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Network Nirvana: The Power of NaaS · Executives at the Edge

0:03
Welcome to executives at the edge.
0:05
A podcast brought you by me.
0:08
I'm your host, Pascal.
0:10
Join me as we explore thought provoking perspectives
0:13
from the leaders and change makers were propelling
0:16
enterprise digital transformation forward.
0:24
I'm so very excited to have, and Neil
0:26
Var.
0:28
He's the Ceo of mit
0:30
and Neil welcome to executives at the edge.
0:33
And today, I believe we're gonna cover campus
0:36
Nas. Camp campus network as a service, and
0:38
I believe Meter has done some incredible work
0:41
in really pioneering this area. You talk about
0:45
non supplying Wifi
0:47
switches, everything
0:48
manage from the cloud as a service delivery
0:51
models. You also have added in security.
0:53
So, An, if you can please tell our
0:56
listeners and there's little about yourself. Little about
0:58
meter or that'd be really helpful.
1:01
Pascal. Thank you so much for having me
1:03
really really appreciate it.
1:05
Yeah. A little bit about me. I studied
1:07
networking college and have been working and networking
1:10
for the last 20 years building out
1:13
software,
1:14
hardware and building deploy systems.
1:16
We started meter about a decade ago. I
1:20
started with my brother Sun
1:22
who have now
1:23
been working with for 2 decades.
1:26
And fundamentally,
1:28
what be been trying to do with mit
1:29
and what the goal has always been
1:32
is to
1:34
hopefully make Internet infrastructure, Internet, networking,
1:38
Wifi,
1:39
on campuses, that might be warehouse, life sciences
1:42
lab retail healthcare care education, more of return
1:45
key utility.
1:47
And you're right, we do this entirely end
1:49
to end from Isp isps to site surveys
1:52
to rack build out,
1:54
to our own hardware from security appliances to
1:57
switches
1:58
access points and
2:00
applications on top, and entirely managed while providing
2:03
and building great software
2:05
for our customers, which are usually It
2:08
and networking teams and then our partners.
2:11
As well.
2:12
So and enable... You know, you talk about
2:16
network as a service.
2:18
So what are the core principles behind it?
2:20
And, you know, how is it align with
2:22
a broader vision of the Nas sector as
2:24
you see it?
2:25
Yeah. I think this a really good question
2:27
because the term Nas has become so muddled,
2:30
especially in the last year or 2. You
2:32
know, we've been thinking about this for a
2:34
while.
2:36
For those that are interested in, like, a
2:37
longer thing of how we're thinking about it,
2:39
when did writing something about this. It's at
2:42
nas dot com, actually, NAAS
2:44
dot com, and you'll see a bit more
2:46
on what we wrote, but I think essentially
2:48
the 2 main components
2:50
are
2:51
a great product and a great service.
2:54
Historically, it's been that there's been a lot
2:56
of good product companies,
2:58
that build good hardware,
3:00
maybe you buy some other software. You bring
3:02
it together for analytics and ob durability and
3:05
performance and other things. But you put a
3:07
bunch of products together
3:09
to make, you know, your offering good for
3:11
your customers or your colleagues any of those
3:14
things.
3:15
Then you've also historically had really great service
3:18
companies.
3:19
And these service companies might know how to
3:21
do the installations really well. They might know
3:23
how to do support really well,
3:26
and they might know how to do the
3:27
entire maintenance and life cycle of really well.
3:30
For us,
3:31
what Nas really means is a combination of
3:34
great product
3:35
and really great service as well. And similar
3:38
to what
3:40
you know, the hyper scaler have done for
3:42
cloud infrastructure, which is instead of having to
3:44
go,
3:45
rent out space by a bunch of racks,
3:47
servers and do raid and cooling and all
3:50
of that. You can just say I would
3:52
like x amount of servers that I can
3:54
spin up to use for my application.
3:56
We think campus mass, which is what we're
3:58
doing as well,
4:00
should be it should be that easy, which
4:03
is customer should be able to scale up
4:05
while having really great products that are fully
4:08
integrated and service
4:10
that because of that great product is even
4:13
better,
4:14
and that's this should be true even for
4:16
partners that are supporting, whether it's their end
4:18
customers if they're
4:20
Isps and providers and tel codes, or their
4:23
Ms sps. If you have a really great
4:25
product and services that are built on top,
4:27
is should be able to deliver that. So
4:29
product and service combination is what we think
4:31
about for Nas.
4:33
So
4:35
meters been around our decade.
4:37
You have a great customer base already that
4:39
you've
4:40
got
4:41
deployed. And
4:43
what you're doing is basically a cloud delivery
4:45
model of network as a service for the
4:47
campus. So you build your own switches
4:50
you build your own Wifi F.
4:52
You build all the manage offerings. You got
4:54
I've security appliances, you said firewalls.
4:57
So really incredible stuff.
4:59
So
5:00
And now you also talked about the Internet
5:02
Isp isps, can you are articulate a little
5:04
bit about how All this comes together like,
5:07
why? Yeah. Well was this enterprise is all
5:10
accessing
5:12
the Internet and doing sd wan on top
5:14
of it, and that's kinda how you see
5:15
it that you manage all of that for
5:17
them.
5:19
Yeah. So what, you know, we started with
5:22
building really great networking hardware and software.
5:26
And as we got few in a decade
5:29
ago,
5:30
no matter how great of a hardware and
5:32
software we built, If there's not great when
5:35
connection and that egress isn't great, it really
5:37
doesn't matter how great of a network you
5:39
have.
5:40
So what we started doing is building this
5:42
full platform in the last 5 to 7
5:45
years on top of our hardware and software
5:46
as we're making that better. So how it
5:48
works today is, let's say there's an enterprise
5:51
that might come through a partner come in
5:53
direct.
5:55
They give us an address they give us
5:57
a floor plan and answer a bunch of
5:59
questions about security and how it's connected,
6:02
then meters work starts So we partner with
6:06
Isps to make sure the right Isp connection
6:08
comes in, and this is also done entirely
6:10
through software, think of it as Kayak or
6:12
Ex ex
6:13
but for Isps.
6:15
Then we do the full rack build out
6:16
like you're saying on security appliances, switches, install
6:19
our Aps,
6:20
to the site surveys testing
6:23
and then software on top that has Dns
6:26
security, Sd wan,
6:28
site to site,
6:30
Vpn all built in
6:32
so that our customers and partners can scale
6:35
their networks.
6:36
Now will multinational
6:39
don't they also rely on, like, Mp Pv
6:41
vpn also.
6:43
So is that only
6:44
for the smaller sites you take on or
6:46
do you take on the large campuses up
6:49
the Multinational too?
6:51
Yeah. We do take on the really large
6:53
campuses as well.
6:54
We have
6:55
individual customers that have millions of square feet
6:58
with us. We have individual customers that have
7:00
hundreds of locations with us.
7:04
And we do plug in for
7:06
existing Mp networks. We plug into those. We
7:09
don't actively manage those ourselves. Majority of enterprises
7:12
we work with as well even if they
7:13
do have Mp in place are looking to
7:16
move to Sd Wan. So as part of
7:17
our offering, we help them in that transition.
7:20
Alright, interesting.
7:21
So look, what emerging trends are shaping the
7:23
landscape of the enterprise,
7:26
especially on networking?
7:27
So how are our companies in the Nasdaq
7:29
sector are strategically usually adapting?
7:32
Yeah. I think there's, like, 2
7:35
important trends that we're seeing,
7:38
especially as
7:40
there's more and more applications.
7:42
First is,
7:43
there are so many things because of automation
7:46
because of robotics and other things that are
7:49
coming onto to the network more than they
7:50
ever have, particularly for enterprises.
7:53
And so networks are being asked to do
7:55
more.
7:56
Simultaneously,
7:57
the other thing that we're seeing, whether it's
7:59
at partners or customers
8:01
is that It and networking teams aren't growing
8:05
at the same pace.
8:07
As
8:07
other teams inside of business.
8:09
So what we're seeing is there's a big
8:11
dirt, the really great products to help act
8:14
as leverage for these teams to be able
8:16
to do more. So
8:18
networking is asked to do more and It
8:20
and networking and partners are asked to do
8:21
more as well and what we're hoping to
8:23
do is kinda of plug in in both
8:25
of those things to be able to provide
8:27
great products and services.
8:30
And really, when you think about the landscape
8:32
the enterprise, they're in their digital transformational journey,
8:36
especially the multinational. Was like, everything is
8:39
digitizing and everything every workflows moving into some
8:43
digital form?
8:44
And
8:45
so do you actually participate
8:48
in those digital transformational projects,
8:51
and as your campus,
8:53
Nas offering
8:54
provides that infrastructure that's fully managed
8:57
runs right, secure.
8:59
Is that kind of how you see the
9:02
the world's kind of meeting the 2, you
9:04
know, the It world or the
9:06
digital transformational world in the networking world that
9:08
coming together? Is that kinda how you see
9:10
it?
9:11
Yeah. That's exactly right. Usually when
9:14
a company and enterprise says, hey, this is
9:17
something that's strategically important for us. We're going
9:20
down this path of digital transformation.
9:22
They might bring in partners. They might bring
9:24
a bunch of
9:25
folks, help with that. As part of that,
9:28
they might be updating from if they have
9:31
retail Pos systems, to large scale security systems,
9:34
they might be updating where they're hosting their
9:36
cloud,
9:38
and where their applications live. But at the
9:40
end of the day, aldi this still needs
9:42
to be connected to the network on how
9:43
these things are being accessed. So that's where
9:46
meter comes in as a part of this
9:49
transformation to then provide end to end reliability,
9:52
scalability,
9:53
and then also security like you're mentioning, being
9:56
able to have a secured network all the
9:58
way from your campus
10:00
and your all your locations as an enterprise,
10:03
all the way up to, you might have
10:05
it, you know, c in the middle to
10:08
public clouds in private cloud, How do you
10:09
have that seamless for compliance and security and
10:13
really scalability?
10:15
So you must have them somewhere backbone as
10:17
your cloud offering
10:19
for the Sd wan to go over the
10:20
Internet, connect all the sites. So really, you're,
10:23
like, a Ms p in that way for
10:25
just even the wide area side.
10:28
And yet you've managed all the camp at
10:29
the same time. Do I have that right?
10:32
Yeah. So so we do have an overlay
10:34
that connects to what somebody already has. Yes.
10:37
But we don't go and manage
10:39
the entire thing ourselves. But, you know, with
10:42
every enterprise that we work with,
10:44
each of the campuses or locations or stores
10:47
or labs or schools or universities, anything that
10:51
we maintain
10:52
as part of our offering that needs to
10:54
connect somewhere. So we do have that Sd
10:57
wan overly on top that connects all these
10:58
sites, and then that can go site to
11:01
site to or site to
11:04
Vpc or site to cloud to be able
11:05
to provide that. So we do manage the
11:09
Campus par have the overlay on everything local
11:12
and then connect to whatever they have in
11:14
the cloud.
11:16
And your overlay is really in the Internet.
11:18
So you don't really hit pops that have
11:20
a private backbone.
11:22
And,
11:23
yeah. We we do we do both. We
11:25
do have customers that do have private pops,
11:28
and then we do put in our hardware.
11:32
In those private pops as well to be
11:34
able to do site to site as well.
11:36
Oh, very cool.
11:37
So how can come... So we talk about
11:39
the Internet and we talk about viewing overlays
11:42
on the Internet. How can companies in the
11:44
Na she contribute
11:45
to enhancing this Internet accessibility
11:49
making the Internet, you know, the first mile.
11:51
And, you know, particularly in marginalized
11:54
and or underserved communities.
11:57
Yeah. I think in those communities, what we
11:58
see is still
12:01
the van
12:02
connectivity and the options that are available,
12:05
are still the biggest challenge
12:07
first. So there's a bunch of work to
12:09
be done there, obviously,
12:11
throughout the work that the government doing on
12:13
digital divide and the infrastructure plan and bunch
12:15
of things that I know. A lot of
12:16
the folks that are part of Me as
12:18
well are investing a lot into that.
12:21
Then I do think there's work to be
12:23
done, whether it's on c or pops for
12:26
reliability and security as well.
12:28
Where folks like us and others can contribute
12:32
for all types of communities, whether it's not
12:34
just in,
12:35
highly dense cities and highly dense popular players,
12:38
but throughout. How can they experience be better
12:40
at Still think there's a lot of work
12:41
to be done?
12:43
Well, I think the good news is with
12:45
Leo technology coming out,
12:47
and, you know, 5 g now
12:49
moving to having spectrum
12:51
coming in from the leo,
12:54
space,
12:56
the low, orbits satellites.
12:59
I think that's a good way of getting
13:01
to broadband capabilities
13:03
to these underserved areas.
13:05
But I I did
13:07
wanna ask a question.
13:09
We're seeing more and more that
13:11
the Internet is really used for
13:14
workloads that are not mission critical.
13:16
And Sd wan is supposed to try to
13:18
make the Sd wan or the environment of
13:20
the Internet look like and feel like it
13:22
can deliver on some Sla. Search level agreements.
13:26
But we're seeing the middle mile to cloud
13:28
become more important. Many, many companies
13:30
don't wanna use for their major workloads, the
13:33
Internet. But they will use the internet for
13:35
the first mile,
13:36
hit then what we call the middle mile
13:39
or hit a pop of the nearest edge
13:40
at that city,
13:42
then go in the private backbone loans
13:44
and get direct connectivity to the clouds, you
13:46
know, with direct connect and express from and
13:49
on. How do you play in that world?
13:52
How how does meter play in that world,
13:55
which is predominantly becoming more and more the
13:57
way how businesses are accessing their clouds The
14:00
Internet is only used for non mission critical,
14:02
but for mission critical applications that they really
14:05
care about. They're using that. I'd I'd love
14:06
to understand that.
14:08
Yeah. So
14:09
let's say somebody has
14:12
500 retail locations,
14:14
and they have a pop somewhere in the
14:15
meadow mile. And from there, maybe they're going,
14:18
some applications go to the private cloud and
14:20
some go to public cloud depending on what
14:22
they're using.
14:24
Meters hardware is in all of these 500
14:27
locations.
14:28
And in these pops to be able to
14:31
connect all these locations to the pop.
14:33
And then from the pop, we can then
14:35
attach it to anything that's on Bg to
14:37
be able to go out to any private
14:40
instances they have or public cloud as well.
14:43
And then choose whether it's tagging or application
14:47
awareness to actually be able to say,
14:49
hey, from my retail location. Or from my
14:52
campuses or from my universities.
14:54
I want these applications to actually just tunnel
14:57
through to the public Internet but these other
15:00
applications I actually want them to go into
15:01
my private hosted ones. We do all of
15:04
those... That application aware,
15:06
traffic shaping ourselves on our hardware and software
15:09
to be able to then hit whatever Sla
15:12
they have in place for these applications and
15:14
different
15:16
instances they have or private cloud, public cloud
15:18
and just Internet itself.
15:20
You know, And no, it's really interesting that.
15:22
You started this 10 years ago. And Nas
15:24
was around for decades.
15:25
But it was really sight to cite that
15:28
the cloud wasn't really there yet, and you
15:30
had this vision,
15:32
because software defined networks sort of talked about.
15:35
And virtualization. So I think you took those
15:37
principles of the world being into a software
15:39
defined model and
15:41
virtualization and you built all this from scratch
15:44
with a vision of as a service
15:47
well ahead of the market in the industry.
15:49
So kudos to you,
15:51
so I think it's really great that you
15:54
had that vision and you've executed. And from
15:56
my I look at your customer base, it
15:57
looked like you've really done
15:59
some really great success wins on building out,
16:02
you know, your your customer base.
16:04
And some great multinational I saw in there
16:06
too, I think. So
16:08
congratulations, But looking forward, what are your insights
16:11
regarding the evolution of Nas itself? And then
16:14
how does the Internet will play more of
16:16
a role.
16:17
In this Nas and how our company's positioned
16:20
to assume
16:21
leaving the roles in these domains.
16:24
Yeah. I think that things with Nas that
16:27
will get pushed if folks don't have great
16:30
software architectures and in our case, hardware architecture
16:33
as well,
16:34
is 2 important things. 1 is visibility.
16:38
Just because it's a Nas platform,
16:41
enterprises
16:42
can't give up the visibility they need, whether
16:44
it's for internal sla they might have, whether
16:46
it's for compliance or security.
16:48
I think visibility will play key part,
16:50
Then the second big thing that I think
16:53
all the Nas companies will get pushed as
16:55
well on is config ability. When you're talking
16:58
about an enterprise that...
17:00
Evolving needs that change based on their customers
17:03
and their partners and their applications that they're
17:05
using,
17:06
config will be a huge part of it.
17:08
So as
17:10
Lot of the Nas companies what they've done
17:12
is sort of say, we'll make whatever your
17:15
needs are on networking.
17:17
Invisible,
17:19
we actually believe the other way should be
17:22
true, which is
17:24
these enterprises should have more control more visibility
17:29
if they need it, but it shouldn't be
17:32
the default. And that's the push that I
17:34
think the industry will go towards on needing
17:36
more config and visibility.
17:38
And to your second question on what the
17:41
Internet will need to be able to do.
17:43
I think fundamentally we'll have to like, upgrade
17:46
a lot of our backbone infrastructure
17:48
that as
17:50
applications are moving online.
17:52
I think the bandwidth requirements and how much
17:54
throughput and how hungry each of these
17:57
local networks will be, and applications will be
17:59
and devices will be, will only increase.
18:03
And that will need to be pushed further
18:05
on how we're thinking about last mile, how
18:06
we're thinking about the middle mile as you
18:08
put it and just the entire backbone
18:11
infrastructure in the first place.
18:12
Yeah. No know. Well said. And, actually, in
18:14
enough, we do see
18:16
the Internet as being the first mile,
18:18
but we do see it as hitting a
18:20
very local pop.
18:22
At some provider. And from there, it hits
18:24
a business network, a middle model we'll call
18:26
it, a backbone that is designed for deter,
18:30
performance,
18:31
and then connecting all kinds of clouds directly
18:34
on bypassing the Internet. So that's how we
18:36
see it
18:38
and we... You know, how our... I think
18:40
our providers are seeing it long term to
18:42
and at that edge pop, will be edge
18:44
compute too. So so,
18:46
You know, This has been a really incredible
18:49
discussion,
18:50
and I really... We are also bracing
18:53
as part of our Nas at Math. To
18:56
embrace the campus part to that. Because our
18:58
d point today sits at the site,
19:02
and it's all about the wide area and
19:03
like, cloud and all that. But at the
19:05
end of the day,
19:06
that's not the experience. Experience is always back
19:08
to the device. They use the application to
19:11
the destination. So all of this has to
19:13
come together for us to see Nas to
19:15
be truly, you know, as a service delivery
19:17
model that just works at a frictionless environment.
19:20
So with that, any further thoughts on this,
19:24
I think you're absolutely right. I think it
19:25
all has to be connected and we're hoping
19:27
to work closely with from Isps to Ms
19:30
isps and tel codes in general.
19:33
Ultimately,
19:34
to be able to provide great value for
19:36
customers,
19:37
this should be entirely integrated and to your
19:39
point earlier,
19:40
Yes, we've been around for a decade, but
19:42
we've been relatively quiet on purpose other than
19:45
with our customers
19:46
is because we wanted to build really great
19:49
products
19:49
from the ground up, and then be able
19:52
to speak about it. So,
19:54
for for the folks that are listening, we
19:55
we'd love to get feedback and see if
19:58
we can work together, But in general,
20:00
I think all of it is working together
20:02
to provide great value is like the fundamental
20:04
thing for customers.
20:07
Well, all, thank you for being on this
20:09
episode, and I wish you the best of
20:10
luck and hope to see you around, and
20:12
I think this would be a fascinating
20:14
show. So thank you.
20:16
Awesome. Thank you for your time, Pascal.
20:20
Thanks for joining us for executives at the
20:21
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