Are you gearing up for Amazon AWS re:Invent 2016 in Las Vegas?  The event is fast approaching, kicking off from November 28th to December 2nd.  Ahead of the show, I met with Quali, a leading maker of cloud sandbox software for DevOps automation.  And to get more details and a better understanding of what the company has planned for the show, I spoke with Shashi Kiran, the company's CMO. 

As an attendee of re:Invent, you'll want to get Quali on your dance card.  Read on to find out why.

VMblog:  Is this your first time sponsoring AWS re:Invent?  What interests you most about this event?

Shashi Kiran:  Yes, it is our first time here. AWS was the original pioneer in public cloud and is still continuing to set the pace. There's a lot of interest from our customers to move to public and hybrid clouds and AWS happens to be one of the lead choices. Naturally we are where our customers are.

Kiran:  For AWS re:Invent attendees that are considering private or hybrid clouds, they should consider the Quali booth as must-stop and check out cloud sandboxes and explore how this technology can help them accelerate hybrid cloud adoption while de-risking the move significantly. We'll also be showing some cool demos with the VMWare-AWS hybrid cloud sandbox, as well as integration with data virtualization and masking solution vendors which is a big deal for compliance.

Beyond this, we'll have a rich demo suite that should appeal to anyone building an on-demand lab with self-service workflows, or DevOps friendly standardized environments. I encourage cloud architects, engineering leaders for QA and development, heads of infrastructure and application delivery, security leaders and DevOps practice heads to stop by.

VMblog:  As an AWS re:Invent sponsor, how can people find you at the show?

Kiran:  The Quali team will be based at Booth #2832 on the AWS re:Invent expo floor.  We'll have several technical experts on the show floor. If you miss us on the show floor, check out our website at www.quali.com

VMblog:  Do you have a theme going on at the show?  Anything interesting or unique about your booth setup?

Kiran:  Our theme is to accelerate hybrid clouds with cloud-centric DevOps environments. 

VMblog:  Why should an attendee add you to their MUST SEE list?

Kiran:  Today over 70% of enterprises are committing to move to hybrid clouds but experiencing significant speed bumps due to mismatched environments, quality issues and lengthy dev/test cycles. Quali can help change that. Most customers are very impressed when they see that we can model the full stack. Then being able to take this or a portion and choose any cloud deployment path is quite impressive.

VMblog:  After visiting your booth at the show, what message will an attendee take back to their boss to sell them on your technology?

Kiran:  They key takeaway we frequently see is how they can build any complex environment quickly and standardize it via blue prints and self-service workflows. Cloud sandboxes can help their organization move faster with a higher quality of software and with reduced costs. The fact this standardized environment can be deployed across any cloud for dev/test is a huge plus. Knowing that their investment in cloud sandboxes can be leveraged for any corporate IT initiative - be it digitization, application modernization, hybrid cloud, lab automation or demo clouds - is a big plus. It future proofs their investment and has a strong ROI.

VMblog:  And can you give readers a few reasons why your product or service is considered unique? 

Kiran:  Sandbox templates or blueprints consisting of a pre-defined set of components (physical or virtual infrastructure, data, APIs, applications etc. replicating the production environment) enable enterprises to define a standardized environment for new dev and test environments. Our ability to model all of these for the "full stack" is very unique in the industry. Then when users are done with a sandbox, it can be torn down, quickly allowing for very efficient resource utilization. Quali's cloud sandboxes allow for very sophisticated modeling and orchestration functionalities, where anything from a passive layer 0 patch panel to the most complex monolithic application or microservice can be brought to life.   

By abstracting the underlying infrastructure and cloud from the applications it provides tremendous portability. This explodes the number of use-cases a sandbox can be leveraged for in the context of an organization.

VMblog:  How does your company and product fit within the AWS ecosystem?

Kiran:  We are an AWS partner. At the same time, we are technology and cloud-agnostic. CloudShell allows the management of AWS EC2 instances directly via the same sandbox environment as on-premise VM instances say from VMware. To facilitate an organization's AWS budget and cost management activities, AWS EC2 instances deployed via CloudShell Apps are preconfigured by design and tagged. This helps drive better governance and cost control.

VMblog:  Attendees always enjoy a good trade show tchotchke.  Are you guys giving away anything special or interesting at your booth?

Kiran:  We're conducting a 3-minute survey and will be awarding Apple watches to survey winners. There'll also other interesting tchotchkes that we usually see good interest in. Come over and check them out.

VMblog:  What is your team looking forward to most at AWS re:Invent?

Kiran:  We are looking to explore opportunities where we can help solve some of the more complex technology and business problems that enterprises face. We are also looking to learn from our peers and others in the industry. Team Quali will be there with an open mind to soak it all in.

VMblog:  What do you think we need to do collectively as an ecosystem to strengthen the industry?

Kiran:  Customers always benefit when vendors work with each other and integrate solutions. Quali's sandboxes adopt a very open approach including open sourcing some of the "shells" that allow heterogeneous vendors to quickly get onboard the sandbox and contribute back to the community. This is an example of one approach that can make ecosystems tick. We're also committed to a multi-cloud, multi-vendor approach in terms of technology integration. Customers love us for that. We need more such approaches across the industry.

VMblog:  Finally, what do you hope to come away with from exhibiting at AWS re:Invent?  What does event success look like to you?

Kiran:  A lot of our existing customers are public cloud providers, Tier-1 service providers, technology vendors and large enterprises. Cloud sandboxes are still a new concept to many in the enterprise. Continuing to raise awareness and preference for cloud sandboxes in the enterprise would be a big win for us.

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To all attendees of this coming event, I highly recommend you check out Quali at Booth #2832 on the AWS re:Invent expo floor.  Thanks again to Shashi Kiran, CMO at Quali, for taking time to answer a few questions ahead of the show.