(light upbeat music) >> Hey, everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's day two live coverage of VMware Explore 2022 from Moscone Center in San Francisco. Lisa Martin here as your host with Dave Nicholson. We've got a couple of guests here and we have some props on set. Get a load of this Nature Fresh Farms produce. Keith Bradley joins us, the VP of IT from Nature Fresh Farms, and Alison Biers is back, as well, director of marketing at Edge Solutions for Dell. Guys, welcome back to the program and thanks for bringin' some food. >> Well, thank you, yeah. >> Thank you so much. >> So, Keith, talk to us a little bit about technology from Nature Fresh Farm's perspective. How do we look at this farming organization as a tech company? >> As technical, we're something that measures everything we grow. So, we're 200 acres of greenhouse, spanning probably about 3 or 400 acres of land. Everything's entirely environmentally controlled. So, the peppers that we have in front of you, the tomatoes, they're all grown and controlled from everything they get from light to moisture to irrigation and nutrients. So, we do all that. >> So, should I be able to taste the Dell goodness in these cucumbers, for example? >> I'd like to say Nature Fresh slash Dell good. >> Connect the dots for us. So, let's go through that sort of mental exercise of how are these end products for consumers better because of what you're doing in IT? >> So, one of the things that we've been able to do, and one of the transformations we made is we are now able to run our ETLs. So, analyze the data realtime at the Edge. So, making decisions which used to be only once a day based on analytics to now multiple times a day. Our ETLs used to take 8 to 10 hours to run. Now they run- >> So, extraction, transformation and load. >> Yep, yep. >> Okay. So, we consider it a party foul if you use a TLA and you don't find it the first time. >> Okay. >> But you get a pass 'cause you're an actual and real person. >> I'll give you that one. >> I already had a claim laid on that. I'm sorry, so continue. >> Yeah, yeah. So, it allowed now the growers to make multiple decisions and then you start adding the next layer. As we expanded our technology base, we started introducing AI into it. So now, AI is even starting to make decisions before the grower even knows to make them based on historical data. So, it's allowed us to become more proactive in protecting the health and longevity and even taste of that plant and the product coming out to you. >> That's awesome. Alison, talk to us about from Dell's perspective how is it helping Nature Fresh to simplify the Edge which there's a lot of complexity there? You talked about the size of the organization but how do you help simplify it? >> I think Nature Fresh had a lot of common problems that we see customers have. So, they had some really interesting ambitions to improve their produce and do it in a GMO free way and really bring a quality product to their customer. But yet, they were each solving their problems on their individual farms in different ways. And so, one of the ways that we were able to help was to consolidate a lot of those silos as they were expanding the scope and scale of what they really wanted to do from a technology perspective. And then being able to do that in a secure way that's delivering the insights they need when they need them right there at the Edge is really critical. >> I think it's wonderful that we have the actual stuff here. Because we often talk in these abstract terms about outcomes. There's your outcome right there. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> But talk about this growing in the soil somewhere. You have growers. It's not an abstraction. These are actual actual people. Where does the technology organism interface occur here? You have organically grown crops. Where's that interface? Where's the first technology involved in this process? Literally physically. >> Physically. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there a shack with a server in it somewhere? >> So, we actually have, we have a core data center at the center of Nature Fresh set up basically where everything ends up. We have our Edge. So, we have computers, we're at the Edge analyzing stuff. But if you want to go right back to the grassroots of where it actually is, is it's right at, not dirt, but a ground up coconut husk. That is what the plants are grown in. And we analyze the data right there, 'cause that is our first Edge. And people think that's static for us. The Edge isn't static. 'Cause the Edge now moves. We have a plant that grows. Then we pick it. And then we have to store it and then we have to ship it. So, our Edge actually does move from area to area to area. So, statically one thing isn't the same all the time. It's a hard thing to say how it all starts but it's just a combination of everything from natural gas to everything. >> Okay, then are those, 'cause we think of things in terms of like internet of things and these sensors. >> Oh yeah. >> Things are being gathered. So, you've got stuff happily growing in husks and then being picked. What's the next step there? Where is that aggregated? Where does that go? Is that all going straight back to your data center or are there sort of intermediate steps in the process? >> So, what we do is we actually store everything at the Edge, and we do daily processes right there. And then it aggregates that data and it drops it down from a large number to a smaller number to go to the core. >> Got it. >> And then that way, at the core, it does the long term analysis. 'Cause again, a lot of the data that we collect, we don't need to keep. A lot of it is the temperature was X, the temperature was X, the temperature, we don't need that. So, it aggregates it all down. So, that way the information coming to the core doesn't overwhelm it. Because we do store enough information. And to give you an idea of how our 1.8 million plants are living and breathing. We actually have estimated 1.8 million plants throughout our 200 acres. >> At any moment. >> Yeah. >> That's how many plants they're tracking. And so, that realtime information is helping to make sure that they water the plants precisely with the amount that they need, that they're fertilizing them. And you were telling me about how the life of a plant, you're really maintaining that plant over the life of 12 months. So, if you make a mistake at any point along the line, then you're dealing with that in terms of their yield throughout the life of the plant. But you aggregate a lot of that data right there on site so that you're not having to send so much back to the cloud or to the core. And you do that a lot with VxRail as well as other technology you have on site. Right? >> Yeah. Our VxRail is the center of the core of how we process things. It allowed us to even expand, not even just for compute but GPUs for our AIs to do it. So, it's what we did. And it allowed us to mold how we do things. >> Alison, question for you, this sounds like a dynamic Edge the way that you described it, Keith, and you described it so eloquently. How does the partnership that Dell has with Nature Fresh, how is Dell enabling and accelerating and advancing its Edge solutions based on what you're seeing here and this need for realtime data analytics. >> Well, we spend a lot of time with customers like Keith and also across all kinds of other industries. And what we see is that they have a really common set of problems. They're all trying to derive realtime data right then and there so that they can make business decisions that impact their profitability and their competitiveness and all of their customers experience their product quality. And what we see a lot of times is that they have a common set of concerns around security. How to manage all of the hardware that they're implementing. And at the same time, they really want to be an enabler for the business outcome. So, people have creative ideas and they come to IT hoping for support in that journey. If you're managing everything as a snowflake, it becomes really hard and untenable. So, I think one of the things that we have as our mission is to help customers simplify their Edge so that they can be the enabler that's helping the business to transform and modernize. One of the things I really admire about Nature Fresh Farms is that they decided it from a full organization perspective. So, everybody from the operational technologists to the IT to the business decision makers and leaders at the company, they all decided to modernize together. And so, I think from a partnership perspective, too, that's one of the areas that we try to work with our customers on is really talking about total transformation and modernization. >> So, it sounds like, Keith, there was an appetite there as Alison was saying for a digital transformation and IT transformation. Talk to me a little bit about from a historical perspective, how old Nature Fresh is and how did you get the team on board sounds so eloquent. How did you get the team on board to go, "This is what we need to do and technology needs to fuel our business because it's going to impact the end user, consumer of our fabulous English cucumbers." >> So, it's actually really neat. Our owner, Pete Quiring, when he first started out he really wanted to embrace technology. And this is going back right to 2000. 2000 is when we first had our first planting. And he was actually a builder by nature. He actually was a builder and fabricator and he built greenhouses for other companies. But he said they're getting a little bigger and it's the labor amount, and the number of growers he needed for a range was getting exponentially higher. So, he was one of the first ones that said, "I'm going to put a computer right in the middle and control this 16 acre range." >> It's a pretty visionary view when you really think about it. He's trying to operate his farm. >> Yeah. >> Right? >> From one single computer. >> Operationalize it. It's really cool. >> So, it was neat concept and it was actually very much not a normal concept then. You go back to 2000, people weren't talking about internet of things. They didn't talk about automation. It wasn't there. And he basically said, this is the way to go. And unfortunately, he thought, "I'll sell it to somebody. I'll grow it, I'll put a product in for a year and I'll sell it." And then guess what happened? He didn't sell it. He says, "Ah, it's not big enough. I'll build another phase two." And then his comment to me was after he built the fourth phase, he says, "I guess I'm in the pepper and cucumber business now." And that's what he is just grown. But he said it was a great relationship we had and it's a great concept. And it even goes back, and I know we talked about before, is the computer allowed one senior grower to control large number of acreages. Where before, you'd need multiple growers that know exactly what to do, 'cause they'd have to manually change all these things. Now, from a single computer they can see everything that's going on in the entire range. >> You mentioned temperature and water. And this is kind of out of the blue question, but how have global circumstances and increases in the cost of fertilizer affected you? Or is that fertilizer that's not the type that you use in your operation? You have any insight into that. >> Yeah, everything has, the global change in cost has changed everybody. I don't think there's anybody that's exempt from it. The only thing that we've been able to do is we're able to control it. We don't need to rely on, I guess you can say, rely on the weather to help us do things. We can control how much is. And we recycle all of our water. So, what the plant doesn't absorb today for nutrients, we'll put it back in the system, sterilize- >> Wait, when you say 200 acres, it's all enclosed? >> Yep, 200 acres. >> 200 acres of greenhouse. >> Yep, at 200 acres of greenhouse entirely enclosed. >> Okay, okay. >> There is not a single portion of our greenhouse that's actually gets exposed to the outside. And if you ever see a picture of a greenhouse and you see one of these lovely plants here wet, that's not true. That's just a nice to make it look better. >> Spray it for the photo. >> Yeah, yeah. They spray it for the photo. But actually everything is dry. That water goes directly to the roots and we monitor how much we put in and how much comes out. And then we recycle it. We even get so much recycling, we run natural gas generators to heat the water to heat the greenhouse. We take the burn-off of natural gas, the CO2, and funnel that into the greenhouse to give it natural stimulant. >> So, this is starting to remind me of "The Martian", if you read the book or if you seen the movie. >> Oh yeah. >> But planting the potatoes inside the hab, in the habitat. >> Yeah, and you cut 'em in half and the little ones grow with that next ones. But yep, we recycle everything that we do. And that's what we do. >> That's amazing. >> And all that information at their fingertips. Really, I think what technology is enabling you all to do is focus on what you all are good at, which is focusing on your farming operation and not necessarily the technology. So, one of the places I think we deliver some value is in validating a lot of the solutions so that customers don't have to figure that all out themselves. >> Yeah, 'cause I'm not a security expert. I don't always understand the true depth of security, but that's where that relationship is. We need this and we need that. And we need a secure way to let those communicate. And we can hand that off to the experts at Dell and let us do what we do best. >> What have been some of the changes? In the last couple of years, we've seen the security elevate skyrocket to a board level conversation. Ransomware is a when, not if, we get attacked. How does Dell help you from a security perspective ensure that what you're able to do ultimately gets these products to market in a secure fashion so that all that data that you're generating isn't exposed? >> So, like I said, I agree 100%. It's not matter of if it's going to happen, it's when it's going to happen. So, one of the things that we've actually done is we started to use Dell solution, the PowerProtect Data Manager to back up our solutions on the VxRail. And it actually did twofold for us. It allowed us to do a lot of database manipulation from restores and stuff like that. But we're now actually even investing in the cyber recovery vault that gives us that protection. And it allows us to now look at how long will it take us to get back up. And we're doing some tests right now and the last test we did is we're able to get back up going as a company from a full attack in about an hour. >> Wow. >> We've actually done a few simulations now. So, we are able to recover what our core needs are within an hour. >> Which is a very different metric than simply saying, "Oh, the data's available." >> Yeah. >> No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You get zero credit for that. We need our operations to be back up and running. >> Even that hour is stressful to our growers. >> Sure. >> It's a variable within a variable because if you go in the summer when it's super hot, they'll be very stressed out within an hour. And then you got nice calm weather day, it's not as bad. But the weather can change in how they have to close the vents. And you're not just closing one vent, you're closing 32, 64, 100 acres of vents. And you're changing irrigation cycle. You need that automation to do it for you. >> How do you let people eat these things after all the care that goes into it? I'm going to feel mildly guilty for just about a second and a half before I sink my teeth into the cucumber. >> Oh, but that's the joy of it. That's one of the things that I love. >> This is serious. You're proud of this, aren't you? >> Oh yeah. You know what? There's not single person at Nature Fresh that isn't proud of what we do each day. We enjoy what we do and it's a culture that makes us strive to do better every day. It's just a great feeling to be there every day and to just enjoy what you're doing. >> And see, it's real. It's real. Isn't it great? Isn't it great to be a part of? My background's in economics. I think of these things in terms of driving efficiency. And this is just a beautiful thing. When you control those variables, you leverage the technology and what's the end result? You're essentially uplifting everything in the world. >> Yeah, so true. >> Not to get philosophical on ya. >> Right, and feeding the world, especially during the last couple of years, that access. One of the things we learned in the pandemic, one of many, is access to realtime data isn't a nice to have anymore, it's essential. >> Yeah. >> So true. >> And so, the story that you're telling here, the impact to the growers, enabling them to focus what you were saying, Alison, on what they do best, Dell Technologies, VxRail enabling Nature Fresh to focus on what it does best, ultimately delivering food to people during the last couple of years was huge. >> Yeah, and allowing even at a reduced labor number for us to keep growing and doing things by automation. We still need labor in the greenhouse to pick, prune and do stuff like that. But again, we're looking into technologies to help offset that. But again, it was one of those things that we just had to be efficient at everything we do. And we drove that through everything we have. >> Well, and you guys haven't stopped. Right? >> Yeah. >> You're continuing to figure out, he was just telling me a little bit about what their next step is. So, just getting more and more accurate, more intelligence as they grow. So, it's the possibilities, that's what's exciting to me about Edge. I think this example is great, 'cause it's so relatable. Everybody can understand what the Edge is in this context. And it's really driven by the fact that you can put compute into so many different places now. It's more though a matter about how do you gather it? How do you do it in a way where you can actually understand and glean information and insights from it? And that, I think, is what you all are really focused on. >> Yeah, yeah, information is key. >> It is key. What's next from Dell's perspective for Edge computing technologies? what are some of the things you guys got cooking? >> Yeah, we're going to try to help customers to continue to simplify their Edge. So, to deliver those insights that they need where they need them, to do it in a really secure way. I know we talked about security but to do it in really a zero trust fashion. And to help customers to do it also in a zero IT fashion. Because in this example, it's the growers that are out there in the fields, or in your greenhouse in this sense, helping people that aren't necessarily IT specialists to be able to get all the benefits from the technology. >> So, do you think that VxRail technology could be used to optimize say the production of olive oil? I'm looking here and we have the makings of a pretty good salad. >> Yeah, you do. >> There you go. >> It obviously doesn't just apply to food production. >> Yeah, it really goes across the board. Whether we're talking about manufacturing or retail or energy, putting technology right there at the point of data creation and being able to figure out how to manage that inflow of data, be able to figure out which portion of the data is really valuable, and then driving decisions and being able to understand and intelligently make decisions for your business based on that data is really important. >> Keith, what's next? Give us, as we wrap out this segment here, what's next from a technology perspective? You mentioned a couple things you're looking into. >> Yeah, so I think automation is really going to change the way we do things. And automation within the greenhouse is truly just becoming a reality. It's funny we go back and we say, can we do this stuff? And now it's like, oh, even three years ago, I don't think we were quite ready for it, but now it's right there. So, I see us doing a lot more work with vendors like Dell and to do automatic picking, automatic scouting, all that stuff that we do by hand, do it in an automated fashion. >> And at scale, right? >> Yeah. >> That's the important part. I think when you're managing a snowflake, you can only do it to some level, and to be able to automate it and to be able to break down those silos, you're going to be able to apply it to so many parts of your business. >> Yeah, wide applicability. Guys, thank you so much for joining us, sharing the Nature Fresh, Dell story, bringing us actual product. This is so exciting. We congratulate you on how you're leveraging technology in a really innovative way. And we look forward to hearing what's next. Maybe we'll see you at Dell Technologies World next year. >> Sounds great. >> Sounds great. >> Thank you so much. >> All right, our pleasure, guys. >> Thank you. >> For our guests and Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live from VMware Explorer 2022. Dave and I will be right back with our next guest. So, stick around. (light upbeat music)

>>Welcome to the cubes dock, our main stage coverage here at DockerCon 2022. I'm John furrier, host of the cube. We're here with cube alumni, a partner scene, the senior director of product and the developer platform at Google cloud, a partner. Great to see you. It's been a while how's things >>Great to see you, John. Thanks for having me. >>So obviously we've covered a lot about the Google's history and open source. If you go back, I mean go back generation 2000, it all started, it continues to continue to thrive the SDO, all the different projects you guys are around the future of containers and serverless all there. Give us the update. Why are customers choosing Google cloud? We're here at Docker con what's the big update from Google cloud's perspective from a, from a developer perspective? >>Well, John, uh, Google cloud has been, uh, the early cloud on containers, um, and by all measures from, we can, from what we can see, you know, it is the preferred cloud for container native workloads. Um, I think why our customers choosing cloud there's a, there's a few different reasons. Um, definitely one of the reasons is because it is a flexible and open platform. And I think that that is, uh, distinctive about Google cloud, as you mentioned, uh, many, many open source projects coming from Google and Google cloud in particular over the last 20 years, um, spanning, um, languages, um, you know, obviously, uh, the go programming language all the way to of course, Kubernetes. Um, and then, uh, more recently Isto and, uh, K native and many more, uh Tecton is one of the leading projects as well. Um, in the C I C D space. >>So I think that, uh, history is something that really attracts the developer population. It's also very, very important for enterprises that are, uh, modernizing and looking to accelerate their, uh, developer productivity. So that's been one major reason. I think the second major reason is really the security aspect, um, of the developer tool chain and in particular related to open source secure well, and I think the third, uh, reason that comes out, um, quite frequently when we, when we talk to our enterprise customers is Google cloud is unique in the multi-cloud space. Um, you know, one of the first, I think probably the first and, uh, only cloud provider to have a very strong multi-cloud strategy, uh, and that stems from the open source roots, but also, you know, uh, bringing more than just, uh, compute, bringing many of our data services also, uh, to the multi-cloud space. I think that's, those are the three reasons why, uh, developers often choose Google cloud. >>Yeah. And you see the multi-cloud also in a distributed computing environment. It's, I mean, multi-cloud is basically distributed computing where you've got hyperscalers and then edges emerging very quickly. Of course, we've talked about that in the past, on previous interviews, how security at the edge software opensource all coming together. Again, Kubernetes launched by Google contributed to the open source world that everyone knows that, or may not know that. Um, but, but that's key. Where do you see the container position come in? Because at the end of the day, containers is standard and now you've got Kubernetes and other parts wrapped around it. Where's container technology going in the coming, coming in the future years. Is it gonna be invisible? Is it gonna be programmable? What's your vision on that? >>This is an excellent question. And you're exactly right. You're seeing containers become mainstream. And some of the latest, uh, state of the, the state of the cloud business report, you're seeing, you know, 80% of enterprises, um, having some form of a container program and I've been involved in this industry since the very early days. So this is something we've been predicting, um, and it is happening even faster than expected. So that's becoming very mainstream, which is extremely exciting for us. Now you ask, you know, what is the future and what is the evolution of it? Um, so, and, and I think, uh, this is the right question because, um, you're seeing a lot of the future actually on Google cloud. Um, we're, we've won the, uh, Gartner and Forester quadrants as far as leader quadrants in, uh, you know, container offerings. And that's not just Kubernetes, of course, uh, Google Kubernetes engine has been, has been the leading area, but there's a whole host of offerings around that. >>Um, in particular I'd like to point out serverless containers with cloud run, as well as the entire DevOps pipeline around containers. And that's a big topic in the industry right now. It brings in, uh, security as related to, uh, developers. And then of course, uh, you know, providing an automated, secure pipeline for DevOps, um, as it relates to containers, we've had several announcements and, and, and a lot of success in this space. Uh, I, I can go through some of these things with cloud run, which is our serverless container offering. We've seen, uh, four X growth in adoption and, uh, consumption of that service last year in 2021. And that is continuing, uh, so it's very, very healthy and it is very much the reason customers are adopting. It is because they don't need to learn a lot of the underlying infrastructure. They don't need to manage any of the underlying infrastructure. >>There isn't necessarily a cluster to manage all of that is taken care of, uh, for them. And they can focus on their application. They can actually use, uh, make use of the benefits of containers, such as, uh, you know, scalability, um, such as, um, application awareness, uh, and such as a lot of the integrated tool chain for, uh, delivery for application delivery, right from your source repository into production, and then being able to bring out new versions of your application, test them, and then roll over. So this is kind of the new, uh, uh, generation I think is very much tied to the pandemic and what's happening in the world post pandemic, where developers are extremely important, developer productivity and, and fact developer work, life balance is extremely >>Important. Yeah. And I, and I think also one of the things that we're seeing to piggyback on that last comment, as well as your other points is developers have always been pulled to the front lines even 10 years ago. You saw the trend towards getting more closer to the customer now with cloud and edge and with open source being the innovation equation where entrepreneurs are starting projects, companies are starting projects, then they gotta get commercialized. So supply chain is a big discussion. We're hearing at Docker con we're hearing about shifting left of security data as code. You start to see the developer on the front lines in all aspects of this, and they want, they want security, they want efficiency, they want things in the pipeline. They don't wanna have to shift left, then come back again. So again, they starting to see this kind of productivity drive the business behavior of the companies cuz that's their, the value partners. That's the application side of cloud native. What's your thoughts for the developers who are doing that? What's in it for them with Google cloud? Why, why are you important to them? >>Yeah, and I think, uh, John, this is where, uh, developers, uh, tend to prefer Google cloud. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is, you know, we are very much, uh, centered around developers. Um, you know, my job is, uh, you know, Google cloud developer platform. And, uh, our goal is to provide ease of use the easiest cloud for developers. Something that is, um, you know, really allows them to get their work done quickly. Developers want to be exposed to the best technology. They want to be able to be exposed to it in a way that that integrates into their workflow that integrates into the tools that they're used to, um, and allows them to get their job done quickly. And so a lot of what we're doing in, in the developer space is providing an integrated stack. Um, you know, whether you're building a web application or you're building a mobile application, or you're trying to do data analytics, uh, Google cloud should be a place that you come to. >>That's easy for you to use, to get the job done. Um, and, and, and the security aspect is not something that developers like to deal with. They want that to be taken care of for them, um, troubleshooting as well, you know, troubleshooting and, and upgrading. And all of that is something that they wanna be taken care of. And so that is something that we're baking into the platform. And you'll see that in a lot of our tooling, um, you know, the build process, uh, we're providing salsa compliance, um, and, and build Providence for the security teams to be able to audit. But it's not something that the, that the developer needs to take care of. It's something that is just part of the, the build process built into, uh, say, uh, cloud run or GK built into our compute options for making >>It for them, making it easy, simple, and reduce the steps it takes to get the job done. So great stuff par, great to see you in the last 30 seconds, we have left. Just give a quick commercial for what the key projects are in open source. You're proud of that people should pay attention to, we got CubeCon coming up, uh, in, uh, Europe and north America. What are some of the successes that you like to point out? >>Well, I really encourage, uh, developers to go and take a look, a new look at, go go 1.8, add support for generics. It should open up a brand new set of applications. So I definitely encourage folks to, to take a look at that, um, of, of course ISEO and service mesh. As, as your container footprint grows, you have many microservices looking at service mesh, uh, extremely important, and it also allows you to get to that SRE type of, um, uh, DevOps model where, you know, you're securing your services. You're also, uh, being able to monitor and control, uh, service usage. And then the last one is of course Tecton and this is where secure software supply chain comes up. Part I'll >>Mention that. I wish I had 20 minutes. Love chatting with you. We'll catch up with you later on the cube we're here at DockerCon. Thanks for your time. Back to the DockerCon main stages of the cube. I'm John farrier, back to the main stage for more coverage.

(bright upbeat music) >> Hi, everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. This segment in this session is about expansion into Asia Pacific and Europe for Unstoppable Domains. It's a hot startup in the Web3 area, really creating a new innovation around NFTs, crypto, single sign-on, and digital identity, giving users the power like they should. We've got two great guests, Sajjad Rehman, Head of Europe, and Nilkanth, known as Nil, Iyer, head of Asia. Sajjad, Nil, welcome to this CUBE, and let's talk about the expansion. It's not really an expansion, the global economy is global, but showcase here about Unstoppables going to Europe. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for inviting us. >> Thanks John, for inviting us. >> So we're living in a global world, obviously, crypto, blockchain, decentralized applications. You're starting to see mainstream adoption, which means the shift is happening. There are more apps coming, and it means more infrastructure, and things got to get easier, right? So, reduce the steps it takes to do stuff, makes the wallets better, give people more secure access and control of their data. This is what Unstoppable is all about. You guys are in the middle of it, you're on this wave. What is the potential of Web3 with Unstoppable, and in general, in Asia and in Europe? >> I can go first. So, now, let's look at the Asia market. I mean, typically, we see the US market, the Europe markets, for typical Web 2.0 software and infrastructure is definitely the larger markets, with US typically accounting for about 60%, and Europe about 20 to 30%, and Asia has always been small. But we see in this whole world of blockchain, crypto, Web 3.0, Asia already has about 160 million users. They have more than 35 local exchanges. And if you really look at the number of countries, in terms of the rate of adoption, many of the Asian countries, which probably you'd have never even heard of, like Vietnam, actually topping the list, right? One of the reasons that this is happening, again, if you go through the Asian Development Bank's latest report, you have these Gen Zs and millennials, of that's 50% of the Asian population. And if you really look at 50% of the Asian population, that's 1.1 billion people out of the total, 1.8 billion Gen Z and millennials that you have have in the world. And these folks are digitally native, they're people, in fact, the Gen Zs are mobile first, and millennials, many of us, like myself, at least, are people who are digital, and 20% of the world's economy is currently digital, and the rest, 40 to 50%, which is going to happen in the Web 3.0 world, and that's going to be driven by millennials and Gen Zs. I think that's why this whole space is so exciting, because it's being driven by the users, by the new generation. I mean, that's my broad thought on this whole thing. >> Before we get get this started, I want to just comment, Asia, also, in other areas where mobile first came, you had the younger demographics absolutely driving the change, because they're like, "Well, I don't want the old way." They go right from scratch at the beginning, they're using the technologies. That has propelled the crypto world. I mean, that is absolutely true. Everyone's kind of seeing that. And that's now influencing some of these developer nations, like say, in Europe, for instance, and even North America, I think Europe's more advanced than North America, in my opinion, but we'll get to that. Oh, so potential in Europe. Sajjad, take us through your thoughts on... As head of Europe, for our audience. >> Absolutely, so, Nil's right. I think Asia is way ahead in terms of Gen Z user adopting crypto, Europe is actually a distant second, but it's surprising to note that Europe actually has the highest transactional activity in crypto over the last year and a half. And if you dig a bit deeper, I'd say, arguably, for Europe, I think the opportunity in Web3 is perhaps the largest. And then perhaps it can mean the most for Europe. Europe, for the last decade, has been trailing behind Asia and North America, when it comes to birthing unicorns, and I think Web3 can provide a StepChain opportunity. This belief, for me, stems from the fact that Europe's policy, right, like, for example, GDPR, is focused on enabling your data ownership. And I think I recently read a very good paper out of Stanford, by Patrick Henson. He speaks about Web3 being the best part, here, for Europe enabling patient sovereignty. So what that means is users control the data, they're paying to enter it, and they harness the value from it. And on one hand, while Europe is enabling that regulation, that's entered in that code, Web3 actually brings it into action. So I think with more enablement, better regulation, and we'll see more hubs, like the Crypto Valley in Switzerland pop up, that will bring, I think, I'd rather be careful, better to say, not over-regulation, the right regulation. We can expect more in prop capital, more builder talent, that then drives more adoption. So I think the prospects for Europe in terms of usage, as well as builders, are quite bright. >> Yeah, and I think, also, you guys are in areas where the cultural shift is so dramatic. You mentioned Asia, the demographics, even the entrepreneurial culture in Europe right now is booming. You look at all the venture-backed startups, and the young generation building companies! And again, cloud computing is a big part of that, obviously. But look at, compared to the United States, you go back 15 years ago, Europe was way behind, on the startup scene. Now it's booming and pumping on all cylinders. And it kind of points at this cultural shift. It's almost like a generational... It's like the digital hippies changing the world. The Web3, it's kind of, "I don't want to be Web2, Web2 is so old, I don't want to do that." And then it's all because it's changing, right? And there are things inadequate with Web2, on the naming system. Also the arbitrage around fake information, bots, users being manipulated, and also merchandised and monetized through these portals. Okay, that's kind of ending. So talk about the dynamic of Web2, 3, at those areas. You've got users and you've got companies, who build applications. They're going to shift and be forced, in our opinion, and I want to get your reaction to that. Do you think applications are going to have to be Web3, or users will reject them? >> Yeah, I think that I'll jump in and add to there in Nil's part. I think the Web3 is built on three principles, right? They're decentralization, ownership, and composability. And I think these are not binary. So if I look further on in the future, I don't see a future where you have just Web3. I think there's going to be coexistence or cooperation between Web2 companies, Web3, building bridges. I think there's going to be... There's a sliding scale to decentralization, versus centralization. Similarly, ownership. And I think users will find what works best for them in different contexts. I think what Unstoppable is doing is essentially providing the identity system for Web3, and that's way more powerful when it comes to being built on blockchains, than with the naming system we had for Web2, right? The identity system can serve the purpose of taking a user's personal identifier, password, blockchain, domain name, and attaching all kinds of attributes that define who you are, both in the physical and digital world, and filling out information that you can transact on the basis of. And I think the users would, as we go to a no-code and low-code future, right, where in Web2, more of the users were essentially consumers, or readers of the internet. And in Web3, with more low-code and no-code technology platforms taking shape and getting proliferation, you would see more users being actually writers, publishers, and developers on the internet. And they would value owning their data, and to harness the most amount of value from it. So I think that's the power concept, and I think that's the future I see, where Web3 will dominate. Nil, what do you think? >> Well, I think you put it very, very nicely, Sajjad. I think you covered most of the points, I think. But I'm seeing a lot of different things that are happening at the ground. I think a lot of the governments, a lot of the Web 2.0 players, the traditional banks, these guys are not sitting quiet on the blockchain space. There are a lot of pilots happening in the blockchain space, right? I mean, I can give you real life examples. I mean, one of the biggest examples is in my home state of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is. They actually partnered with Polygon (MATIC), right? Actually built a private blockchain-based capability to kind of deliver your COVID vaccination certificates with the QR code, right? And that's the only way they could deliver that kind of volumes in that short a time, with the kind of user control, the user control the user has on the data. That could only be possible because of blockchain. Of course, it's still private, because it's healthcare data, they still want to keep it, something that's not fully on a blockchain. But that is something. Similarly, there is a consortium of about nine banks who have actually trying to work on making things like remittances or trade finance much, much easier. I mean, remittances through a traditional, Web 2.0 world is very, very costly. And especially in the Asian countries, a lot of people from Southeast Asia work across the world and send back money home. It's a very costly and a time-taking affair. So they have actually partnered and built a blockchain-based capability, again, in a pilot stage, to kind of reduce the transaction costs. For example, if you just look at the trade finance days where there are 14 million traders, who do 2.4, 5 trillion dollars, of transaction, they were able to actually reduce the time that it takes from eight to nine days, to about two to three days. And so, to add on to what you're saying, I think these two worlds are going to meet, and meet very soon. And when they meet, what they need is a single digital identity, a human-readable way of being able to send and receive and do commerce. I think that's where I see Unstoppable Domains, very nicely positioned to be able to integrate these two worlds, so that's my thought on all the logistics. >> That was a great point. I was going to get into which industries, and kind of what areas, you see in your geographies. But it's a good point about saving time. I like how you brought that up, because in these new waves, you either got to reduce the steps it takes to do something, or save time, make it easy. And this is the successful formula, in anything, whether it's an app or UI or whatever, but what specifically are they doing in your areas? And what about Unstoppable are they attracted to? Is it because of the identity? Is it because of the apps? Is it because of the single sign-on? What is the reason that they're leaning in, and unpacking this further into their pilots? >> Sajjad, do you want to take that? >> Yeah, absolutely, man. >> Because. >> Yeah, I'm happy. Please jump in if you want. So I think, and let me clarify the question, John, you're talking about Web2 companies, looking to partner in software, or potential partnerships, right? >> Yeah, what are they seeing, and what are they seeing as the value that these pilots we heard from Nilkanth around the financial industry? And obviously, gaming's one, it's obvious. Huge: financial, healthcare, I mean, these are obviously verticals that are going to be heavily impacted in a positive way. What are they seeing as value? What's getting them motivated to do these pilots? Why are they jumping in, with both feet, if you will, on these projects? Is it because it's saving money, is it time, or both, is it ease of use, is it the user's expectations? Trying to tease out how you guys see that evolving. >> Yeah, yeah, I think... This is still, the space is, the movement is going very fast, but I think the space is still young. And right now, a lot of these companies are seeing the potential that Web3 offers. And I think the key, key dimensions, right, composability, decentralization, and ownership. So I think the key thing I'm seeing in EU is these Web2 companies seeing the momentum and looking to harness that by enabling bridges to Web3. One of the key trends in Europe has been Fintech, I think over the last five to six years, we have the Revolut, N26, e-TOTAL creating platforms, new banks and super finance, super apps rising to the forefront. And they are all enabling, or also connecting a bridge with Web3 in some shape and form, either enabling creating of crypto, some are launching their own native wallets, and these are, essentially, ways that they can, one, attract users. So the Gen Z who are looking for more friction in finance, to get them on board, but also to look to enable more adoption by their own users, who are not using these services that potentially create new revenue streams, and create allocation of capital that they could not access, to have access to otherwise. So I think that's one trend I'm seeing over here. I think the other key trend is, in Europe, at least, has been games. And again, dead links or damaged, web creators would call the metaverse. So a lot of game companies are looking to step into Game Fire, which is, again, a completely different business model to what traditional game companies used to use. Similarly, metaverse is where again, ownership creates a different business model and they see that users and gamers of the future would want to engage with that, versus just being monetized on the basis of subscription or ads. And I think that's something that they're becoming aware of, and moving quickly in the space, launching their own metaverses, or game by applications. Or creating interoperability with these decentralized applications. >> You know, I wanted to get into this point, but I was going to ask about the community empowerment piece of this equation, 'cause digital identity is about the user's identity, which implies they're part of a community. Web3 is very community-centric. But you mentioned gaming, I mean, people who have been watching the gaming world, like ourselves, know that communities and marketplaces have been very active for years, many years, over 15 years. Community, games, currency, in-game activity, has been out there, right, but siloed within the games themselves. So now, it seems that that paradigm's coming in and empowering all communities. Is this something that you guys see and agree with? And if so, what's different about that? How are communities being empowered? I guess that's the question. >> Yeah, I can maybe take that, Sajjad. So, I mean, I must have heard of Axie Infinity, I mean, 40% of their user base is in Vietnam. And the average earning that a person makes in a month, out of playing this game, is more than the national, daily or minimum wage that is there, right? So that's the kind of potential. Actually, going back, as a combination of actually answering your earlier question, and I think over and above what Sajjad said, what's very unique in Asia is we still have a lot of unbanked people, right? So if you really look at the total unbanked population of the world, it's 1.6 billion, and 24% of that is in Asia, so almost 375 million people are in Asia. So these are people who do not have access to finance or credit. So the whole idea is, how do we get these people on to a banking system, onto peer-to-peer lending, or peer-to-peer finance kind of capabilities. I think, again, Unstoppable Domains kind of helps in that, right? If you just look at the pure Web 3.0 world, and the complex, technical way in which money or other crypto is transferred from one wallet to the other, it's very difficult for an unbanked person who probably cannot even do basic communication, cannot read and write, to actually be able to do it. But something that's very human-readable, something that's very easy for him to understand, something that's visual, something that he can see on his mobile. With 2G network, we are not talking of... The world is talking about 5G, but there are parts of Asia, which are still using 2G and 2.5G kind of network, right? So I think that's one key use case. I think the banks are trying to solve because for them, this is a whole new customer segment. And, sorry, I actually went back a little bit, to your earlier question, but coming to this whole community-building, right? So on March 8th, we're launching something called this Women of Web3, or, oh, that is WoW3, right? This is basically to, again, empower. So if you, again, look at Asia, women need a lot of training, they need a lot of enablement, for them to be able to leverage the power of Web 3.0. I can talk about India, of course, being from India. A lot of the women do not... They do all the small businesses, but the money is taken by middlemen, or taken by their husbands. With Web 3.0, fundamentally, the money comes to them, because that's what they use to educate their children. And it's the same thing in a lot of other Southeast Asian countries as well. I think it's very important to build those communities, communities of women entrepreneurs. I think this is a big opportunity to really get the section of society, which probably will take 10 more years, if we go through the normal Web1 to Web 2.0 progression, where the power is with corporations, and not with the individuals. >> And that's a great announcement, by the way, you mentioned the $10 million worth of domains being issued out for... This is democratization, it's what it's all about. Again, this is a new revolution. I mean, this is a new thing. So great stuff, more education, more learning. And going to get the banks up and running, get those people banking, 'cause once they're banking, they get wallets, right? So they need the wallets. So let's get to the real meat here. You guys are in the territory, Europe and Asia, where there's a lot of wallets. There's a lot of exchanges, 'cause that's... They're not in the United States. There's a few of them there, but most of them outside the United States. And you've got a lot of dApps developing, decentralized applications, okay? So you got all this coming together in your territory. What's the strategy, how you going to attack that? You got the wallets, you got the exchanges, and you got D applications. DApps. >> Yeah, I'm happy to (indistinct). So I think, and just quickly there, I think one point is, and Nil really expressed it beautifully, is finding inclusion. That is something that has inspired me, how Web3 can make the internet more inclusive. That inspired my move here. Yeah, I think, for us, I think we are at the base start when it comes to Europe, right? And the key focus, in terms of our approach in Europe would be that, we want to do two things. One, we want to increase the utility of these domain names. And the second thing is, we will invite proliferation with our partners. So when I speak about utility, I think utility is when you have a universal identifier, which is a domain name, and then you have these attributes around it, right? What then defines your identity. So in the context, in Europe, we would look to find partners to help us enrich that identity around the domain name. And that adds value for users, in terms of acquiring these domains and new clients. And on the other end, when it comes to proliferation, I think it's about working with all those crypto, and crypto and Web3, Web3 participants as well as Web3-adjacent companies, brands, and services, who can help us educate current and future, and upcoming Web3 users about the utility of domain names, and help us onboard them to the decentralized internet. So I think that's going to be the general focus. I think the key is that, as, oh, and hopefully, we'll be having one, overarching regulation, EU, that allowed us to do this at a vision level. But I would say I think it's going to be tackling it country by country, identifying countries where there's deeper penetration for Web3, and then making sure that we are partnered with local, trusted partners that are already developing for local communities there. So, yeah, that's my view and Nil, I believe those are wants in, for Asia. >> Oh, I think, yeah, so again, in Asia, one is you have a significant part of humanity living in Asia, right? So obviously, all the other challenges and the opportunities that we talk about, I think the first area of focus would be educating the people on the massive opportunity that they have, and if you're able to get them in early, I think it's great for them as well, right? Because by the time governments, regulations, large banking, financial companies move, but if you can get the larger population into this whole space, it's good for them, so they are first movers in that space. I think we are doing a lot of things on this, worldwide. I think we've done more than 100 past podcasts, just educating people on what is Web 3.0, what are NFT domains? What is DeFi, and so on and so forth. I think it would need some bit of localization, customization, in Asia, given that India itself has about 22 languages. And then there are the other countries which, each of them with their own local languages and syntax, semantics and all those things, right? So I think that that is very important, to be able to disseminate the knowledge, although it's global, but I think to get the grassroot people to understand the opportunity, I think it would need some amount of work there. I think also building communities, I think, John, you talked about communities, so did Sajjad talk about communities. I think it's very important to build communities, because communities create ideation. It talks about... People share their challenges, so that people don't repeat the same mistakes. So I think it's very important to build communities based on interest. I think we all know in the technology world, you can build communities around Elegram, Telegram, Discord, Twitter spaces, and all those things. But, again, when you're talking of financial inclusion, you're talking of a different kind of community-building. I think that that would be important. And then of course I will kind of, primarily from a company perspective, I think getting the 35 odd exchanges in Asia, the wallets to partner with us. Just as an example, MATIC. They had, until September of last year, about 3,500 apps. In just one quarter, it doubled to 7,000 dApps on their platform. But that is the pace, or the speed of innovation that we are seeing on this whole 3.0 space. I think it's very important to get those key partners, Who are developing those dApps. See the power of single sign-on, having a human-readable, digital identity, being able to seamlessly transfer all your assets, digital assets, across multiple cryptos, across multiple NFT marketplaces, and so on and so forth. >> Yeah, and I think the whole community thing, too, is also you seeing the communities being part of, certainly in the entertainment area, and the artistry, creator world, the users are art of the community, they own it, too. So it goes both ways, but this brings up the marketplace, too, as well, because you guys have the opportunity to have trust built into the software layer, right? So now you can keep the reputation data. You can be anonymous, but it's trustworthy, versus bots, which we all know bots can be killed and then started again with... And no one knows what the tagalong has been around. So the whole inadequacy of Web2, which is just growing pains, right? This is what it evolution looks like, next abstraction layer. So I love that vibe. How advanced do you think that thinking is, where people are saying, Hey, we need this abstraction layer. We need this digital identity. We need to start expanding our applications so that the users can move across these and break down those silos where the data is, 'cause that's... This is like the nerd problem, right? It's the data silos that are holding it back. What's your guys' reaction to that? The killing the silos and making it horizontally scalable? >> Yeah, I think it's a nerd problem. It is a problem of people who understand technology. It's a problem of a lot of the people in the business who want to compete effectively against those giants, which are holding all the data. So I think those are the people who will innovate and move. Again, coming back to financial inclusion, coming back to the unbanked, those guys just want to do their business. They want to live their daily life. I think that's not where you'll see... You will see innovation in a different form, but they're not going to disrupt the disrupters. I think that would be the people, Fintechs, I think they would be the first to move on to something like that. I mean, that's my humble opinion. >> Sajjad, you heard. >> Yeah, I think- >> Go ahead. >> I mean, absolutely. I think, I mean, I touched on creators, right? So, like I said earlier, right, we are heading to a future where more people will be creators on the internet. Whether you're publishing, writing something, you're creating video content, and that means that they have data they own, but that's their data, they bring it to the internet. That's more powerful, more useful, and they should be able to transact on that basis. So I think people are recognizing that, and they will increasingly look to do so. And as they do that, they would want these systems that enable them to hold permission to their data. They will want to be able to control what their permission and what they want to provide, dApp. And at the end of the day, these applications have to work backwards from customers, and the customer's looking for that. That's where... That's what they will build. >> The users want freedom. They want to be able to be connected, and not be restricted. They want to freely move around the global internet and do whatever they want with the friends and apps that they want to consume, and not feel arbitraged. They don't want to feel like they're kind of nailed into a walled garden and stuck there and having to come back. It's the new normal. >> They don't want to be the product, right, so. >> They don't want to be the product. Gentlemen, great to have you on, great conversation. We're going to continue this later. Certainly want to keep the updates coming. You guys are in a very hot area in Europe and Asia Pacific. That's where a lot of the action is happening. We see the entrepreneurial activity, the business transformation, certainly with the new paradigm shift, and this big wave that's coming. It's here, it's mainstream. Thanks for coming on and sharing your insights. Appreciate it. >> Thanks, John. >> Thanks, John, Thanks for the opportunity, have a good day. >> Okay, okay, great conversation. All the action's moving and happening real fast. This is theCUBE Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (contemplative music)

>>Everyone welcome back to the cubes, unstoppable domains partner showcase. I'm John furrier, host of the cube. This segment, this session is about expansion into Asia, Pacific and Europe for unstoppable domains. It's a hot start-up in the web three area, really creating a new innovation around NFTs crypto, single sign-on and digital identity giving users the power like they should. We've got two great guests, the Jod ramen head of Europe and Neil Katz on is Neil I, our head of Asia. So John Neil, welcome to this cube and let's talk about the expansion. It's not really expansion. The global economy is global, but showcase here about unstoppable was going to Europe. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks John. >>So we're living in a global world, obviously crypto blockchain, decentralized applications. You're starting to see mainstream adoption, which means the shift is happening. There are more apps coming and it means more infrastructure and things got to get easier, right? So, you know, reduce the steps it takes to do stuff makes the Wallace better. Give people more secure. Access can control the day. This is what unstoppable is all about. You guys are in the middle of it. You're on this wave. What is the potential of web three with unstoppable and in general in Asia and in Europe, >>I can go first. So now let's look at the Asia market. I mean, typically we see the us market, the Europe markets for typical web two.zero software and infrastructure is definitely the larger markets with us, typically accounting for about 60% and you know, Europe about 20 to 30% and Asia has always been small, but we see in this whole world of blockchain, crypto web three.zero Asia already has about 116 million users. They have more than 35 local exchanges. And if you really look at the number of countries in terms of the rate of adoption of many of the Asian countries, which probably would have never even heard of like Vietnam actually topping the list, right? One of the reasons that this is happening again, if you go through the Asian development banks, latest report, you have these gen Z's and millennials of that's 50% of the Asian population. >>And if you really look at 50% of the Asian population, that's 1.1 billion people out of the total, 1.8 billion gen Z and millennials that you have in the world. And these folks are digital native they're people. In fact, our mobile first and millennials. Many of us like myself at least are people who are digital. And 20% of the world's economy is currently digital and the rest 40 to 50%, which is going to happen. It's going to happen in the web three dot four world. And that's going to be driven by millennials and gen Zs. I think that's why this whole space is so exciting because it's being driven by the users by the new generation. I mean, that's my broad thought on this little thing. >>I want to just comment on Asia also in the other areas where mobile first came, you had the end, the younger demographics, absolutely driving the change because they're like, well, I don't want the old way. They've got, they can write, write from scratch at the beginning, they're using the technologies that has propelled the crypto world. I mean, that is absolutely true. Everyone's kind of seeing that. And that's now influencing some of these developer nations, like say in Europe, for instance, and even north America, I think years more advanced than north America in my opinion, but we'll get to that. Oh, so potential in Europe. So John could take us through your thoughts on as head of Europe for >>Absolutely so news, right? I think the issue is way ahead in terms of gen Z user golfing, critical Jordan was actually a distant second, but it's a rising tool that actually has the highest transaction. Like they will be retro or last year and a half. And you know, if you dig a bit deeper, I'd say, arguably, I think the opportunity in web three is perhaps the largest and perhaps it can mean the most withdrawal Jora for the last decade has been trailing behind Asia and north America when it comes to. But I think unicorns and I think that we can provide a step change opportunity. This belief for me, stems from the fact that Jordan on a seat, right? Like for example, GDPR is focused on enabling real data ownership. And I think I recently read a paper out of Stanford by Patrick Henson speaks about being the best bot paper, enabling patient sovereign. >>So what that means is you just spend tool the data they've been to the internet and they harness the value from it. And on one hand while, you know, verb is enabling that regulation that could bring that forward when she actually brings it into action. So I think with what enablement better regulation, and we'll see more hubs like the crypto valley in Switzerland popup that we're bring, I think normal regulation, the right regulation. We can expect what info capital for builder talent that then drives more adoption. So I think the prospects for Europe in terms of usage, as well as builders are quite right. >>Yeah. And I think also you guys are in areas where the cultural shift is so dramatic. You mentioned Asia that they have demographics. Even the entrepreneurial culture in Europe right now is booming. You look at all the venture back startups and the young generation building companies. And again, cloud computing is a big part of that as obviously. But look at compared to the United States, you go back 15 years ago, Europe was way behind on, on the startup scene. Now it's booming and pumping on all cylinders and kind of points at this cultural shift. It's almost like a generational, you know, it's like the digital hippies changing the world. You know, they're web three. It's kinda, I don't want to be web to web two is so old. You know, I don't want to do that. And it's all because it's changing, right? And there are things that inadequate with web two on the naming system, also the arbitrage around fake information, bots users being manipulated, and also, you know, merchandise and monetize through these portals. And that's, that's kind of ending. So talk about the dynamic of web two, three at those areas. You've got users and you've got companies who build applications, they're going to shift and be forced in our opinion, and want to get a reaction to that. Do you think applications are going to have to be web three or users will reject them? >>Yeah, I think I jumped in and I'm not Neil's sport. I think the, the back is built on Q principles, right? Decentralization or ship and compostability. And I think these are binary. So, you know, if, if I look far down the future, I don't see a future where you have just whipped V I think there's gonna be a coexistence or cooperation between bamboo companies. I think there's going to be a sliding scale to decentralization versus PlayStation similarity, you know, ownership. And I think users will find what works best for them in different contexts. I think what installed this link is potentially providing the identity system correctly and that's, we were powerful that account being better on blockchains, then the naming system we had for web, right? The, the identity system serve focus, Paul, taking that you as a personal identifier that, so blockchain to me mean they're attaching all kinds of attributes that define who you are, the physical and digital world, and then filling out information that you can transact on the basis of. And I think that users would as the or future, right with, you know, InBev to more of the users were essentially consumers or readers of the internet and in bed with more technology platforms taking shape and getting proliferation that you would see more than just being actually writers, publishers, and developers on the internet. And they were value owning the data and to harness the most model valuable. So I think a basketball with bonds, and I think that's the future. I see that >>Well, I think you put it very, very nicely. So the other thing you've covered most of the points, I think, but I'm seeing a lot of different things that are happening in the ground. I think a lot of the garments, a lot of the web two.zero players, the traditional banks, these guys are not sitting quiet on the blockchain space. There's a lot of pilots happening in the blockchain space, right? I'm mean I can give you real life examples. I mean, one of the biggest example is in my home state of Maharashtra and Mumbai is they actually partnered with the polygon MarTech, right? Actually built a private blockchain based capability to, you know, kind of deliver your COVID vaccination certificates with the QR code it. And that's the only way they could deliver that kind of volumes in that shorter time. But the kind of user control the user control the user has on the data that could only be possible because of blockchain. >>Of course, it's still private because it's healthcare data. Now, they still want to keep it, or, you know, something that's not fully on a blockchain, but that is something, a similarly view. There is a consortium of about nine banks who have actually been trying to work on making things like remittances or trade finance, much, much easier. I mean, remittances through a traditional web two.zero world is very, very costly. And especially in the Asian countries, but a lot of people from Southeast Asia work across the world and send back money home. It's a very costly and a time taking affair. So they have actually partnered and built a blockchain based capability. Again, in a pilot stage, we kind of reduce the transaction costs. Like for example, if we just look at the trade finance space where there are 14 million traders who do 2.4, $5 trillion of transaction, now they were able to actually reduce the time that it takes from eight to nine days to about two to three days. So to add onto what you're saying, I think these two worlds are going to meet and meet very soon. And when they meet what they need is a single digital identity, a human readable way of being able to send and receive and do commerce. I think that's where I see unstoppable domains, very nicely positioned to be able to integrate these two worlds. So that's, that's my thought on >>Great point. I was going to get into which industries and kind of what areas you see in your air and geographies, but it's a good point about saving time. I liked how you brought that up because in these new waves, you either got to reduce the steps. It takes to do something or save time, make it easy. And these are the, this is the successful formula in anything, whether it's an app or UI or whatever, but what specifically are they doing in your areas? And, and what about unstoppable? Are they attracted to, is it because of the identity? Is it because of the, the apps is because of the single sign on what is that? What is the reason that they're leaning in and unpacking this further into their pilots? >>Do you want to take that because >>I am having these dumping it'd be warranted. So I think, and let me clarify the question, John you're, you're talking about companies looking at departments of our production partner. >>Yeah. What are they seeing and what are they seeing as the value that these pilots we heard from Neil Canada around the, the, the financial industry and obviously gaming gaming's one it's obvious, huge financial healthcare. I mean, these are obviously verticals that are going to be heavily impacted in a positive way. Where, what are they seeing as the value what's getting them motivated to do these pilots? Why they, why they jumping in with, with both feet, if you will, on these projects, is it because it's saving money? Is it time? What, or, or both, is it ease of use? Is it the, is it the user's expectations trying to tease out how you guys see that evolving? >>Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think the, the, this is still spaces. The movement is going very fast, but I think the space has been young. And right now a lot of these companies are seeing the potential that, that few offers. And I think the key dimensions, like the possibility isn't leadership ownership. So I think the key thing I'm seeing in you is these web companies seeing the momentum and looking to harness that book by enabling bridges web. One of the key trends in water has been FinTech. I think over the last five to six years, we'll have the Revolut and 26 platforms, new banks and super finance. So perhaps rising to the forefront and they are all enabling or connecting a page with them in some shape and form either any of them creating a crypto, some are launching their own native wallets. And these are essentially ways that they can one crack users. >>So the gen Z who are looking for war with finance to get them on board, but also to look to, you know, enable more adoption by data on users, one, not using these services that potentially create new revenue streams and, and create allocation of capital that they could not access to have access to otherwise. So I think that's one brand I'm seeing over here. I think the other key trend is in your use has been games. And again, that links are damaged. We have to, that is called the MetAware. So a lot of game companies are looking to step into game five, which is again, completely different. This is more work traditional game companies use use similarly metal versus we, again, worship creates a different business model and they see that users and gamers of the future were born to engage with that versus just being more eyes on the business of question or our ads. And I think that's something that they're, you know, becoming a bit off and quickly the space launching the one better versus, or are gained by applications or creating a comfortability with these, these, these, >>You know, I wanted to get it to this point, but I was going to ask about the community empowerment piece of this equation because she's identity is about the user's identity, which implies they're part of a community. Web three is very convenient community centric, but you mentioned gaming. I mean, people who have been watching the gaming world like ourselves, know that communities and marketplaces have been very active for years, many years, you know, over 15 years community, you know, games, currency in game activity has been out there. Right. But siloed within the games themselves. So now it seems that that paradigm is coming in and empowering all communities. Is this something that you guys see and agree with? And if so, what's different about that? What, how are our, how our communities being empowered? I guess that's the question. >>Yeah. I can maybe take that too. So, I mean, I've also heard of vaccine I'm in a 40% of their user base in Vietnam. And the average earning that a person makes in a month out of playing this game is more than the, you know, national daily or, you know, minimum wage that is there. Right. So that's the kind of potential actually going back as a combination of actually answering your earlier question, I think, or, and about what Sadat said, what's really unique in Asia is we still have a lot of unbanked people, right? So if you really look at the total unbanked population of the world, it's 1.6 billion and 24% of that as a nation, almost 375 million people are an issue. So these are people who do not have access to finance or credit. So the whole idea is how do we get these people on to a banking system on to peer peer, to peer lending out kind of peer to peer finance kind of capabilities? >>I think, you know, again, unstoppable domains kind of helps in that, right? If you just look@thepurethatthree.zero world and the complex, you know, technical way in which, you know, money or other crypto is transferred from one wallet to the other, it's very difficult for an un-banked person who probably cannot even do basic communication, cannot read and write, but actually be able to do it, but something that's very human readable, something that's very easy for him to understand something that's visual, something that he can see on his mobile with, you know, two G network. We are not talking of the world is talking about 5g, but there are parts of Asia which are still using two G and you know, two point 5g kind of network. Right? So I think that's one key use case. I think the banks are trying to solve because for them, this is a whole new customer segment. >>And sorry, I actually went back a little bit to your earlier question, but you know, coming back to this whole community building, right? So on March 8th, we're launching something called us women of web 3.0, that is three. This is basically to again, empower. So if you, again, look at Asia, you know, women, you know, need a lot of training. They need a lot of enablement for them to be able to leverage the power of that three.zero. I can talk about India because being from India, a lot of the women do not, you know, they, they do all the, you know, small businesses, but the money is not taken by middlemen or taken by their husbands, but fundamentally the money comes to them because that's what they use to educate their children. And it's the same thing in a lot of other, Southeast Asian countries as well. I think it's very important to build those communities or communities of women entrepreneurs. I think this is a big opportunity to really get the section of society, which probably, you know, will take 10 more years. If we go for the normal one to web two.zero progression where the power is with corporations and not with the individual. >>And that's a great announcement, by the way, you mentioned the $10 million worth of domains being issued out for this is democratization is what it's all about. Again, this is, you know, a new revolution. I mean, this is a new thing, so great stuff, more education, more learning, and can get the banks up and running, get those people banking because once they're banking, they get wallets, right? So they need the wallet. So let's get to the real meat here. You guys are in the territory, Europe and Asia, where there's a lot of wallets. There's a lot of exchanges because that's, they're not in the United States is few of them there, but most of them outside the United States and you got a lot of di apps developing, you know, decentralized applications. Okay. So you've got all this coming together and your territory, what's the strategy is that what's the strategy. How are you gonna attack that? You've got the wallets, you've got the exchanges and you've got D applications. You, >>Yeah. so I think just quickly there, I think one point is the Neil very expressive, beautifully is the final conclusion that that is something that has been inspired me, how better we can make it more inclusive that inspired mine. Yeah. I think for us, I think when a bit at the base star, when it comes to your right and the, the key focus in, in, in terms of our approach would be that the more do two dates, one, we want increase the utility of these domains. And the second thing is we weren't via proliferation with, with, with our partners. So when I speak on utility, I think utility is when you have a universe like depart, which is a domain name, and then you have these attributes around it, right? What, what that defines your identity. So in, in the context in Europe, we would look to find partners to help us enrich that identity around the domain name. >>And that adds value for users in terms of acquiring new leads and new blinds. And all the other element comes proliferation. I think it's about working with all those crypto and participants, as well as the adjacent companies, parents services who can help us educate current and future upcoming three users about the utility of domain names and help us onboard them to the, the. So I think that's going to be the general focus. I think the key is that as well, and hopefully it will be having watch regulation, you that allow us to do this at a visual level, but at the outset, I think it's going to be tackling it. Can't be by, can't be identified on this where there's deeper, better patient for and then making sure that we are partnering with local project partners that are demanding for local communities there. So, yeah, that's my view in, >>Oh, I think, yeah. So again, in Asia, once you have a significant part of Manatee living in Asia, right? So obviously I know obviously all the other challenges and the opportunities that we talk about, I think the first area of focus would be educating the people on the massive opportunity that they can not, they have, and if you're able to get them in early, I think it's great for them as well, right? Because by the time, you know, governments regulations and a large banking financial companies move, but if we can get the larger population or, you know, into this whole space, it's, it's good for them. So they are first movers in that space. I think we're doing a lot of things on this worldwide. I think we have done more than a hundred Pasco podcast, just educating people on water's web feed or, or, you know, waters, what are NFP domains, what is defy and, you know, so on and so forth. >>I think it would need some bit of localization customization in Asia, given that, you know, India itself has about 22 languages. And then there are the other countries which each of them have their own local languages and, you know, syntax, semantics and all those things. So I think that that is very important to be able to disseminate the knowledge or though it's it's global. But I think to get the grassroot people to understand the opportunity, I think it would need some amount of work that I think also building communities. I think John, you talked about communities so that such I'd talk about communities. I think it's very important to build communities because communities create ideation. It talks about people share their challenges so that people don't repeat the same mistakes. Also. I think it's very important to build communities based on impressed. I think we all know in the technology world, you can build communities and on telegram, telegram, discard, Twitter spaces and all those things. >>But, you know, again, when we're talking about financial inclusion, we're talking of a different kind of community building. I think that that would be important. And then of course I will, you know, kind of primarily from a company perspective, I think getting the 35 odd exchanges in Asia, the wallets to partner with us, just as an example, you know, they hired till September of last year, about 3,500 apps in just one quarter at double two, 7,000 tabs on their platform. But that is the pace or the speed of innovation that we are seeing on this whole, you know, three dot old space. I think it's very important to get those key partners. We're developing those dots or see the power of single sign on having a human readable, digital identity, being able to seamlessly transfer your assets, digital assets across multiple crypto's across multiple NFT when the market places and so on. So >>Yeah, and I think the whole community thing too is also you seeing the communities being part of certainly in the entertainment area and the artistry creator world, the users are part of the community own it too. So it goes both ways, but this brings up the marketplace too, as well, because you ha you guys have the opportunity to have trust built into the software layer, right? So now you can keep the reputation data. You don't, you can be anonymous, but it's trustworthy versus bots, which we all know bots can be killed and then started again with, and no one knows what the timeline has been around. So, you know, the whole inadequacy of web too, which is just growing pains, right? This is what it'll evolution looks like, you know, next to them, traction layer. So I love that vibe. How advanced do you think that thinking is where people are saying, Hey, we need this abstraction layer. We need this digital identity. We need to start expanding our applications so that the users can move across these and break down those silos where the data is cause that's, this is like the problem, right? It's the data silos that are holding it back. What'd you guys' reaction to that? The, the killing the silos and making it horizontally scalable. >>Yeah, I think it's, it's not problem. It is a problem of people who understand technology. It's a problem of a lot of the people in the business who want to compete effectively against those giants, which are holding all the data. So I think those are the people who will innovate and move again, coming back to financial inclusion, coming back to the unbanked and those guys just want to do their business. They want to live their daily life. I think that's not where you'll see, you will see innovation in a different form, but they're not going to disrupt the disruptors. I think that would be the people that are fintechs. I think they would be the first to move on to something like that. I mean, that's my humble opinion. >>Absolutely. I, I got you on creators, right? So like I said earlier, right, we are heading for a future where more creators on the internet, whether you're publishing, writing something, you're creating video content. And that means that the data they own, because that's their data, they're bringing it to the internet. That's more powerful, more useful, and they should be reprocessed on that basis. So I think people are recognizing that and they've been using the proposal and as they do that, they were warranties systems that enabled them to work permissions with data. They will want to be able to control what the permission and what they want to provide, adapt. And at the end of the day, you know, these applications have to work backwards from customers and keep the customers looking for, but that then, and ask where passport for >>The users want freedom. They want to be able to be connected and not be restricted. They want to freely move around the global internet and do whatever they want with the friends and apps that they want to consume and not feel arbitrage. They don't want to feel like they're kind of nailed into a walled garden and, you know, stuck there and having to come back. It's the new normal. If >>They don't want to be the, they don't want to be the product. They >>Don't want to be the perfect gentlemen. Great to have you on great conversation. We're going to continue this later. Certainly want to keep the updates coming. You guys are in a very hot area in Europe and Asia Pacific. That's where a lot of the action is happening. We see the entrepreneurial activity, the business transformation, certainly with the new paradigm shift and this big wave that's coming. It's here. It's mainstream. Thanks for coming on, sharing your insights. Appreciate it. >>Thanks for the opportunity. >>Great conversation. All the actions moving and happening real fast. This is the cube unstoppable debates partner showcase with I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) >> Hi, everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. We're wrapping up four days of coverage, two sets. Two remote sets, one in Boston, one in Palo Alto. And really, it's a pleasure to introduce Benoit Dageville. He's the Press Co-founder of Snowflake and President of Products. Benoit, thanks for taking some time out and coming to theCUBE. >> Yeah, thank you for having me, Dave. >> You know, it's really a pleasure. We've been watching Snowflake since, maybe not 2012, but mid last decade you hit our radar. We said, "Wow, this company is going to go places." And yeah, we made that call correctly. But it's been a pleasure to sort of follow you. We've talked a little bit remotely. I kind of want to go back to some of the fundamentals. First of all, I wanted mention your earnings last night. If you guys didn't see it, again, triple digit growth, $1.8 billion RPO, cashflow actually looking pretty good. So, pretty amazing. Oh, and 173% NRR, you know, wow. And Mike Scarpelli is kind of bummed that you did so well. And I know why, right? Because it's going to be at some point, and he dials it down for the expectations and Wall Street says, "Oh, he's sandbagging." And then at some point you're actually going to meet expectations and people are going to go, "Oh, they met expectations." But anyway, he's a smart guy, he know what he's doing. (Benoit laughing) I loved it, it was so funny listening to him last night. But anyway, I want to go back to, when I talked to practitioners about data warehousing pre-cloud, they would say sound bites like, it's like a snake swallowing a basketball, they would tell me. And the other thing they said, "We just chased the chips. Every time a new Intel chip comes out, we have to bring in new servers, and we're struggling." The cloud changed all that. Your vision and Terry's vision changed all that. Maybe go back to the fundamentals of what you saw. >> Yeah, we really wanted to address what we call the data challenges. And if you remember at that time, data challenge was first of the volume of data, machine-generated data. So it was way more than just structured data, right? Machine-generated data is weblogs, and it's at petabyte scale. And there was no good solution for that type of data. Big data was not a great solution, Hadoop was really bad. And there was no good solution for that. So we thought we should do something for big data. The other aspect was concurrency, right? Everyone wants to use these data analytic platform in an enterprise, right? And you have more and more workload running against the same data, and the systems that were built were not scaling for these workloads. So you had to silo data, right? That's the only way big enterprise could deal with that, is to create many different silos, Oracle, Teradata, data mass, you would hear data mass. All of it was to afloat, right, this data? And then there was the, what do we call, data sharing. How to get access to data which is not born inside the enterprise, right? So with Terry, we wanted to solve all these challenges and we thought the only way to solve it was the cloud. And the cloud has really two free aspects. One is the elasticity, for all of a sudden, you can run every workload that you want concurrently, in parallel, on different computer resources, and you can run them against the same data. So this is kind of the data lake model, if you want. At the same time, you can, in the cloud, create a service. So you can remove complexity from users and make it really easy for new workloads to be added to the system, because you can manage, you can create a managed service, where all the sudden our customers, they don't need to manage infrastructure, they don't need to patch, they don't need to tune. Everything is done by Snowflake, the service, and they can just load in and run their query. And the third aspect is really collaboration. Is how to connect data sets together. And that's almost a new product for Snowflake, this data sharing. So we really at Snowflake was all about combining big data and data warehouse in one system in the cloud, and have only one single system where you can put all your data and all your workload. >> So you weren't necessarily trying to solve the data warehouse problem, you were trying to solve a data problem. And then it just so happened data warehouse was a logical entry point for you. >> It's really not that. Yes, we wanted to solve the data problem. And for us big data was a really important problem to solve. So from day one, Snowflake was all about machine generated data, petabyte scale, but we wanted to do it right. And for us, right was not compromising on data warehouse principle, which is a CDT of transaction, which is really fast response time, and which is also simplicity. So as I said, we wanted to solve kind of all the problems at the time of volume of data, concurrency, and these sharing aspects. >> This was 2012. You knew at that time that Hadoop wasn't going to be the answer. >> No, I mean, we were really, I mean, everyone knew that. Everyone knew Hadoop was really bad. You know, complex to manage, really slow. It had good aspects, right? This was the only system that could manage petabyte scale data sets. That's the only thing- >> Cheaply. >> Yeah, and cheaply which was good. And we wanted really to do that, plus have all the good attributes of data warehouse system. And at the same time, we wanted to build a system where if you are data warehouse customer, if you are coming from Teradata, you can migrate to Snowflake and you will get to a system which is faster than what you had on-premise, right. That's why it's pretty cool. So we wanted to do big data without compromising on data warehouse. >> So several years ago we looked at the hyperscalers and said, "Wow, last year they spent $100 billion in CapEx." And so, we started to think about this abstraction layer. And then we saw what you guys announced with the data cloud. We call it super clouds. And we see that as exactly what you're building. So that's clearly not just a data warehouse or database, it's technology that really hides the underlying complexity of all those clouds, and it allows you to have federated governance and data sharing, all those things. Can you talk about sort of how you think about that architecture? >> So for me, what I say is that really Snowflake is the worldwide web of data. And we are indeed a super cloud, or we are super-posed to the infrastructure cloud, which is our friends at Amazon, and of course, Azure, I mean, Microsoft and Google. And as any cloud, we have regions, Snowflake regions all over the world, and located on different cloud providers. At the same time, our platform is global in the sense that every region interconnects with all the other regions, this is our snow grid and data mesh, if you want. So that as an organization you can have your presence on several Snowflake region. It doesn't matter which cloud provider, so you can mix AWS with Azure. You can use our cloud like that. And indeed you can, this is a cloud where you can store your data, that's the thing that really matters, and data is structured, but it's machine structure, as I say, machine generated, petabyte scale, but there's also unstructured, right? We have added support for images, text, videos, where you can process this data in our system, and that's the workload spout. And workload, what is very important is that you can run this workload, any number of workloads. So the number of workloads is effectively unlimited with Snowflake because each workload can have its dedicated set of compute resources all operating on the same data set. And the type of workloads is also very important. It's not only about dashboards and data warehouse, it's data engineering, it's data science, it's building application. We have many of our customers who are building full-scale cloud applications on top of Snowflake. >> Yeah so the other thing, if you're not familiar with Snowflake, I don't know, maybe your head has been in the sand for a while, but separating compute and storage, I don't know if you were the first, but you were certainly the first to popularize it. And that allowed you to solve that chasing the chips problem and the swallowing the basketball, right? Because you have virtually infinite resources now at your disposal. >> Yeah, this is really the concurrency challenge that I was mentioning. Everyone wants to access the data. And of course, if everyone runs on the same set of compute resources, you have a bottleneck. So Snowflake was really about this multi-workload. We call it Multi-Cluster Shared Data Architecture. But it's not difficult to run multiple cluster if you don't have consistency of data. So how to do that while maintaining transactional property of data as CDT, right? You cannot modify data from different clusters. And when you commit, every other cluster will immediately see the change, right, as if everyone was running on the same cluster. So that was the challenge that we solve when we started Snowflake. >> Used the term data mesh. What is data mesh to Snowflake? Is it a concept, is it fabric? >> No, it's a very interesting point. As much as we like to centralize data, this becomes a bottleneck, right? When you are a large organization with different independent units, everyone wants to manage their own data and they have domain-specific expertise about that data. So having it centralized in IT is not practical. At the same time, you really want to be able to connect these different data sets together and join different data together, right? So that's the data mesh architecture. Each data set is managed independently by business owners, and then there is a contract which is exposed to others, and you can combine. And Snowflake architectures with data sharing, right. Data sharing that can happen within an organization, or across organization, allows you to connect any data with any other data on our platform. >> Yeah, so when I first heard that term, you guys using the term data mesh, I got very excited because it was kind of the data mesh is, my view, anyway, is going to be the fundamental architecture of this decade and beyond. And the principles, if I understand it correctly, you're applying the principles of Jim Octagon's data mesh within Snowflake. So decentralized data doesn't have to be physically in one place. Logically it's in the data cloud. >> It's logically decentralized, right? It's independently managed, and the reason, right, is the data that you need to use is not produced by your, even if in your company you want to centralize the data and having only one organization, let's say IT managing that, let's say, pretend. Yet you need to connect with other datasets, which is managed by other organizations. So by nature, the data that you use cannot be centralized, right? So now that you have this principle, if you have a platform where you can store all the data, wherever it is, and you can connect these data very seamlessly, then we can use that platform for your enterprise, right? To have different business units independently manage their data sets, connects these together so that as a company you have a 360 view of your customers, for example. But you can expand that outside of your enterprise and connect with data sets, which are from your vertical, for example, financial data set that you don't have in your company, or any public data set. >> And the other key principles, I think, that you've touched on really is the line of business now. Increasingly they're building data products that are creating value, and then also there's a self-service component. Assuming there's the fourth principle, governance. You got to have federated governance. And it seems like you've kind of ticked the boxes, more than tick the boxes, but engineered a solution to solve for those. >> No, it's very true. So Snowflake was really built to be really simple to use. And you're right. Our vision was, it would be more than IT, right? Who is going to use Snowflake is going now to be business unit, because you do not have to manage infrastructure. You do not have to patch. You do not have to do these things that business cannot do. You just have to load your data and run your queries, and run your applications. So now business can directly use Snowflake and create value from that. And yes, you're right, then connect that data with other data sets and to get maximum insights. >> Can you please talk about some of the things you do with AWS here at the event. I'm interested in what you're doing with your machine learning initiatives that you've recently announced, the AI piece. >> Yes, so one key aspects is data is not only about SQL, right? We started with SQL, but we expanded our platform to what we call data programmability, which is really about running program at scale across a large volume of data. And this was made popular with a programming model which was introduced by Pendal, DataFrames. Later taken by Spark, and now we have DataFrames in Snowflake, Where we are different than other systems, is that these DataFrame programs, which are in Python, or Java, or Scala, you program with data. These DataFrames are compiled to our single execution platforms. So we have one single execution platform, which is a data flow execution platform, which can run both SQL very efficiently, as I said, data warehouse speed, and also these very complex programs running Python and Java against this data. And this is a single platform. You don't need to use two different systems. >> Now so, you kind of really attack the traditional analytics base. People said, "Wow, Snowflake's really easy." Now you're injecting AI and machine intelligence. I see Databricks coming at it from the other angle. They started with machine learning, now they're sort of going after the analytics. Does there need to be a semantic layer to connect, 'cause it's the same raw data. Does there need to be a semantic layer to connect those two worlds? >> Yes, and that's what we are doing in our platform. And that's very novel to Snowflake. As I said, you interact with data in different program. You pick your program. You are a SQL programmer, use SQL. You are a Python programmer, use DataFrames with Python. It doesn't really matter. And then the semantic layer is our compiler and our processing engine, is going to translate both your program and my program in Python, your program in SQL, to the same execution platform and to the same programming language that Snowflake internally, we don't expose our programming language, but it's a data flow programming language that our execution platform executes. So at the end, we might execute exactly the same program, potentially. And that's very important because we spent all our IP and all our time, engineering time to optimize this platform, to make it the fastest platform. And we want to use that platform for any type of workloads, whether it's data programs or SQL. >> Now, you and Terry were at Oracle, so you know a lot about bench marketing. As Larry would stand up and say, "We killed the competition." You guys are probably behind it, right. So you know all about that. >> We are very behind it. >> So you know a lot about that. I've had some experience, I'm not a technologist, but I'm an observer and analyst. You have to take benchmarking with a very big grain of salt. So you guys have generally stayed away from that. Databricks came out and they came up with all these benchmarks. So you had to respond, because otherwise it's out there. Now you reran the benchmarks, you took out the materialized views and all the expensive stuff that they included in your cost, your price performance, but then you wrote, I thought, a very cogent blog. Maybe you could talk about sort of why you did that and your general philosophy around bench marketing. >> Yeah, from day one, with Terry we say never again we will participate in this really stupid benchmark war, because it's really not in the interest of customers. And we have been really at the frontline of that war with Terry, both of us, really doing special tricks, right? And optimizing this query to death, this query that no one runs apart from the synthetic benchmark. We optimize them to death to have the best number when we were at Oracle. And we decided that this is really not helping customers in the end. So we said, with Snowflake, we'll not do that. And actually, we are not the only one not to do that. If you look at who has published TPC-DS, you will see no one, none of the big vendors. It's not because they cannot run TPC-DS, Oracle can run it, I know that. And all the other big data warehouse vendor can, but it's something of a little bit of past. And TPC was really important at some point, and is not really relevant now. So we are not going to compete. And that's what we said is basically now our blog. We are not interesting in participating in this war. We want to invest our engineering effort and our IP in solving real world issues and performance issues that we have. And we want to improve our engine for these real world customers. And the nice thing with Snowflake, because it's a service, we see exactly all the queries that our customers are executing. So we know where we are struggling as a system, and that's where we want to invest and we want to improve. And if you look at many announcements that we made, it's all about under-the-cover improving Snowflake and getting the benefit of this improvement to our customer. So that was the message of that blog. And yes, the message was okay. Mr. Databricks, it's nice, and it's perfect that, I mean, everyone makes a decision, right? We made the decision not to participate. Databricks made another decision, which is very fine, and that's fine that they publish their number on their system. Where it is not fine is that they published number using Snowflake and misrepresenting our performance. And that's what we wanted also to correct. >> Yeah, well, thank you for going into that. I know it's, look, leaders don't necessarily have to get involved in that mudslide. (crosstalk) Enough said about that, so that's cool. I want to ask you, I interviewed Frank last spring, right after the lockdown, he was kind enough to come on virtually, and I asked him about on-prem. And he was, you know Frank, he doesn't mix words, He said, "We're not getting into a halfway house. That's not going to happen." And of course, you really can't do what you do on-prem. You can't separate compute, some have tried, but it's not the same. But at the same time that you see like Andreessen comes out with this blog that says a huge portion of your cost of goods sold is going to be the cloud, so you're going to have to repatriate. Help me square that circle. Is it cloud forever? Is it will you never say never? What can you share of that? >> I will never say never, it's not my style. I always say you can always change your mind, and maybe different factors can change your mind. What was true at some point might not be true at a later point. But as of now, I don't see any reason for us to go on-premise. As you mentioned at the beginning, right, Snowflake is growing like crazy. The world is moving to the cloud. I think maybe it goes both ways, but I would say 90% or 99% of the world is moving to the cloud. Maybe 1% is coming back for some very specific reasons. I don't think that the world is going to move back on-premise. So in the end we might miss a small percentage of the workload that will stay on-premise and that's okay. >> And as well, if you dig into some of the financial statements you'll see, read the notes where you've renegotiated, right? We're talking big numbers. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of cost reduction, actually more, over a 10 year period. Billions of your cloud bills. So the cloud suppliers, they don't want to lose you as a customer, right? You're one of their biggest customer. So it's awesome. Last question is kind of, your work now is to really drive the data cloud, get adoption up, build that supercloud, we call it. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how you see the future. >> The future is really broadened, the scope of Snowflake, and really, I would say the marketplace, and data sharing, and services, which are directly built natively on Snowflake and are shared through our platform, and can operate, it can mix data on provider-side with data on consumer-side, and creating this collaboration within the Snowflake data cloud, I think is really the future. And we are really only scratching the surface of that. And you can see the enthusiasm of Snowflake data cloud and vertical industry We have nuanced the final show data cloud. Industry, complete vertical industry, latching on that concept and collaborating via Snowflake, which was not possible before. And I think you talked about machine learning, for example. Machine learning, collaboration through machine learning, the ones who are building this advanced model might not be the same as the one who are consuming this model, right? It might be this collaboration between expertise and consumer of that expertise. So we are really at the beginning of this interconnected world. And to me the world wide web of data that we are creating is really going to be amazing. And it's all about connecting. >> And I'm glad you mentioned the ecosystem. I didn't give enough attention to that. Because as a cloud provider, which essentially you are, you've got to have a strong ecosystem. That's a hallmark of cloud. And then the other, vertical, that we didn't touch on, is media and entertainment. A lot of direct-to-consumer. I think healthcare is going to be a huge vertical for you guys. All right we got to go, Terry. Thanks so much for coming on "theCUBE." I really appreciate you. >> Thanks, Dave. >> And thank you for watching. This a wrap from AWS re:Invent 2021. "theCUBE," the leader in global tech coverage. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto, in Boston bringing you data-driven insights from theCUBE and ETR. This is braking analysis with Dave Vellante. >> Database is the heart of enterprise computing. The market is both exploding and it's evolving. The major force is transforming the space include Cloud and data, of course, but also new workloads, advanced memory and IO capabilities, new processor types, a massive push towards simplicity, new data sharing and governance models, and a spate of venture investment. Snowflake stands out as the gold standard for operational excellence and go to market execution. The company has attracted the attention of customers, investors, and competitors and everyone from entrenched players to upstarts once in the act. Hello everyone and welcome to this week's Wikibon CUBE Insights powered by ETR. In this breaking analysis, we'll share our most current thinking on the database marketplace and dig into Snowflake's execution. Some of its challenges and we'll take a look at how others are making moves to solve customer problems and try to get a piece of the growing database pie. Let's look at some of the factors that are driving market momentum. First, customers want lower license costs. They want simplicity. They want to avoid database sprawl. They want to run anywhere and manage new data types. These needs often are divergent and they pull vendors and technologies in different direction. It's really hard for any one platform to accommodate every customer need. The market is large and it's growing. Gardner has it at around 60 to 65 billion with a CAGR of somewhere around 20% over the next five years. But the market, as we know it is being redefined. Traditionally, databases have served two broad use cases, OLTP or transactions and reporting like data warehouses. But a diversity of workloads and new architectures and innovations have given rise to a number of new types of databases to accommodate all these diverse customer needs. Many billions have been spent over the last several years in venture money and it continues to pour in. Let me just give you some examples. Snowflake prior to its IPO, raised around 1.4 billion. Redis Labs has raised more than 1/2 billion dollars so far, Cockroach Labs, more than 350 million, Couchbase, 250 million, SingleStore formerly MemSQL, 238 million, Yellowbrick Data, 173 million. And if you stretch the definition of database a little bit to including low-code or no-code, Airtable has raised more than 600 million. And that's by no means a complete list. Now, why is all this investment happening? Well, in a large part, it's due to the TAM. The TAM is huge and it's growing and it's being redefined. Just how big is this market? Let's take a look at a chart that we've shown previously. We use this chart to Snowflakes TAM, and it focuses mainly on the analytics piece, but we'll use it here to really underscore the market potential. So the actual database TAM is larger than this, we think. Cloud and Cloud-native technologies have changed the way we think about databases. Virtually 100% of the database players that they're are in the market have pivoted to a Cloud first strategy. And many like Snowflake, they're pretty dogmatic and have a Cloud only strategy. Databases has historically been very difficult to manage, they're really sensitive to latency. So that means they require a lot of tuning. Cloud allows you to throw virtually infinite resources on demand and attack performance problems and scale very quickly, minimizing the complexity and tuning nuances. This idea, this layer of data as a service we think of it as a staple of digital transformation. Is this layer that's forming to support things like data sharing across ecosystems and the ability to build data products or data services. It's a fundamental value proposition of Snowflake and one of the most important aspects of its offering. Snowflake tracks a metric called edges, which are external connections in its data Cloud. And it claims that 15% of its total shared connections are edges and that's growing at 33% quarter on quarter. This notion of data sharing is changing the way people think about data. We use terms like data as an asset. This is the language of the 2010s. We don't share our assets with others, do we? No, we protect them, we secure or them, we even hide them. But we absolutely don't want to share those assets but we do want to share our data. I had a conversation recently with Forrester analyst, Michelle Goetz. And we both agreed we're going to scrub data as an asset from our phrasiology. Increasingly, people are looking at sharing as a way to create, as I said, data products or data services, which can be monetized. This is an underpinning of Zhamak Dehghani's concept of a data mesh, make data discoverable, shareable and securely governed so that we can build data products and data services that can be monetized. This is where the TAM just explodes and the market is redefining. And we think is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Let's talk a little bit about the diversity of offerings in the marketplace. Again, databases used to be either transactional or analytic. The bottom lines and top lines. And this chart here describe those two but the types of databases, you can see the middle of mushrooms, just looking at this list, blockchain is of course a specialized type of database and it's also finding its way into other database platforms. Oracle is notable here. Document databases that support JSON and graph data stores that assist in visualizing data, inference from multiple different sources. That's is one of the ways in which adtech has taken off and been so effective. Key Value stores, log databases that are purpose-built, machine learning to enhance insights, spatial databases to help build the next generation of products, the next automobile, streaming databases to manage real time data flows and time series databases. We might've missed a few, let us know if you think we have, but this is a kind of pretty comprehensive list that is somewhat mind boggling when you think about it. And these unique requirements, they've spawned tons of innovation and companies. Here's a small subset on this logo slide. And this is by no means an exhaustive list, but you have these companies here which have been around forever like Oracle and IBM and Teradata and Microsoft, these are the kind of the tier one relational databases that have matured over the years. And they've got properties like atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability, what's known as ACID properties, ACID compliance. Some others that you may or may not be familiar with, Yellowbrick Data, we talked about them earlier. It's going after the best price, performance and analytics and optimizing to take advantage of both hybrid installations and the latest hardware innovations. SingleStore, as I said, formerly known as MemSQL is a very high end analytics and transaction database, supports mixed workloads, extremely high speeds. We're talking about trillions of rows per second that could be ingested in query. Couchbase with hybrid transactions and analytics, Redis Labs, open source, no SQL doing very well, as is Cockroach with distributed SQL, MariaDB with its managed MySQL, Mongo and document database has a lot of momentum, EDB, which supports open source Postgres. And if you stretch the definition a bit, Splunk, for log database, why not? ChaosSearch, really interesting startup that leaves data in S-3 and is going after simplifying the ELK stack, New Relic, they have a purpose-built database for application performance management and we probably could have even put Workday in the mix as it developed a specialized database for its apps. Of course, we can't forget about SAP with how not trying to pry customers off of Oracle. And then the big three Cloud players, AWS, Microsoft and Google with extremely large portfolios of database offerings. The spectrum of products in this space is very wide, with you've got AWS, which I think we're up to like 16 database offerings, all the way to Oracle, which has like one database to do everything not withstanding MySQL because it owns MySQL got that through the Sun Acquisition. And it recently, it made some innovations there around the heat wave announcement. But essentially Oracle is investing to make its database, Oracle database run any workload. While AWS takes the approach of the right tool for the right job and really focuses on the primitives for each database. A lot of ways to skin a cat in this enormous and strategic market. So let's take a look at the spending data for the names that make it into the ETR survey. Not everybody we just mentioned will be represented because they may not have quite the market presence of the ends in the survey, but ETR that capture a pretty nice mix of players. So this chart here, it's one of the favorite views that we like to share quite often. It shows the database players across the 1500 respondents in the ETR survey this past quarter and it measures their net score. That's spending momentum and is shown on the vertical axis and market share, which is the pervasiveness in the data set is on the horizontal axis. The Snowflake is notable because it's been hovering around 80% net score since the survey started picking them up. Anything above 40%, that red line there, is considered by us to be elevated. Microsoft and AWS, they also stand out because they have both market presence and they have spending velocity with their platforms. Oracle is very large but it doesn't have the spending momentum in the survey because nearly 30% of Oracle installations are spending less, whereas only 22% are spending more. Now as a caution, this survey doesn't measure dollar spent and Oracle will be skewed toward the big customers with big budgets. So you got to consider that caveat when evaluating this data. IBM is in a similar position although its market share is not keeping up with Oracle's. Google, they've got great tech especially with BigQuery and it has elevated momentum. So not a bad spot to be in although I'm sure it would like to be closer to AWS and Microsoft on the horizontal axis, so it's got some work to do there. And some of the others we mentioned earlier, like MemSQL, Couchbase. As shown MemSQL here, they're now SingleStore. Couchbase, Reddis, Mongo, MariaDB, all very solid scores on the vertical axis. Cloudera just announced that it was selling to private equity and that will hopefully give it some time to invest in this platform and get off the quarterly shot clock. MapR was acquired by HPE and it's part of HPE's Ezmeral platform, their data platform which doesn't yet have the market presence in the survey. Now, something that is interesting in looking at in Snowflakes earnings last quarter, is this laser focused on large customers. This is a hallmark of Frank Slootman and Mike Scarpelli who I know they don't have a playbook but they certainly know how to go whale hunting. So this chart isolates the data that we just showed you to the global 1000. Note that both AWS and Snowflake go up higher on the X-axis meaning large customers are spending at a faster rate for these two companies. The previous chart had an end of 161 for Snowflake, and a 77% net score. This chart shows the global 1000, in the end there for Snowflake is 48 accounts and the net score jumps to 85%. We're not going to show it here but when you isolate the ETR data, nice you can just cut it, when you isolate it on the fortune 1000, the end for Snowflake goes to 59 accounts in the data set and Snowflake jumps another 100 basis points in net score. When you cut the data by the fortune 500, the Snowflake N goes to 40 accounts and the net score jumps another 200 basis points to 88%. And when you isolate on the fortune 100 accounts is only 18 there but it's still 18, their net score jumps to 89%, almost 90%. So it's very strong confirmation that there's a proportional relationship between larger accounts and spending momentum in the ETR data set. So Snowflakes large account strategy appears to be working. And because we think Snowflake is sticky, this probably is a good sign for the future. Now we've been talking about net score, it's a key measure in the ETR data set, so we'd like to just quickly remind you what that is and use Snowflake as an example. This wheel chart shows the components of net score, that lime green is new adoptions. 29% of the customers in the ETR dataset that are new to Snowflake. That's pretty impressive. 50% of the customers are spending more, that's the forest green, 20% are flat, that's the gray, and only 1%, the pink, are spending less. And 0% zero or replacing Snowflake, no defections. What you do here to get net scores, you subtract the red from the green and you get a net score of 78%. Which is pretty sick and has been sick as in good sick and has been steady for many, many quarters. So that's how the net score methodology works. And remember, it typically takes Snowflake customers many months like six to nine months to start consuming it's services at the contracted rate. So those 29% new adoptions, they're not going to kick into high gear until next year, so that bodes well for future revenue. Now, it's worth taking a quick snapshot at Snowflakes most recent quarter, there's plenty of stuff out there that you can you can google and get a summary but let's just do a quick rundown. The company's product revenue run rate is now at 856 million they'll surpass $1 billion on a run rate basis this year. The growth is off the charts very high net revenue retention. We've explained that before with Snowflakes consumption pricing model, they have to account for retention differently than what a SaaS company. Snowflake added 27 net new $1 million accounts in the quarter and claims to have more than a hundred now. It also is just getting its act together overseas. Slootman says he's personally going to spend more time in Europe, given his belief, that the market is huge and they can disrupt it and of course he's from the continent. He was born there and lived there and gross margins expanded, do in a large part to renegotiation of its Cloud costs. Welcome back to that in a moment. Snowflake it's also moving from a product led growth company to one that's more focused on core industries. Interestingly media and entertainment is one of the largest along with financial services and it's several others. To me, this is really interesting because Disney's example that Snowflake often puts in front of its customers as a reference. And it seems to me to be a perfect example of using data and analytics to both target customers and also build so-called data products through data sharing. Snowflake has to grow its ecosystem to live up to its lofty expectations and indications are that large SIS are leaning in big time. Deloitte cross the $100 million in deal flow in the quarter. And the balance sheet's looking good. Thank you very much with $5 billion in cash. The snarks are going to focus on the losses, but this is all about growth. This is a growth story. It's about customer acquisition, it's about adoption, it's about loyalty and it's about lifetime value. Now, as I said at the IPO, and I always say this to young people, don't buy a stock at the IPO. There's probably almost always going to be better buying opportunities ahead. I'm not always right about that, but I often am. Here's a chart of Snowflake's performance since IPO. And I have to say, it's held up pretty well. It's trading above its first day close and as predicted there were better opportunities than day one but if you have to make a call from here. I mean, don't take my stock advice, do your research. Snowflake they're priced to perfection. So any disappointment is going to be met with selling. You saw that the day after they beat their earnings last quarter because their guidance in revenue growth,. Wasn't in the triple digits, it sort of moderated down to the 80% range. And they pointed, they pointed to a new storage compression feature that will lower customer costs and consequently, it's going to lower their revenue. I swear, I think that that before earnings calls, Scarpelli sits back he's okay, what kind of creative way can I introduce the dampen enthusiasm for the guidance. Now I'm not saying lower storage costs will translate into lower revenue for a period of time. But look at dropping storage prices, customers are always going to buy more, that's the way the storage market works. And stuff like did allude to that in all fairness. Let me introduce something that people in Silicon Valley are talking about, and that is the Cloud paradox for SaaS companies. And what is that? I was a clubhouse room with Martin Casado of Andreessen when I first heard about this. He wrote an article with Sarah Wang, calling it to question the merits of SaaS companies sticking with Cloud at scale. Now the basic premise is that for startups in early stages of growth, the Cloud is a no brainer for SaaS companies, but at scale, the cost of Cloud, the Cloud bill approaches 50% of the cost of revenue, it becomes an albatross that stifles operating leverage. Their conclusion ended up saying that as much as perhaps as much as the back of the napkin, they admitted that, but perhaps as much as 1/2 a trillion dollars in market cap is being vacuumed away by the hyperscalers that could go to the SaaS providers as cost savings from repatriation. And that Cloud repatriation is an inevitable path for large SaaS companies at scale. I was particularly interested in this as I had recently put on a post on the Cloud repatriation myth. I think in this instance, there's some merit to their conclusions. But I don't think it necessarily bleeds into traditional enterprise settings. But for SaaS companies, maybe service now has it right running their own data centers or maybe a hybrid approach to hedge bets and save money down the road is prudent. What caught my attention in reading through some of the Snowflake docs, like the S-1 in its most recent 10-K were comments regarding long-term purchase commitments and non-cancelable contracts with Cloud companies. And the companies S-1, for example, there was disclosure of $247 million in purchase commitments over a five plus year period. And the company's latest 10-K report, that same line item jumped to 1.8 billion. Now Snowflake is clearly managing these costs as it alluded to when its earnings call. But one has to wonder, at some point, will Snowflake follow the example of say Dropbox which Andreessen used in his blog and start managing its own IT? Or will it stick with the Cloud and negotiate hard? Snowflake certainly has the leverage. It has to be one of Amazon's best partners and customers even though it competes aggressively with Redshift but on the earnings call, CFO Scarpelli said, that Snowflake was working on a new chip technology to dramatically increase performance. What the heck does that mean? Is this Snowflake is not becoming a hardware company? So I going to have to dig into that a little bit and find out what that it means. I'm guessing, it means that it's taking advantage of ARM-based processes like graviton, which many ISVs ar allowing their software to run on that lower cost platform. Or maybe there's some deep dark in the weeds secret going on inside Snowflake, but I doubt it. We're going to leave all that for there for now and keep following this trend. So it's clear just in summary that Snowflake they're the pace setter in this new exciting world of data but there's plenty of room for others. And they still have a lot to prove. For instance, one customer in ETR, CTO round table express skepticism that Snowflake will live up to its hype because its success is going to lead to more competition from well-established established players. This is a common theme you hear it all the time. It's pretty easy to reach that conclusion. But my guess is this the exact type of narrative that fuels Slootman and sucked him back into this game of Thrones. That's it for now, everybody. Remember, these episodes they're all available as podcasts, wherever you listen. All you got to do is search braking analysis podcast and please subscribe to series. Check out ETR his website at etr.plus. We also publish a full report every week on wikinbon.com and siliconangle.com. You can get in touch with me, Email is David.vellante@siliconangle.com. You can DM me at DVelante on Twitter or comment on our LinkedIn posts. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE Insights powered by ETR. Have a great week everybody, be well and we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> When I was a young analyst at IDC I remember sitting in a packed boardroom, listening to this new company called Teradata introduce a machine, that was specially designed to make databases run much faster at far less cost. At the time, the most advanced disc drive in the world was 2.5 gigabytes and it costs more than a $100,000. It was the size of a giant refrigerator. There was not a single data center in the US that housed the terabyte of data, underscoring this young startups, Moxie, with a name like Teradata. Fast forward nearly 40 years and the company is still going strong. It has a robust tech stack that has been matured and hardened over the decade, over the decades with capabilities around things like referential integrity, sophisticated workload management and support for complex joins, and many other factors. Recently, the company's financial performance has been in the news, with an earnings and revenue beat, in a large part attributed to its cloud business model. The stock roughly doubled in a few days as surprised investors took notice. Welcome to this CUBE Conversation, my name is Dave Vellante, and we're here with Steve McMillan, who's the CEO of Teradata, to give us the updates, Steve welcome. >> Hey Dave, it's great to be here, thanks for having me. >> Okay, so you're very welcome. So what's happening with Teradata? What's behind the recent surprise and the momentum that you're seeing? >> Look, Dave, I think over the last 12 to 18 months, we've just been continuously improving our cloud capabilities and the performance of our cloud business. I took over as CEO of Teradata in June of last year, and it's been my pleasure to really focus the company on a cloud-first agenda. And what that's really mean is that, we've built a great leadership team with some key new appointments, a new chief product officer, a new chief strategy officer, and most recently our new chief revenue officer, to really build up our cloud credentials and capability. We've also done things like completely invert our R&D spend. So we spend nearly $300 billion on research and development every year, but previously our focus have been only 30% of our spend was in cloud, we'll flipped that around to have 70% of our investment in cloud, and 30% on-prem, enabling us to do things like go general availability of Teradata in Google Cloud in Q3 of last year. And roles of these investments in moving that investment envelope has really enabled us to put forward Teradata as a very relevant modern cloud platform for our customers. And that's enabled us to win in the cloud fairly significantly. And we always knew that at some point, we would declare to the street what cloud revenues were, but we wanted to make sure that they were a substantial and relevant, and we felt that at over $100 million dollars of ARR and with an outlook to double that this year, that those were the kind of metrics that were going to get the market and our customers' attention in terms of us being modern and relevant. >> I got a lot of questions based on that. Thank you for that upfront. But so let me ask you, so you took over as CEO less than 90 days into a global pandemic. And so, how much did that affect your thinking around cloud-first? Did you come in, before that knowing this was the direction you're going to take the company, was that accelerated, can you comment? >> Look, I think, taking over at Teradata, you pointed out in the introduction, a 40-year heritage event at essentially inventing the enterprise data warehouse marketplace. I knew I was taking over a company with a fantastic heritage and a fantastic culture, a set of people that are absolutely focused on and are incredibly proud of Teradata's technology it's capability and how Teradata helps transform how businesses work and people lives through data. What I saw is, we had to really focus on what the market and our customers were looking for, and that meant we emphasizing the importance of cloud and saved the company. So it was really a lot about focus, and then about developing the culture of the company to be able to execute. In terms of the pandemic, I think the pandemic has act as an accelerant to digital transformation, as organizations want to use data to help optimize how they operate, makes sure they're operating effectively and efficiently. One of the customer examples that we had in our last quarter, was an airline in the US investing in Teradata technology to do just that, as clearly a distressed industry, but they see how the power of data can optimize their supply chain to enable them to work more effectively and more efficiently. >> Great, I want to get into some of those customer examples, but I want to stick on cloud-first for a minute. So it sounds like cloud-first is a mindset but then leads to sort of investment priorities. And there are some pretty prominent companies that had a switch from a sort of on-prem to a cloud-first mentality, Microsoft is the most obvious, but there are others. But what really does cloud-first mean for your customers? >> Well, what it means is, we really think about the future digital strategy of our customers, and clearly all of our customers want to embrace cloud. It's also about data gravity, where is data moving to? And we see the data gravity of many companies, we focus on the top 10,000 companies in the world where they're operating at that level of scale, Teradata can really give them the right kind of solution that meets their business requirements. But as that data gravity is moving towards the cloud, it really means that we have to be in front of that, and we have to have the technology in place to capture that data as it moves to the cloud. And so the vision from a product perspective in terms of cloud-first, is to be the leader from a connected multi-cloud data platform perspective. And I that each component of that product description is really important, connected in terms of being able to access data either in native object store or in loads of different data sources, multi cloud in terms of being available across all of the cloud platforms, but for our existing customers extending and reaching into their on-prem capabilities, and from a data platform, thinking about it in terms of the services that Teradata has been known for, in terms of enterprise data warehousing but also real data analytics capabilities that we built into our core SQL engine. So super excited about the future of Teradata in this cloud first world. >> Yes, the definition of cloud, by the way of course it is evolving as we all know. And I spent a fair amount of my time trying to squint through earnings statements, and figure out okay, what's exactly in there? So, $100 million in ARRs, that's that's a pretty big number. I mean, for a lot of companies, that's like they're getting ready for an IPO if they're doing that kind of ARR. So what is in that cloud number? I presume there's a hybrid, a component of that, but can you help us understand what's that definition? >> Yeah, we were very careful with that because we wanted to be assured that we're talking to you all about cloud and being true cloud. So that is just revenues of our vantage product running in AWS or Azure or Google Cloud. It doesn't include any private cloud or hybrid cloud environment. So we wanted to be really specific about, that's a success and the hyper scaler environment and the public cloud environment. Thanks for asking that question, that's great. >> Thank you for the answer, and that's really important. There's just so much cloud washing going on, and so it's good to hear that you're making that clean, what you call the true cloud number, I would agree. That's a great way to look at it. And of course, there's a lot of evolution going on in cloud and on-prem, and from a hybrid standpoint out to the edge, so is your cloud strategy to be compatible with the cloud native AWS, Azure, Google maybe Alibaba someday. But is your strategy also to try to cross connect those clouds in some way which is a kind of metadata challenge. Maybe you could talk about that. >> Yeah, that's exactly that when I use the term, connected multi-cloud data platform, that's exactly the point. We see companies want to have a data fabric that spans across, either from on-premise and from on-prem, but they want to span across those public cloud environments. Our perspective as the companies seem to crave, how to use compute transparently across multi-cloud environments, our perspective is, we want to give that same ability to essentially federate data across a multi-cloud environment. Because the CIO is, I talked to the too, and I'm sure you do too, Dave, they want optionality in terms of cloud provider. They don't want to be locked in to an AWS or an Azure or Google, they want to be able to keep a competitive environment, competitive sourcing environment, be able to use the right services from the right cloud provider. So from a Teradata perspective, one of the other key things about our cloud focus is, we're starting to think about Teradata vantage as much more of a platform rather than a product. And so, you know, we've got 17 integrations in the product to native cloud services and Amazon alone, about 13 in Azure and 12 in Google Cloud, where we utilize and enable our customers to use those native cloud services, in the way that their dev ops teams have become very accustomed to. And I think that level of integration that our R&D spend has enabled recently, has really positioned then our customers minds the ability for Teradata to be modern in terms of that dev ops, and for Teradata to be at the core of their data architecture. And then from a pervade and a fabric perspective, we've really invested in what we called our query grid technology to really be able to federate queries out across multiple cloud environments. And we've put a commercial model in place that we charge per query. So we don't charge per megabyte of storage, that we charge for successful query execution. And our thesis says, if we open the Teradata platform to as many data sources as possible, our customers are going to want to query that data, connect it together, and get unique valuable insights that they can't get anywhere else other than using a solution like Teradata. So we were super excited about that. >> I'm excited too, that it's kind of the Holy grail, because the other thing CIO is telling me Steve is like, look, we've spent a decade in our developers, they got the cloud native thing. They know how to optimize for AWS or Google or Azure, we got that. What we need, is we need to enable the businesses, so if you can abstract away that complexity, that's innovation that they want, 'cause they want to go faster. And this notion of a federated query, I think what I'm hearing is, you're building out the knowledge to wherever the query should be serviced, whether it's remote, or local, on AWS or Azure or Google, or on-prem, you're going to be able to service that query in the most efficient manner. Is that's kind of the vision here? >> That's the vision, that's exactly it. It is a connected, we enable a connected data fabric, a multi-cloud for our biggest customers who are always going to have an on-prem capability. They can reach back into their on-prem system from the data, the storage on-prem, in terms of the data that travels across for that is only though for the query. So you don't need to duplicate queries, you don't need to duplicate data in lots of different places. But not only that, to your point, that this is all about business outcome and use cases. And the 40 years of experience that Teradata has, in terms of helping customers know how to use data to solve business problems, they get that in the cloud with the Teradata that they know, and so that whole, if they want to migrate from on-prem to in the cloud, if they wanted federate, we can give that range of options, layer on top our industry and use case experience to deliver a fantastic overall cloud migration experience to our customer set. >> I like the pricing model too, because essentially, you're charging for value. I mean, I think you look, we've gone through decades and for the past decade, a lot of SAS companies have done really well but it's kind of a one-way street. And the charge per query really is a sort of, to me anyway, a gain share, the customers win, you win, as long as you deliver a good product, they'll stay loyal to you. >> That's right. I think our customers are saying that pricing model relates directly to business value. And the total cost of ownership of the Teradata technology, is as much more efficient and effective, it gives a much better TCO, especially with enterprise skill, either data volumes, data complexity or query complexity or query concurrency. And there's entrust, and I'll reflect back to your opening remarks, right? And not very many people use this. We were born on-prem, but what we're finding in the cloud is that it's given us a better advantage, because we are used to squeezing every bit of performance out of the storage and compute and the Teradata system. So, and our poor SQL engine or workload management and query optimization means that we don't run away with the consumption of compute and storage. What we find from a native cloud pervade that are solutions as to solve these really enterprise skill challenges, they spin up more compute or spin up more storage. And it's an exponential increase in terms of the total cost of ownership, whereas we believe we give a much more predictable cost profile and performance profile, utilizing the technologies that we honed on-prem. >> Yeah, that's an important point. I mean, Teradata is by design, it's architected to be a perfectly tuned system. I mean, and so back in the day, where it was $100, 000 for 2.5 gigabytes, you had better architected it that way. And so the prevailing way to solve these problems today, there's not a lot of ways to skin a cat, but just throwing resources at it as it is the only way. And that as you pointed out, can get a little bit out of control, it makes the CFO's nervous. On the earnings score, you referenced two customer situations where you beat out snowflake for the deal. I wonder if you could add some color and elaborate on that. >> Yeah, we've been working with a number of customers that kind of kicked the tires on cloud native solutions, and we're delighted to see some of them coming by, recommitted to Teradata. And I think there's really a couple of reasons for that. One is the challenge of migration. I guess I think snowflake mentioned that in the earnings call yesterday about the challenge of migrating enterprise workload, from a Teradata perspective, because what you get in the cloud is exactly the same as what you've got on-prem. We can lift and shift, and then we can look to modernize once it's in the cloud. So it's dramatically different approach. So there's no interruption to the business users, so it's less risk, less costs, quicker time to value from a migration perspective. So one of those wins with an e-commerce company in the US, was because the new CTO came in and said, "Those 70 engineers, they'd been working on for the last 12 months." And it was about to try and migrate Teradata workload to a cloud native solution. And he said, "Why don't we just use Teradata in the cloud?" Which was a logical question and we were delighted to help them with that answer. And then the other example really was about, the projected cost of running in the cloud, and how expensive it was going to be once that organization had scaled up to the level of queries and execution that their enterprise was going to be generating, and also from the growth trajectory that they were anticipating, just from a tool cost of ownership perspective Teradata made a lot of sense. And that probably would surprise quite a lot of people over there who have always considered Teradata as being reassuringly expensive. But what we're really demonstrating now is when we think about it in terms of query execution and as customers try alternative solutions to execute the kind of queries the enterprise skill that Teradata does every day, we are actually a really good price performance player. >> Yeah, I don't think anybody would ever question your database chops. I mean, I think people were trying to understand it and I my myself was trying to understand, okay, what happens to the on-prem business? And you're sort of connected the dots there for me. So my question is, what are your on-prem customers? What's their motivation for moving to the cloud? Are they actually leaning in, or are they kind of many of them putting a brick wall around their on-prem, and sort of carving out a cloud agenda? How do you see that evolving? >> Look, I think, and I'm talking about existing customers rather than winning new customers here. But our existing customers are going to continue growing their on-prem environments. You know, if you look at the market analysis it says, between one and 4% growth per annum for the existing on-prem traditional technologies. So, and we expect Teradata to more than gain our share in terms of that one to 4% market share grows every year, but really the growth, the 30% plus growth, in terms of year on year data growth in the cloud, is really driven by that DevOps approach, one to utilize first party cloud services to augment the technology development that's going on inside organizations, also as data starts moving into a SaaS environments, being able to do the analytics of that data that's already in a cloud environment and a cloud environment starts to make a lot of sense. So we are investing in connectors to the sales force, the service now, so that you can have access to that data from Teradata. So we think that hybrid approach, in many of the biggest companies in the world is going to continue to make a lot of sense, but the big growth, and I think is going to be in those cloud environments. >> So as I model, my mental model around Teradata is really holding serve and that on-prem business, low single digit growth, keep that stable, and then you're growing very very rapidly in the ARR model, the cloud business. And then at some point you've got, let's Teradata, 1.8 billion in revenue, somewhere around there. So you've got ways to go before that cloud business is as large as the on-prem business, obviously, but that's the opportunity. And we've seen a number of companies transition through that very successfully. You're obviously communicating to the street, they liked the story. This seems to be some upside people are, you know, the investors are saying, "Well this is an undervalued company you don't have- >> Yeah, no, absolutely. And I would say is, we look at our current ARR, we know that we're going to have a stable base of on-prem ARR for the foreseeable future. But, the ability to migrate some of that ARR to cloud is low hanging fruit in terms of growing our cloudy ARR. But then what we've seen is, once we migrate an on-prem customer to the cloud, it kind of unlocks the Teradata environment for that customer, because, remember we usually run all of the mission critical production workloads, and so that system is like tied tightly down, you don't, if you're the CFO, you don't want the marketing team like disrupting your month end running. But when you're in the cloud, to run those ad hoc queries or ad hoc analytics capabilities, then we can spin up and we can elastically grow more compute, more storage, so that workload can be satisfied, both still predicting those mission critical workloads and the core SQL engine. And so we're seeing the expansion once we move some of those workloads to the cloud and some of those customers to the cloud as being really, really significant. So expanding the ARR that the did have on-prem, when it lands in the cloud, as we've seen more than 50% expansion rates. >> I mean, I see the future. You used the term, I think data fabric, I see the future is data warehouse, data warehouse, data lake or whatever repository you want. Those are just nodes in my mind within that fabric. And you mentioned marketing, if I'm in the marketing department, I want my own data. I have the context, I know what I need, I don't want to be subservient to some complex data pipeline and data scientists to get permission. I just want to... I want to go for it and create data products. And so, my last question is sort of, there's my sort of simple vision. How do you see the future? >> Look, I think I'll give an example of telcos who are increasingly trying to move to be techcos. And how orchestration of data across multiple silos in an enterprise can create significant enterprise value. So if you imagine the IOT use case 5G deployment strategy, you've got all of these 4G handsets, so you just know, telco is wanting to know where all of that usage data is, so that they can mane that usage data into customer usage patterns to then influence their capital allocation strategy as they build out 5G networks. So it takes data from the consumer level and puts it into a corporate planning process, on the really backend of the company. And so we believe with our connected multi-cloud data platform and our outstanding and data warehousing analytics, we can get those kind of most complex use cases, the lever to our customers really successfully. >> Hey Steve, great story, it's clear to me you've got your priorities straight. So thanks so much for coming on theCUBE and sharing your story there. >> Dave, it's been an absolute pleasure, I hope to do it again. >> All right, you got it. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>>Hello, and welcome to today's event, dealing government emergency responses beyond the pandemic. This is Bob Wooley, senior fellow for the center for digital government and formerly the chief tech clerk for the state of Utah. I'm excited to serve as moderator for today's event. And just want to say, thank you for joining us. I know we're in for an informative session over the next 60 minutes before we begin a couple of brief housekeeping notes or recording of this presentation will be emailed to all registrants within 48 hours. You can use the recording for your reference or feel free to pass it along to colleagues. This webcast is designed to be interactive and you can participate in Q and a with us by asking questions at any time during the presentation, you should see a Q and a box on the bottom left of the presentation panel. >>Please send in your questions as they come out throughout the presentation, our speakers will address as many of these questions as we can during the Q and a portion of the close of our webinar today, if you would like to download the PDF of the slides for this presentation, you can do so by clicking the webinar resources widget at the bottom of the console. Also during today's webinar, you'll be able to connect with your peers by LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Please use the hashtag gov tech live to connect with your peers across the government technology platform, via Twitter. At the close of the webinar, we encourage you to complete a brief survey about the presentation. We would like to hear what you think if you're unable to see with us for the entire webinar, but we're just like to complete the survey. As much as you're able, please click the survey widget at the bottom of the screen to launch the survey. Otherwise it will pop up once the webinar concludes at this time, we recommend that you disable your pop-up blockers, and if you experiencing any media player issues or have any other problems, please visit our webcast help guide by clicking on the help button at the bottom of the console. >>Joining me today to discuss this very timely topic are Karen revolt and Tim Burch, Kim Berge currently serves as the administrator of human services for Clark County Nevada. He's invested over 20 years in improving health and human service systems of care or working in the private public and nonprofit sectors. 18 of those years have been in local government in Clark County, Las Vegas, where you served in a variety of capacities, including executive leadership roles as the director of department of social services, as well as the director for the department of family services. He has also served as CEO for provider of innovative hosted software solutions, as well as chief strategy officer for a boutique public sector consulting firm. Karen real-world is the social program management offering lead for government health and human services with IBM Watson health. Karen focuses delivering exciting new offerings by focusing on market opportunities, determining unmet needs and identifying innovative solutions. >>Much of her career has been in health and human services focused on snap, TANIF, Medicaid, affordable care act, and child welfare prior to joining IBM. Karen was the senior director of product management for a systems integrator. She naturally fell in love with being a project manager. She can take her user requirements and deliver offerings. Professionals would use to make their job easier and more productive. Karen has also found fulfillment in working in health and human services on challenges that could possibly impact the outcome of people's lives. Now, before we begin our discussion of the presentation, I want to one, we'd like to learn a little more about you as an audience. So I'm going to ask you a polling question. Please take a look at this. Give us an idea of what is your organization size. I won't bother to read all these to you, but there are other a range of sizes zero to 250 up to 50,000. Please select the one that is most appropriate and then submit. >>It looks like the vast majority are zero to two 50. Don't have too many over 250,000. So this is a very, very interesting piece of information. Now, just to set up our discussion today, what I want to do is just spend just a moment and talk about the issue that we're dealing with. So when you look the COVID-19 pandemic, it's put immense pressure on States. I've been a digital state judge and had been judging a lot of the responses from States around the country. It's been very interesting to me because they bifurcate really into two principle kinds of reactions to the stress providing services that COVID environment present. One is we're in a world of hurt. We don't have enough money. I think I'm going to go home and engage as little as I have to. Those are relatively uncommon. Thankfully, most of them have taken the COVID-19 pandemic has immense opportunity for them to really do a lot more with telework, to do more with getting people, employees, and citizens involved with government services. >>And I've done some really, really creative things along the way. I find that to be a really good thing, but in many States systems have been overloaded as individuals and families throughout the country submitted just an unprecedented number of benefit applications for social services. At the same time, government agencies have had to contend with social distance and the need for a wholly different approach to engage with citizens. Um, overall most public agencies, regardless of how well they've done with technology have certainly felt some strain. Now, today we have the opportunity to go into a discussion with our speakers, have some wonderful experience in these areas, and I'm going to be directing questions to them. And again, we encourage you as you hear what they have to say. Be sure and submit questions that we can pick up later at the time. So Tim, let's start with you. Given that Las Vegas is a hub for hospitality. An industry hit severely as a result of this pandemic. How's the County doing right now and how are you prioritizing the growing needs of the County? >>Thanks Bob. Thanks for having me. Let me start off by giving just a little, maybe context for Clark County too, to our audience today. So, uh, Clark County is, you know, 85% of the state of Nevada if we serve not just as a regional County by way of service provision, but also direct municipal services. Well, if, uh, the famous Las Vegas strip is actually in unincorporated Clark County, and if we were incorporated, we would be the largest city in the state. So I say all of that to kind of help folks understand that we provide a mix of services, not just regional services, like health and human services, the direct and, and missable, uh, services as well as we work with our other five jurisdiction partners, uh, throughout the area. Uh, we are very much, um, I think during the last recession we were called the Detroit of the West. >>And, uh, that was because we're very much seen as a one industry town. Uh, so most like when the car plants, the coal plants closed back East and in the communities fuel that very rapidly, the same thing happens to us when tourism, uh, it's cut. Uh, so of course, when we went into complete shutdown and March, uh, we felt it very rapidly, not just on, uh, uh, tax receipts and collectibles, but the way in which we could deliver services. So of course our first priority was to, uh, like I think you mentioned mobilized staff. We, we mobilized hundreds of staff overnight with laptops and phones and cars and the things they needed to do to get mobile and still provide the priority services that we're mandated to provide from a safety standpoint. Um, and then we got busy working for our clients and that's really where our partnership with IBM and Watson, uh, came in and began planning that in July. And we're able to open that portal up in October to, to really speed up the way in which we're giving assistance to, to our residents. Um, re focus has been on making sure that people stay housed. We have, uh, an estimated, uh, 2.5 million residents and over 150,000 of those households are anticipated to be facing eviction, uh, as of January one. So we, we've got a, a big task ahead of us. >>All of this sounds kind of expensive. Uh, one of the common threads as you know, runs throughout government is, ah, I don't really have the money for that. I think I'd be able to afford that a diaper too, as well. So what types of funding has been made available for counties, a result of a pandemic, >>Primarily our funding stream that we're utilizing to get these services out the door has been the federal cares act. Uh, now we had some jurisdictions regionally around us and even locally that prioritize those funds in a different way. Um, our board of County commissioners, uh, took, um, a sum total of about $85 million of our 240 million that said, this will go directly to residents in the form of rental assistance and basic needs support. No one should lose their home or go hungry during this pandemic. Uh, so we've really been again working through our community partners and through our IBM tools to make sure that happens. >>So how does, how does, how does the cares act funding then support Clark County? Cause it seems to me that the needs would be complex, diverse >>Pretty much so. So as you, as folks may know him a call there's several tronches of the cares act, the original cares act funding that has come down to us again, our board, uh, identified basic needs or rental assistance and, and gave that the department of social service to go to the tunicate, uh, through the community. We then have the cares act, uh, uh, coronavirus relief funds that have, uh, impacted our CDBG and our emergency solutions grants. We've taken those. And that's what we was going to keep a lot of the programs and services, uh, like our IBM Watson portal open past January one when the cares act dollars expire. Uh, our initial response was a very manual one, uh, because even though we have a great home grown homeless management information system, it does not do financials. Uh, so we had 14 local nonprofits adjudicating, uh, this rental assistance program. >>And so we could get our social service visitor portal up, uh, to allow us to take applications digitally and run that through our program. Uh, and, uh, so those partners were obviously very quickly overwhelmed and were able to stand up our portal, uh, which for the reason we were driving so hard, even from, uh, beginning of the conversations where after going into lockdown into contracting in July and getting the portal open in October, which was an amazing turnaround. Uh, so the kudos that IBM team, uh, for getting us up and out the door so quickly, uh, was a tie in, uh, to our, uh, Curam IBM, uh, case management system that we utilize to adjudicate benefits on daily basis in Clark County for all our local indigent population, uh, and high needs folks. Uh, and then that ties into our SAP IBM platform, which gets the checks out the door. >>So what, what we've been able to do with these dollars is created in Lucian, uh, that has allowed us in the last 60 days to get as much money out the door, as our nonprofits were able go out the door in the first six months pandemic. So it really has helped us. Uh, so I'm really grateful to our board of County commissioners for recognizing the investment in technology to, to not only get our teams mobile, but to create ease of access for our constituents and our local residents to give them the help they need quickly and the way that they need it. >>Just to follow up question to that, Tim, that I'm curious about having done a lot of work like this in government, sometimes getting procurement through in a timely way is a bit challenging. How were you able to work through those issues and getting this up and provision so quickly? >>Uh, yeah, so we, we put together a, what we call a pandemic playbook, which is kind of lessons learned. And what we've seen is the folks who were essential workers in the first 60 days of the, uh, pandemic. We were able to get a lot done quickly because we were taking full advantage of the emergency. Uh, it may sound a little crass to folks not inside the service world, but it was, uh, you know, don't want you to crisis. It was things we've been planning or trying to do for years. We need them yesterday. We should have had them yesterday, but let's get them tomorrow and get it moving very quickly. Uh, this IBM procurement was something we were able to step through very quickly because of our longstanding relationship. Our countywide, uh, system of record for our financials is SAP. Uh, we've worked with Curam, uh, solution, uh, for years. >>So we've got this long standing relationship and trust in the product and the teams, which helped us build the business case of why we did it, no need to go out for competitive procurement that we didn't have time. And we needed something that would integrate very quickly into our existing systems. Uh, so that part was there. Now when the folks who were non essential came back in June and the reopening, it was whiplash, uh, the speed at which we were moving, went back to the pace of normal business, uh, which feels like hitting a wall, doing a hundred miles an hour when you're used to having that, uh, mode of doing business. Uh, so that's certainly been a struggle, uh, for all of those involved, uh, in trying to continue to get things up. Um, but, uh, once again, the teams have been great because we've probably tripled our licensure on this portal since we opened it, uh, because of working with outside vendors, uh, to, uh, literally triple the size of our staff that are processing these applications by bringing on temporary staff, uh, and short-term professionals. Uh, and so we've been able to get those things through, uh, because we'd already built the purchasing vehicle during the early onset of the crisis. >>That's very helpful. Karen, IBM has played a really pivotal role in all of this. Uh, IBM Watson health works with a number of global government agencies, raging from counties like Clark County to federal governments. What are some of the major challenges you've seen with your clients as a result of the pandemic and how is technology supporting them in a time of need and give us some background Watson health too. So we kind of know a little more about it because this is really a fascinating area. >>Yeah. Thank you, Bob. And thanks Tim for the background on Clark County, because I think Clark County is definitely also an example of what federal governments and global governments are doing worldwide today. So, um, Watson health is our division within IBM where we really focus on health and human services. And our goal is to really focus in on, um, the outcomes that we're providing to individuals and families and looking at how we use data and insights to really make that impact and that change. And within that division, we have our government health and human services area, which is the focus of where we are with our clients around social program. But it also allows us to work with, um, different agencies and really look at how we can really move the ball in terms of, um, effecting change and outcomes for, um, really moving the needle of how we can, uh, make an impact on individuals and families. >>So as we look at the globe globally as well, you know, everything that Tim had mentioned about how the pandemic has really changed the way that government agencies operate and how they do services, I think it's amazing that you have that pandemic playbook because a lot of agencies in the same way also had these set of activities that they always wanted to go and take part on, but there was no impetus to really allow for that to happen. And with the pandemic, it allowed that to kind of open and say, okay, we can try this. And unfortunately I'm in a very partial house way to do that. And, um, what Tim has mentioned about the new program that they set up for the housing, some of those programs could take a number of years to really get a program online and get through and allowing, uh, the agencies to be able to do that in a matter of weeks is amazing. >>And I think that's really gonna set a precedent as we go forward and how you can bring on programs such as the housing and capability in Canada with the economic, uh, social, um, uh, development and, and Canada need that the same thing. They actually had a multi benefit delivery system that was designed to deliver benefits for three programs. And as part of the department of fisheries and oceans Canada, the, um, the state had an emergency and they really need to set up on how they could provide benefits to the fishermen who had been at that impacted, um, from that. And they also did set up a digital front-end using IBM citizen engagement to start to allow the applications that benefits, um, and they set it up in a matter of weeks. And as I mentioned, we, uh, Clark County had a backend legacy system where they could connect to and process those applications. And this case, this is a brand new program and the case management system that they brought up was on cloud. And they had to set up a new one, but allow them to set up a, what we used to call straight through processing, I think has been now turned, turned or coined contact less, uh, processing and allowing us to really start to move those benefits and get those capabilities out to the citizens in even a faster way than has been imagined. Uh, pre pandemic. >>Karen, I have one follow-up question. I want to ask you, having had a lot of experience with large projects in government. Sometimes there's a real gap between getting to identified real requirements and then actions. How do you, how do you work with clients to make sure that process time to benefit is shortened? >>So we really focus on the user themselves and we take a human centered design focus and really prioritizing what those needs are. Um, so working with the clients, uh, effectively, and then going through agile iterations of brain, that capability out as, um, in, in a phased approach to, so the idea of getting what we can bring out that provides quality and capability to the users, and then over time starting to really roll out additional functions and, um, other, uh, things that citizens or individuals and families would need >>Very helpful. Tim, this is an interesting partnership. It's always good to see partnerships between private sector and government. Tell us a little bit about how the partnership with IBM Watson health was established and what challenges or they were brought into assist, where they brought into assist with back to requirements. Again, within the requirements definitely shifted on us. You know, we had the con looking at, uh, Watson on our child welfare, uh, side of the house that I'm responsible for and how that we could, uh, increase access to everything from tele-health to, to, uh, foster parent benefit, uh, kinship, placement benefits, all those types of things that, that right now are very manual, uh, on the child welfare side. Uh, and then the pandemic kid. And we very quickly realized that we needed, uh, to stand up a, um, a new program because, uh, a little bit for context, uh, the park County, we don't administer TANIF or Medicaid at the County level. >>It is done at the state level. So we don't have, uh, unemployment systems or Medicaid, 10 of snap benefits systems to be able to augment and enroll out. We provide, uh, the indigent supports the, the homelessness prevention, referee housing continuum of care, long-term care, really deep emergency safety net services for our County, which is a little bit different and how those are done. So that was really our focus, which took a lot of in-person investigation. We're helping people qualify for disability benefits so they can get into permanent supportive housing, uh, things that are very intensive. And yet now we have a pandemic where we need things to happen quickly because the cares act money expires at the end of December. And people were facing eviction and eviction can help spread exposure to, to COVID. Uh, so, uh, be able to get in and very rapidly, think about what is the minimal pelvis to MVP. >>What's the minimum viable product that we can get out the door that will help people, uh, entrance to a system as contactless as possible, which again was a complete one 80 from how we had been doing business. Um, and, uh, so the idea that you could get on and you have this intelligent chat bot that can walk you through questions, help you figure out if you look like you might be eligible, roll you right into an application where you can upload the few documents that we're going to require to help verify your coat would impact and do that from a smartphone and under, you know, 20 minutes. Um, it, it, it is amazing. And the fact that we've stood that up and got it out the door in 90 days, it's just amazing to me, uh, when it shows the, uh, strength of partnership. Um, I think we can, we have some shared language because we had that ongoing partnership, but we were able to actually leverage some system architects that we had that were familiar with our community and our other products. So it really helped expedite, uh, getting this, uh, getting this out to the citizens. >>So, uh, I assume that there are some complexities in doing this. So overall, how has this deployment of citizen engagement with Watson gone and how do you measure success other than you got it out quick? How do you know if it's working? >>Yeah. Right. So it's the adage of, you know, quick, fast and good, right. Um, or fast, good and cheap. So, uh, we measure success in this way. Um, how are we getting access as our number one quality measurement here? So we were able to collect, uh, about 13,000 applications, uh, manual NRC, manually folks had to go onto our website, download a PDF, fill it out, email it, or physically drop it off along with their backup. One of their choice of 14 non-profits in town, whichever is closest to them. Um, and, uh, and then wait for that process. And they were able to get 13,000 of those, uh, process for the last six months. Uh, we have, I think we had about 8,000 applications the first month come into the portal and about an equal amount of folks who could not provide the same documentation that it was needed. >>And self-selected out. If we had not had the, the tool in place, we would have had 16,000 applications, half of which would have been non-eligible would have been jamming up the system, uh, when we don't have the bandwidth to deal to deal with that, we, we need to be able to focus in on, uh, Judy Kenny applications that we believe are like a 95% success rate from the moment our staff gets them, but because we have the complex and he was on already being dependent upon the landlord, having to verify the rent amount and be willing to work with us, um, which is a major hurdle. Um, but, uh, so w we knew we could not do is go, just reinvent the manual process digitally that that would have been an abject failure on our behalf. So, uh, the ideas that, uh, folks had can go on a very, had this very intuitive conversation to the chat bot, answer some questions and find out if they're eligible. >>And then self-select out was critical for us to not only make sure that the citizens got the help they needed, but not so burnt out and overload our workforce, which is already feeling the strain of the COVID pandemic on their own personal lives and in their homes and in the workplace. Um, so that was really critical for us. So it's not just about speed, ease of access was important. Uh, the ability to quickly automate things on the fly, uh, we have since changed, uh, the area median income, a qualifier for the rental assistance, because we were able to reallocate more money, uh, to the program. So we were able to open it up to more people. We were able to make that, uh, change to the system very quickly. Uh, the idea that we can go on the home page and put updates, uh, we recognized that, uh, some of our monolingual Hispanic residents were having difficulty even with some guidance getting through the system. >>So we're able to record a, a Spanish language walkthrough and get done on the home page the next day, right into the fordable, there'll be a fine, so they could literally run the YouTube video while they're walking through their application. Side-by-side so things like that, that those are how we are able to, for us measured success, not just in the raw dollars out the door, not just in the number of applications that have come in, but our ability to be responsive when we hear from our constituents and our elected officials that, Hey, I want, I appreciate the 15,000 applications as you all, a process and record time, I've got three, four, five, six, 10 constituents that having this type of problem and be able to go back and retool our systems to make them more intuitive, to do, be able to keep them responsive for us is definitely a measure of success and all of this, probably more qualitative than here we're looking >>For, but, uh, that's for us, that's important. Actually the qualitative side is what usually gets ignored. Uh, Karen, I've got a question that's a follow up for you on the same topic. How does IBM facilitate reporting within this kind of an environment given the different needs of stakeholders, online managers and citizens? What kinds of things do you, are you able to do >>So with, um, the influx of digitalization? I think it allows us to really take a more data-driven approach to start looking at that. So, as, as Tim was mentioning, you can see where potentially users are spending more time on certain questions, or if they're stuck on a question, you can see where the abandoned rate is. So using a more data-driven approach to go in to identify, you know, how do we actually go and, um, continue to drive that user experience that may not be something that we drive directly from the users. So I would say that analytics is really, uh, I think going to continue to be a driving force as government agencies go forward, because now they are capturing the data. But one thing that they have to be careful of is making sure that the data that they're getting is the right data to give them the information, to make the right next steps and decisions. >>And Tim, you know, use a really good example with, um, the chatbot in terms of, you know, with the influx of everything going on with COVID, the citizens are completely flooded with information and how do they get the right information to actually help them decide, can I apply for this chap program? Or should I, you know, not even try and what Tim mentioned just saved the citizens, you know, the people that may not be eligible a lot of time and going through and applying, and then getting denied by having that upfront, I have questions and I need answers. Um, so again, more data-driven of how do we provide that information? And, you know, we've seen traditionally citizens having to go on multiple website, web pages to get an answer to the question, because they're like, I think I have a question in this area, but I'm not exactly sure. And they, then they're starting to hunt and hunt and hunt and not even potentially get an answer. So the chocolate really like technology-wise helps to drive, you know, more data-driven answers to what, um, whether it's a citizen, whether it's, um, Tim who needs to understand how and where my citizens getting stuck, are they able to complete the application where they are? Can we really get the benefits to, um, this individual family for the housing needs >>Too many comments on the same thing. I know you have to communicate measures of success to County executives and others. How do you do that? I mean, are you, do you have enough information to do it? Yeah, we're able to, we actually have a standup meeting every morning where the first thing I learn is how many new applications came in overnight. How many of those were completed with full documentation? How many will be ported over into our system, assigned the staff to work, where they're waiting >>On landlord verification. So I can see the entire pipeline of applications, which helps us then determine, um, Oh, it's, it's not, you know, maybe urban legend is that folks are having difficulty accessing the system. When I see really the bottleneck there, it got gotten the system fine, the bottlenecks laying with our landlord. So let's do a landlord, a town hall and iterate and reeducate them about what their responsibilities are and how easy it is for them to respond with the form they need to attest to. And so it lets us see in real time where we're having difficulties, uh, because, uh, there's a constant pressure on this system. Not just that, uh, we don't want anyone to lose their home, uh, but these dollars also go away within a December. So we've got this dual pressure of get it right and get it right now. >>Uh, and so th the ability to see these data and these metrics on, on a daily basis is critical for us to, to continue to, uh, ModuLite our response. Um, and, and not just get comfortable are baked into well, that's why we developed the flowchart during requirements, and that's just the way things are gonna stay. Uh, that's not how you respond to a pandemic. Uh, and so having a tool and a partner that helps us, uh, stay flexible, state agile, I guess, to, to, to leverage some terminology, uh, is important. And, and it's, it's paid dividends for our citizens. Karen, again, is another up to the same thing. I'm kind of curious about one of the problems of government from time to time. And Tim, I think attest to this is how do you know when Dunn has been reached? How did you go about defining what done would look like for the initial rollout with this kind of a customer? >>So I think Doug, I guess in this case, um, is, is this, isn't able to get the benefits that they're looking for and how do we, uh, you know, starting from, I think what we were talking about earlier, like in terms of requirements and what is the minimum viable, um, part of that, and then you start to add on the bells and whistles that we're really looking to do. So, um, you know, our team worked with him to really define what are those requirements. I know it's a new program. So some of those policy decisions were still also being worked out as the requirements were being defined as well. So making sure that you are staying on top of, okay, what are the key things and what do we really need to do from a compliance standpoint, from a functionality, and obviously, um, the usability of how, uh, an assistant can come on and apply and, um, have those, uh, requirements, make sure that you can meet that, that version before you start adding on additional scope. >>Very helpful. Jim, what's your comment on this since I know done matters to you? Yeah. And look, I I've lived through a, again, multiple, uh, county-wide it implementations and some department wide initiatives as well. So I think we know that our staff always want more so nothing's ever done, uh, which is a challenge and that's on our side of the customer. Um, but, uh, for this, it really was our, our experience of recognizing the, the time was an essence. We didn't have a chance. We didn't have, uh, the space to get into these endless, uh, conversations, uh, the agile approach, rather than doing the traditional waterfall, where we would have been doing requirements tracking for months before we ever started coding, it was what do we need minimally to get a check in the hands of a landlord on behalf of a client, so they don't get evicted. >>And we kept just re honing on that. That's nice. Let's put that in the parking lot. We'll come back to it because again, we want to leverage this investment long term, uh, because we've got a we, and we've got the emergency solutions and CDBG, and then our, uh, mainstream, uh, services we brought on daily basis, but we will come back to those things speed and time are of the essence. So what do we need, uh, to, to get this? So a chance to really, um, educate our staff about the concepts of agile iteration, um, and say, look, this is not just on the it side. We're gonna roll a policy out today around how you're doing things. And we may figure out through data and metrics that it's not working next week, and we'll have to have that. You want it. And you're going to get the same way. >>You're getting updated guidance from the CDC on what to do and what not to do. Uh, health wise, you're getting the same from us, uh, and really to helping the staff understand that process from the beginning was key. And, uh, so, and, and that's, again, partnering with, with our development team in that way was helpful. Um, because once we gave them that kind of charter as I am project champion, this is what we're saying. They did an equally good job of staying on task and getting to the point of is this necessary or nice. And if it wasn't necessary, we put it in the nice category and we'll come back to it. So I think that's really helpful. My experience having done several hundred sheet applications also suggest the need for MBP matters, future stages really matter and not getting caught. My flying squirrels really matters. So you don't get distracted. So let's move on to, let's do a polling question before we go on to some of our other questions. So for our audience, do you have a digital front ends for your benefit delivery? Yes, no. Or we're planning to a lot of response here yet. There we go. Looks like about half, have one and half note. So that's an interesting question. What's going to one more polling question, learn a little more here. Has COVID-19 >>Accelerated or moved cloud. Yes, no. We already run a majority of applications on cloud. Take a moment and respond if you would, please. So this is interesting. No real acceleration was taken place and in terms of moving to cloud is not what I was expecting, but that's interesting. So let's go onto another question then. And Karen, let me direct this one to you, given that feedback, how do you envision technologies such as citizen engagement and watching the system will be used, respond to emergency situations like the pandemic moving forward? I mean, what should government agencies consider given the challenges? This kind of a pandemic is brought upon government and try to tie this in, if you would, what, what is the role of cloud in all of this for making this happen in a timely way? Karen, take it away. >>Okay. Thanks Bob. So as we started the discussion around the digital expansion, you know, we definitely see additional programs and additional capabilities coming online as we continue on. Um, I think, uh, agencies have really seen a way to connect with their citizens and families and landlords, um, in this case an additional way. And he prepared them like there were, uh, presuppose assumptions that the, um, the citizens or landlords really wanted to interact with agency face-to-face and have that high touch part. And I think, um, through this, the governments have really learned that there is a way to still have an impact on the citizen without having a slow, do a face to face. And so I think that's a big realization for them to now really explore other ways to digitally explain, expand their programs and capabilities. Another area that we touched on was around the AI and chat bot piece. >>So as we start to see capabilities like this, the reason why Clark County was able to bring it up quickly and everything was because it was housed on cloud, we are seeing the push of starting to move some of the workloads. I know from a polling question perspective that it's been, um, lighter in terms of getting, uh, moving to the cloud. But we have seen the surge of really chatbots. I think we've been talking about chatbots for a while now. And, um, agencies hadn't really had the ability to start to implement that and really put it into effect. But with the pandemic, they were able to bring things up and, you know, very short amount of time to solve, um, a big challenge of not having the call center be flooded and have a different way to direct that engagement between the citizen and the government. >>So really building a different type of channel for them to engage rather than having to call or to come into an office, which wasn't really allowed in terms of, um, the pandemic. Um, the other thing I'll touch on is, um, 10 mentioned, you know, the backlog of applications that are coming in and we're starting to see the, um, the increase in automation. How do we automate areas where it's administratively highly burdened, but it's really a way that we can start to automate those processes, to give our workers the ability to focus on more of those complex situations that really need attention. So we're starting to see where the trends of trying to push there of can we automate some of those processes, um, uh, uploading documents and verification documents is another way of like, trying to look at, is there a way that we can make that easier? >>Not only for the applicant that's applying, but also for the caseworker. So there's not having to go through that. Um, does the name match, um, the applicant, uh, information and what we're looking on here, and Bob, you mentioned cloud. So behind the scenes of, you know, why, uh, government agencies are really pushing the cloud is, um, you heard about, I mean, with the pandemic, you see a surge of applicants coming in for those benefits and how do we scale for that kind of demand and how do you do that in an inappropriate way, without the huge pressures that you put on to your data center or your staff who's already trying to help our citizens and applicants, applicants, and families get the benefits they need. And so the cloud, um, you know, proposition of trying, being able to be scalable and elastic is really a key driver that we've seen in terms of, uh, uh, government agencies going to cloud. >>We haven't really seen during a pandemic, the core competencies, some of them moving those to cloud, it's really been around that digital front end, the chat bot area of how do we start to really start with that from a cloud perspective and cloud journey, and then start to work in the other processes and other areas. Um, security is also huge, uh, focus right now with the pandemic and everything going online. And with cloud allows you to be able to make sure that you're secure and be able to apply the right security so that you're always covered in terms of the type of demand and, um, impact, uh, that is coming through >>Very helpful. Tim, I'm going to ask to follow up on this of a practical nature. So you brought this up very quickly. Uh, there's a certain amount of suspicion around state government County government about chatbots. How did you get a chat much and be functional so quickly? And were you able to leverage the cloud in this process? Yeah, so on the trust is important. Uh, and I'll go back to my previous statement about individuals being able to see upfront whether they believe they're eligible or not, because nothing will erode trust more than having someone in hours applying and weeks waiting to find out they were denied because they weren't eligible to begin with, uh, that erodes trust. So being able to let folks know right up front, here's what it looks like to be eligible, actually help us build some of that, uh, cause they don't feel like, uh, someone in the bureaucracy is just putting them through the ringer for no reason. >>Um, now in regard to how do we get the chat bot out? I will say, uh, we have a, uh, dynamic it and leadership, uh, team at the highest level of County government who we have been already having conversations over the last year about what it meant to be smart government, uh, the department of social service and family services that I'm responsible for. We're already, uh, hands up first in line, you know, Guinea pigs volunteering to be on the front end of, uh, certain projects. So w we have primed ourselves for, for some of this readiness in that aspect. Um, but for citizen trust, um, the timeliness of application right now is the biggest element of trust. Uh, so I've applied I've I feel like I put my housing future in your hands. Are you going to deliver and having the ability for us to rapidly scale up? >>Uh, we typically have 120 staff in the department of social service that, that are adjudicating benefits for programs on daily basis. We've doubled that with temporary staff, uh, through some partnerships, uh, we're, we're gonna, as of next week, probably have more temporary per professional staff helping an adjudicator applications. No, do full-time County staff, because again, this rush to get the dollars out, out the door. So having a system where I can easily, uh, ramp on new users and manage them without having to be solely dependent upon an already, uh, overworked it staff who were trying to support 37 other departments in the County, um, around infrastructure needs has been greatly helpful. Sounds to me like a strong outcome focus and one that seems to work. Let's move on now to our audience questions. We're getting close to the end of our time. So let's jump into some questions from the audience. A number of you have been asking about getting copies of today's presentation within the next 48 hours. Government technology will provide all attendees with the link to the recording for your reference, or to share with colleagues. Well, let's go to our first question. So this is an interesting one. And Karen, this is for you did IBM work with other counties and States to provide digital engagement portals. >>We did Bob, uh, we've worked, um, so globally we've provided guidance on this. We work closely with New York city. They've been the integral part of the development also with our citizen engagement offering. Um, we work closely with the States. So we worked with New York city. Um, North Carolina was also another state who, um, improved their, uh, citizen engagement piece, bring up their Medicaid and snap, um, applications along with Medicaid. COVID testing along that. And I mentioned, um, the economic and social development in Canada as well. And we also work with the ministry of social development in Singapore. So a number of our customers had put up, uh, a global, uh, or sorry, a citizen engagement frontend. And during this timeframe, >>Very helpful. I don't know how much did you hear your mom provide you, but how much did it cost for initial deployment and what are the ongoing costs in other words, is this thing going to be sustainable over time? >>Yeah, absolutely. So total, uh, to date, we've spent about a $1.8 million on development implementations and licensure. A big chunk of that again has been the rapid extended of licensure, uh, for this program. Um, I think over a third of that is probably licensing because again, we need to get the dollars out and we need staff to do that and making the short term several hundred thousand dollar investment in a professional support staff and having them be able to work this portal is much cheaper than the long-term investment of bringing on a staff, printing a job, uh, during a financial difficulty that we're facing, uh, the single largest fiscal cliff let's get into that us history. Um, so it's not smart to create jobs that have a 30 year, one way to retirement, uh, inside our in unionized government environment here. So having this, the staff that would come on and do this and get out the door on these federal dollars was critical for us. Um, and there is a $800,000 a year, I believe so ongoing costs associated with licensure and, and the programming support. Uh, but once again, we're going to be moving, um, our traditional services into this digital front end. We'll be continuing this because we're, we're, we're facing, it took us, I think, six and a half, seven years to come back from the previous recession. Undoubtedly, take a little longer to get back >>From this one. Here's another interesting question, I guess really primarily Tim Tim was the solution on primarily on premise or in the cloud. >>So we'll, we've done a mix. Uh, the, and I'm starting a lot of feedbacks. I don't know if you all can hear that or not, but the, uh, I think we went on prem for, uh, some people because of the, uh, bridge into our service case manager system, which is on prem. So we did some management there. I do believe the chat bot piece of it though is in the cloud. So we're bringing it down to, from one system to the other. Uh, and, and part of that was a student negotiations and costs and worrying about what long-term is that we have a very stated goal of moving, uh, our Curam platform, which is on-prem, this is the backend. So how are we? We, we set our IBM Watson, uh, portal up, uh, and moving all of that on cloud, uh, because I mean, we've got, uh, a workforce who, uh, has the ability to retire at a very high rate over the next five years. >>And, uh, having 24 seven support in the cloud is, is as a, someone who would be called to respond to emergency situations like the is, is a much better Cod deal for, for myself and the citizen. So migrating, uh, and, um, our typical on-prem stuff up into the cloud, uh, as we continue on this, uh, evolution of what IBM Watson, uh, and the plug into our Curam, uh, system looks like Karen related question for another user is the portal provided with Clara County and others linked to other third-party backend office apps, or can it be, >>Yeah, the answer is it can be it's interoperable. So through APIs, uh, rest, uh, however, um, assistance that they need to be integrated with can definitely be integrated with, uh, like, uh, Tim mentioned, we, we went to the case management solution, but it can be integrated with other applications as well. >>Tim, did you use some other backend third party apps with yours? Uh, we did not. Uh, again, just for speed of getting, uh, this MVP solution out the door. Uh, now what we do with that on the go forward, it is going to look different and probably will include some, another practical question. Given the cares funding should be expended by December. Can this application even be employed at this late date? And you want to take a cut at that? Yeah, for us, uh, once again, we brought up earlier, um, the emergency solutions grants and the community development block grants, which have a Corona virus, uh, CV traunch, each one of those, and those have two to three year expenditure timeframes on them. Uh, so we were going to leverage those to keep this system and some of these programs going once again, that the housing needs, uh, will outstrip our capacity for years to come. >>I guess probably I should have said upfront Las Vegas has one of the worst affordable housing inventories in the nation. Uh, so we know we're going to be facing a housing issue, um, because of this for, for a long time. So we'll be using those two traunches of dollars, ESE, ESPs, uh, CV CDBG, CB funds, uh, in addition to dollars earmarked through some, uh, recreational marijuana license fees that have been dedicated to our homelessness. And when you consider this housing, uh, stability program was part of that homelessness prevention. That's our funding mix locally. Very helpful. So questions maybe for bolts for you on this one, you can probably also teach respond is the system has been set up helping the small business community. Um, this user's been canvassing and the general feeling is that small businesses have been left behind and they've been unable to access funds. What's your response on that? Karen, do you want to take that first? >>Um, yes. So in terms of, uh, the security and sorry. Um, but, uh, can you repeat the last part of that? I just missed the last part when you >>Behind it, but unable to access funds. >>Uh, yeah, so I think from a funding perspective, there's different types of, I think what Tim mentioned in terms of the cares funding, there was different types of funding that came out from a government perspective. Uh, I think there were also other grants and things that are coming out one, uh, that we're still looking at. And I think as we go into the new year, it'll be interesting to see, you know, what additional funding, um, hopefully is, is provided. Uh, but in terms of creativity, we've seen other creative ways that organizations come together to kind of, uh, help with the different agencies, to provide some, some guidance to the community, um, and helping to, uh, provide efforts and, uh, maybe looking at different ways of, um, providing, uh, some of the capabilities that the, either at the County or at the state level that they're able to leverage. But Tim happy to maybe have you chime in here too. >>Yeah. So I'll first start with my wheelhouse and I'll expand out to, to some of my partners. Uh, so the primary, small business, we knew the idea was a daily basis inside this realm is going to be landlords. Uh, so actually this afternoon, we're doing a town hall with folks to be able to roll out, uh, which they will go to our portal to find a corporate landlord program. Uh, so that I seem a landlord for Camille the application pack and on behalf of a hundred residents, rather than us having to adjudicate a hundred individual applications and melon a hundred checks. Uh, so that is because we were listening to that particular segment of the, uh, the business community. Now I know early on, we were, we were really hoping that the, the paycheck protection program federally would have, uh, been dispersed in a way that helped our local small businesses. >>Uh, more we did a, our economic development team did a round of small business supports through our cares act. Uh, our quarterly unfortunate was not open yet. It was just about 15, 20 days shy. So we use, uh, another traditional grant mechanism that we have in place to dedicate that. Uh, but on a go forward board, willing to Congress passes something over the next 30 days, um, that if there's a round two of cares or some other programs, we absolutely now have a tool that we know we can create a digital opening for individuals to come figure out if they're eligible or not for whatever program it is, the it housing, the it, uh, small business operations supports, uh, and it would apply through that process and in a very lightweight, so we're looking forward to how we can expand our footprint to help all of the needs that are present in our community. This leads to another question which may be our last one, but this is an interesting question. How can agencies use COVID-19 as a proof point providing a low cost configurable solutions that can scale across government. Karen, do you want to respond to that? And then Tim also, >>Thanks, Bob. So I believe like, you know, some of the things that we've said in terms of examples of how we were able to bring up the solution quicker, I definitely see that scaling as you go forward and trying to really, um, focus in on the needs and getting that MVP out the door. Uh, and then Tim alluded to this as well. A lot of the change management processes that went into re-imagining what these processes look like. I definitely see a additional, you know, growth mindset of how do we get better processes in place, or really focusing on the core processes so that we can really move the ball forward and continuing to go that path of delivering on a quicker path, uh, leveraging cloud, as we mentioned of, um, some, some of the capabilities around the chat bot and other things to really start to push, um, uh, the capabilities out to those citizens quicker and really reduce that timeline that we have to take on the backend side, um, that that would be our hope and goal, um, given, you know, sort of what we've been able to accomplish and hoping using that as a proof point of how we can do this for other types of, uh, either programs or other processes. >>Yeah, I think, um, the, you know, the tool has given us capability now there, whether we use local leaders leverage that to the fullest really becomes a coming upon us. So do we take a beat, uh, when we can catch our breath and then, you know, work through our executive leadership to say, look, here's all the ways you can use this tool. You've made an enterprise investment in. Um, and I know for us, uh, at Clark County, we've stood up, uh, enterprise, uh, kind of governance team where we can come and talk through all of our enterprise solutions, uh, encourage our other department head peers, uh, to, to examine how you might be able to use this. Is there a way that, um, you know, parks and rec might use this to better access their scholarship programs to make sure that children get into youth sports leagues and don't get left out, uh, because we know youth suicide on the rise and they need something positive to do when this pandemic is clear, I'm there for them to get out and do those things. >>So the possibilities really are out there. It really becomes, um, how do we mind those internally? And I know that being a part of listservs and, uh, you know, gov tech and all the magazines and things are out there to help us think about how do we better use our solutions, um, as well as our IBM partners who are always eager to say, Hey, have you seen how they're using this? Um, it is important for us to continue to keep our imaginations open, um, so that we continue to iterate through this process. Um, cause I, I would hate to see the culture of, um, iteration go away with this pandemic. >>Okay. We have time for one final question. We've already addressed this in part two, and this one is probably for you and that you've used the cares act to eliminate some of the procurement red tape that's shown up. Well, how do you somehow that's been very positive. How do you see that impacting you going forward? What happens when the red tape all comes back? >>Yeah, so I think I mentioned a little bit, uh, about that when some of the folks who are deemed non essential came back during our reopening phases and they're operating at the speed of prior business and red tape where we had all been on this, these green tape, fast tracks, uh, it, it was a bit of a organizational whiplash. Uh, but it, for us, we've had the conversation with executive management of like, we cannot let this get in the way of what our citizens need. So like keep that pressure on our folks to think differently. Don't and, uh, we've gone so far as to, uh, even, uh, maybe take it a step further and investigate what had been done in, in, in Canada. Some other places around, um, like, like going right from in a 48 hour period, going from a procurement statement through a proof of concept and doing purchasing on the backside, like how can we even get this even more streamlined so that we can get the things we need quickly, uh, because the citizens don't understand, wait, we're doing our best, uh, your number 3000 and queue on the phone line that that's not what they need to hear or want to hear during times of crisis. >>Very helpful. Well, I want to be respectful of our one hour commitment, so we'll have to wrap it up here in closing. I want to thank everyone for joining us for today's event and especially a big, thank you goes to Karen and Tim. You've done a really great job of answering a lot of questions and laying this out for us and a special thanks to our partners at IBM for enabling us to bring this worthwhile discussion to our audience. Thanks once again, and we look forward to seeing you at another government technology event,

>> Announcer: From around the globe it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Commvault Future Ready 2020 brought to you by Commvault. >> Hi and welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Commvault Future Ready. I'm Stu Miniman and I'm joined by David Vellante here. Of course, we just had the keynote for Commvault Future Ready, Sanjay Mirchandani, CEO. Dave, he's been there a little bit over a year. We've been watching the transformation of Commvault as they are trying to go much deeper in the cloud. Of course, the space, data protection overall, backup and recovery, been a super hot one. Especially, if you talk about everybody accelerating what they're doing with the cloud, Dave, from an end user standpoint, as well as for Commvault. So why don't we start with the company first, as I said, the move to subscription, the move to cloud, a lot of change needed, and that's one of the reasons they brought Sanjay into the company. Of course, he'd been at Puppet before that, he was the CIO of EMC before that. So Dave, tell us your thoughts lately on Commvault. >> Okay, so Commvault, obviously Stu, has been around for a long, long time, and it's kind of a diversified player in the data protection space. I've always felt like they've had a more diversified sort of vision and portfolio. Sanjay took over, what was it February last year, right? So he kind of came in and inherited a company in transition. And transitioning from what has largely been a legacy sort of on-prem, perpetual software licensed business to now one that's transferring into a subscription based model, obviously a large maintenance base. I think about 60% of their revenues comes from services, and most of that is maintenance, okay? So he's inherited that, and then they're going into a subscription model. So that's going to hit the income statement, and then boom COVID hits. So Sanjay is getting it all from all sides, but Commvault is a 670, roughly, million dollar company on a trailing 12 month basis. And the market cap's in the 1.7, 1.8 range, so they trade at about 2.7 times revenue. So that's much better than a hardware company, but it should be better than that as a software company. So the challenge that he has is, okay, how do we get the company growing again? How do we transition to that subscription based model? The good news on Commvault is their balance sheet is tremendous. I mean, they have no debt, no debt. I mean, several hundred million dollars in cash, over 300 million and zero debt, which kind of interesting to me, Stu. Because many companies during this COVID pandemic have tapped the credit markets, Commvault has chosen not to. Maybe they should right now with such low interest rates, and maybe that can help get the growth engine going. But I think they're very conservative in that standpoint and obviously very proud of their balance sheet, but with the likes of Cohesity and Rubrik, and I know we're going to talk about that pouring money into the market, trying to attack them, and we'll talk more about their position relative to those guys, you might like to see 'em raise a little bit of money or take on some debt and really go after some of those opportunities that you referred to upfront, it is a hot market. >> Yeah, well, Dave, you talk about some of the newer entrants raised just insane amounts of money when you talk about that space. Not only Cohesity and Rubrik, but also talked about Veem. Of course, we've watched Veem go from a change in ownership and how much money they have. And from a revenue standpoint, Veem actually might be bigger than Commvault at this point, I believe, right? >> Yeah, I think so. I mean, they're billion dollar bookings, they say. I mean, I believe it, but they're a privately held company. Commvault, we can tell actually what their numbers are. Guaranteed Cohesity and Rubrik are losing money. So their cost of acquiring a customer is huge. Commvault is, let's face it, it's servicing its install base, and it's mining that. And that's why it's, it's cashflow positive. I mean, it's a very healthy company financially. The challenge that, again, Sanjay has is how do you get growth? They're a company, as I said earlier, in transition. Let me share with you, if I may, some data from our friends at ETR. What we're showing here is the fundamental methodology of ETR, which is that net score, Stu. We talk about that all the time, ETR is, as I say, our data partner, Enterprise Technology Research. Every quarter, they go out and they say, "Based for each company and their various segments, "are you adopting new?" That's the lime green, that's the 2%. "Are you increasing spending?" That's the 30%, and this is from the July survey so this is relative to the first half. "Are you flat?" You can see that fat middle 56%, and then you can see decrease is 7% and that's in the pink, and then 5% replacing. So good news here is more people are spending more, more customers spending more, than are spending less. Net score's the red subtracted from the green, so it comes out at roughly 20%, which is that's certainly not terrible. It's a legacy company that's been around a long time. So you would see a company that's a newbie, that's hot. We'd always talked about UI path automation anywhere, Snowflake, they're in the 70% range, but they're much, much smaller companies but they're growing very, very rapidly. So this is respectable and very common for a company that has been around as long as Commvault. >> Yeah, thanks so much for sharing that data, Dave. Of course, as you said, huge customer base, they've been around for awhile. I remember when we first did Commvault GO two years ago, very excited, very engaged user base. There was a good strategy discussion and an understanding for what Commvault needed to do to get to the cloud, but there was an understanding that they couldn't keep doing with the same team what had brought them to the place before. You always say, Dave, what got you to where you were isn't going to get you to where you need to go. Talk a little bit about the keynote. Last year at Commvault there were a couple of big pieces. Number one, is they really had their first SaaS offering with Metallic. And what the momentum has been on Metallic is, first of all, they made a big partnership announcement with Microsoft ahead of this event. Multi-year, Metallic has a few different solutions. One of them, of course, is to work on Office 365, so when we go to SaaS and we go to the cloud, we understand that data protection isn't something that just comes inherently. Some people thought, "Oh hey, I did it "in my own data center, but once I go to the cloud, well, "I'm sure it just takes care of things "like data protection and security." The answer is I still need to think about it, and the ecosystem has helped filling that gap. So Metallic was the first step and what we saw, Dave, really looks like a holistic refresh of the product line. Commvault back in recovery, Commvault disaster recovery, Commvault complete data protection, all aligning themselves to be more to what you were talking about, going to that full ratable model, and the other piece was Hedvig. So Hedvig software company, helping them to be in more cloud-native environments. And they launched a Hedvig X, so it's the full integration of that solution. Less than a year from the acquisition to fully integrating it and making it an offering that's ready for what they're doing. >> Is that they're cloud play? Actually Hedvig is sort of in that space, right? As with cloud you think subscription, but also Commvault is basically putting its stack in the cloud, right? And taking advantage of cloud services, right? >> Yeah, absolutely, Dave. Metallic, specifically is built for the cloud. >> So let's talk a little bit about cloud, I have some other data here. And the cloud, if you pull up that next slide, the cloud has been eating away at on-prem vendors. We know it's been growing at 2000, 3000 basis points higher than the on-prem business. But what this slide shows is that same net score methodology that we talked about before, but it's filtering, you can see in the left hand side here, it's filtering on AWS, Google and Microsoft. So there's 585, AWS, Google and Microsoft customers in the ETR dataset. There's like about 1200 in the overall survey this quarter. And this shows the over time the net score of Commvault in those accounts, so you can see, as I was saying, go back to 2018, you can see prior to Sanjay taking over this thing was dipping and dipping, losing momentum coming into kind of the April survey and then July survey of 2019, and it's kind of bouncing off the bottom now. So it seems like they're making some progress there, and what we want to see is that momentum continue to grow. Again, net score is a measure of spending velocity. So what you want to see is as that transition occurs more sort of a net score increases over each quarter. >> Yeah, well, Dave as you mentioned earlier, there absolutely are some headwinds potentially there, but it looks like Sanjay, at least, has stopped some of the bleeding on this and, stated goal of course, to return to growth. And so we would want to see that go from just up one or 2% to be able to track with the cloud. Probably a good time for us to talk a little bit about the competition, Dave, because if you talk just in cloud markets, are you tracking along with the cloud? So the hyperscales themselves, of course, growing at very huge percent. A company that's been around as long as Veritas isn't necessarily going to be doing 35 to 70% growth as you would see from AWS or Azure. But what do you see out there for some of the competition in general, who were some of the key players that we need to look at? >> Yeah, so I mean, think about the backup guys. I mean, the traditional space, you've mentioned Veritas. Veritas, by the way, in the ETR survey data is not playing well, they're in the red. They've been losing share, the share donors, as they say, you've got some big players, Dell EMC, obviously, kind of living off the data domain base. Remember Dell EMC fell behind, prior to the Dell acquisition, they weren't investing heavily in the data protection business. They were kind of living milking off that data domain base. Back when you were there, they had the networker and they had Avamar, and so there was a bifurcated thing. Frank Slootman came and he tried to clean some of that up, but then he was onto his next big thing, of course, it was ServiceNow. And so, you know, Dell is a big footprint, obviously, but they're very hardware centric, as you know, so they have a big hardware agenda. IBM with Spectrum Protect, Veem was hurting them. They did the deal with Catalogic to kind of stop the bleeding, he kind of did. Again, big install base, and then you got the sort of newcomers. Veem is not really a newcomer anymore. I think they've been around for 15 years, big acquisition. Decent momentum in the market, especially started the Microsoft base, and they're kind of everywhere, so you see them. And of course you see Cohesity and Rubrik spend a lot of money, as you said. And it's interesting, let me pull up this next data point. In the ETR data set this past quarter you saw Cohesity actually overtake Rubrik. Rubrik was very, very strong earlier on. They're kind of neck and neck in this chart, what this chart shows is not net score, it's now market share. Now market shares, not real market shares, Stu. I have to be cautious here because it's not like IDC tracks market share. What it is is pervasiveness in the dataset. So in other words, within this segment, the number of mentions of the vendor divided by the total mentions in the segment, okay? So it's really pervasiveness or presence in the data set. And what this shows is you can see we've got 65 Commvault customers in the survey, and it shows the impact of Veem, Rubrik and Cohesity in the Commvault base. And you can see up through, let's see, that's the recent surveys is you see the increases up to the increasing red line is Veem, and then you got the Rubrik line and then the Cohesity line, but they're all recently, since the October 19th survey, down, trending down. So that says to me that Commvault is holding serve within its own base and actually doing better as these guys are declining in this base. You can see the comment that ETR made, "Rubrik, Cohesity and Veeam are all seeing "market share declines in shared accounts with Commvault," so that's good news. I think this is very important, Stu, and here's why. Is Commvault has got to hunker down and maintain those customers. It does not want to be a share donor much in the same way that Veritas has been. So that's a quick scan of the competitive marketplace. And again, from my standpoint, I'd like to see Sanjay maybe get a little bit more aggressive. I liked the acquisitions. Hedvig, it's great, deal with actually some more subscription, but I'd like to see them go hard after a cloud native. I have to dig into that, maybe you can comment, but really cloud native and multicloud across clouds being able to have that same experience on-prem as I do in the clouds at very high performance, very low latency. >> Yeah. Well, Dave, first of all, one thing, talk about the competitive win rate. That's something you always look at is how are you doing against the competitors? Not only did Sanjay come in, but you saw changes along how the channel chief, I believe, and the salespeople. So definitely reinvigorating that piece of it, as well as, Dave we saw, in the keynote. So the portfolio is updated, an aggressive engineering investment, some through acquisition, some through changing the code and moving in these environments, leveraging partnerships, great to see the Microsoft one, love to see something along the lines of Google. We understand Amazon, you play in that ecosystem, it is challenging to necessarily partner deeply with AWS, unless you're one of a few strong players in the marketplace, but working closer in cloud. And Dave, one thing I'd point out, last year, one of the things that really impressed me at Commvault GO is they did have some good developer actions. So when you talk about cloud native, of course, enabling developers is one of the key things. Like many companies out there, inside the company you've got developers, so how are you unleashing that? So Hedvig, a good acquisition along those lines, but you know, in the middle of the show floor, they had people that you set up with whiteboards and just go at it. So, you know, reminds me of days past when you used to have these engineering-driven shows where you could go in and really understand that. So helping to developers, enable them, backup and recovery just needs to tie into all my DevOps and IT Ops and all my other environments to make things just more automated because also you talk cloud native, Dave, automation has to be a big piece of it. And to your point, we actually have really good guests coming on the program. Not only will we have Sanjay, relatively fresh off the keynote, I've got a panel with the product people to really dig in and understand that. We'll poke and prod at some of the cloud native pieces and understand where that's going, got their head of strategy also on the program. >> Yes, I think you're making a great point about automation. Just speaking about M&A for a moment, I like M&A, I like growth through M&A, I'm comfortable with that as long as it fits into the portfolio. Your point about automation, I see opportunities there for M&A, things like visibility, observability, obviously hot analytics, automated operations, IT Ops, anything that sort of removes labor and complexity and gives me visibility across clouds. That I think is something that could be interesting, again, as long as it fits into the portfolio. I'll say this, I mean, Sanjay was at EMC and knows M&A because I've no doubt they were bringing all their M&A candidates to Sanjay and saying, "Okay, what do you think of this tech, do you use it?" Probably kick the tires a little bit, so he, I'm sure, was a part of those. I'm sure he saw the good, the bad, and the ugly. You were there, EMC was pretty good at acquisitions, but then it got a little out of control. >> And Dave, talk automation, Sanjay came from Puppet. Puppet was one of the early companies along helping people move along from those manual tasks to how can we automate those? So, absolutely, Sanjay now a little over a year in there, starting to see from the product standpoint, and expect to see some of the trailing results as to how that moves forward. >> And then again, blending that, if it's a tuck in or whatever, maybe there's some big chess move out there. I would just suspect given Commvault's conservative nature you wouldn't see that. Although, they could do it. I mean, at their revenue level, their balance sheet would allow them to raise some debt, if they wanted to do that now would be the time to do it. But it's interesting, everybody's doing it and they're not. So I kind of liked the contrarian play. Given the opportunity in the market, given the TAM expansion through, beyond backup into data management, and it's a cloud and multicloud, I do think there's maybe an opportunity for them to be a little bit more aggressive. >> All right, well, Dave, thanks so much for helping us dig in and kick off our coverage. >> You're welcome, Stu. >> All right, stay with us. We have a bunch of interviews here for Commvault Future Ready. I'm Stu Miniman, and thank you for watching theCUBE. (gentle music)

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering HP. Discover Virtual experience Brought to you by HP. >>Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of HP Discover. 2020. The virtual experience. The Cube. The Cube has been virtualized. My name is Dave Vellante. I'm here with Stuart Minuteman and our good friend Tim Crawford is here. He's a strategic advisor to see Io's with boa. Tim, Great to see you. Stuart. Thanks for coming on. >>Great to see you as well, Dave. >>Yes. So let's unpack. What's going on in that Discover Antonio's, He notes, Maybe talk a little bit about the prospects for HP of coming forward in this decade. You know, last decade was not a great one for HP, HP. I mean, there was a lot of turmoil. There was a botched acquisitions. There was breaking up the company and spin merges and a lot of distractions. And so now that companies really and you hear this from Antonio kind of positioning for innovation for the next decade. So So I think this is probably a lot of excitement inside the company, but I want to touch on a couple of points and then you get your guys reaction, I guess, you know, to start off. Obviously, Antonio's talking about Cove in the role that they played in that whole, you know, pandemic and the transition toe the the isolation economy. But so let me start with you, Tim. I mean, what is the sort of posture amongst cios that you talk to? How strategic is HB H B two? The folks that you talk to in your community? >>Well, I think if you look at how CIOs are thinking, especially as we head into covert it into Corona virus and kind of mapping through that, that price, um, it really came down to Can they get their hands on technology? Can they get people back to work working from home? Can they do it in a secure fashion? Um, keeping people productive. I mean, there was a lot of block and tackling, and even to this day, there's still a fair amount of that was taking place. Um, we really haven't seen the fallout from the cybersecurity impact of expanding our foot print. Um, quite. But we'll see that, probably in the coming months. There are some initial inklings there when it comes to HP specifically I think it comes back to just making sure that they had the product on hand, that they understood that customers are going through dramatic change. And so all bets are off. You have to kind of step back and say, Okay, those plans that I had 60 9100 and 20 days ago those strategies that I may have already started down the path with those are up for grabs. I need to step back from those and figure out What do I do now? And I think each company, HP included, needs to think about how do they start to meld themselves, to be able to address those changing customer needs? And I think that's that's where this really kind of becomes the rubber hits the road is is HP capable of doing that? And are they making the right changes? And quite frankly, that starts with empathy. And I think we've heard pretty clearly from Antonio that he is sympathetic to the plight of their customers and the world >>on the whole. >>Yeah, and I think culturally 10 minutes do I mean I think you know HP is kind of getting back to some of its roots, and Tony has been there for a long time. I think people I think is very well liked. Andi, I think, ease of use, and I'm sure he's tough. But he's also a very fair individual, and he's got a vision and he's focused. And so, you know, I think again, as they said, looking forward to this decade, I think could be one that is, you know, one of innovation. Although, you know, look, you look at the stock price, you know, it's kind of piqued in November 19. It's obviously down like many stocks, so there's a lot of work to do there, and it's too. We're certainly hearing from HP. This notion of everything is a service that we've talked about green like a lot. What's your sense of their prospects going forward in this, you know, New Era? >>Yeah, I mean, Dave, one of the biggest attacks we've heard about H E in the last couple of years, you know the line Michael Dell would use is you're not going to grow by, say, abstraction. But as a platform company, HP is much more open. From what I've seen in the HP that I remember from, you know, 5 to 10 years ago. So you look at their partner ecosystem. It's robust. So, you know, years ago, it seemed to be if it didn't come out of HP Labs, it wasn't a product, you know. That was the services arm all wanted to sell HP here. Now, in this software defined world working in a cloud environment, they're much more open to finding that innovation and enabling it. So, you know, we talk about Green Lake Day. Three lakes got about 1000 customers right now, and a big piece of that is a partner. Port Police, whether it's VM Ware Amazon Annex, were H B's full stack themselves. They have optionality in there, and that's what we hear from from users is that they want flexibility they don't want. You know, you look at the cloud providers, it's not, you know, here's a solution. You look at Amazon. There's dozens of databases that you can use from Amazon or, if you use on top of Amazon, so H p e. You know, not a public cloud provider, but looking more like that cloud experience. They've done so many acquisitions over the years. Many of them were troubled. They got rid of some of the pieces that they might have over paid for. But you look at something like CTP them in this multi cloud world in the networking space, they've got a really cool, open source company, the company behind spiffy, inspire. And, you know, companies that are looking at containers and kubernetes, you know, really respond to say, Hey, these are projects that were interesting Oh, who's the company that that's driving that it's HP so more open, more of a partner ecosystem definitely feels that there's a lot there that I respect and like that hp >>well, I mean, the intent of splitting the company was so that HP could be more focused but focused on innovation was the intent was to be the growth company. It hasn't fully played out yet. But Tim, when you think about the conversations that CIOs are having with with HPI today versus what they were having with hpe HP, the the conglomerate of that the Comprising e ds and PCs, I guess I don't know, in a way, more more Dell like so Certainly Michael Dell's having strategic conversations, CIOs. But you got to believe that the the conversations are more focused today. Is that a good thing or a jury's still out? >>No, it absolutely is a good thing. And I think one of the things that you have to look at is we're getting back to brass tax. We're getting back to that focus around business objectives. So no longer is that hey, who has the coolest tech? And how can we implement that tax? Kind of looking from a tech business? Ah, spectrum, you're now focused squarely is a C i. O. You have to be squarely focused on what are the business objectives that you are teamed up for, and if you're not, you're on a very short leash and that doesn't end well. And I think the great thing about the split of HP HP e split and I think you almost have to kind of step back for a second. Let's talk about leadership because leadership plays a very significant role, especially for CIOs that are thinking about long term decisions and strategic partners. I don't think that HP necessarily had the right leadership in place to carry them into that strategic world. I think Antonio really makes a change there. I mean, they made some really poor decisions. Post split. Um, that really didn't bode well for HP. Um, and frankly, I talked a bit about that I know wasn't really popular within HP, but quite frankly, they needed to hear it. And I think that actually has been heard. And I think they are listening to their customers. And one of the big changes is they're getting back into the software business. And when you talk about strategic initiatives, you have to get beyond just the hardware and start moving up the proverbial stack, getting closer to those business initiatives. And that is software. >>Yeah, well, Antonio talked about sort of the insights. I mean, something I've said a lot about borrowed from the very Meeker conversations that that data is plentiful. Something I've always said. Insights aren't. And so you're right. You've seen a couple of acquisitions, you know, Matt bahr They picked up, I think pretty inexpensively. Kind of interesting cause, remember, HP hp had an investment in Horton works, which, of course, is now Cloudera and Blue Data. Ah Kumar Conte's company, you know, kind of focusing on maybe automating data, you know, they talked about Ed centric, cloud enabled, data driven. Nobody's gonna argue with those things. But you're right, Tim. I mean, you're talking more software than kind of jettisons the software business and now sort of have to rebuild it. And then, of course, do this cloud. What do you make of HP ease Cloud play? >>Yeah, well, I >>mean, >>Dave, you the pieces. You were just talking about math bar and blue data, where HP connects it together is, you know, ai ops. So you know, where are we going with infrastructure? There needs to be a lot more automation. We heard a great quote. I love from automation anywhere. Dave was, if you talk about digital transformation without automation, it's hallucination. So, you know, HP baking that into what they're doing. So, you know, I fully agree with Tim software software software, you know, is where the innovation is. So it can't just be the infrastructure. How do you have eyes and books into the applications? How are you helping customers build those new pieces? And what's the other software that you build around that? So, you know, absolutely. It's an interesting piece. And you know, HP has got a lot of interesting pieces. You know, you talk about the edge. Aruba is a great asset for that kind of environment and from a partnership, that is a damn point. Dave. They have. John Chambers was in the keynote. John, of course. Long time partners. He's with Cisco for many years Intel. Cisco started eating with HP on the server business, but now he's also the chairman of pensando. HP is an investor in pensando general availability this month of that solution, and that's going to really help build out that next generation edge. So, you know, a chip set that HP E can offer similar to what we see how Amazon builds outpost s. So that is a solution both for the enterprise and beyond. Is as a B >>yeah course. Do. Of course, it's kind of, but about three com toe. Add more fuel to that tension. Go ahead, Tim. >>Well, I was going to pick apart some of those pieces because you know, at edge is not an edge is not an edge. And I think it's important to highlight some of the advantages that HP is bringing to the table where Pensando comes in, where Aruba comes in and also we're really comes in. I think there are a number of these components that I want to make sure that we don't necessarily gloss over that are really key for HP in terms of the future. And that is when you step back and you look at how customers are gonna have to consume services, how they're going to have to engage with both the edge and the cloud and everything in between. HP has a great portfolio of hardware. What they haven't necessarily had was the glue, that connective tissue to bring all of that together. And I think that's where things like Green Lake and Green Lake Central really gonna play a role. And even their, um, newer cloud services are going to play a role. And unlike outposts and unlike some of the other private cloud services that are on the market today, they're looking to extend a cloud like experience all the way to the edge and that continuity creating that simplicity is going to be key for enterprises. And I think that's something that shouldn't be understated. It's gonna be really important because when I look at in the conversations I'm having when we're looking at edge to cloud and everything in between. Oh my gosh, that's really complicated. And you have to figure out how to simplify that. And the only way you're going to do that is if you take it up a layer and start thinking about management tools. You start thinking about autumn, and as companies start to take data from the edge, they start analyzing it at the edge and intermediate points on the way to cloud. It's going to be even more important to bring continuity across this entire spectrum. And so that's one of the things that I'm really excited about that I'm hearing from Antonio's keynote and others. Ah, here at HP Discover. >>Yeah, >>well, let's let's stay on that stupid. Let's stay on that for a second. >>Yeah, I wanted to see oh interested him because, you know, it's funny. You think back. You know, HP at one point in time was a leader in, you know, management solutions. You know, HP one view, you know, in the early days, it was really well respected. I think what I'm hearing from you, I think about outpost is Amazon hasn't really put management for the edge. All they're doing is extending the cloud piece and putting a piece out of the edge. It feels like we need a management solution that built from the ground up for this kind of solution. And do I hear you right? You believe that to be as some of those pieces today? >>Well, let's compare and contrast briefly on that. I think Amazon and the way Amazon is well, is Google and Microsoft, for that matter. The way that they are encompassing the edge into their portfolio is interesting, but it's an extension of their core business, their core public cloud services business. Most of the enterprise footprint is not in public cloud. It's at the other end of that spectrum, and so being able to take not just what's happening at the edge. But what about in your corporate data center in your corporate data center? You still have to manage that, and that doesn't fall under the purview of Cloud. And so that's why I'm looking at HP is a way to create that connective tissue between what companies are doing within the corporate data center today, what they're doing at the edge as well as what they're doing, maybe in private cloud and an extension public cloud. But let's also remember something else. Most of these enterprises, they're also in a multi cloud environment, so they're touching into different public cloud providers for different services. And so now you talk about how do I manage this across the spectrum of edge to cloud. But then, across different public cloud providers, things get really complicated really fast. And I think the hints of what I'm seeing in software and the new software branding give me a moment of pause to say, Wait a second. Is HP really gonna head down that path? And if so, that's great because it is of high demand in the enterprise. >>Well, let's talk about that some more because I think this really is the big opportunity and we're potentially innovation is. So my question is how much of Green Lake and Green Lake services are really designed for sort of on Prem to make that edge to on Prem? No, I want to ask about Cloud, how much of that is actually delivering Cloud Native Services on AWS on Google on Azure and Ali Cloud etcetera versus kind of creating a cloud like experience for on Prem in it and eventually the edge. I'm not clear on that. You guys have insight on how much effort is going into that cloud. Native components in the public cloud. >>Well, I would say that the first thing is you have to go back to the applications to truly get that cloud native experience. I think HP is putting the components together to a prize. This to be able to capitalize on that cloud like experience with cloud native APS. But the vast majority of enterprise app they're not cloud native. And so I think the way that I'm interpreting Green Lake and I think there are a lot of questions Greenland and how it's consumed by enterprises there. There was some initial questions around the branding when it first came out. Um, and so you know it's not perfect. I think HP definitely have some work to do to clarify what it is and what it isn't in a way that enterprises can understand. But from what I'm seeing, it looks to be creating and a cloud like experience for enterprises from edge to cloud, but also providing the components so that if you do have applications that are shovel ready for cloud or our cloud native, you can embrace Public Cloud as well as private cloud and pull them under the Green Lake >>Rela. Yeah, ostensibly stew kubernetes is part of the answer to that, although you know, as we've talked about, Kubernetes is necessary containers and necessary but not sufficient for that experience. And I guess the point I'm getting to is, you know we do. We've talked about this with Red Hat, certainly with VM Ware and others the opportunity to have that experience across clouds at the Edge on Prim. That's expensive from an R and D standpoint. And so I want to kind of bring that into the discussion. HP last year spent about 1.8 billion in R and D Sounds like a lot of money. It's about 6% of its of it's revenues, but it's it's spread thin now. It does are indeed through investments, for instance, like Pensando or other acquisitions. But in terms of organic R and D, you know, it's it's it's not at the top of the heap. I mean, obviously guys like Amazon and Google have surpassed them. I've written about this with regard to IBM because they, like HP, spend a lot on dividends on share buybacks, which they have to do to prop up the stock price and placate Wall Street. But it But it detracts from their ability to fund R and d student your take on that sort of innovation roadmap for the next decade. >>Yeah, I mean, one of the things we look at it in the last year or so there's been what we were talking about earlier, that management across these environments and kubernetes is a piece of it. So, you know, Google laid down and those you've got Microsoft with Azure, our VM ware with EMS. Ooh! And to Tim's point, you know, it feels like Green Lake fits kind of in that category, but there's there's pieces that fall outside of it. So, you know, when I first thought of Green Lake, it was Oh, well, I've got a private cloud stack like an azure stack is one of the solutions that they have there. How does that tie into that full solution? So extending that out, moving that brand I do here, you know good things from the field, the partners and customers. Green Lake is well respected, and it feels like that is, that is a big growth. So it's HB 50 from being more thought of, as you know, a box seller to more of that solution in subscription model. Green Lake is a vehicle for that. And as you pointed out, you know, rightfully so. Software so important. And I feel when that thing I'd say HPI ee feels toe have more embracing of software than, say, they're closest competitors. Which is Dell, which, you know, Dell Statement is always to be the leading infrastructure writer, and the arm of VM Ware is their software. So, you know, just Dell alone without VM ware, HP has to be that full solution of what Dell and VM ware together. >>Yeah, and VM Ware Is that the crown jewel? And of course, HP doesn't have a VM ware, but it does have over 8000 software engineers. Now I want to ask you about open source. I mean, I would hope that they're allocating a large portion of those software engineers. The open source development developing tooling at the edge, developing tooling from multi cloud certainly building hooks in from their hardware. But is HP Tim doing enough in open source? >>Well, I don't want to get on the open source bandwagon, and I don't necessarily want to jump off it. I think the important thing here is that there are places where open source makes sense in places where it doesn't, um, and you have to look at each particular scenario and really kind of ask yourself, does it make sense to address it here? I mean, it's a way to to engage your developers and engage your customers in a different mode. What I see from HP E is more of a focus around trying to determine where can we provide the greatest value for our customers, which, frankly, is where their focus should be, whether that shows up in open source for software, whether that shows up in commercial products. Um, we'll see how that plays out. But I think the one thing that I give HP e props on one of several things I would say is that they are kind of getting back to their roots and saying, Look, we're an infrastructure company, that is what we do really well We're not trying to be everything to everyone. And so let's try and figure out what are customers asking for? How do we step through that? I think this is actually one of the challenges that Antonio's predecessors had was that they tried to do jump into all the different areas, you know, cloud software. And they were really X over, extending themselves in ways that they probably should. But they were doing it in ways that really didn't speak to their four, and they weren't connecting those dots. They weren't connecting that that connective tissue they needed to dio. So I do think that, you know, whether it's open source or commercial software, we'll see how that plays out. Um, but I'm glad to see that they are stepping back and saying Okay, let's be mindful about how we ease into this >>well, so the reason I bring up open source is because I think it's the mainspring of innovation in the industry on that, but of course it's very tough to make money, but we've talked a lot about H B's strength since breath is, we haven't talked much about servers, but they're strong in servers. That's fine We don't need to spend time there. It's culture. It seems to be getting back to some of its roots. We've touched on some of its its weaknesses and maybe gaps. But I want to talk about the opportunities, and there's a huge opportunity to the edge. David Flores quantified. He says that Tam is four. Trillion is enormous, but here's my question is the edge Right now we're seeing from companies like HP and Dell. Is there largely taking Intel based servers, kind of making a new form factor and putting them out on the edge? Is that the right approach? Will there be an emergence of alternative processors? Whether it's our maybe, maybe there's some NVIDIA in there and just a whole new architecture for the edge to authority. Throw it out to you first, get Tim Scott thoughts. >>Yeah, So what? One thing, Dave, You know, HP does have a long history of partnering with a lot of those solutions. So you see NVIDIA up on stage when you think about Moonshot and the machine and some of the other platforms that they felt they've looked at alternative options. So, you know, I know from Wicky Bon standpoint, you know, David Foyer wrote the piece. That arm is a huge opportunity at the edge there. And you would think that HP would be one of the companies that would be fast to embrace that >>Well, that's why I might like like Moonshot. I think that was probably ahead of its time. But the whole notion of you know, a very slim form factor that can pop in and pop out. You know, different alternative processor architecture is very efficient, potentially at the edge. Maybe that's got got potential. But do you have any thoughts on this? I mean, I know it's kind of Yeah, any hardware is, but, >>well, it is a little hardware, but I think you have to come back to the applicability of it. I mean, if you're taking a slim down ruggedized server and trying Teoh essentially take out, take off all the fancy pieces and just get to the core of it and call that your edge. I think you've missed a huge opportunity beyond that. So what happens with the processing that might be in camera or in a robot or in an inch device? These are custom silicon custom processors custom demand that you can't pull back to a server for everything you have to be able to to extend it even further. And, you know, if I compare and contrast for a minute, I think some of the vendors that are looking at Hey, our definition of edge is a laptop or it is this smaller form factor server. I think they're incredibly limiting themselves. I think there is a great opportunity beyond that, and we'll see more of those kind of crop up, because the reality is the applicability of how Edge gets used is we do data collection and data analysis in the device at the device. So whether it's a camera, whether it's ah, robot, there's processing that happens within that device. Now some of that might come back to an intermediate area, and that intermediate area might be one of these smaller form factor devices, like a server for a demo. But it might not be. It might be a custom type of device that's needed in a remote location, and then from there you might get back to that smaller form factor. Do you have all of these stages and data and processing is getting done at each of these stages as more and more resources are made available. Because there are things around AI and ML that you could only do in cloud, you would not be able to do even in a smaller form factor at the edge. But there are some that you can do with the edge and you need to do at the edge, either for latency reasons or just response time. And so that's important to understand the applicability of this. It's not just a simple is saying, Hey, you know, we've got this edge to cloud portfolio and it's great and we've got the smaller servers. You have to kind of change the vernacular a little bit and look at the applicability of it and what people are actually doing >>with. I think those are great points. I think you're 100% right on. You are going to be doing AI influencing at the edge. The data of a lot of data is going to stay at the edge and I personally think and again David Floor is written about this, that it's going to require different architectures. It's not going to be the data center products thrown over to the edge or shrunk down. As you're saying, That's maybe not the right approach, but something that's very efficient, very low cost of when you think about autonomous vehicles. They could have, you know, quote unquote servers in there. They certainly have compute in there. That could be, you know, 2344 $5000 worth of value. And I think that's an opportunity. I'd love to see HP Dell, others really invest in R and D, and this is a new architecture and build that out really infuse ai at the edge. Last last question, guys, we're running out of time. One of the things I'll start with you. Still what things you're gonna watch for HP as indicators of success of innovation in the coming decade. As we said last decade, kind of painful for HP and HP. You know, this decade holds a lot of promise. One of the things you're gonna be watching in terms of success indicators. >>So it's something we talked about earlier is how are they helping customers build new things, So a ws always focuses on builders. Microsoft talks a lot. I've heard somethin double last year's talk about building those new applications. So you know infrastructure is only there for the data, and the applications live on top of it. And if you mention Dave, there's a number of these acquisitions. HP has moved up the stack. Some eso those proof points on new ways of doing business. New ways of building new applications are what I'm looking for from HP, and it's robust ecosystem. >>Tim. Yeah, yeah, and I would just pick you back right on. What's do was saying is that this is a, you know, going back to the Moonshot goals. I mean, it's about as far away as HP ease, and HP is routes used to be and that that hardware space. But it's really changing business outcomes, changing business experiences and experiences for the customers of their customers. And so is far cord that that eight p e can get. I wouldn't expect them to get all the way there, although in conversations I am having with HP and with others that it seems like they are thinking about that. But they have to start moving in that direction. And that's actually something that when you start with the builder conversation like Microsoft has had, an Amazon has had Google's had and even Dell, to some degree has had. I think you missed the bigger picture, so I'm not saying exclude the builder conversation. But you have to put it in the right context because otherwise you get into this siloed mentality of right. We have solved one problem, one unique problem, and built this one unique solution. And we've got bigger issues to be able to address as enterprises, and that's going to involve a lot of different moving parts. And you need to know if you're a builder, you've it or even ah ah, hardware manufacturer. You've got to figure out, How does your piece fit into that bigger picture and you've got to connect those dots very, very quickly. And that's one of the things I'll be looking for. HP as well is how they take this new software initiative and really carry it forward. I'm really encouraged by what I'm seeing. But of course the future could hold something completely different. We thought 2020 would look very different six months ago or a year ago than it does today. >>Well, I wanna I want to pick up on that, I think I would add, and I agree with you. I'm really gonna be looking for innovation. Can h P e e get back to kind of its roots? Remember, H B's router invents it was in the logo. I can't translate its R and D into innovation. To me, it's all about innovation. And I think you know cios like Antonio Neri, Michael Dell, Arvind Krishna. They got a They have a tough, tough position because they're on the one hand, they're throwing off cash, and they can continue Teoh to bump along and, you know, placate Wall Street, give back dividends and share buybacks. And and that's fine. And everybody would be kind of happy. But I'll point out that Amazon in 2007 spent spend less than a $1,000,000,000 in R and D. Google spent about the back, then about the same amount of each B E spends today. So the point is, if the edge is really such a huge opportunity, this $4 trillion tam is David Foyer points out, there's a There's a way in which some of these infrastructure companies could actually pull a kind of mini Microsoft and reinvent themselves in a way that could lead to massive shareholder returns. But it was really will take bold vision and a brave leader to actually make that happen. So that's one of things I'm gonna be watching very closely hp invent turn r and D into dollars. And so you guys really appreciate you coming on the Cube and breaking down the segment for ah, the future of HP be well, and, uh and thanks very much. Alright. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Volante for Tim Crawford and Stupid men. Our coverage of HP ease 2020 Virtual experience. We'll be right back right after this short break. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. (intense music) >> Hi, everybody, this is Dave Vellante in theCUBE, and as you know, I've been doing a CEO series, and welcome to the isolation economy. We're here at theCUBE's remote studio, and really pleased to have Charlie Giancarlo, who is the CEO of PureStorage. Charlie, I wish we were face-to-face at Pure Accelerate, but this'll have to do. Thanks for coming on. >> You know, Dave, it's always fun to be face-to-face with you. At Pure Accelerate when we do it in person is great fun, but we do what we have to do, and actually, this has been a great event for us, so appreciate you coming on air with me. >> Yeah, and we're going to chat about that, but I want to start off with this meme that's been going around the internet. I was going to use the wrecking ball. I don't know if you've seen that. It's got the people, the executives in the office building saying, "Eh, digital transformation; "not in my lifetime," complacency, and then this big wrecking ball, the COVID-19. You've probably seen it, but as you can see here, somebody created a survey, Who's leading the digital transformation at your company? The CEO, the CTO, or of course circled is COVID-19, and so we've seen that, right? You had no choice but to be a digital company. >> Well, there's that, and there's also the fact that the CEOs who've been wanting to push a digital transformation against a team that wants to stick with the status quo, it gives the CEO now, and even within our own company in Pure, to drive towards that digital transformation when people didn't really take up the mantle. So no, it's a great opportunity for digital transformation, and of course, the companies that have been doing it all along have been getting ahead during this crisis, and the ones that haven't are having some real trouble. And you and I have had some really interesting conversations. Again, that's, I think, the thing I miss most, not only having you in theCUBE, but the side conversations at the cocktail parties, et cetera. And we've talked about IP, and China, and the history of the US, and all kinds of interesting things there, but one of the things I want to put forth, and I know you guys, Kix especially, has done a lot of work on Tech For Good, but the narrative pre-COVID, PC I guess we'd call it, was really a lot of vitriol toward big tech especially, but you know what? That tech lash... Without tech, where would we be right now? >> Well, just think about it, right? Where would we be without videoconferencing, without the internet, right? We'd be sheltered in place with literally nothing to do, and all business would stop, and of course many businesses that require in-person have, but thank God you can still get goods at your home. You can still get food, you can still get all these things that today is enabled by technology. We've seen this ourselves, in terms of having to make emergency shipments during our first quarter to critical infrastructure to keep things going. It's been quite a quarter. I was saying to my team recently that we had just gotten everyone together in February for our sales kickoff for the year, and it felt like a full year since I had seen them all. >> Well, I had interviewed, I think, is it Mike Fitzgerald, your head of supply chain. >> Yes. >> In March, and he was saying, "No. "We have no disruptions. "We're delivering for clients," and we certainly saw that in your results in the quarter. >> Yeah, no, we're very fortunate, but we had been planning for doing our normal business continuity disaster planning, and actually, once we saw COVID in Asia in January we started exercising all those muscles, including pre-shipping product around to depos around the world in case transportation got clogged, which it in fact did. So we were well-prepared, but we're also, I think, very fortunate in terms of the fact that we had a very distributed supply chain. >> Yeah, I mean you guys obviously did a good job. You saw in Dell's earnings they held pretty firm. HPE, on the other hand, really saw some disruption, so congratulations to you and the team on that. So as we think about exiting this isolation economy, we've done work that shows about 44% of CIOs see a U-shaped recovery, but it's very fragmented. It varies by industry. It varies by how digital the organizations are. Are they able to provide physical distancing? How essential are these organizations? And so I'm sure you're seeing that in your customer base as well. How are you thinking about exiting this isolation economy? >> Well, I've certainly resisted trying to predict a U- or a V-shape, because I think there are many more unknowns than there are knowns, and in particular, we don't know if there's a second wave. If there is a second wave, is it going to be more or less lethal than the first wave? And as you know, maybe some of your audience knows, I contracted COVID in March. So I've done a lot of reading on not just COVID, but also on the Spanish flu of 1918-1919. It's going to take a while before this settles down, and we don't know what it's going to look like the rest of the year or next year. So a lot of the recovery is going to depend on that. What we can do, however, is make sure that we're prepared to work from home, work in the office, that we make sure that our team out in the field is well-placed to be able to support our customers in the environment, and the way that we're incenting our overall team now has less to do with the macro than it does with our specific segment, and what I mean by that is we're incenting our team to continue to build market share, and to continue to outperform our competition as we go forward, and also on our customer satisfaction figure, which you know is our Net Promoter Score, which is the highest in the industry. So that's how we're incenting our team. >> Yeah, and we're going to talk about that, and by the way, yes, I did know, and it's great to see you healthy, and I'd be remiss if I didn't also express my condolences, Matt, the loss of Matt Danziger, your head of IR, terrible tragedy. Of course Matt had some roots in Boston, went to school in Maine. >> Yeah. >> Loved Cape Cod, and so really sad loss, I'm sure, for all of the Puritans. >> It's affected us all very personally, because Matt was just an incredible team member, a great friend, and so young and vital. When someone that young dies for almost unexplainable reasons. It turned out to be a congenital heart condition that nobody knew about, but it just breaks... It just breaks everyone's heart, so thank you for your condolences. I appreciate it. >> You're welcome. Okay, so let's get into the earnings a little bit. I want to just pull up one of the charts that shows roughly, I have approximately Q1 because some companies like NetApp, Dell, HPE, are sort of staggered, but the latest results you saw IBM growing at 19%. Now we know that was mainframe-driven in a very easy compare. Pure plus 12, and then everybody else in the negative. Dell, minus five, so actually doing pretty well relative to NetApp and HPE, who, as I said, had some challenges with deliveries. But let's talk about your quarter. You continue to be the one sort of shining star in the storage business. Let's get into it. What are your big takeaways that you want us to know about? >> Well, of course I'd rather see everybody in the black, right, everybody in the positive, but we continue to take market share and continue to grow 20 to 30% faster than the rest of the industry combined, and it's quarter after quarter. It's not just a peak in one quarter and then behind in another quarter. Every quarter we're ahead of the rest of the industry, and I think the reasoning is really quite straightforward. We're the one company that invests in storage as if it's high technology. You do hear quite often, and even among some customers, that storage is commoditized, and all of our competitors invest in it, or don't invest in it, as if it's a commoditized market. Our view is quite straightforward. The science and the engineering of computing and data centers continues to evolve, continues to advance, has to advance if we continue down this path of becoming more of a digital economy. As we all know, processors advance in speed and capability. Networking advances in terms of speed and capability. Well, data storage is a third of data center spend, and if it doesn't continue to advance at the same pace or faster than everything else, it becomes a major bottleneck. We've been the innovator. If you look at a number of different studies, year after year, now over six or seven years, we are the leader in innovation in the data storage market, and we're being rewarded for that by penetrating more and more of the customer base. >> All right, let's talk about that. And you mentioned in your keynote at Accelerate that you guys spend more on R&D as a percentage of revenue than anybody, and so I want to throw out some stats. I'm sorry, folks, I don't have a slide on this. HPE spends about 1.8 billion a year on R&D, about 6% of revenues. IBM, I've reported on IBM and how it's spending the last 10 years, spent a huge amount on dividends and stock buybacks, and they spent six billion perpetually on R&D, which is now 8% of revenue. Dell at five billion. Of course Dell used to spend well under a billion before the EMC acquisition. That's about 6% of revenue. And NetApp, 800 million, much higher. They're a pure play, about 13%. Pure spends 430 million last year on R&D, which is over 30% of revenue on R&D, to your point. >> Yeah, yeah, well, as I said, we treat it like it's high technology, which it is, right? If you're not spending at an appropriate level you're going to fall behind, and so we continue to advance. I will say that you mentioned big numbers by the other players, but I was part of a big organization as well with a huge R&D budget, but what matters is what percent of the revenue of a specific area are you spending, right? You mentioned Dell and VMware. A very large fraction of their spend is on VMware. Great product and great company, but very little is being spent in the area of storage. >> Well, and the same thing's true for IBM, and I've made this point. In fact, I made this point about Snowflake last week in my breaking analysis. How is Snowflake able to compete with all these big whales? And the same thing for you guys. Every dime you spend on R&D goes to making your storage products better for your customers. Your go-to-market, same thing. Your partner ecosystem, same thing, and so you're the much more focused play. >> Right, well I think it boils down to one very simple thing, right? Most of our competitors are, you might call them one-stop shops, so the shopping mall of IT gear, right? The Best Buy, if you will, of information technology. We're really the sole best of breed player in data storage, right, and if you're a company that wants two vendors, you might choose one that's a one-stop shop. If you have the one-stop shop, the next one you want is a best of breed player, right? And we fill that role for our customers. >> Look it, this business is a technology business, and technology and innovation is driven by research and development, period, the end. But I want to ask you, so the storage business generally, look, you're kind of the one-eyed man in the land of the blind here. I mean the storage business has been somewhat on the back burner. In part it's your fault because you put so much flash into the data center, gave so much headroom that organizations didn't have to buy spindles anymore to get to performance, the cloud has also been a factor. But look, last decade was a better decade for storage than the previous decade when you look at the exits that you guys had and escape velocity, Nutanix, if you can kind of put them in there, too. Much larger than say the Compellents or 3PARs. They didn't make it to a billion. So my question is storage businesses, is it going to come back as a growth business? Like you said, you wish everybody were in the black here. >> Right, well a lot of what's being measured, of course, is enterprise on-prem storage, right? If we add on-prem and cloud, it actually continues to be a big growth business, because data is not shrinking. In fact, data is still growing faster than the price reduction of the media underneath, right, so it's still growing. And as you know, more recently we've introduced what we call Pure as-a-Service and Cloud Block Store. So now we have our same software, which we call Purity, that runs on our on-prem arrays, also running on AWS, and currently in beta on Azure. So from our point of view this is a... First of all, it's a big market, about $30 to $40 billion total. If you add in cloud, it's another $10 to $15 billion, which is a new opportunity for us. Last year we were about 1.65 billion. We're still less than, as you know, less than 10% of the overall market. So the opportunity for us to grow is just tremendous out there, and whether or not total storage grows, for us it's less important right now than the market share that we pick up. >> Right, okay, so I want to stay on that for a minute and talk about... I love talking about the competition. So what I'm showing here with this kind of wheel slide is data from our data partner ETR, and they go out every quarter. They have a very simple methodology. It's like Net Promoter Score, and it's very consistent. They say relative to last year, are you adopting the platform, that's the lime green, and so this is Pure's data. Are you increasing spend by 6% or more? That's the 32%, the forest green. Is spending going to be flat? Is it going to decrease by more than 6%? That's the 9%. And then are you replacing the platform, 2%. Now this was taken at the height of the US lockdown. This last survey. >> Wow. >> So you can see the vast majority of customers are either keeping spending the same, or they're spending more. >> Yeah. >> So that's very, very strong. And I want to just bring up another data point, which is we like to plot that Net Score here on the vertical axis, and then what we call market share. It's not like IDC market share, but it's pervasiveness in the survey. And you can see here, to your point, Pure is really the only, and I've cited the other vendors on the right hand, that box there, you're the only company in the green with a 40% Net Score, and you can see everybody else is well below the line in the red, but to your point, you got a long way to go in terms of gaining market share. >> Exactly, right, and the reason... I think the reason why you're seeing that is really our fundamental and basic value is that our product and our company is easy to do business with and easy to operate, and it's such a pleasure to use versus the competition that customers really appreciate the product and the company. We do have a Net Promoter Score of over 80, which I think you'd be hard-pressed to find another company in any industry with Net Promoter Scores that high. >> Yeah, so I want to stay on the R&D thing for a minute, because you guys bet the company from day one on simplicity, and that's really where you put a lot of effort. So the cloud is vital here, and I want to get your perspective on it. You mentioned your Cloud Block Store, which I like that, it's native to AWS. I think you're adding other platforms. I think you're adding Azure as well, and I'm sure you'll do Google. >> Azure, Azure's in beta, yes. >> Yeah, Google's just a matter of time. Alibaba, you'll get them all, but the key here is that you're taking advantage of the native services, and let's take AWS as an example. You're using EC2, and high priority instances of EC2, as an example, to essentially improve block storage on Amazon. Amazon loves it because it sells Compute. Maybe the storage guys in Amazon don't love it so much, but it's all about the customer, and so the native cloud services are critical. I'm sure you're going to do the same thing for Azure and other clouds, and that takes a lot of investment, but I heard George Kurian today addressing some analysts, talking about they're the only company doing kind of that cloud native approach. Where are you placing your bets? How much of it is cloud versus kind of on-prem, if you will? >> Yeah, well... So first of all, an increasing fraction is cloud, as you might imagine, right? We started off with a few dozen developers, and now we're at many more than that. Of course the majority of our revenue still comes from on-prem, but the value is the following in our case, which is that we literally have the same software operating, from a customer and from a application standpoint. It is the same software operating on-prem as in the cloud, which means that the customer doesn't have to refactor their application to move it into the cloud, and we're the one vendor that's focused on block. What NetApp is doing is great, but it's a file-based system. It's really designed for smaller workloads and low performance workloads. Our system's designed for high performance enterprise workloads, Tier 1 workloads in the cloud. To say that they're both cloud sort of washes over the fact that they're almost going after two completely separate markets. >> Well, I think it's interesting that you're both really emphasizing cloud native, which I think is very important. I think that some of the others have some catching up to do in that regard, and again, that takes a big investment in not just wrapping your stack, and shoving it in the cloud, and hosting it in the cloud. You're actually taking advantage of the local services. >> Well, I mean one thing I'll mention was Amazon gave us an award, which they give to very few vendors. It's called the Well-Architected AWS Award, because we've designed it not to operate, let's say, in a virtualized environment on AWS. We really make use of the native AWS EC2 services. It is designed like a web service on EC2. >> And the reason why this is so important is just, again, to share with our audience is because when you start talking about multi-cloud and hybrid cloud, you want the same exact experience on-prem as you do in the cloud, whether it's hybrid or across clouds, and the key is if you're using cloud native services, you have the most efficient, the highest performance, lowest latency, and lowest cost solution. That is going to be... That's going to be a determinate of the winner. >> Yes, I believe so. Customers don't want to be doing... Be working with software that is going to change, fundamentally change and cause them to have to refactor their applications. If it's not designed natively to the cloud, then when Amazon upgrades it may cause a real problem with the software or with the environment, and so customers don't want that. They want to know they're cloud native. >> Well, your task over the next 10 years is something. Look it, it's very challenging to grow a company the size of Pure, period, but let's face it, you guys caught EMC off-guard. You were driving a truck through the Symmetrics base and the VNX base. Not that that was easy. (chuckling) And they certainly didn't make it easy for ya. But now we've got this sort of next chapter, and I want to talk a little bit about this. You guys call it the Modern Data Experience. You laid it out last Accelerate, kind of your vision. You talked about it more at this year's Accelerate. I wonder if you could tell us the key takeaways from your conference this year. >> Right, the key takeaway... So let me talk about both. I'll start with Modern Data Experience and then key takeaways from this Accelerate. So Modern Data Experience, for those that are not yet familiar with it, is the idea that an on-prem experience would look very similar, if not identical, to a cloud experience. That is to say that applications and orchestrators just use APIs to be able to call upon and have delivered the storage environment that they want to see instantaneously over a high speed network. The amazing thing about storage, even today, is that it's highly mechanical, it's highly hardware-oriented to where if you have a new application and you want storage, you actually have to buy an array and connect it. It's physical. Where we want to be is just like in the cloud. If you have a new application and you want storage or you want data services, you just write a few APIs in your application and it's delivered immediately and automatically, and that's what we're delivering on-prem with the Modern Data Experience. What we're also doing, though, is extending that to the cloud, and with Cloud Block Store as part of this, with that set of interfaces and management system exactly the same as on-prem, you now have that cloud experience across all the clouds without having to refactor applications in one or the other. So that's our Modern Data Experience. That's the vision that drives us. We've delivered more and more against it starting at the last Accelerate, but even more now. Part of this is being able to deliver storage that is flexible and able to be delivered by API. On this Accelerate we delivered our Purity 6.0 for Flash Array, which adds not only greater resiliency characteristics, but now file for the first time in a Flash Array environment, and so now the same Flash Array can deliver both file and block. Which is a unified experience, but all delivered by API and simple to operate. We've also delivered, more recently, Flash Array 3.0... I'm sorry, Purity 3.0 on FlashBlade that delivers the ability for FlashBlade now to have very high resiliency characteristics, and to be able to even better deliver the ability to restore applications when there's been a failure of their data systems very, very rapidly, something that we call Rapid Restore. So these are huge benefits. And the last one I'll mention, Pure as-a-Service allows a customer today to be able to contract for storage as a service on-prem and in the cloud with one unified subscription. So they only pay for what they use. They only pay for what they use when they use it, and they only pay for it, regardless of where it's used, on-prem or in the cloud, and it's a true subscription model. It's owned and operated by Pure, but the customer gets the benefit of only paying for what they use, regardless of where they use it. >> Awesome, thanks for that run through. And a couple other notes that I had, I mean you obviously talked about the support for the work from home and remote capabilities. Automation came up a lot. >> Yep. >> You and I, I said, we have these great conversations, and one of the ones I would have with you if we were having a drink somewhere would be if you look at productivity stats in US and Europe, they're declining-- >> Yes. >> Pretty dramatically. And if you think about the grand challenges we have, the global challenges, whether it's pandemics, or healthcare, or feeding people, et cetera, we're not going to be able to meet those challenges without automation. I mean people, for years, have been afraid of automation. "Oh, we're going to lose jobs." We don't have enough people to solve all these problems, and so I think that's behind us, right-- >> Yeah, I agree. >> The fear of automation. So that came up. Yeah, go ahead, please. >> I once met with Alan Greenspan. You may remember him. >> Of course. >> This is after he was the chairman, and he said, "Look, I've studied the economies now "for the last 100 years, "and the fact of the matter is "that wealth follows productivity." The more productive you are as a society, that means the greater the wealth that exists for every individual, right? The standard of living follows productivity, and without productivity there's no wealth creation for society. So to your point, yeah, if we don't become more productive, more efficient, people don't live better, right? >> Yeah, I knew you'd have some good thoughts on that, and of course, speaking of Greenspan, we're seeing a little bit of rational exuberance maybe in the market. (chuckling) Pretty amazing. But you also talked about containers, and persisting containers, and Kubernetes, the importance of Kubernetes. That seems to be a big trend that you guys are hopping on as well. >> You bet. It is the wave of the future. Now, like all waves of the future, it's going to take time. Containers work entirely differently from VMs and from machines in terms of how they utilize resources inside a data center environment, and they are extraordinarily dynamic. They require the ability to build up, tear down connections to storage, and create storage, and spin it down at very, very rapid rates, and again, it's all API-driven. It's all responsive, not to human operators, but it's got to be responsive to the application itself and to the orchestration environment. And again, I'll go back to what we talked about with our Modern Data Experience. It's exactly the kind of experience that our customers want to be able to be that responsive to this new environment. >> My last question is from John Furrier. He asked me, "Hey, Charlie knows a lot about networking." We were talking about multi-cloud. Obviously cross-cloud networks are going to become increasingly important. People are trying to get rid of their MPLS networks, really moving to an SD-WAN environment. Your thoughts on the evolution of networking over the next decade. >> Well, I'll tell you. I'm a big believer that even SD-WANs, over time, are going to become obsolete. Another way to phrase it is the new private network is the internet. I mean look at it now. What does SD-WAN mean when nobody's in the local office, right? No one's in the remote office; they're all at home. And so now we need to think about the fact... Sometimes it's called Zero Trust. I don't like that term. Nobody wants to talk about zero anything. What it really is about is that there is no internal network anymore. The fact of the matter is even for... Let's say I'm inside my own company's network. Well, do they trust my machine? Maybe not. They may trust me but not my machine, and so what we need to have is going to a cloud model where all communication to all servers goes through a giant, call it a firewall or a proxy service, where everything is cleaned before it's delivered. People, individuals only get, and applications, only get access to the applications that they're authorized to use, not to a network, because once they're in the network they can get anywhere. So they should only get access to the applications they're able to use. So my personal opinion is the internet is the future private network, and that requires a very different methodology for authentication for security and so forth, and if we think that we protect ourselves now by firewalls, we have to rethink that. >> Great perspectives. And by the way, you're seeing more than glimpses of that. You look at Zscaler's results recently, and that's kind of the security cloud, and I'm glad you mentioned that you don't like that sort of Zero Trust. You guys, even today, talked about near zero RPO. That's an honest statement-- >> Right. >> Because there's no such thing as zero RPO. (chuckling) >> Right, yeah. >> Charlie, great to have you on. Thanks so much for coming back in theCUBE. Great to see you again. >> Dave, always a pleasure. Thank you so much, and hopefully next time in person. >> I hope so. All right, and thank you for watching, everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, and we'll see you next time. (smooth music)

so it definitely fits into basic being able to automate the redundant main mundane types of tasks that anyone can do right so you if you think about it if you have a security operations center with five or ten analysts it might take one analyst to do a task make two comes two or three hours and where you can leverage a tool like Sansom any type of sort platform to actually create a playbook to do that tasks within 30 seconds so not only are you minimizing the amount of you know headcount to do that you're also you know using your consistent tool to make that folks should make the function of you know more I want to say enhanced so you can build playbooks around it you can basically use that on a daily basis whether it's for security monitoring or network operations reporting all that becomes and the impact of mine thank you so what we do is we are a data analytics and intelligence nonprofit dedicated to countering all forms of human trafficking whether it's labor trafficking sex King or any of the subtypes men women and children all over the world so when you think about that what that really means is that we interact with thousands of state across law enforcement government nonprofits academia and then the private sector as well and all of those essentially act as data silos for human trafficking data and when you think about that as trafficking as a data problem or you tackle it as a data problem what that really means is that you have to have a technology and data led solution in order to solve the problem so that's really our mission here is to bring together all of those stakeholders give them easy access to tools that can help improve their counterpose yeah so like a day to day or like kind of what our team does is we focus on like what's going on previously what are we seeing in the wild like what campaigns are happening and then my role within my team is focused on what's coming so what are what are red team's working on what are pen testers looking into take that information begin testing it begin building proof of concepts put that back into our product so that whether it's two weeks six months two years we have coverage for it no matter what so a lot of us a lot of our time is generating proof of concepts on what may be coming so there's a lot of you know very unique things that maybe in the wild today and then there's some things that we may never see that are just very novel and kind of once one Center once a time kind of thing I joined nine months ago and when I was interviewing for the role I remember Doug Merritt saying to me hey you know we might be the only two billion dollar enterprise software company that nobody's ever heard of he said I want to go solve for that right like the folks you know Splunk and our customers they love us our product is awesome and our culture is awesome but the world doesn't know about us yet and we haven't invested there so I want to go take the brand to the next level and I want the world to understand what data use cases are out there that are so broad and so vast leave that every problem ultimately can be solved through data are almost every problem and we wanted to set the stage for that with this new brand campaign about the product were you guys ad using Splunk and you putting data sensors out there you leveraging an existing data bulb take us through some of that you know the nuts and bolts of what's going on the price so part of it is building out some data sets so there are some data sets that don't exist but the government and the counties and the private sector have built out a huge ball of corpus of data around where the buildings are where the people are where the cell phones are where the traffic is so we're able to leverage that information as we have it today the technology we're using the Amazon stack it's easy for us to spin up databases it's easy for us to build out and expand as we grow and the response we're able to have a place for all this real-time data to land and for us to be able to build API is to pull it out very very simple when we say dated everything we really mean it it's really you know it's a personal story for me I am on the government affairs team here is blog so I manage our relationships with governor's and mayors and these are the issues that they care about right when the city is burning down the mayor cares about that the governor this is you know one of the governor and California's and major initiatives is trying to find solutions on wildfires you know I met charlie my hometown Orinda California art fire chief in that town was one of sort of the outside advisors working with Charlie on this idea and we ran I met him at a house party where the fire chief was telling me that trim my trees back and shrubs back and then I was at a conference three days later that same fire chief Dave Winokur was on a panel with like folks from a super computer lab and NASA and MIT I was like you know my fire chief's still the smartest guy in that panel I got to meet this guy a few weeks later we were literally in the field doing these proof of concepts with sensors and data super savvy folks some of the other folks from Cal Fire there you know dropping Cox was with us today here it's what my and you know we've we've just been collaborating the whole time and seeing you know that that Splunk can really put some firepower the power behind these guys and we just see like look they've got the trust of these customers and we need to make sure this idea happens it's a great idea and it's going to save lives yeah the little small nuance data to everything data time and the reason behind that was we believe you can bring and we can enable our customers to bring data to every question every decision and every action to create meaningful outcomes and the use cases are vast and enormous we talked about some of them before the show started but helping look global law enforcement get ahead of human trafficking fierce Punk and spelunking what's going on across all sorts of data sources right helping zone Haven which is our first investment from Splunk ventures which startup that's actually helping firefighters figure out burn burn patterns with pilot wildfires but also when temperatures and humidity change we're sensors are they can alert firefighters 30 to 45 minutes earlier than they would usually do that and then they can also help influence evacuation patterns I mean it's it's remarkable what folks are doing with data today and it's really at the core of solving some of the world's biggest issues so I'm glad you mentioned data right we're a data company and we're very proud that we actually pull star diversity inclusion number so we moved the needle 1.8% on gender last year year-on-year pride but not satisfied we understand that there's much more to diversity inclusion than just gender but our strategy is threefold for diversity inclusion so its workforce workplace marketplace the farces arranged is where I talk about is improving our representation so that these women are no longer the only czar in the minority they were much more represented and we're lucky we have three women on our board we have four women in our C suite so we're making good good progress but there's a lot more to do and as I say it's not just about gender we want to do we know that innovation is fueled by diversity so we want to attract you know folks of different race different ethnicity books who are military veterans people with disability one its plans to be successful the important thing thing is you know the things you mentioned the the vulnerability scanning the intrusion detection these are all still important in the cloud I think the key thing that the cloud offers is the fact that you have the ability to now automate and integrate your security teams more tightly with the things that you're doing and you can actually we always talk about the move fast and stay secure customers choose AWS for the self-service the elasticity of the price and you can't take advantage of those unless you're secure you can actually keep up with you so the fact that everything isn't based on an API you can define infrastructure as code you can actually enforce standards now whether they be before you write a line of code in your DevOps pipeline we're actually being able to detect and >> those things all through code and in a consistent way really allows you to be able to look in your security in a different way and take the kind of philosophy and mindset you've always had around security but actually do something with it and be able to maybe do the things you've always wanted to do that have never had a chance to do it so I think I think security can actually keep up with you and actually help you different you're different to your business the acquisition is really extremely you know exciting for us you know after meeting Marcus I've known of Marcus he's a very positive influence in the community but having worked with him the vision for threat care and the vision for alike rests really closely aligned so where we want to take the future of security testing testing controls making sure upstream controls are working where threat care wanted to go for that was very much with what we aligned war so it made sense to partner up so very excited about that and I think we will roll that in our gray matter platform as another capability we really see the product involving the same way that you see a lot of the portfolio overall so Doug has talked a lot about investigate monitoring and analyzing and right and so those same concepts apply to how you think about a process as well so right now we're really helping the investigation and monitoring but will also continue to extend across that spectrum lifetime a lot of cloud services and micro services observability a big part of all this yeah definitely and how we've built the product but also I think you can sit alongside some of the other things that you're also seeing in that so I think the thing to understand is correct we're not just a security company but we are number one in the security magic quadrant we're number one in both IDC and Gartner and so that's important but what happens is all of the data that you collect first security can also be used for all these other use cases so generally speaking whatever you're collecting for security is also valuable for IT operations and it's also valuable for many other use cases so I'll give you an example Domino's which is a great customer of ours there they've gone 65% of their orders now come in digitally ok and so they monitor the entire end-to-end customer experience what they monitor not only from an IT operations perspective that same data that they use for IT operations also tells them you know what's being ordered what special orders are being made and they use that data for promotions based upon volume in traffic and timing they actually create promotions so now you're talking about the same data that you collected for a security night operations you can actually use for promotions which is marketing it's a great intro on data is awesome but we all have data to get to decisions first and actions second what that in action there's no point in gathering data and so many companies been working their tails off to digitize her landscapes why well you want a more flexible landscape but why the flexibility because there's so much data being generated there you can get effective decisions and then actions that landscape can adapt very very rapidly which goes back to machine learning and eventual AI opportunity set so that is absolutely squarely where we've been focused is translating that data into value and into actual outcomes which is why our orchestration automation piece is so so important one big 18 factors that we felt as existed is for this plunk index it's only for this blank index the pricing mechanism mechanism has been data volume and that's a little bit contrary to the promise which is you don't know where the values could be within data and whether it's a gigabyte or whether it's a petabyte why shouldn't be able to put whatever day do you want in to experiment you

>>Live from San Diego, California. It's the cube covering to clock in cloud native con brought to you by red hat, the cloud native computing foundation and its ecosystem Marsh. >>Welcome back. This is the cubes coverage of coupon, cloud-native con 2019 here in San Diego. I'm Stu Miniman co-hosting for three days with John Troyer to my left and happy to welcome back to the program. Two of our cube alumni to my right is Robert Christiansen who is the vice president of strategy and office of the CTO with the IP group to see you. And sitting next to him is Kumar Sri Conti, SVP and CTO of that hybrid it group at HPE Kumar. Great to see you. Thank you very much. Thank you John. Good to be back here. Yes, hot off the presses. HP had a big announcement today. Uh, really unveiling it. Full container platform. Uh, Kumar, maybe it help us frame and understand, uh, what that is and why that wants here at at the show. Thank you. Is too good, too good to see John and it's very nice to be back on the cube. >>Yeah, we are very excited. We made an announcement, a HV container platform as we sat in the presser lays and various conversations. This is built on a proven technologies. HP has acquired a few companies in the past which includes my company blue data map. Our blue data has been in the container technology for more than five years. We have containers running specifically for the spa workloads like big data and AML and we brought those technologies together to give the customers the choice of 100% coupon. It has to run both stateful and stateless workloads under the same pane of glass and we are very excited about this opportunity and we have actually talked to a lot of customers and the most important in addition to all of that is the, we also integrated the map, our technology, which is one of the very so robust and sophisticated data store that gives you a persistency for the containers. >>Kumar, John and I were coming out of the keynote and saying, if you're brand new in this environment, Oh my gosh, there's just so many projects and so many pieces. You know, when I think back, you know, who helped me along the way, uh, one of the pieces you picked up with CTP, cloud technology partner and you're talking about specific applications. So you know, really building those bridges to where customers are and helping them give us, if you could some of those key use cases where you're finding that that cloud native philosophy and where customers are, are looking for HPS help. Robert and I spend a lot of time over the last few months internally and talking to the customers. Our thesis is the, all the low hanging fruit applications have mode. It's actually the most difficult applications, both stateful and stateless applications. So customers are asking and say, we want to standardize, we want to have a abstract platform and Gouverneur does is it? And, but we wanted to have a platform that gives us the board hybrid opportunity. I wanted to be able to run the on prem >>when necessary, also on the public cloud. And I wanted to be able to have a same platform to run both stateful answered as application. Yeah. And that's, that's a really interesting point because what Kumar's really, really looking at is that the only way that an enterprise has been using the path that modernization has been been a public cloud, uh, trajectory. Okay. And they really haven't had anything on premises that gave them the set of services necessary to get parody between the two. And what we're finding and you know, been been involved with public cloud since 2010 right? So hundreds and hundreds of engagements, the portion that they thought they were going to move to cloud is substantially dropped the actual number of applications versus now those are going to stay on prem. And we were looking at each other and we're saying, Hey, this is a trifecta of opportunities with the containers coming in and the normalization of Kubernetes as the unified pass platform, the abstraction of bullying all the way down to bare metal, right? >>And giving those clients that true native architectures where they are not having to pay what we consider excessive prices to be putting in that, that world right there and then allowing that monetization practice to happen. So you've got to start with that platform, that, that container platform, and to do it in the way that the motion is going right now in the world today that's consistent with the public cloud. This is really important that you have to have consistency in your development environments, whether they're public or private. And that's where we believe is important. So Robert, you're seeing enterprises develop that. It sounds like you're seeing enterprises develop that operational experience and operational expertise, process development, independent of where their workloads are running. Well, that's the goal. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Well, right now they're siloed. Right? Okay. You've got a public operating model and you've got a private operating model. >>Right? And there's some people that tried to stitch this stuff together, but it's really difficult. What we're looking to do is given consistent plain across, all right? And when you have a consistent plane, a control point across all, no matter where you put your clusters and a management frame around it, now you have the ability to build an operating model that's consistent to go forward. Okay. So you know, we've been at the show for four years. I interviewed Joe beta, uh, and, and Joe says, he said, look, you know, Kubernetes, it's not a magic layer. It does not all of a sudden say add Coobernetti's in it and everything works every hair there. No, it's a very thin layer. I'm glad he said that. Washing my car from that happened on top. Right. If flip problem just rubbed Coobernetti's on it and get better. So Kumar, help us understand kind of the HPE stack if you work and what you put together and therefore it will be an enabler for customers in your application. Thank you. That's a very, very well said and I joke that Gouverneur does, we'll wash your car and post to read and babysit. And um, so I think he enjoys the ride, a lot of wisdom there. So what we found is, uh, content has an ensemble persistence always problem per se. So if I want, if >>I have a database running and my container goes away, we also notice that you want to make sure your endpoints are well secured and you want to expose only things what you want in the thing. We also found out that customers are more interested in applications and are giving me just the engine and the tires. I need to go from point a to point B. What blue data has done is actually it actually automates all your deployments of applications. We announced that product in September, so what what what this continent platform does is bring all these pieces together so the customers to be able to move to the deploy man and not worry about whether I have tires or I have an engine or not. In addition, I would like to find out that, I think Antonio talked about it the hour Sammo we want to come to the customers and it's the best possible lowest cost workload per application. >>This is why we think better metals are very, very, very important. Running containers on bare metal will Remos techs and and there is an, and we've been running better minerals in on bare metal containers in the blue data for almost five years. One of the things I think I wanted to add to that because I, you, you were guys saying, Hey, deploying Kubernetes and just add a little bit on top of that and it's all fine, right? I thought that was a great comment. Um, a lot of our clients are literally talking about container sprawl, right? It don't take anything to go to cncf.org and pull down could the Kubernetes distro launch it out there? And I've got a bunch of stuff running. They're popping up faster than all the shadow it did when the cloud, the public cloud started coming up, right? So you have this, this, um, motion that's uncontrolled, and if you're an enterprise and you're and governance and you're trying to put your arms around a global infrastructure that you want to be able to put your arms around that, more importantly, you may have one group running 1.15. >>You may have another group 0.1, 1.8. You may have two other groups that have an older version that's into production right now, and you have them all independently running. And then you need to maintain a multitenancy across all of that and then separate those. Okay. You have to have a system that does that. And so the container HP container platform does that. This is a huge differentiating with consistent data layer underneath and that, that abstraction between the two and that governance around it is so much bigger than what we consider just Kubernetes on its own and that world comfort zone. Right, right. >>Well, I, I to play on that, right. Uh, we used to say, talk about paths a lot, right? And then a lot of words were spilled. I, I, what I love about some of the work here is that it comes from actual use, you know, proven in production use cases, years of work, you, the rough edges, the, the, the sharp, the, the cuts on your hands. Um, so that's actually great. All open source also and, and, and contributed back to the community. Also. Interesting. There is a, um, you know, but as so as folks, and there's many ways of getting Kubernetes raw, Kubernetes, Kubernetes with pieces, uh, in this room right here. So, you know, an interesting set of technologies that you've put together that with, for ease of use and for, for governance and you know, at the, from the business, from the ops layer, from the, from the dev layer. >>Um, but there is a difference of speed sometimes of uh, of uh, you know, the, what the enterprise wants to move Kubernetes these releases every quarter. And you know, I and you know, the other projects released at their own pace. So in this open source philosophy, uh, and the HPE as a partner with the, you know, point next and, and you know, support is your middle name kind of, uh, you know, how do you, how do you marry the, the, the speed of the cloud native technologies and all of the open source, uh, collaboration with, with kind of the enterprise on the enterprise side and help them? >>Yeah, very good question. I think Robert Weiner, there's one other focus for us is we didn't want to provide, I think before the injury you are talking about the curator Cuban or that we are supporting a hundred percent covenant is open source. So Robert says, I am a developer. I want 1.19 and Stu says I want do I have a 1.17 because I'm stable on that. You can have both the clusters along with the blue data, Epic controller clusters in the same pane of glass. Now you can run big data applications, you can run your cloud narrative, you can run your cloud narrative because you are on 1.19 so that is our goal. So when the CNCF releases newer versions obviously that we will support it. And then as you pointed out, HP support is the middle lame. We have a point next organization we have a CDP. So we will help the customers and we will obviously support certain versions and make sure when somebody gives a call and help the customers. And so we want to give that flexibility so that the developers can deploy whatever the native new versions that are coming up under the umbrella of HP container. It's this Epic layer that's providing some of the multitenancy and governance and controls. >>Exactly right. So this, you know, if you look at the, the, the CNCF, uh, roadmap, they're their grid, right? And you see where Coobernetti's lands in that one piece. There's all these surrounding pieces like that. There's lots and lots of vendors here that have pieces of it, right? But it takes a system, right? And you know that, and then it takes an operating model around that. Then it takes a deployment and governance model around that, right? And then you have, so there's so much more that the enterprise world acquires to make this a legitimate platform that can be scaled. >>One thing that I would like to add it, I don't want to underplay the, the, the value of a persistent proven data layer that has been there for 10 years with the map, our map around some of the best and largest databases in the world. And we are now bringing those two together. It's a, it's a very, very profound and very, very useful for the, for the enterprises. You know, Robert, you were emphasizing the consistency that needs to happen, uh, explained to how that fits in with your partnerships with all the public clouds. Uh, because you know, you hear a very different Coobernetti's message if you go to the Google show versus the Azure versus AWS. And I see HPE know at all of them. >>That's absolutely true. So, you know, I was the CTO with cloud technology partners, right? So I joined in 2013 and it was, um, our, our whole world was how do we work with the three hyperscalers to bring some consistency across them, right? You know, and you have operating models that are different for all three. I mean, what runs on AWS in a certain way is going to run differently on Azure. What's going to be running differently in GCP, right? So the tooling, all that, all the pieces are different. You go pull that back on prem. Now you have a whole different conversation as well. So what we know is that you have to have a unification of behavioral control systems in place before, wherever you deploy your clusters, wherever those are going to be like that. So what we know is is that the tagging nomenclature, the tagging is key to all of this operational models. >>All your tools are gonna be using tagging. And when you go into existing environments, taggy will be inconsistent between, even with inside AWS will be consistent, inconsistent with an Azure. So you have to have a mapping. So what we have as part of our GreenLake offering that would come in together with this is we have a unification tagging layer that bridges that gap and unifies that into a consistent nomenclature and control plane that gives you a basis to have an operating model. This is a, this only gets exposed until you start having 2050 102 hundred clusters out there. And everybody goes, how do I put my arms around this? So it's very important that that, that's just one piece of it. But operating model, operating model, operating model, I keep going back to this every time. There's a bunch of people here can spin up manage clusters all day long and some of them doing better than others, but unless you surround it and you surround it with the stuff that he's talking about is a consistent data layer, persistent and a consistent management system of all these people's behaviors, you're going to get just an unbelievable out of control platform. >>Yup. Kumar, I'd love your viewpoint as to just the overall maturity of this ecosystem and where does HPE see their role as to, you know, we talked about, you know, data and you know, everything that's changing. I heard a lot in the keynote this morning about, >>uh, some of the progress that's being made, but I'd love your viewpoint there. HP is a legend in the Valley as you know. I mean, they've done every, we, all engineering calculator starts with HV calculator. HP recognize they missed a couple of transitions in the industry. And I think there's a new leadership with, uh, with our, with the Robert and me and other other key leaders recognizes this is a great opportunity for us. We see this window to help the customers. Make the modern digitalization transition the applications, taking the monolithic applications, doing microservices. You can. In fact, Robert and I was talking to a bank and they told us they have 6,000 applications built so far. They have micro service, four of them and, and, and we have actually what, what, what we believe with this application is you can actually run your monolithic applications in a container platform while you are figuring it right. So what we see is helping the customers make the digital transition and making sure that they have, they make, they go down this journey. That's what we see. Kumar, Robert, thank you so much for the updates. Congratulations on the launch. I look forward to seeing your presence. Thanks for having and cube. I allow Q. yeah. Thanks Jeff. Again, look for next time. Okay. All right. Bye. Thanks so much for John Troyer. I'm Stu Miniman. Lots more in our three days wall to wall coverage here at cube colon cloud native con 2019 thanks for watching. Fuck you..

>> Narrator: From the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas Nevada, it's the CUBE. Covering Coupa Inspire 2019. Brought to you by Coupa. >> Welcome to the CUBE from Coupa Inspire'19 at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. It's a pretty swanky place here. Very excited to welcome to the CUBE for the first time from Accenture, Jesse Hanger, Director of Capability Network Sourcing and Procurement. Jesse, welcome. >> Thank you, glad to be here. >> Oh, our pleasure to have you. So here we are day two of the main stuff going on here. All talking about Business Spend Management, BSM, this new category that Coupa is defining. We had the chance yesterday to speak with Rob Bernshteyn their CEO. Ravi Thakur was there. And it's one of the cool things that Coupa is doing is it's now, it's procurement, it's invoicing, it's expenses, it's payments, but it's also helping to redefine procurement and finance. >> And it is. I mean it's a huge shift when we think about, in industry, the same shift that Salesforce had years ago when it comes to CRM. When Coupa started talking about this, maybe two years ago, I had a little bit of a head-scratcher, I saw some of their slides and I thought to myself, that's a bit much to say you're going to change this, but the funny thing was, no one else had come up with a real definition of this. We finally had procurement technology that was at a level that you could capture this type of data and information, and it could go broader than just my MRP system and bills of materials, and to everything. Into your traveling expenses, into how you're sourcing things, into your basic inventory, and so it took me awhile to come around, but it was a slow journey for me, but clearly Business Spend Management is the future, what we look at with procurement. Because for a CPO, it can't just be about saving money or reducing costs, you have to start driving business and you can't drive business if all you do is save money. >> Exactly, and that's been something that I've learned a lot from in the last a week or so, alone, is how influential a CPO can be. This person can be, not just the money saver, it's shareholder value. >> Jesse: Right, bottom line growth of the business. >> Yes, and one of the things that I really appreciate is Coupa's done a great job the last two days of sharing the voice of the customer. Because I said to you, before we went live, I said, I don't as a marketer, I'm a little bias, but I don't think there's anything that's more brand validating than the voice of a successful customer that actually shows measurable business outcomes and they showed that this morning. That transcends any industry whether you're manufacturing or a retailer. >> Yep, and so when you do think about it from their customer's perspective, from our client's perspective at Accenture, this is not easy. Changing the way you do things and changing your overall procurement operating model it's not a easy stuff. There's a reason why there're so many big companies like Accenture that do this kind of work. Because it's hard and it's needed. We come in with a different perspective. Having a platform like Coupa to really initiate that transformation, to be the to be the lever that moves the company from where they were to where they want to be and where they need to be to be competitive in the market, it makes our job so much easier across the broader supply chain practice to really, not just make the change, but you know we use a big consulting word, to instantiate it, so that it stays. We don't make it better this year, we make it better moving forward. >> It's an evolution. >> Jesse: It is. >> But that requires the right mindsets to go from a tactical role, of managing budgets and things, to being strategic, being able to identify fraud detection, for example. >> Well and again, when they talk about their suite synergy and the fact that all of these components of the platform, they're not separate modules, they hate when we say modules, so it's the T&E module. All of these components because they are all natively integrated and the data structure is the same on the back end, things like the fraud detection become easy. for Coupa, not in other platforms. Again, the more things you are doing with Coupa, the more data you have and the more you can get the benefit from the broader ecosystem, from the over 1 trillion dollars in spend that's gone through, that's fully classified, coded, detailed, now all of that spend helps that fraud engine do a better job. >> The community that you mentioned they were saying, I think Rob Bernshteyn CEO Coupa said yesterday that since 2016, around the time they went public, it's been a 5X increase in the amount of spend being managed through the Coupa platform. Accenture has over 50 deployments of Coupa in 72 countries, you guys are also managing over 100 billion of that, but this community that they described yesterday, so eloquently, is very collaborative, allowing not just customers to leverage from peer's best practices, but suppliers, as well. Talk to us about some of the things, like the wave that they're riding now, in terms of this community intelligence, and how is it going to help Accenture really be able to help more companies get that visibility and that control of all their spend? >> So as an example, at Accenture when you look at the analyst reports, we do very well when it comes to our procurement practice and the spend that we're helping companies manage outside of a platform. So we've got I think the latest number I saw was like 1.8 trillion dollars that we have helped companies source in the last handful of years. >> Wow. So that is something that gives us a huge competitive advantage. The same thing is true of Coupa and you said, how they're riding this wave, honestly, I don't think they're riding the wave yet, I think the wave is still building and they're about to start riding it, I think that what we're going to see over the next one to four years is going to be a fairly significant shift in how that data is going to drive very discrete and concrete value to all the members of the community. >> Wow, that is exciting. One of the things that we talk about in terms of changes to the CPO's role and CFO are these ways of disruption. One of them is consumerization. And you know I think Raja talked about that this morning, it was talked about a number of times yesterday, we spoke about it on the program, we're consumers all the time. Whether we're getting up in the morning at a conference and going to buy a coffee at Starbucks, or something that we want to order from a vendor like an Amazon, we have this expectation that we can get it, or if you want to buy a car, we have all of this data that we've never had before, so empowered, but then we go to our work lives, and if we're in whatever role we're in, maybe I'm in marketing and I need to do a trip, so I've got to go and do it, travel expense, we want the same ease of consumerization. Your thoughts on Coupa Pay, the expansion of Coupa with open buying the AWS Marketplace, on bringing that consumerization in, do you think like, (hand clapping) yes, that's exactly what we need? >> The first place of bringing in the consumerization was really how Coupa was engineered, years ago. When we go back to before they had released numbers and it was fall of 2007, they had numbers like that, Coupa really did give you an experience that was like Amazon. It was, we used to say, we're going to bring your shopping experience from Sunday afternoon to your desk Monday morning. And as that happened, now you start to see a different piece and that is a greater uptake in terms of the usage of procurement platforms. So instead of people, it's easier to pick up the phone and call Bill over at my supplier and say I need a case of whatever, it's actually easier to do it in the platform, and I can still give Bill a call and go have a beer with him if I want to maintain the relationship, but I don't have to make every one of my transactions start with a phone call that necessitates three additional phone calls later on to check on the status. Instead, I can do it in the platform very quickly. When you expand that out to what now Coupa Pay is going to offer, especially when we look at our clients that have challenges with multiple financial systems, multiple banks that are processing their payments, as you shift it away from that multiple outlet situation and you can move it large, if not all of that, into Coupa Pay, you're streamlining things for dozens if not scores of people in your company and making it better for them. >> Some of the stats I saw on the press release about the amount of payment processes that are still manual, and still 40% of it by paper check? >> I've got one client that writes 40,000 paper checks a year. >> How receptive are they to digital transformation? >> They almost think it's too good to be true. When you when you talk to clients like that, Fortune 500 companies, and when we talk to clients like that and you tell them, what you heard from Coupa is true, they're not just selling you, or trying to sell you something, they're telling you how it really works for clients and we've seen it. I look at the last dozen or so clients I've worked with, last year and a half I was doing some analysis, 51 billion dollars, 50.8 billion dollars in revenues is the average for those clients. So big companies. >> Big, yes. Really big companies. And as we look at those, you'd be surprised at how many of them have challenges with a lot of manual processes, still. They're the top of their field but they still have those challenges. So bringing this to them as they are deploying Coupa and seeing what they can realize in terms of efficiencies, it actually makes my job really fun because everybody's going to be happy. >> That is a win-win. One of the things Rob said yesterday, I know a little bit about Rob, and some of his proudest moments are hearing clients articulate success and he goes, one of my favorite things that's going into, whether it's a 50 billion dollar a year company or not, where there's someone maybe in the C-suite that just is skeptical, and he goes, and that just takes one champion who sees this vision, to convert that person to, oh my gosh, we can have this crystal ball of visibility of everything, and really leverage that to drive digital transformation so that the business is faster to identify new products, new revenues, convert customers faster, increase customer lifetime value and, and, and, the impact there is exponential. >> Well and that's one of the reasons why I think our partnership with Coupa is so rich, is because Accenture is more a technology company. We're not just focused on accounting, we're not just focused on finance, we have a lot of technology resources. We usually have a lot of connection into the CIO and the IT suite of leadership. They're the ones that are typically the most skeptical. They've been through dozens of roll outs of different things and they've seen them go anywhere from 0% to 50% effective. So because we've got the relationships there and we can have these conversations with the CIO, and say, this is different. This is going to be a very different kind of program for you and we're coming in and telling you that we can work this together as your partner and be successful, and again, you get six months into it and the lights fully on at that point and they're on board. In fact next year we're looking forward to bringing one or two CIOs on stage with us at Inspire'20 to talk about it from an IT perspective. >> Awesome, well I look forward to hearing that. Jesse, thank you so much for joining me on the Cube this afternoon. Exciting stuff. Control, visibility, who doesn't want that? >> Exactly, it's good times. >> Excellent, thanks Jesse, appreciate it. >> Thank you, appreciate being here. >> For Jesse Hanger, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Coupa Inspire'19. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat techno music) >> Live from Barcelona Spain, it's theCUBE. Covering KubeCon CloudNativeCon Europe 2019. Brought to you by Red Hat, The Cloud Native Computing Foundation and Ecosystem Partners. >> Welcome back, this is The Cube's coverage of KubeCon CloudNativeCon 2019. I'm Stu Miniman with Corey Quinn as my cohost, even though he says kucon. And joining us on this segment, we're not going debate how we pronounce certain things, but I will try to make sure that I get Bridget Kromhout correct. She is a Principle Cloud Advocate at Microsoft. Thank you for coming back to The Cube. >> Thank you for having me again. This is fun! >> First of all I do have to say, the bedazzled shirt is quite impressive. We always love the sartorial, ya know, view we get at a show like this because there are some really interesting shirts and there is one guy in a three-piece suit. But ya know-- >> There is, it's the high style, got to have that. >> Oh, absolutely. >> Bringing some class to the joint. >> Wearing a suit is my primary skill. (laughing) >> I will tell you that, yes, they sell this shirt on the Microsoft company store. And yes, it's only available in unisex fitted. Which is to say much like Alice Goldfuss likes to put it, ladies is gender neutral. So, all of the gentleman who say, but I have too much dad bod to wear that shirt! I say, well ya know get your bedazzlers out. You too can make your own shirt. >> I say it's not dad bod, it's a father figure, but I digress. (laughing) >> Exactly! >> Alright, so Bridget you're doing some speaking at the conference. You've been at this show a few times. Tell us, give us a bit of an overview of what you're doing here and your role at Microsoft these days. >> Absolutely. So, my talk is tomorrow and I think that, I'm going to go with its a vote of confidence that they put your talk on the last day at 2:00 P.M. instead of the, oh gosh, are they trying to bury it? But no, it's, I have scheduled enough conferences myself that I know that you have to put some stuff on the last day that people want to go to, or they're just not going to come. And my talk is about, and I'm co-presenting with my colleague, Jessica Deen, and we're talking about Helm 3. Which is to say, I think a lot of times it would, with these open-sourced shows people say, oh, why do you have to have a lot of information about the third release of your, third major release of your project? Why? It's just an iterative release. It is, and yet there are enough significant differences that it's kind of valuable to talk about, at least the end user experience. >> Yeah, so it actually got an applause in the keynote, ya know. (Bridget laughing) There are certain shows where people are hootin' and hollerin' for every, different compute instance that that is released and you look at it a little bit funny. But at the keynote there was a singular moment where it was the removal of Tiller which Corey and I have been trying to get feedback from the community as to what this all means. >> It seems, from my perspective, it seemed like a very strange thing. It's, we added this, yay! We added this other thing, yay! We're taking this thing and ripping it out and throwing it right into the garbage and the crowd goes nuts. And my two thoughts are first, that probably doesn't feel great if that was the thing you spent a lot of time working on, but secondly, I'm not as steep in the ecosystem as perhaps I should be and I don't really know what it does. So, what does it do and why is everyone super happy to con sine it to the dub rubbish bin of history? >> Right, exactly. So, first of all, I think it's 100% impossible to be an expert on every single vertical in this ecosystem. I mean, look around, KubeCon has 7,000 plus people, about a zillion vendor booths. They're all doing something that sounds slightly, overlapping and it's very confusing. So, in the Helm, if you, if people want to look we can say there's a link in the show notes but there, we can, people can go read on Helm.sh/blog. We have a seven part, I think, blog series about exactly what the history and the current release is about. But the TLDR, the too long didn't follow the link, is that Helm 1 was pretty limited in scope, Helm 2 was certainly more ambitious and it was born out of a collaboration between Google actually and a few other project contributors and Microsoft. And, the Tiller came in with the Google folks and it really served a need at that specific time. And it was, it was a server-side component. And this was an era when the Roll by Stacks has control and Kubernetes was, well nigh not existent. And so there were a lot of security components that you kind of had to bolt on after the fact, And once we got to, I think it was Kubernetes 1.7 or 1.8 maybe, the security model had matured enough that instead of it being great to have this extra component, it became burdensome to try to work around the extra component. And so I think that's actually a really good example of, it's like you were saying, people get excited about adding things. People sometimes don't get excited about removing things, but I think people are excited about the work that went into, removing this particular component because it ends up reducing the complexity in terms of the configuration for anyone who is using this system. >> It felt very spiritually aligned in some ways, with the announcement of Open Telemetry, where you're taking two projects and combining them into one. >> Absolutely. >> Where it's, oh, thank goodness, one less thing that-- >> Yes! >> I have to think about or deal with. Instead of A or B I just mix them together and hopefully it's a chocolate and peanut butter moment. >> Delicious. >> One of the topics that's been pretty hot in this ecosystem for the last, I'd say two years now it's been service matched, and talk about some complexity. And I talk to a guy and it's like, which one of these using? Oh I'm using all three of them and this is how I use them in my environment. So, there was an announcement spearheaded by Microsoft, the Service Mesh Interface. Give us the high level of what this is. >> So, first of all, the SMI acronym is hilarious to me because I got to tell you, as a nerdy teenager I went to math camp in the summertime, as one did, and it was named SMI. It was like, Summer Mathematics Institute! And I'm like, awesome! Now we have a work project that's named that, happy memories of lots of nerdy math. But my first Unix system that I played with, so, but what's great about that, what's great about that particular project, and you're right that this is very much aligned with, you're an enterprise. You would very much like to do enterprise-y things, like being a bank or being an airline or being an insurance company, and you super don't want to look at the very confusing CNCF Project Map and go, I think we need something in that quadrant. And then set your ships for that direction, and hopefully you'll get to what you need. And it's especially when you said that, you mentioned that, this, it basically standardizes it, such that whichever projects you want to use, whichever of the N, and we used to joke about JavaScript framework for the week, but I'm pretty sure the Service Mesh Project of the week has outstripped it in terms of like speed, of new projects being released all the time. And like, a lot of end user companies would very much like to start doing something and have it work and if the adorable start-up that had all the stars on GitHub and the two contributors ends up, and I'm not even naming a specific one, I'm just saying like there are many projects out there that are great technically and maybe they don't actually plan on supporting your LTS. And that's fine, but if we end up with this interface such that whatever service mesh, mesh, that's a hard word. Whatever service mesh technology you choose to use, you can be confident that you can move forward and not have a horrible disaster later. >> Right, and I think that's something that a lot of developers when left to our own devices and in my particular device, the devices are pretty crappy. Where it becomes a, I want to get this thing built, and up and running and working, and then when it finally works I do a happy dance. And no one wants to see that, I promise. It becomes a very different story when, okay, how do you maintain this? How do you responsibly keep this running? And it's, well I just got it working, what do you mean maintain it? I'm done, my job is done, I'm going home now. It turns out that when you have a business that isn't being the most clever person in the room, you sort of need to have a longer term plan around that. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> And it's nice to see that level of maturation being absorbed into the ecosystem. >> I think the ecosystem may finally be ready for it. And this is, I feel like, it's easy for us to look at examples of the past, people kind of shake their heads at OpenStack as a cautionary tale or of Sprawl and whatnot. But this is a thriving, which means growing, which means changing, which means very busy ecosystem. But like you're pointing out, if your enterprises are going to adapt some of this technology, they look at it and everyone here was, ya know, eating cupcakes or whatever for the Kubernetes fifth birthday, to an enterprise just 'cause that launched in 2014, June 2014, that sounds kind of new. >> Oh absolutely. >> Like, we're still, we're still running that mainframe that is still producing business value and actually that's fine. I mean, I think this maybe is one of the great things about a company like Microsoft, is we are our customers. Like we also respect the fact that if something works you don't just yolo a new thing out into production to replace it for what reason? What is the business value of replacing it? And I think for this, that's why this, kind of Unix philosophy of the very modular pieces of this ecosystem and we were talking about Helm a little earlier, but there's also, Draft, Brigade, etc. Like the Porter, the CNET spec implementation stuff, and this Cloud Native application bundles, that's a whole mouthful. >> Yes, well no disrespect to your sparkly shirt, but chasing the shiny thing, and this is new and exciting is not necessarily a great thing. >> Right? >> I heard some of the shiny squad that were on the show floor earlier, complaining a little bit about the keynotes, that there haven't been a whole lot of new service and feature announcements. (Bridget laughing) And my opinion on that is feature not bug. I, it turns out most of us have jobs that aren't keeping up with every new commit to an open-source project. >> I think what you were talking about before, this idea of, I'm the developer, I yolo'd out this co-load into production, or I yolo'd this out into production. It is definitely production grade as long as everything stays on the happy path, and nothing unexpected happens. And I probably have air handling, and, yay! We had the launch party, we're drinkin' and eatin' and we're happy and we don't really care that somebody is getting paged. And, it's probably burning down. And a lot of human misery is being poured into keeping it working. I like to think that, considering that we're paying attention to our enterprise customers and their needs, they're pretty interested in things that don't just work on day one, but they work on day two and hopefully day 200 and maybe day 2000. And like, that doesn't mean that you ship something once and you're like, okay, we don't have to change it for three years. It's like, no, you ship something, then you keep iterating on it, you keep bug fixing, you keep, sure you want features, but stability is a feature. And customer value is a feature. >> Well, Bridget I'm glad you brought that up. Last thing I want to ask you 'cause Microsoft's a great example, as you say, as a customer, if you're an Azure customer, I don't ask you what version of Azure you're running or whether you've done the latest security patch that's in there because Microsoft takes care of you. Now, your customers that are pulled between their two worlds is, oh, wait, I might have gotten rid of patch Tuesdays, but I still have to worry and maintain that environment. How are they dealing with, kind of that new world and still have, certain things that are going to stay the old way that they have been since the 90's or longer? >> I mean, obviously it's a very broad question and I can really only speak to the Kubernetes space, but I will say that the customers really appreciate, and this goes for all the Cloud providers, when there is something like the dramatic CVE that we had in December for example. It's like, oh, every Kubernetes cluster everywhere is horribly insecure! That's awesome! I guess, your API gateway is also an API welcome mat for everyone who wants to, do terrible things to your clusters. All of the vendors, Microsoft included, had their managed services patched very quickly. They're probably just like your Harple's of the world. If you rolled your own, you are responsible for patching, maintaining, securing your own. And this is, I feel like that's that tension. That's that continuum we always see our customers on. Like, they probably have a data center full of ya know, veece, fear and sadness, and they would very much like to have managed happiness. And that doesn't mean that they can easily pickup everything in the data center, that they have a lease on and move it instantly. But we can work with them to make sure that, hey, say you want to run some Kubernetes stuff in your data center and you also want to have AKS. Hey, there's this open-source project that we instantiated, that we worked on with other organizations called Vertual Kubelet. There was actually a talk happening about it I think in the last hour, so people can watch the video of that. But, we have now offered, we now have Virtual Node, our product version of it in GA. And I think this is kind of that continuum. It's like, yes of course, you're early adapters want the open-source to play with. Your enterprises want it to be open-source so they can make sure that their security team is happy having reviewed it. But, like you're saying, they would very much like to consume a service so they can get to business value. Like they don't necessarily want to, take, Kelsey's wonderful Kubernetes The Hard Way Tutorial and put that in production. It's like, hmm, probably not, not because they can't, these are smart people, they absolutely could do that. But then they spent their, innovation tokens as, the McKinley blog post puts it, the, it's like, choose boring technology. It's not wrong. It's not that boring is the goal, it's that you want the exciting to be in the area that is producing value for your organization. Like that's where you want most of your effort to go. And so if you can use well vetted open-source that is cross industry standard, stuff like SMI that is going to help you use everything that you chose, wisely or not so wisely, and integrate it and hopefully not spend a lot of time redeveloping. If you redevelop the same applications you already had, its like, I don't think at the end of the quarter anybody is getting their VP level up. If you waste time. So, I think that is, like, one of the things that Microsoft is so excited about with this kind of open-source stuff is that our customers can get to value faster and everyone that we collaborate with in the other clouds and with all of these vendor partners you see on the show floor, can keep the ecosystem moving forward. 'Cause I don't know about you but I feel like for a while we were all building different things. I mean like, instead of, for example, managed services for something like Kubernetes, I mean a few jobs that would go out was that a start up that we, we built our own custom container platform, as one did in 2014. And, we assembled it out of all the LEGOs and we built it out of I think Docker and Packer and Chef and, AWS at the time and, a bunch of janky bash because like if someone tells you there's no janky bash underneath your home grown platform, they are lying. >> It's always a lie, always a lie. >> They're lying. There's definitely bash in there, they may or may not be checking exit codes. But like, we all were doing that for a while and we were all building, container orchestration systems because we didn't have a great industry standard, awesome! We're here at KubeCon. Obviously Kubernetes is a great industry standard, but everybody that wants to chase the shiny is like but surface meshes. If I review talks for, I think I reviewed talks for KubeCon in Copenhagen, and it was like 50 or 60 almost identical service mesh talk proposals. And it's like, and then now, like so that was last year and now everyone is like server lists and its like, you know you still have servers. Like you don't add sensation to them, which is great, but you still have them. I think that that hype train is going to keep happening and what we need to do is make sure that we keep it usable for what the customers are trying to accomplish. Does that make sense? >> Bridget, it does, and unfortunately, we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much for sharing everything with our audience here. For Corey, I'm Stu, we'll be back with more coverage. Thanks for watching The Cube. (upbeat techno music)