, and so when
Speaker 2: they think about scaling, they think about many of the
Speaker 2: challenges that go along with scaling, is you know, everything
Speaker 2: can you know, you can stand it up very quickly once,
Speaker 2: but when you actually try to scale it, then you
Speaker 2: come into things like again latency and maybe in a
Speaker 2: different context here, which is how long is it going
Speaker 2: to take for that function to execute? Is that going
Speaker 2: to where? Where is that function going to be running?
Speaker 2: Is it going to be in market, is it going
Speaker 2: to be in a central location? Where are the end users?
Speaker 2: And so the questions that get asked are typically different.
Speaker 2: And then there's a class of user who really doesn't
Speaker 2: think about that and also doesn't want to think about that,
Speaker 2: And it's just unapologetic about not thinking about that. It
Speaker 2: says that is not my problem. My problem is delivering
Speaker 2: the application. My problem is servicing my end user everything
Speaker 2: with respects to how it gets deployed, where it gets deployed,
Speaker 2: how much of it gets deployed is your problem, you know,
Speaker 2: either cloud infrastructure provider or some you know SAZ or
Speaker 2: paths a service that runs on top of that and so,
Speaker 2: and it is very very unapologetic about that and just
Speaker 2: says this is, you know, my job is not to
Speaker 2: think about the scale and concerns that that someone else's.
Speaker 1: Do you get a lot of the customers fixated on
Speaker 1: like regional based services or is there like a fair
Speaker 1: set that's like, well, some want localization where their potential
Speaker 1: users are with this, like the gaming ones where you're
Speaker 1: connecting to maybe other players in a local area to
Speaker 1: reduce cross player pings and increase fps. Are there global
Speaker 1: customers as well, They're like they don't want to think
Speaker 1: about where their where their users are, and they still
Speaker 1: have to connect and you're solving for problems like that
Speaker 1: in that space as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say that, you know, the Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: typically you know kind of like falls into two categories.
Speaker 2: There is those that are location sensitive that say it
Speaker 2: needs to be here. That could be for many different reasons.
Speaker 2: It could be because they're only serving customers in the
Speaker 2: specific market and that's going to be the best performance
Speaker 2: for them, or there's other concerns for regulatory so for
Speaker 2: data governance, it has to be in the EU, or
Speaker 2: has to be in India or some other location where
Speaker 2: there's specific regulatory concerns that it needs to be in market.
Speaker 2: On the flip side, you have a global software or
Speaker 2: application that needs to serve end users in a specific
Speaker 2: area that where you're optimizing for the lowest possible latency
Speaker 2: in that market. And so in that case, you you know,
Speaker 2: the the entity might be in wherever they happen to
Speaker 2: be in the world, but they need to make sure
Speaker 2: that they're deploying into as many markets as they are.
Speaker 2: And it's not just gaming, you know, we get a
Speaker 2: ton of other customers that are in the security space,
Speaker 2: that are in the network telemetry space, where they'll take one, two,
Speaker 2: maybe a handful of nodes in every single data center
Speaker 2: that we have. We have thirty two regions, thirty two
Speaker 2: data individual data centers around the world, three two individual regions.
Speaker 2: They'll take one or a handful of nodes in every
Speaker 2: single one of those locations because they're doing let's say,
Speaker 2: you know, eyeball network monitoring. So they'll send out probes
Speaker 2: on the network, and they'll do it with us, and
Speaker 2: they'll do it with a bunch of other cloud providers.
Speaker 2: They might have hundreds or thousands of individual systems running
Speaker 2: in terms of their global platform. As a let's say
Speaker 2: you know, a network you know, latency, performance, uptime, health
Speaker 2: monitoring service. They might deploy you know, thousands of probes
Speaker 2: around the globe, across you know, across our entire footprint,
Speaker 2: but across many other cloud providers foot prints specifically for
Speaker 2: the end purpose of monitoring the network. And so so
Speaker 2: in that situation, they're you know, they're they're optimizing for
Speaker 2: something that's very specific for the application that's unique to them.
Speaker 2: And and again like similarly for you know, if they're
Speaker 2: running some you know IoT edge network for you know,
Speaker 2: for an automotive company that has you know, the connected cars,
Speaker 2: that's you know, again like common use case where they
Speaker 2: might have something that's deployed into specific markets to reach
Speaker 2: the cars that are in that specific market with the
Speaker 2: lowest possible latency for for what that is. And it's
Speaker 2: not self driving, Like you know, the self driving stuff
Speaker 2: is never going to be you know, off the device
Speaker 2: that's going to be on the vehicle. That would be catastrophic.
Speaker 2: But but for other pieces of connected car where you
Speaker 2: do have it off device, then then you're going to
Speaker 2: want to have that in the region that the cars
Speaker 2: are operating in.
Speaker 1: Its jumping into the controversial topics already, but before I
Speaker 1: get into that one, I'm really interested to know how
Speaker 1: you managed to figure out where to place your your
Speaker 1: edge location. So do you have different types of data
Speaker 1: centers or are all of them pretty much equivalent as
Speaker 1: far as capabilities that they offer. I can imagine the
Speaker 1: size and maybe the individual resources may be different depending
Speaker 1: on actual need and where the customers are, but are
Speaker 1: they fundamentally treated the same. Like if we look at
Speaker 1: AWS or GCP, they don't offer every service in every region,
Speaker 1: and they also don't offer a data center in every country.
Speaker 1: So you may be in a place where you have
Speaker 1: users who want to utilize your well culture to serve
Speaker 1: their customers and there may not be any localized resources there.
Speaker 1: How do you figure out where to put the edge
Speaker 1: nodes and what do those actually look like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's that's a really fantastic question because
Speaker 2: edge means different things to different people. And you know,
Speaker 2: when edge computing first was a thing, you know, a
Speaker 2: few years ago or several years ago, both thought that
Speaker 2: edge computing was, you know, there's going to be a
Speaker 2: data center at the bottom of every cell tower, and
Speaker 2: that was you know, kind of a thing for for
Speaker 2: a minute and kind of like pushing the boundaries of
Speaker 2: edge because you know, if you look at the evolution
Speaker 2: of data center footprint over time, it was all the
Speaker 2: major metros were the hubs for data centers. And the
Speaker 2: reason for that was just as there was density, you
Speaker 2: had all the major financial markets, you had all the
Speaker 2: major tech technology companies, they were all in these regions
Speaker 2: and people wanted to have you know, data centers that
Speaker 2: were in those major regions. So you know New York,
Speaker 2: you know the Bay Area, Ashburn, you know Dallas, there's
Speaker 2: you know some major Chicago, there's major metros where there's
Speaker 2: you know, just if you look at the US, the
Speaker 2: density of those data centers there, and then started to
Speaker 2: branch out into regional operators to go into other places
Speaker 2: that were still major metropolitan areas but not you know,
Speaker 2: kind of like you know Tier one cities in the US,
Speaker 2: and then it kind of like skipped over like rapid
Speaker 2: expansion to and now we're gonna put one at the
Speaker 2: end of the edge, you know, at the bottom every
Speaker 2: cell tower, and that you know, like if you look
Speaker 2: at the cost of capital to deploy at the bottom
Speaker 2: of every cell tower as an example, it just doesn't
Speaker 2: make sense if you have you know, I'm looking, you know,
Speaker 2: streaming a YouTube video in the car, and you know,
Speaker 2: I'm passing one cell tower, you know, and I'm only
Speaker 2: connected to that tower for you know, for for two
Speaker 2: to three minutes as I'm driving down the highway. The
Speaker 2: amount of data that I'm processing over that network is
Speaker 2: just never going to recoup the cost of putting building
Speaker 2: the data center and installing servers there and and having
Speaker 2: you know, over the network delivery of things like self
Speaker 2: driving cars is you know, just a safety disaster. And
Speaker 2: so you know, you're looking at how much data actually
Speaker 2: needs to get processed at the far edge and so,
Speaker 2: and it's just it's just not that much, you know,
Speaker 2: so so but then then you you like enter GPU,
Speaker 2: it's like, okay, wait a minute. So now there's a
Speaker 2: bunch of edge data centers which aren't in the cell
Speaker 2: tower you know, aren't at the base of cell towers,
Speaker 2: but they are edge data centers insofar as they might
Speaker 2: be in the middle of a wind farm in South
Speaker 2: Dakota and it's like, well, what are they doing there?
Speaker 2: They might be like mining crypto as an example, where
Speaker 2: there's access to very cheap power, but you're going to
Speaker 2: have concerns in terms of redundancy, so like are they
Speaker 2: you know, like optimizing for cost is different than optimizing
Speaker 2: for redundancy and resiliency, which is what you're going to
Speaker 2: gatch if you're you know, operting a data center that's
Speaker 2: delivering you know, services to the financial services industry. It's
Speaker 2: just like a different tier of service. And so you
Speaker 2: have a bunch of data centers that pop up in
Speaker 2: like the far it's a far edge, it's a different
Speaker 2: far edge, but also out out there as well. We
Speaker 2: don't have any of those. We are focused on major
Speaker 2: major markets that that's where our We do have thirty two,
Speaker 2: but they're in all the major markets that are around
Speaker 2: the world. And so the things that we look at
Speaker 2: are the common things like population density, we look at
Speaker 2: obviously customer demand. If somebody needs us to show up
Speaker 2: in a specific location for a specific reason, we'll do that.
Speaker 2: And so it's you know, we're really focused on being
Speaker 2: able to deliver services to places where there are you
Speaker 2: know that there's a there's a need there, and so
Speaker 2: our data centers are not again like we didn't grow
Speaker 2: up in you know, we didn't grow up having data
Speaker 2: centers in the middle of nowhere that we're then trying
Speaker 2: to like you know, retrofit with data you know, with
Speaker 2: backup generators and with better network performance because they suddenly
Speaker 2: have a different you know, value add in terms of
Speaker 2: the industry that they're going after. These are you know
Speaker 2: again like they're they're tier three plus data centers, which
Speaker 2: is you know, like one of the highs. There's four
Speaker 2: tiers and you know Tier three plus is like you know,
Speaker 2: one of the best and so so. So yes, these
Speaker 2: are like high you know, like I can't remember they
Speaker 2: I've lost count of the number of nines that it offers.
Speaker 2: But these are again like they're they're major at all,
Speaker 2: the major like name brand you know, data center providers
Speaker 2: or the or the folks that we work with, and
Speaker 2: they're and that's you know, because our class of customers,
Speaker 2: just their their enterprise customers, they expect a certain thing
Speaker 2: in terms of the uptime of these of these services
Speaker 2: and the network they're going to get there.
Speaker 1: So are you seeing that your customers and potentually this
Speaker 1: outer market segment of customers that you're not necessarily geared
Speaker 1: to right now are leaning towards more hybrid model over
Speaker 1: time or and they bring their own local data center
Speaker 1: or already built server rack and they're connecting that up
Speaker 1: to your cloud, or are you offering something to be
Speaker 1: able to build that connection so that those customers who
Speaker 1: may not have data center expertise like I can think
Speaker 1: and in AWS, there's like some sort of deployable outposts
Speaker 1: for instance, for running tech on Is there some corollary
Speaker 1: that you've got or see customers actually interested in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that's another really really great question. You know,
Speaker 2: the database outpost, I think has you know, seen somewhat
Speaker 2: limited optick, you know, because if you have, if you
Speaker 2: have an on prem data center. I think that when
Speaker 2: cloud went through the first wave of explosive growth, people
Speaker 2: assumed that everything was going to go to cloud and
Speaker 2: that on prem was going to go to zero. And
Speaker 2: the reality is is that when you're deploying, you know,
Speaker 2: when you're flipping capex to op x, so instead of
Speaker 2: buying servers, you're paying you know op x. You know
Speaker 2: your depreciation schedule for your your CAPEX. You know, you like,
Speaker 2: from a financial perspective, you recognize that if you're going
Speaker 2: to be in the cloud, and at this point everybody
Speaker 2: understands that they're going to need infrastructure in some fashion.
Speaker 2: That if you're going to be in the business of
Speaker 2: having infrastructure boud infrastructure in some form either delivered on
Speaker 2: prem through you're on you know, your your platform team
Speaker 2: combined with your on site team, or if you're just
Speaker 2: consuming it through the cloud, that you're going to be
Speaker 2: going to need it over a long period of time,
Speaker 2: and so those charts cross out of about the three
Speaker 2: year mark for most people in terms of the cost
Speaker 2: of the TCO. And so if somebody's saying, hey, we're
Speaker 2: going to need this infrastructure, we're planning to be in
Speaker 2: business for the next you know, two to three or
Speaker 2: four decades, then they're going to say it's going to
Speaker 2: be way more cost effective for us to own this gear.
Speaker 2: Understanding that that, you know, the lines crossed at about
Speaker 2: you know, three years or so, but the useful the
Speaker 2: actual useful life of those systems is probably somewhere between
Speaker 2: I don't know, six, seven, eight years probably, And so
Speaker 2: if you have the you know, so a CFO is
Speaker 2: going to look at that and say, hey, like we
Speaker 2: should be doing that, you know, putting servers and data
Speaker 2: centers because it's going to be more cost effective for
Speaker 2: that asset. There's other challenges that come along with that
Speaker 2: because now you have to have a team. You have
Speaker 2: to either have the team already or you need to
Speaker 2: hire the team, and you need to do a lot
Speaker 2: of things that people don't generally do as part of
Speaker 2: their business. I mean, when you know, when was the
Speaker 2: last time that you were inside of a data center.
Speaker 1: Ever, I was lucky early on in my career and
Speaker 1: I managed to get in one because the company I
Speaker 1: worked for what offered global manufacturing services, and so they
Speaker 1: would put a data center within each of the manufacturing plans.
Speaker 1: And I there's a lot of stories that go on there,
Speaker 1: ones like you probably don't expect to have to deal
Speaker 1: with a flood or fire or having both at the
Speaker 1: same time very close to where your data center is,
Speaker 1: and that being like a critical problem. So just reliability
Speaker 1: of that thing is another challenge there, Like I actually
Speaker 1: feel like hiring you know, that's obviously one of the issues.
Speaker 1: But there's just like so many in the list goes
Speaker 1: on and on, for instance, correct projections, right, like how
Speaker 1: many of us were like, oh, yeah, you know, uh
Speaker 1: six years ago, you know, what's gonna be so different
Speaker 1: around the world, like sands, whether or not any sort
Speaker 1: of LM or AI. Yeah, I brought it up and
Speaker 1: we're only out Like the twenty minute mark is is good,
Speaker 1: accurate or useful? I do feel like it's impacting a
Speaker 1: lot of companies, and that's something that I can guarantee you.
Speaker 1: Very few financial experts put into any of their market
Speaker 1: predictions or for their companies. So yeah, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you have a perfect understanding of what of how much
Speaker 1: money you're going to spend and how much like what
Speaker 1: your accounts receivable is going to be going forward, your
Speaker 1: revenue and where you can capitalize on that, yeah, go
Speaker 1: for it, you know, make the those purchases. But I
Speaker 1: guarantee you no one is that good. And if you
Speaker 1: are that good, you know, just quit your job and
Speaker 1: go put some money in the stock market right now,
Speaker 1: you know. And I say that, I'm like, I'm sure
Speaker 1: the correct buy is like shortening the market by you know,
Speaker 1: any amount like that's probably how a bunch of people
Speaker 1: are gonna become rich in the next couple of years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. I've never had too much luck
Speaker 2: for that. I feel like the moment that I decide
Speaker 2: that I'm gonna, you know, make make a better it
Speaker 2: just feels like gambling to me. I'm gonna be like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna short sell, and then that will be the
Speaker 2: moment that it's the bottom of the bottom of the market.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna stick with delivery infrastructure as my no.
Speaker 1: I think I think that's incredibly I think that's incredibly
Speaker 1: wise and right thing to do. Yeah, for sure, Like
Speaker 1: there are so many analysts out there that statistically they're
Speaker 1: just gonna like they only do this. Like my brother
Speaker 1: was telling me when he was in working for a
Speaker 1: mutual fund that literally there's like one person at that
Speaker 1: company and all they do is focus on like five
Speaker 1: companies specifically. That's it. That's all they know. So there's
Speaker 1: no way that you're gonna have more information or be
Speaker 1: more of an expert to be able to make better
Speaker 1: decisions in them. You're pretty much betting against everyone else
Speaker 1: who has also no idea. So you know, maybe you're
Speaker 1: more lucky than that. You know, if luck is on
Speaker 1: your side, definitely go for it. But for immateur investors,
Speaker 1: definitely any sort of market index fund. If you're feeling risky,
Speaker 1: you know, and you want to you want to be
Speaker 1: like you know what, I want to either have nothing
Speaker 1: or everything, then then you know, you take the take
Speaker 1: the gamble, like you.
Speaker 2: Said, exactly exactly. Yeah, I'll never never put money, you know,
Speaker 2: make my own bets there because it truly feels like
Speaker 2: a bet. It feels like you know, and the way
Speaker 2: that I approach that is, you know, I only I
Speaker 2: only would bet the money that I'm willing to lose,
Speaker 2: which is very little. It would prefer to do things
Speaker 2: that I can control and uh and and have some
Speaker 2: knowledge over. So but yeah, you know, you know, getting
Speaker 2: back to your original question about about you know, like
Speaker 2: the hybrid models and how customers are viewing that, I
Speaker 2: think that, yeah, you know, that's an area where you know,
Speaker 2: I think that there's there's certainly folks who have you know,
Speaker 2: again like putting them into kind of two category, is
Speaker 2: there are folks who are clouds only and there are
Speaker 2: those that are hybrid, and we see both of those
Speaker 2: and I think that having a strategy that accounts for
Speaker 2: both of those is is really important. And so I
Speaker 2: think that it would be a mistake to think that
Speaker 2: everything is ultimately going to end up in the cloud,
Speaker 2: because that has not been born out, and I don't
Speaker 2: think that will continue to prove out. But cloud is
Speaker 2: an important strategy and an important thing for a lot
Speaker 2: of even those customers who are traditionally on prem and
Speaker 2: I've worked at well both of those places that are
Speaker 2: you know, that have a hybrid strategy because that's what
Speaker 2: they need. They need cloud for the birstability, they needed
Speaker 2: for instant access to because they can't make a prediction
Speaker 2: of their capacity. They need to have a hybrid strategy,
Speaker 2: but they just simply either can't or don't want to
Speaker 2: be fully in the cloud, and so having a strategy,
Speaker 2: a technical strategy that they can account for that is
Speaker 2: I think, is I think really important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I'm totally with you. My advice has always
Speaker 1: been make the mistake in going to the cloud, and
Speaker 1: then ten years later when you're like, oh, well, you
Speaker 1: know it would have been better if we didn't, then
Speaker 1: you can start being like exactly figuring out how you
Speaker 1: want to move some of your stuff back on prem
Speaker 1: unless you have a lot of old hardware sitting around
Speaker 1: that you're just like, oh, I want to throw a
Speaker 1: bunch of extra money at maintenance. Which is the thing
Speaker 1: that I thought about when you said having the data
Speaker 1: centers at the bottom of every cell tower. It's not
Speaker 1: even like having to spend the money to go and
Speaker 1: build them there, or the complexity of building an application
Speaker 1: that handles like lossy packets, like not meeting anywhere because
Speaker 1: you're in between switching. I mean, you think about how
Speaker 1: reliable GPS seller networks are, Like it's very difficult to
Speaker 1: get your position in some places in the world just
Speaker 1: due to jamming and whatnot. And now you have to
Speaker 1: deal with not like unreliable technology and then it's going
Speaker 1: to break down, right just having one of those at
Speaker 1: every single cell tower, that's a lot of extra maintenance
Speaker 1: that you're going into it more so than like how
Speaker 1: do you even send a person there, you know, in
Speaker 1: a truck with the right equipment to go and investigate
Speaker 1: and then hip thing Like a lot of those are
Speaker 1: in places that are very difficult to reach. You know,
Speaker 1: there's pretty much just one cable going to the tower
Speaker 1: and no one ever goes to that tower ever.
Speaker 2: Again exactly that that's very true. And uh and again
Speaker 2: like you also, you know these are running on you know,
Speaker 2: like if there's you know, if you lose utility power,
Speaker 2: you know, you're operating on a generator and you know,
Speaker 2: I I do have a UPS power bank you know
Speaker 2: for my home internet to ensure that it's up all
Speaker 2: the time, but it lasts about eight minutes. And you know,
Speaker 2: and and for the cell tower, you know, with the
Speaker 2: very low power, you know, the the things that are
Speaker 2: running there typically you know, their arm chips for low
Speaker 2: power consumption, the switching like all of that is you know,
Speaker 2: it's all low power devices, even the you know, the signal,
Speaker 2: I mean they have to broadcast the signal. But you've
Speaker 2: got maybe you know, somewhere between eight and twenty four
Speaker 2: hours of redundancy of the current cellular infrastructure that's there.
Speaker 2: Then you start tacking on you know, kilo watts of
Speaker 2: of server compute and and you know, you have much
Speaker 2: different challenges if if you lose utility power or if
Speaker 2: something if something goes wrong. So it's it's a yeah, no,
Speaker 2: that that was you know when that happened, it was
Speaker 2: you know, the assumption was and I think the other
Speaker 2: aspect of that, going again, going back to the high performance,
Speaker 2: low latency, like the other aspect of that is that
Speaker 2: you know, it's like, what is the use case that
Speaker 2: requires that low level of latency because we operate in
Speaker 2: thirty two DA centers around the world. It's thirty two
Speaker 2: and there's you know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands
Speaker 2: of cell towers. Like what's the difference, Like what what
Speaker 2: what what do you actually need that for? Because we
Speaker 2: already operate, you know, our our platform, you know, thirty
Speaker 2: two we operate and we are able to reach. I
Speaker 2: think it's you know, ninety plus percent of the world's
Speaker 2: population under forty milliseconds. It's like in like, so like,
Speaker 2: what's the use case that necessitates that you dropped from
Speaker 2: forty milliseconds down to you know two or one? There
Speaker 2: are those like there's again like financial services you have
Speaker 2: like you know, you're you're not dealing in milliseconds. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you're you're dealing in a unit much smaller than that.
Speaker 2: But that's in a very specific location that the global
Speaker 2: application use case of insanely low latency has yet to
Speaker 2: be born out. And I think for a minute there
Speaker 2: it was like well, self driving cars, of course, but
Speaker 2: you know, pushing that over the network, over the you know,
Speaker 2: the EM spectrum with jamming and with everything else that's
Speaker 2: going on again is just you know, a safety disaster.
Speaker 2: And so that that was like the use case that
Speaker 2: everybody trotted out when that was you know, when when
Speaker 2: that was a hot topic, but that that has not
Speaker 2: really again been worn out in reality, and and that
Speaker 2: the use case where you need high amounts of compute
Speaker 2: at that you know, minuscule latency to necessitate a deployment
Speaker 2: like that. Again, as we've yet seen that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm with you there. I mean, we'll
Speaker 1: see for real time decision making, having that on vehicle
Speaker 1: for autonomous vehicles would make way more sense. I mean,
Speaker 1: we already see this needing to be the case for
Speaker 1: any sort of on personed missions outside the atmosphere or
Speaker 1: a planet. So we're already thinking about this as a
Speaker 1: as a species of how to build technology like this
Speaker 1: and what is actually necessary. But I have seen an
Speaker 1: uptick in companies that are trying to provide remote services.
Speaker 1: Rather than having you know, full autonomous vehicle, you just
Speaker 1: have the driver is somewhere else, like it's sitting at
Speaker 1: their desk, driving your vehicle to the actual location. And
Speaker 1: so with that, I can see a little bit more
Speaker 1: of a use there. I could see maybe it's backed
Speaker 1: up by redundant systems within the vehicle, so the person
Speaker 1: who's in the car, like you, still don't have to
Speaker 1: drive the vehicle. But I do see these as long
Speaker 1: as there's some differentiation in the markets around the world
Speaker 1: being financially viable to outsource the driving to someone else
Speaker 1: somewhere else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think that that It's it's a
Speaker 2: super interesting one to talk about because I think that
Speaker 2: there are you know, again, whether it's somebody driving your
Speaker 2: car for you, or you know missions you know in
Speaker 2: other parts of the world that you have an operator
Speaker 2: sitting somewhere you know, those are those are valid use cases.
Speaker 2: But the realities is that the electromagnetic spectrum is open
Speaker 2: to anyone. And so and I don't mean open in
Speaker 2: so far as yes, you know, you have to encrypt it,
Speaker 2: you have to worry about like, but anybody can you know,
Speaker 2: has access to both you know, broadcast or receive those signals.
Speaker 2: That's open. Obviously it's regulated. You'd be in a lot
Speaker 2: of trouble if you broadcast over part of the spectrum
Speaker 2: that you were not authorized to broadcast over, but it
Speaker 2: would be extraordinarily disruptive if somebody did knowingly. So it's
Speaker 2: it's it's an attack factor because it is an open spectrum.
Speaker 2: I mean, anybody can you know, by commodity parts and
Speaker 2: assemble an electromagnetic you know, something that either you know
Speaker 2: sends or receives over the electromatic spectrum in the frequencies
Speaker 2: that these would operate in. And so there has to
Speaker 2: be the ability for either that like if you take,
Speaker 2: like somebody driving your car remotely like that sounds great,
Speaker 2: But if that signal gets jammed or if that signal
Speaker 2: gets dropped, there needs to be something on the device,
Speaker 2: either in the form of somebody has to be sitting
Speaker 2: behind the wheel, or the car needs to stop itself
Speaker 2: and then coordinate it between the other cars to to
Speaker 2: stop themselves without causing an accident. But but that that
Speaker 2: the medium in particular, if it's why or if it's
Speaker 2: fixed in place, there's things that you know, there's a
Speaker 2: there's a relative amount of a surety around what's happening
Speaker 2: to be able to stop it because it's fixed or
Speaker 2: it's wired, and so the redundancy of that is so
Speaker 2: much better. But we all see, you know, the you know,
Speaker 2: the electromagnetic spectrum is is already extraordinarily crowded and is
Speaker 2: only getting more congested, and it is also open to
Speaker 2: interference and jamming in ways that a wired network is.
Speaker 2: You know, it doesn't suffer for those things. So it
Speaker 2: just it presents unique challenges to to be able to solve,
Speaker 2: to be able to do that in a way that
Speaker 2: you know is safe and and you know and accounts
Speaker 2: for the reality of the medium by which this information
Speaker 2: gets transferred.
Speaker 1: So if you're making an autonomous car company and you
Speaker 1: need to send signals between each of the vehicles and
Speaker 1: some you know primary data center, vulture is probably the answer,
Speaker 1: is what I'm hearing.
Speaker 2: I yes, I guess that's you know, getting back the vulture. Yes, no,
Speaker 2: that would be that would be the way to do it.
Speaker 2: As if you need a locate a data center. I
Speaker 2: mean this is this is also true, like this is
Speaker 2: actually what we do with connected cars, which I will
Speaker 2: also say, like the connected car, you know, use case
Speaker 2: is is totally valid. It's not for maybe necessarily like
Speaker 2: driving the car, but you know, I mean on my
Speaker 2: device itself right here, I can talk to my car.
Speaker 2: I can unlock it, I can lock it, I can
Speaker 2: see is it moving, where it's the what's the location.
Speaker 2: I can set the climate control. So there are things
Speaker 2: that are like for non critical communication between the vehicle
Speaker 2: and the end user or the cloud, is a totally
Speaker 2: valid use case for sure. It's it's only when you
Speaker 2: so you know, when you have you know, human lives
Speaker 2: that are being transported in the vehicle that you know
Speaker 2: it could be potentially deadly. Is when you say, okay,
Speaker 2: maybe le's like let let's not do that over the network,
Speaker 2: but certainly for things that are you know, with respect
Speaker 2: to how you start the car or stop you know,
Speaker 2: lock it remotely. Those are all things where you know,
Speaker 2: connected car is a super valid use case where and
Speaker 2: we see that all the time where it's like and
Speaker 2: that's also the valid like if you're doing a connected
Speaker 2: car in you know, in in Asia or in Australia,
Speaker 2: or in in the India like there, or in the U.
Speaker 2: Those are all areas where having a data center that
Speaker 2: is in market is incredibly important. Like that's that's an
Speaker 2: area where you know, you only get goodness from being
Speaker 2: able to deploy close to where the end users.
Speaker 1: Are makes a lot of sense. I do have to ask, so,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm running a company. I don't think that
Speaker 1: high performance computing is something that we need, but are
Speaker 1: there telltale signs that I should be thinking about the
Speaker 1: infrastructure that my product my company is utilizing Differently, are
Speaker 1: there are there certain things that I could like ask
Speaker 1: myself potentially you know, the audience that is listening to
Speaker 1: this right now, something for them that would help identify
Speaker 1: that just using a regular cloud provider or doing something
Speaker 1: on prem like may have a better alternative.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think that the you know, being
Speaker 2: able to look at the I guess I should also say,
Speaker 2: you know, we if you just want access to easy
Speaker 2: access to large amounts of compute around the world, Vulture
Speaker 2: is a great fit. So you know that we have
Speaker 2: all the SDKs like Cluster, API and Terraform, and you
Speaker 2: know it's API for saything that you can do in
Speaker 2: the portal, you can do via the API. And so
Speaker 2: you know, we've again that's like been battle hardened with developers.
Speaker 2: That's a huge part of our origin story and the
Speaker 2: DNA of this company is being able to serve developers
Speaker 2: and DevOps, individuals and teams. That's really that's a core
Speaker 2: part of you know, what Vulture is all about. And
Speaker 2: so so, yes, there's a piece of performance, but it's
Speaker 2: also ease of use. You know, if you if you
Speaker 2: work with some of the hyperscalers, it's incredibly complicated just
Speaker 2: to get something. I mean, I guess they've made something
Speaker 2: kind of like the onboarding process easy so you can
Speaker 2: click the button to get going, but they're incredibly complicated.
Speaker 2: And you look at you know, some of the hyperscalers
Speaker 2: and you know, you look at like the I am
Speaker 2: or like resource hierarchy models of how permissions get structured,
Speaker 2: and it's almost seems impossible to set up a new
Speaker 2: service or it's like wait, why is this throwing me
Speaker 2: an air? I'm the root user and I can't even
Speaker 2: deploy this new thing that I want to try out,
Speaker 2: or when I add my second user, I put these
Speaker 2: accounts together, How the policies get things like, you know,
Speaker 2: all the services of how you do networking and there's
Speaker 2: ten different kind of gateways that you you can all
Speaker 2: stitch together in very different ways. Like there's there's incredible
Speaker 2: complexity with when you are at one of the hyperscalers,
Speaker 2: which you know, we are focused on kind of distilling
Speaker 2: that down into what is it that you actually need?
Speaker 2: And so I think there's there is the performance piece
Speaker 2: of it, which just says, you know, how can I
Speaker 2: get better, better performance at a better price. It's not
Speaker 2: like apples and oranges, where you know it's it's like,
Speaker 2: well it's less expensive, but it's also cheaper and smaller,
Speaker 2: and this is like better for less and and then
Speaker 2: also the easy of use component of that. How do
Speaker 2: we keep it simple? How do we distill these things
Speaker 2: down to say, like I just want some compute, like
Speaker 2: I just want a Kubernators cluster. I just want some
Speaker 2: object storage. How can I deliver that to the end
Speaker 2: user in a way that is is easy to consume
Speaker 2: and and and they can actually enjoy the process of
Speaker 2: getting it without having to think about you know, okay,
Speaker 2: like I am an individual, or I'm a developer, and
Speaker 2: I or I have a small team, like I'm not
Speaker 2: a giant enterprise that has multiple business units and multiple
Speaker 2: organizational units with different cost centers and different billing accounts,
Speaker 2: Like I don't I shouldn't need to think about that
Speaker 2: every single time I go to deploy like my next instance.
Speaker 2: And so that's like like so if if there's you know,
Speaker 2: challenges in consuming things at the hyperscalers, or it's like
Speaker 2: why is this so complicated and hard? Yeah, like and
Speaker 2: then you and then you look at the bill. You
Speaker 2: get the bill at the end of the month, and
Speaker 2: it's like, Wow, I didn't realize that I needed a
Speaker 2: PhD in finance and accounting to be able to understand
Speaker 2: my cloud bill. That's that's an other area where you know,
Speaker 2: like I was recently looking at a at a bill
Speaker 2: from one of, you know, from a potential prospect that
Speaker 2: was coming from a hyperscaler and they were getting charged
Speaker 2: eight thousand dollars for configuration. There's literally objects in the
Speaker 2: database they're getting charged eight thousand dollars for like usage
Speaker 2: based some number of hours per configure item inside of
Speaker 2: the database. And and I was like, that's a really
Speaker 2: interesting I mean, that's a fantastic business model. I would
Speaker 2: love it if if you know, like if everybody, I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess with your hyperscaler, you've just kind of chosen
Speaker 2: that that's an okay, an acceptable thing. But typically, like
Speaker 2: the administrative aspects of what you're delivering as a struture
Speaker 2: provider or as a SaaS service, it's just it's baked in.
Speaker 2: It's like it's the cost of doing business. But if
Speaker 2: you if you like looked closely at your bill, it's like, wow,
Speaker 2: I didn't. And on a small scale, it's like, okay, well, okay,
Speaker 2: that's fine. They charged me thirteen dollars for my configuration objects,
Speaker 2: and I have a lot of them. That's fine. But
Speaker 2: imagine spending eight thousand dollars on a month on configuration objects.
Speaker 2: That was just how my cloud got configured. So like
Speaker 2: there's areas where if you look at like the many
Speaker 2: different ways, like we don't charge for you know, requesting
Speaker 2: like S three requests, and like that's a huge cost
Speaker 2: for on ata us. It's not just you're just getting
Speaker 2: charged for the storage, you're getting charged for requesting it.
Speaker 2: That's another area where like keeping it simple, where it's
Speaker 2: like you're going to get charged, you know, per terabyte
Speaker 2: per month for the storage that you use, and we're
Speaker 2: not going to nickel and daim you on you know,
Speaker 2: all these different areas and so so there's a lot
Speaker 2: I mean, yes, there is. Again, like there's the performance
Speaker 2: piece of it, but there's many other areas where people
Speaker 2: you know, are kind of tired of the ways in
Speaker 2: which the hyperskillers do business and want they want an alternative.
Speaker 1: No, I'm totally with you. I think that one thing
Speaker 1: at leads from an AWS standpoint has been I try
Speaker 1: to provide that as granular understanding as possible so that
Speaker 1: you can optimize as much as you want based off
Speaker 1: of what they're providing. But I feel like it's sort
Speaker 1: of a leaky abstraction. You can sort of figure out
Speaker 1: how they built their service based off of how they're
Speaker 1: charging because it's so transparent, and it doesn't necessarily help
Speaker 1: because it has a lot of complexity there. When we
Speaker 1: built our own service, we offer auth as a service,
Speaker 1: and part of that is realistically all of our competitors
Speaker 1: charged by like monthly active users, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: what if your users aren't like monthly active, what if
Speaker 1: they're used once and whatnot? And so trying to come
Speaker 1: up with a single metric that handles every single use
Speaker 1: case and is easy to charge and understand has been
Speaker 1: really important. Whereas I feel like you will see this
Speaker 1: where there's like some primary metric and then there's like
Speaker 1: five other metrics that are like but if you do this,
Speaker 1: it's like another charge, and if you do this, it's
Speaker 1: a third charge. Like that doesn't help anyone exactly.
Speaker 2: No, it's very true. And I think that, yeah, I
Speaker 2: think that when you have like when you sit around
Speaker 2: a room, when you have the opportunity to sit around
Speaker 2: a room and just come up with different ways to
Speaker 2: charge people for using the platform and an extracting value
Speaker 2: from it, you can come up with very many creative
Speaker 2: ways to add on, you know, tackle on different ways
Speaker 2: to to to charge customers and and that's something that also,
Speaker 2: I mean, we've been doing this for you know, Vulture
Speaker 2: for for over a decade, and it's kind of remarkable
Speaker 2: that we have been able to keep it as simple
Speaker 2: as we have. And I think that's a testament to
Speaker 2: being able to focus on you know, providing fundamental cloud
Speaker 2: infrastructure to a tech enabled uh, you know, mid to
Speaker 2: large tech enabled enterprise and SaaS companies, and that's you know,
Speaker 2: that that gives us the ability to really focus on,
Speaker 2: you know, focus on making sure that it's simple, easy
Speaker 2: to consume, and without having to introduce all these ancillary
Speaker 2: ways that people get charged, and it's it's easy to understand.
Speaker 2: Also just makes our lives easier when somebody comes in
Speaker 2: and says, hey, you know, can you please digest my
Speaker 2: you know, my my bill from a hyperscaler and we
Speaker 2: are able to look at that and say, a great,
Speaker 2: like all of these just is a big red you know,
Speaker 2: like big X mark, Like just that's you know, I'm
Speaker 2: just not going to get charged for that. And people
Speaker 2: look at that and they say they think, oh wow,
Speaker 2: I didn't even realize that that was an option. I
Speaker 2: just thought that this was the way that it was
Speaker 2: and being able to provide an alternative that is really powerful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's actually a great book out there called
Speaker 1: Platform Revolution where it actually talks about if all of
Speaker 1: your customers need to hire a third party consultant to
Speaker 1: do something, then you have an opportunity to recapture that
Speaker 1: value within your own platform. And so I think the
Speaker 1: other hyperscalers, you know, fail at that where there's huge
Speaker 1: successful businesses out there in that regard that are trying
Speaker 1: to just explain your cloud bill and it should tell you, no,
Speaker 1: we should probably do something a little bit smarter than
Speaker 1: with how we're actually providing this. It just makes tracking
Speaker 1: so much easier for everyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, it's much easier to add than it is
Speaker 2: to remove, I've found. You know, it's it's you know,
Speaker 2: being able to add more. You know, but what you
Speaker 2: cut and how you cut or how you create things
Speaker 2: that make it simpler is often, you know, is often
Speaker 2: is difficult because you know that complexity typically gets added
Speaker 2: for either well intentioned reasons or because somebody said that
Speaker 2: was a requirement and so it got added. And now
Speaker 2: once it's there, it's very very hard to unwind.
Speaker 1: Hopefully, no one no one's adding features because someone said
Speaker 1: it's a requirement without actually backing it up with a
Speaker 1: good justifications. I just can't imagine that's happening in the
Speaker 1: real world. Is that there is this good quote that
Speaker 1: I'm totally going to misattribute. That perfection is not when
Speaker 1: there is nothing more to add but nothing left to remove.
Speaker 1: So I think that definitely applies to having a good
Speaker 1: building strategy.
Speaker 2: I love that. Yeah, that's very that's very, very true.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: I will I do want to ask I feel like
Speaker 1: we were dancing around this a little bit. Uh, since
Speaker 1: you are building data centers, how does sort of research
Speaker 1: and analysis go into the requirements and understanding of like
Speaker 1: where to place the data center, geelocation base, like any
Speaker 1: sort of potential issues catastrophic wise to impact the data center.
Speaker 1: And you know, the part that's really interesting for me
Speaker 1: is what sort of attention to security of like physical
Speaker 1: security of the data center.
Speaker 2: Many things that go into that. And you know, we,
Speaker 2: I mean we we also should say, you know, we
Speaker 2: worked with a lot of fantastic data center partners who
Speaker 2: who do a lot of that work for us, and
Speaker 2: so you know, we we typically don't go out and
Speaker 2: procure land and do construction, but we do work with
Speaker 2: our data center partners too to go through that assessment,
Speaker 2: and there's there's many things that they go into that,
Speaker 2: especially as you know, if we if we want to
Speaker 2: unwrap the presence of AI and GPU, there are many
Speaker 2: things that go into that, especially around the advent of
Speaker 2: the AI boom that's been happening, and so access to power,
Speaker 2: access to reliable power, access to multiple sources of large
Speaker 2: amounts of power is one of the I guess one dimension.
Speaker 2: The other aspects that go into that is okay, well,
Speaker 2: now that if you're delivering a lot of that power
Speaker 2: into a very small space, you have to cool it
Speaker 2: because there's a ton of heat and so you know,
Speaker 2: things like you know like the just like things that
Speaker 2: have evolved over the last few years from air cooling
Speaker 2: to liquid cooling to other things like reird or heat
Speaker 2: exchangers where you have it's like a hybrid where it's
Speaker 2: like liquid cool to the ship you know DLC, but
Speaker 2: you know there's other components that still generate heat, and
Speaker 2: so you need to have some fans that will go
Speaker 2: to a real or heat exchanger. So there's a bunch
Speaker 2: of different things that go into that. And so the
Speaker 2: like where you specifically do the data center is you know,
Speaker 2: you know, there's many many things that go into that,
Speaker 2: and then once you have it, you have to you know,
Speaker 2: you're talking about in some cases situations where what you're
Speaker 2: deploying into a single data center is and this is
Speaker 2: true across true US both power footprint and across networking.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that just is fascinating about
Speaker 2: what has happened is that you have right now a
Speaker 2: moment where in a single location you could be deploying
Speaker 2: more power than you might have intero for a GPU footprint,
Speaker 2: then you might have across an entire global footprint of CPU,
Speaker 2: which is really incredible. And you have that also at
Speaker 2: the network level too. You know, if you look at
Speaker 2: some of the larger clusters that we've deployed and the
Speaker 2: GPU fabric, which is you know, the GPU's effectively get communicated,
Speaker 2: they get connected via networking on the back end, so
Speaker 2: you have like front side networking which is like my
Speaker 2: public IP and the back end networking for GPU fabric networking.
Speaker 2: If you look at some of the larger clusters, the
Speaker 2: amount of aggregate throughput that you have in a single
Speaker 2: clusters more throughput than the entire Internet in a single cluster,
Speaker 2: and there's multiple clusters that are getting deployed, and that
Speaker 2: like if you look both for power and for networking,
Speaker 2: you're and then you're deploying them on a time scale
Speaker 2: where like it's you know, twenty twenty five, Like it
Speaker 2: took how many decades of the Internet growth to get
Speaker 2: to where we are. And now if you look at
Speaker 2: what's going to get deployed, know what just got deployed
Speaker 2: last year was going to get deployed over the course
Speaker 2: of the next one or two years. It's really this
Speaker 2: incredible volume of we just it took us this long
Speaker 2: to develop the entire Internet with all of the CPU cloud,
Speaker 2: and now it's like we're going to be deploying what is,
Speaker 2: you know, ten or one hundred or one thousand or
Speaker 2: ten thousand x the power networking on a much shorter
Speaker 2: time scale. And that has I mean, just as an observer,
Speaker 2: it is incredible to see what's being deployed. As somebody
Speaker 2: who also deploys that it is you know, it's presented
Speaker 2: challenges that I've never seen before my entire career. And
Speaker 2: so that's been really really fascinating to witness both again
Speaker 2: as an observer and a participant.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's interesting. I mean, I think we've known
Speaker 1: for a long time that waste heat is still like
Speaker 1: fifty sixty percent of costs of data centers, possibly higher
Speaker 1: or lower, but you know, it's it's a huge amount
Speaker 1: to have to deal with that. It's not the compute
Speaker 1: or human resources or physical resources. But the other thing
Speaker 1: that really comes to mind is at this point, I
Speaker 1: wonder if you're already getting to the point where you're
Speaker 1: identifying concrete competition for the power, the actual energy to
Speaker 1: power your data centers with the other hyperscalars, or whether
Speaker 1: or not it's still seen as a limited resource for
Speaker 1: the for the moment, or whether or not this is
Speaker 1: an actual question that's come up in a concern that
Speaker 1: you're you have to start dealing with.
Speaker 2: No, it's always a concern. Yeah, I mean, I would
Speaker 2: say that the again, access to power, large quantities of
Speaker 2: power and the relatively small densities is for sure an issue,
Speaker 2: and we all face it, you know, And I would
Speaker 2: say this, there's a planning cycle to that as well.
Speaker 2: I mean, everybody understands that it's not an unlimited resource,
Speaker 2: but that I think that honestly predates you know, GPU,
Speaker 2: Like there's always the fallback to utility power and maybe
Speaker 2: there's a special you know, special agreement that you have
Speaker 2: with you know, utility power. But data center providers you know,
Speaker 2: have to have guarantees and so that's always taken the
Speaker 2: form of you know, contractual obligations, you know, for for
Speaker 2: power delivery. And this is no different. Although because of
Speaker 2: the scale it it, you know, where the power generation
Speaker 2: comes from, and the time scale in which to deploy it,
Speaker 2: you know, has introduced different things. But you know, data
Speaker 2: centers have never really been just like oh yeah, just
Speaker 2: like plug it into the outlet and you're good. Like
Speaker 2: it's always been, you know, there's there's been a little
Speaker 2: bit more to that and so so so yeah, that
Speaker 2: that has always been a special consideration, and I guess
Speaker 2: more so now just more like the time piece of
Speaker 2: ensuring when that power is going to show up so
Speaker 2: coordinate things on the back end.
Speaker 1: No, it makes co clete sense. I'm sort of wondering
Speaker 1: whether or not you're taking into account you'll, like, say,
Speaker 1: where data centers by other hyperscalers out there are putting
Speaker 1: their data centers, because you could end up with a
Speaker 1: conflict of you know, a scarce resource.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I mean certainly there's you know, we we
Speaker 2: we definitely, you know, we definitely look at that. I mean,
Speaker 2: typically the way that that shows up is that there's
Speaker 2: going to be a certain amount of power, you know,
Speaker 2: ten twenty fifty megawatts of power that gets delivered through
Speaker 2: a contractual obligation, and so that would be over some
Speaker 2: number of years or decades to be able to do that,
Speaker 2: and that's kind of like preserved power capacity, and so
Speaker 2: that that's just you know, like you you reserve that capacity,
Speaker 2: and that like if you're going to say, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're gonna let's say there's twenty megawatts that is
Speaker 2: available in Cleveland or in Cincinnati or in South Dakota somewhere,
Speaker 2: that that becomes available, and then whoever takes it takes it.
Speaker 2: And so that is and in some cases people are
Speaker 2: in the market for additional capacity. In some cases they say, well,
Speaker 2: we just took down, you know, thirty megawatts in Pittsburgh
Speaker 2: and so we're fine, and so we don't need that
Speaker 2: twenty that just showed up over you know, in the
Speaker 2: in the Midwest. But there's ten other people that were
Speaker 2: chomping at the bit for the power that was in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2: And so you know, now there's you know, if there
Speaker 2: were ten people that were in Pittsburgh, one of them
Speaker 2: got satisfied, and now there's nine people that are going
Speaker 2: to that might be interested in the twenty mega wants
Speaker 2: you know interest, just as a simple simple example. So,
Speaker 2: and that also fluctuates with the demand of the end customers.
Speaker 2: And so depending on you know, who's who's you know,
Speaker 2: who's buying it on the back end, you know, the
Speaker 2: you know that will you know, influence the band. And
Speaker 2: so in some cases there's opportunities that are you know,
Speaker 2: that that are being chased, and so folks might be
Speaker 2: asking about the same you know, for the same end
Speaker 2: customer coming out at different angles. And so it's a
Speaker 2: it's a really it's a super dynamic time, super dynamic market.
Speaker 2: And so we're always you know, assessing what's available based
Speaker 2: on our own needs and and our own you know,
Speaker 2: and our end customer needs as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds like it's not a struggle yet.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously there are ins and outs and complexities
Speaker 1: and contracts and future prediction for for demand needs. But
Speaker 1: it sounds like at the moment there's still positive optimism
Speaker 1: or you know what's available and you know, sure you
Speaker 1: may not be able to build a data center in
Speaker 1: one local but picking another one is still is still
Speaker 1: an option. Uh. You know, I'm wondering when this when
Speaker 1: I'll say, craze of power usage spikes even more, whether
Speaker 1: or not that will actually drive innovation and the science
Speaker 1: is to complete the years old fusion research that it
Speaker 1: looks only like China at the moment is actually sufficiently
Speaker 1: invested in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I've seen every so often I get
Speaker 2: articles that I'll come across my news feed that talk
Speaker 2: about breakthroughs in fusion and and I've seen several of
Speaker 2: them over the last even twelve months or so, and
Speaker 2: so I think that it's it's going to be. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think there's maybe one other alternative that's that has
Speaker 2: more of a practical implication, but SMRs, which is small
Speaker 2: I think it's small modular reactors there. There it's it's
Speaker 2: nuclear power, but there it's on a much smaller scale.
Speaker 2: And so and I think even I think equin X
Speaker 2: announced that they were investing some number of millions of
Speaker 2: dollars into s m rs as as an alternative. And
Speaker 2: you know, the US has not been a leader in
Speaker 2: renewable nuclear power, whereas the EU has made a lot
Speaker 2: of advancements over the last couple of decades. You know,
Speaker 2: if you look at the cycle of you know, nuclear
Speaker 2: waste and how you you know, kind of process that
Speaker 2: and can you know, ensure there's a healthier you know,
Speaker 2: like our strategy to to nuclear waste is to bury
Speaker 2: it in the ground, and which is it's that that's
Speaker 2: a choice, but there's other choices that are that have emerged.
Speaker 2: And so I think that innovations in the nuclear space
Speaker 2: is something that's really fascinating because you're able to have
Speaker 2: access to you know, without a lot of the footprint,
Speaker 2: the carbon footprint and fossil fuels and you know, unrenewable
Speaker 2: energy sources. It's it's really really compelling, but you do
Speaker 2: have to completely think about the complete picture for it
Speaker 2: to be a sustainable method.
Speaker 1: I do want to get an energy expert on the show.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I will say that bearing into the ground is still
Speaker 1: better than putting it in some other places. And and
Speaker 1: I think the the idea of I think is switching
Speaker 1: to thorium over the uranium yellow Cake from two fifty eight.
Speaker 1: I think there are innovations. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: have your optimism about what Europe is doing. There is progress,
Speaker 1: not as much as I would I would really like.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's a it's really interesting and I
Speaker 2: am not an expert on it, because I think there
Speaker 2: was it. I think, if I'm remembering correctly, Germany was,
Speaker 2: you know, like on the brink of this kind of
Speaker 2: like renewable cycle and I'm there's there's a name for
Speaker 2: it that I'm forgetting. But then they announced that they
Speaker 2: were going to shut it down or something, and I
Speaker 2: just remember thinking about it. It was like but that thing,
Speaker 2: like you were on like the brink of like getting
Speaker 2: to the point where we all wanted it to get to,
Speaker 2: which was you know, more of a I think from
Speaker 2: a technical perspective, they were. They had made more advancement,
Speaker 2: even though I think there were some policy that prevented
Speaker 2: it from chem to fruition, whereas I and I don't
Speaker 2: know that those those translated over here. But maybe maybe
Speaker 2: you have some more then than I do.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll share what I know. So facts. Germany definitely
Speaker 1: did shut down all their nuclear reactors the interesting thing
Speaker 1: is they had been like promised to be decommissioned for
Speaker 1: over a decade, and other countries faced with the same
Speaker 1: similar challenges crises that we're facing, said you know what,
Speaker 1: let's stop our decommission process. Part of the challenge in
Speaker 1: Germany was a huge lobby from the coal miners associations
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of jobs associated with that, and
Speaker 1: that still has a huge impact in many countries switching
Speaker 1: over to realistic renewables. Actually in the last two decades
Speaker 1: one of the hugest impact to switching to fission reactors.
Speaker 1: So what we're calling nuclear is other quote unquote green
Speaker 1: renewable energy sources. Like the lobby against vision and nuclear
Speaker 1: by solar and wind is like I would stretch ridiculously.
Speaker 1: It's just so sad. This is there's probably not the
Speaker 1: podcast to go into that. It's all gonna stop there,
Speaker 1: and I'll say, uh, say, if there's one last thing
Speaker 1: about Vulture you wanted to share, we can we can
Speaker 1: close it out with that.
Speaker 2: Well, so yeah, look, I would say maybe closing it
Speaker 2: out getting back to cloud infrastructure and DevOps. You know,
Speaker 2: I think one of the things that we we say
Speaker 2: is that you know, Vulture is the platform for platform
Speaker 2: engineering teams. So you know, if DevOps and platform engineering
Speaker 2: is is your jam, where you find that that's an
Speaker 2: area where you're doing a lot of it. You know,
Speaker 2: I think that Vulture has a really compelling platform that is,
Speaker 2: you know, it is something that you'll enjoy working with.
Speaker 2: It has the again compelling price, compelling performance, and it
Speaker 2: needs of use attached to that with a global footprint
Speaker 2: and so that checks a lot of the big boxes
Speaker 2: for for DevOps individuals and platform engineering teams. And so
Speaker 2: if that something that that resonates, you know, definitely check
Speaker 2: us out and you know, let us know what you think.
Speaker 1: I love the sales pitch. I will I will ask
Speaker 1: because I'm sure someone will be wondering, like, what's the
Speaker 1: interface that you're providing? Is it you know, some custom APIs?
Speaker 1: Are you providing like some sort of Kubernetes adjacent replacement
Speaker 1: for the control planes, et cetera. What does that look like?
Speaker 2: So yeah, it is, you know, it's it's a PI first.
Speaker 2: So you know, if you use terraform or or cluster API,
Speaker 2: you know you'll feel right at home. We have providers
Speaker 2: for cross plane, we have providers for cross plane cluster,
Speaker 2: API terraform and so yeah. So like full API deployment,
Speaker 2: there is you know, future rich portal as well, and so,
Speaker 2: but that you know typically is going to be the
Speaker 2: entry point is going to be one of those like
Speaker 2: you know, we have a go Go Vulture Goaling library,
Speaker 2: so one of those entry points for API is probably
Speaker 2: going to be that. We do also have VK which
Speaker 2: is the Vulture Kubernetes engine, so this is vanilla Kubernetes
Speaker 2: and is something that you know, it is kind of directly,
Speaker 2: you know, instead of runn Kubernetes yourself, which is totally fine.
Speaker 2: You can run Kubernetes on VMS or bare model yourselves
Speaker 2: if that's your jam. But if that's not your jam,
Speaker 2: you can consume kubernetovkay from us and we'll run it
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 1: No, that's that's good, not my jam. And I don't
Speaker 1: know how many people would you know, pick it personally you.
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna keep my opinions across playing to
Speaker 1: myself for this episode.
Speaker 2: Uh okay, So I think I will say I was
Speaker 2: going for I was going for a walk the other
Speaker 2: day and there's a fire hydrant and attached to the
Speaker 2: fire hydrant was a series of you know, piping in
Speaker 2: tubes connecting down to a little water faucet on the end,
Speaker 2: and it just kind of reminded me of Kubernetes a
Speaker 2: little bit, where Kubernetes is the fire hydrant and then
Speaker 2: to deploy your applications just like a little water faucet.
Speaker 2: It's like it can be really overkill sometimes to be like,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, why why am I needing to do
Speaker 2: this and just to get this little bit of application going,
Speaker 2: But it is you know, yeah, that's yeah. If deploying
Speaker 2: something that's a little bit easier is attractive, then than
Speaker 2: the we can do that for you.
Speaker 1: We actually had a Kumminatory consultant expert consultant come on
Speaker 1: a few episodes ago, and I highly recommend that episode
Speaker 1: for anyone that's interested in the different ways of deploying
Speaker 1: to cloud providers with your technology stack. Okay, so with that,
Speaker 1: let's move over to pay. So my pick for today
Speaker 1: is I don't know how I'm gonna be lame, but
Speaker 1: I like this. There's a show on YouTube and Nebula
Speaker 1: called jet Lag the Game, and it's they have a
Speaker 1: couple of different game versions. They play tag within like
Speaker 1: a small area like multiple countries involved, or capture the
Speaker 1: flag in in Japan or in a larger area. Basically, trains, planes,
Speaker 1: buses are involved in game playing, and they even have
Speaker 1: a card game version where you can play with your
Speaker 1: friends like in an actual, live, physical location. So there's
Speaker 1: lots of there's like lots of episodes that they do
Speaker 1: about three or four seasons a year, and it's absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1: I think it's like if you hated the reality show
Speaker 1: Race around the World or Amazing Race, this is so
Speaker 1: much better. This is like actual high quality, like game
Speaker 1: relevant stuff. There's no no real tricks involved.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. I love that. Well. I would have to
Speaker 2: my pick of today, I would have to say there's
Speaker 2: a TV show called Money Heist and I'm not sure
Speaker 2: if you're familiar with this, but it's it's it's on Netflix,
Speaker 2: and it's about It's a show about it's an incredible
Speaker 2: like psychological it's every single there's the first season, it's
Speaker 2: every single episode. Believe you wanting to watch more. It's
Speaker 2: it's in Spanish, so don't get the dubbed version. Do
Speaker 2: Spanish to subtitles, but it is phenomenal and I don't
Speaker 2: want to give too much away, but it's called Money Heist,
Speaker 2: and if you watched the first you can get through
Speaker 2: the first episode, you'll you'll it's an incredibly smart, well
Speaker 2: done about a heist in of the Central Bank of Spain,
Speaker 2: and so it is fascinating. I absolutely love it and
Speaker 2: if you haven't seen it, check it out. Money Heist.
Speaker 1: I feel like I watched something that was like a
Speaker 1: single episode of and I don't know if it was this, you.
Speaker 2: Know, it might have been. There's many things that happened
Speaker 2: in that in that season, and it is really it's
Speaker 2: just one of the smartest TV shows that I've watched
Speaker 2: in a while, and it's it's entertaining, but it's also
Speaker 2: really really well done. So yeah, it's and not a
Speaker 2: lot of people have have have have heard of it.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 2: Somebody recommended it and watched the whole thing and was
Speaker 2: aid it was one of those shows where I think
Speaker 2: we all have them right where you just can't, Like
Speaker 2: you get to the end of the episode, you're like,
Speaker 2: I like, you know, it's I really have to you know,
Speaker 2: I've got an early early morning meetings and the I
Speaker 2: have to stop watching, But I just really what happens next.
Speaker 2: It's really really smart about you know how they do that,
Speaker 2: and and yeah, I really highly recommend it.
Speaker 1: It's a sleep sacrifice worthy. It sounds like a great pick.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Nathan. So I just want to say thanks
Speaker 1: again for coming on the senior vice president of Vulture
Speaker 1: here with us, and it was a great episode, and
Speaker 1: thank you all the listeners and viewers for staying around.
Speaker 1: And we'll catch everyone next week.