(bright upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to this CUBE Unstoppable Domain Showcase. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We've been showcasing all the great content about Web3 and what's going around the corner for Web4. Of course, Unstoppable Domains is one of the big growth stories in the business. Brad Kam, the Co-founder is here with me, of Unstoppable Domains, Brad, great to see you, thanks for coming on this showcase. >> Thanks, pleasure for having me. >> So you have a lot of history in the Web3. They're calling it now, but it's basically crypto and blockchain. You know, the white paper came out and then, you know how it developed was organically. We saw how that happened. Now you're the co-founder of Unstoppable Domains. You're seeing the mainstream, I would say mainstream scene, Superbowl commercials, okay? You're seeing it everywhere. So it is here. Stadiums are named after cryptos, companies. It's here. Hey, it's no longer a fringe, it is reality. You guys are in the middle of it. What's going on with the trend, and where does Unstoppable fit in and where do you guys tie in here? >> I mean, I think that what's been happening in general, this whole revolution around cryptocurrencies and then NFTs and what Unstoppable Domain is doing. It's all around creating this idea that people can own something that's digital. And this hasn't really been possible before Bitcoin. Bitcoin was the first case. You could own money. You don't need a bank, no one else. You know, you can completely control it. No one else can turn you off. Then there was this next phase of the revolution, which is, assets beyond just currencies. So NFTs, digital art. What we're working on is like a decentralized identity, like a username for Web3 and each individual domain name is an NFT. But yeah, it's been a crazy ride over the past 10 years. >> It's fun because, you know, on siliconangle.com, which we founded, we were covering early days of crypto. In fact, our first website, the developer want to be paid in crypto. It's interesting. Price of Bitcoin, I won't say that how low it was. But then you saw the ICO Wave, the token started coming in. You started seeing much more engineering focus, a lot of white papers coming out, a lot of cool ideas. And then now you got this mainstream of this. So I got to ask you, what are the coolest things you guys are working on, because Unstoppable has a solution that solves a problem today, and that people are facing at the same time, it is part of this new architecture. What problem do you guys solve right now that's in market that you're seeing the most traction on? >> Yeah, so it's really about, so whenever you interact with a blockchain, you wind up having to deal with one of these really, really crazy public keys, public addresses. And they're like anywhere from 20 to 40 characters long, they're random, they're impossible to memorize. And going back to even early days in crypto, I think people knew that this tech was not going to go mainstream if you have to copy and paste these things around. If I'm getting ready to send you like a million dollars, I'm going to copy and paste some random string of numbers and letters. I'm going to have no confirmations about who I'm sending it to, and I'm going to hope that it works out. It's just not practical. People have kind of always known there was going to be a solution. And one of the more popular ideas was, doing kind of like what DNS did, which is, instead of having to deal with these crazy IP addresses, this long random string of numbers to find a website, you have a name like a keyword, something that's easy to remember. You know, like a hotels.com or something like that. And so what NFT domains are, is basically the same thing, but for blockchain addresses. And yeah, it's just better and easier. There's this joke that everybody, you know, if you want to send me money, you're going to send me a test transaction of, you know, like a dollar first, just to make sure that I get it. Call me up and make sure that I get it before you go and send the big amount. Just not the way of moving billions of dollars of value is going to work in the future. >> Yeah, and I think one of the things you just point out, make it easier. When you have these new waves, these shifts, we saw it with the web pages. More and more web pages were coming on, more online users. They called it the online populations growing. Here, the same thing's happening. And if the focus is on ease of use, making things simpler to understand, and reducing the step it takes to do things, right? This is kind of what's going on and with the developer community, and what Ethereum has done really well is, brought in the developers. So that's the convergence of all the action. And so, when you (John chuckles) so that's where you're at right now. How do you go forward from here? Obviously, there's business development deals to do, you guys are partnering a lot. What's the strategy? What are some of the things that you can share about some of your business activity that points to how mainstream it is and where it's going? >> So I think the way to think about an NFT domain name is that it's meant to be like your identity on Web3. So, it's going to have a lot of different context. So it's kind of like your Venmo account, where you could send me money to brad.crypto, can be your decentralized website, where you can check out my content at brad.crypto. It can also be my like login kind of like a decentralized Facebook O oth, where I can log into DApps and share information about myself and bring my data along with me. So it's got all of these different things that it can do, but where it's starting is inside of crypto wallets and crypto apps, and they are adopting it for this identity idea. And it's the same form of identity across all your apps. That's the thing that's new here. So, yeah, that's the really big and profound shift that's happening. And the reason why this is going to be maybe even more important than a lot of, you know, your listeners think is that, everyone's going to have a crypto wallet. Every person in the world is going to have a crypto wallet. Every app, every consumer app that you use is going to build one in. Twitter just launched, just built one. Reddit is building one. You're seeing it across all the consumer finance apps. So it's not just the crypto companies that you're thinking of, every app's going to have a wallet. And it's going to really change the way that we use the internet. >> I think there's a couple things you pointed. I want to get your reaction to and thoughts more on this concept of DApps or decentralized applications, DApps or depending on what you call it. This is applications. And that take advantage of the architecture, and then this idea of users owning their own data. And this absolutely reverses the script today. Today, you see Facebook, you see LinkedIn, all these silos, they own the data that you are the product. Here, the users are in control. They have their data, but the apps are being built for it for the paradigm shift here, right? That's what's happening. Is that right? >> Totally, totally. And so, it all starts. I mean, DApp is just this crazy term. It feels like it's this, like really foreign, weird thing. All it means is that you sign in with your wallet instead of signing in with a username and password, where the data is stored inside of that app. Like inside of Facebook. So that's the only real, like, core underneath difference to keep in mind, signing in with the wallet. But that is like a complete sea change in the way the internet works. Because I have this key, this private key, it's on my phone or my device or whatever. And I'm the only one that has it. So, if somebody wanted to hack me, they need to go get access to my device. Two years ago, when Twitter got hacked, Barack Obama and Elon Musk were tweeting the same stuff. That's because Twitter had all the data. And so, you needed to hack Twitter instead of each individual person. It's a completely different security model. It's way better for users to have that. But, if you're thinking from the user perspective, what's going to happen is, is that instead of Facebook storing all of my data, and then me being trapped inside of Facebook, I'm going to store it, and I'm going to move around on the internet, logging in with my Web3 username, my NFT domain name, and I'm going to have all my data with me. And then I could use 100 different Facebooks all in one day. And it would be effortless for me to go and move from one to the other. So, the monopoly situation that we exist in as a society is because of the way data storage works and- >> So that's a huge point. So let's double down on that for one more second. This is a huge point. I want to get your thoughts. So I think people don't understand that in the mainstream having that horizontal traversal or ability to move around with your identity in this case, your Unstoppable Domain and your data allows the user to take it from place to place. It's like going to other apps that could be like Facebook, where the user's in charge. And they're either deciding whether to share their data or not, or they're certainly continuate their data. And this allows for more of a horizontal scalability for the user, not for a company. >> Yeah, and what's going to happen is, as users are building up their reputation. They're building up their identity in Web3. So you have your username and you have your profile and you have certain badges of activities that you've done. And you're building up this reputation. And now apps are looking at that, and they're starting to create social networks and other things to provide me services because it started with the user. And so, the user is starting to collect all this valuable data, and then apps are saying, well, hey, let me give you a special experience based on that. But the real thing, and this is like the core, I mean, this is just like a core capitalist idea, in general. If you have more competition, you get a better experience for users. We have not had competition in Web2 for decades because these companies have become monopolies. And what Web3 is really allowing is, this wide open competition. And that's the core thing. Like, it's not like, you know, it's going to take time for Web3 to get better than Web2. You know, it's very, very early days. But the reason why it's going to work is because of the competitive aspect here. Like it's just so much better for consumers when this happens. >> I would also add to that, first of all, great point, great insight. I would also add that the web presence technology based upon DNS specifically is, first of all, it's asking, so it's not foreign characters, it's not Unicode for the geeks out there. But that's limiting too, it limits you to be on a site. And so, I think the combination of kind of inadequate or antiquated DNS has limitations. So if... And that doesn't help communities, right? So when you're in the communities, you have potentially marketplaces that could be anywhere. So if you have ID, I'm just kind of thinking it forward here. But if you have your own data and your own ID, you can jump into a marketplace, two-sided marketplace anywhere. An app can provide that, if the community's robust, this is kind of where I see the use case going. How do you guys, do you guys agree with that statement and how do you see that ability for the user to take advantage of other competitive or new emerging communities or marketplaces? >> So I think it all comes down. So identity is just this huge problem in Web2. And part of the reason why it's very, very hard for new marketplaces and new communities to emerge is 'cause you need all kinds of trust and reputation. And it's very hard to get real information about the users that you're interacting with. If you're in the Web3 paradigm, then what happens is, is you can go and check certain things on the blockchain to see if they're true. And you can know that they're true 100%. You can know that I have used Uniswap in the past 30 days, and OpenSea in the past 30 days. You can know for sure that this wallet is mine. The same owner of this wallet also owns this other wallet, owns this asset. So having the ability to know certain things about a stranger is really what's going to change behavior. And one of the things that we're really excited about is being able to prove information about yourself without sharing it. So I can tell you, hey, I'm a unique person. I'm an American, I'm not an American, but I don't have to tell you who I am. And you can still know that it's true. And that concept is going to be what enables what you're talking about. I'm going to be able to show up in some new community that was created two hours ago, and we can all trust each other that a certain set of facts are true. And that's possible because- >> And exchange value with smart contracts and other with no middle men involved activities, which is the promise of the new decentralized web. All right, so let me ask you a question on that. Because I think this is key. The anonymous point is huge. If you look at any kind of abstraction layers or any evolution in technology over the years, it's always been about cleaning up the mess or extending capabilities of something that was inadequate. We mentioned DNS, now you got this. There's a lot of problems with Web2, 2.0, social bots. You mentioned bots. Bots are anonymous and they don't have a lot of time in market. So it's easy to start bots, and everyone who does either scraping bots, everyone knows this. What you just pointed out was, in an ops environment that was user choice, but has all the data that could be verified. So it's almost like a blue check mark on Twitter without having your name, kind of- >> It's going to be 100s of check marks, but exactly. 'Cause there's so many different things that you're going to want to communicate to strangers, but that's exactly the right mental model. It's going to be these check marks for all kinds of different contexts. And that's what's going to enable people to trust that they're, you know, you're talking to a real person or you're talking to the type of person you thought you were talking to, et cetera. But yeah, it's, you know, I think that the issues that we have with bots today are because Web2 has failed at solving identity. I think Facebook at one point was deleting half a billion fake accounts per quarter. Something like the entire number of user profiles they were deleting per year. So it's just a total- >> And they spring up like mushrooms. They just pop up, to think that's the problem. I mean, the data that you acquire in these siloed platforms is used by them, the company. So you don't own the data, so you become the product as the cliche goes. But what you guys are saying is, if you have an identity and you pop around to multiple sites, you also have your digital footprints and your exhaust that you own. Okay, that's time, that's reputation data. I mean, you can cut it any way you want, but the point is, it's your stuff over time, that's yours. And that's immutables on the blockchain, you can store it and then make that permanent and add to it. >> Exactly. >> That's a time based thing versus today, bots that are spreading misinformation can get popped up when they get killed. They just start another one. So time actually is a metric for quality here. >> Absolutely. And people already use it in the crypto world to say like, hey, this wallet was created greater than two years ago. This wallet has had transactions for at least three or four years. Like this is probably a real, you know, this is probably a legitimate user. And anybody can look that up. I mean, we can we go look it up together right now on Etherscan, it would take a minute. >> Yeah, (indistinct). Yeah, I'm a big fan, I can tell, I love this product. I think you guys are going to do really well. Congratulations, I'm a big fan. I think this is needed. What are some of the deals you've done? blockchain.com is one and Opera. Can you take us through those deals and why they're working with you? Let's start with blockchain.com. >> Yeah, so the whole thing here is that, this identity standard for Web3 apps need to choose to support it. So, you know, we spent several years as a company working to get as many crypto wallets and browsers and crypto exchanges to support this identity standard. Some of the largest and probably most popular companies to have done this are, blockchain.com, for example, blockchain.com, one of the largest crypto wallets in the world. And you can use your domain names instead of crypto addresses. And this is super cool because blockchain.com in particular focuses on onboarding new users. So they're very focused on how we're going to get the next 4 billion internet users to use this tech. And they said, usernames are going to be essential. Like, how can we onboard this next several billion people if we have to explain to them about all these crazy addresses. And it's not just one, like we want to give you 10, 40 character addresses for all these different contexts. Like, it's just no way people are going to be able to do that without having a user name. So, that's why we're really excited about what blockchain.com's doing. They want to train users that this is the way you should use the tech. >> Yeah, and certainly no one wants to remember. I remember how writing down all my... You know, I was never a big wallet fan 'cause of all the hacks I used to write it down and store it in my safe. But if the house burns down or I kick the can who's going to find it, right? So again, these are all important things. Your key storing it, securing it, super important. Talk about Opera. That's an interesting partnership because it's got a browser that people know what it is. What are they doing different? Almost imagine they're innovating around the identity and what people's experiences with what they touch. >> Yeah, so this is one of those things that's a little bit easier and I strongly encourage everybody to go and try DApps after this. 'Cause this is going to be one of those concepts, it can be a little easier if you try it than if you hear about it. But the concept of a wallet and a browser are kind of merging. So it makes sense to have a wallet inside of your browser. Because when you go to a website, the website's going to want you to sign in with your wallet. So having that be in one app is quite convenient for users. And so Opera was one of the trailblazers, a traditional browser that added a crypto wallet so that you can store money in there. And then also added support for domain names for payments and for websites. So, you can type in brad.crypto and you can send me money, or you can type in brad.crypto into the browser and you can check out my website. I've got a little NFT gallery. You can see my collection up there right now. So that's the idea is that, browsers have this kind of superpower in Web3. And what I think is going to happen, Opera and Brave have been kind of the trailblazers here. What I think is going to happen is that, these traditional browsers are going to wake up and they're going to see that integrating a wallet is critical for them to be able to provide services to consumers. >> I mean, it is an app. I mean, why not make it a DApps as well? Because why wouldn't I want to just send you crypto, like Venmo, you mentioned earlier, which people can understand that concept. Venmo, let me make my cash. Same concept here. But built in to the browser, which is not a browser anymore it's a reader, a DApp reader, basically with a wallet. All right, so what does this mean for you guys and the marketplace? You got Opera pushing the envelope on browsing, changing the experience, enabling the applications to be discovered and navigated and consumed. You got blockchain.com with the wallets and being embedded there. Good distribution. Who are you looking for for partners? How do people partner? Let's just say theCUBE wants to do NFTs, and we want to have a login for our communities, which are all open. How do we partner with you? Or do we? We have to wait or is there a... I mean, take us through the partnership strategy. How do people engage with Unstoppable Domains? >> Yeah, so, I mean, I think that if you're a wallet or a crypto exchange, it's super easy, we would love to have you support being able to send money using domains. We also have all sorts of different kind of marketing activities we can do together. We can give out free stuff to your communities. We have a bunch of education that we do. We're really trying to be this onboarding point to Web3. So there's, I think a lot of cool stuff we can do together on the commercial side and on the marketing side. And then the other category that we didn't talk about was DApps. And we now have this login with ensemble domains, which you kind of alluded to there. And so you can log in with your domain name and then you can give the app permission to get certain information about you or proof of information about you, not the actual information, if you don't want to share it, because it's your choice and you're in control. And so, that would be another thing. Like, if you all launch a DApps, we should absolutely have login with Unstoppable there. >> Yeah, there's so much headroom here. You got a short term solution with exchange. Get that distribution, I get that, that's early days of the foundation, push the distribution, get you guys everywhere. But the real success comes in for the login. I mean, the sign in single sign in concept. I think that's going to be powerful, great stuff. Okay, future, tell us something we don't know about Unstoppable Domains that people might be interested in. >> I think the thing that you're going to hear about a lot from us in the future is going to be around this idea of identity, of being able to prove that you're a human and be able to tell apps that. And apps are going to give you all kinds of special access and rewards and all kinds of other things, because you gave 'em that information. So that's probably, that's the hint I'm going to drop. >> You know, it's interesting, Brad. You bring trust, you bring quality verified data, choose intelligence software and machine learning, AI and access to distributed communities and distributed applications. Interesting to see what the software does with that. Cause it traditionally didn't have that before. I mean, just in mind blowing. I mean, it's pretty crazy. Great stuff. Brad, thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing the insight. The Co-founder of Unstoppable Domains, Brad Kam. Thanks for stopping by theCUBE's Showcase with Unstoppable Domains. >> Thanks for having me. (bright upbeat music)

>>Oh, welcome to this cube unstoppable domain showcase. I'm John for your host of the cube and showcasing all the great content about web three. And what's around the corner for web. For of course, stoppable domains is one of the big growth stories in the business bread. Can the co-founders here with me have ensembles mains break. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on the showcase. >>So you have a lot of history in the, in the web three, they're calling it net, but it's basically crypto and blockchain. You know, the white paper came out and then, you know how it developed was organically. We saw how that happened. Now, the co-founder was titled domains. You seeing the mainstream, I would say main street scene, super bowl commercials. Okay. You're seeing it everywhere. So it is, it is here. Stadiums are named after cryptos companies. It's here. Hey, it's no longer a fringe. It is reality. You guys are in the middle of it. What's what's going on with the trend. And where does unstoppable fit in? Where do you guys tie in here? >>I mean, I think that what's been happening in general, this whole revolution around cryptocurrencies and then in FTEs and what unstoppable domains is doing, it's all around creating this idea that people can own something that's digital. And this hasn't really been possible before Bitcoin Bitcoin was the first case. You could own money. You don't need a bank. No one else. You can completely control it. No one else can turn you off. Then there was this next phase of the revolution, which is assets beyond just currencies. So, and if T is digital art, what we're working on is like a decentralized identity, like a username for web three and each individual domain name is a is an NFT. But yeah, it's a, it's been a, it's been a, it's been a crazy ride over the past. >>It's fun because you on siliconangle.com, which we founded, we were covering early days of crypto. In fact, our first website, the developer want to be paid in crypto is interesting price of Bitcoin. I won't say that how low it was, but then you saw, you saw the, you know, the ICO way, the token started coming in, you started seeing much more engineering, focused, a lot of white papers coming out, a lot of cool ideas. And then now you got this mainstream of it. So I had to ask you, what are the coolest things you guys are working on because ensemble has a solution that solves a problem today, and that people are facing at the same time. It is part of this new architecture. What problem do you guys solve right now? That's in market that you're seeing the most traction on. >>Yeah. So it's really about, so whenever you inter interact with a blockchain, you wind up having to deal with one of these really, really crazy public keys, public addresses. And they're like anywhere from 20 to 40 characters, long they're random, they're impossible to memorize. And going back to even early days in crypto, I think if people knew that this tech was not going to go mainstream, if you have to copy and paste these things around, if I'm getting to send you like a million dollars, I'm going to copy and paste some random string of numbers and letters. I'm going to have no confirmations about who I'm sending it to. And I'm going to hope that it works out. It's just not practical people. Who've kind of always known there was going to be a solution. And one of the more popular ideas was doing kind of like what DNS did, which is instead of having to deal with these crazy IP addresses this long, random string of numbers to find a website, you have a name, like a keyword, something that's easy to remember, you know, like a hotels.com or something like that. And so what NFT domains are, is basically the same thing, but for blockchain addresses and yeah, it's just, it's just better and easier. There's this joke that everybody, if you want to send me money, you're going to send me a test transaction of, you know, like a dollar first, just to make sure that I get it, call me up and make sure that I get it before you go and send the big amount. I'm just not the way moving, you know, billions of dollars of value is going to work in the future. >>Yeah. And I think one of the things you just pointed out, make it easier. One of these, when you have these new waves, these shifts we saw with the web web pages, more and more web pages were coming on more online users, they call the online population is growing here, the same thing's happening. And the focus is on ease of use, making things simple, to understand and reducing the step it takes to do things, right. This is kind of, kind of what is going on and with the developer community and what a theory has done really well is brought in the developers. So that's the, that's the convergence of all the action. And so when you, so that's where you're at right now, how do you go forward from here? Obviously see this business development deals to do. You guys are partnering a lot. What's the strategy? What are some of the things that you can share about some of your business activity that points to how mainstream it is and where it's going? Okay. >>So I think the, the, the, the way to, the way to think about, and, and T domain name is that it's meant to be like your identity on web three. So it's gonna have a lot of different contexts. It's kind of like your, your Venmo account, where you could send me money to Brad dot crypto can be your decentralized website, where you can check out my content at Brad dot crypto. It can also be my like login kind of like a decentralized Facebook OAuth, where I can log into ADAPs and share information about myself and bring my data along with me. So it's got all of these, all of these different, all these different things that it can do, but where it's starting is inside of crypto wallets and crypto apps, and they are adopting it for this identity, this identity idea. And it's the same identity across all your apps. >>That's the thing that's kinda, that's new here. So, so yeah, that's the, that's the really, that's the really big and profound shift that's happening. And the reason why this is going to be maybe even more important, a lot of, you know, your, your listeners thing is that everyone's going to have a crypto wallet. Every person in the world is going to have a crypto wallet. Every app, every consumer app that you use is going to build one in Twitter, just launched, just built one. Reddit is building one. You're seeing it across all the consumer finance apps. So it's not just the crypto companies that you're thinking of. Every app is going to have a wallet, and it's going to really, it's going to really change the way that we use the internet. >>I think there's a couple of things you pointed. I want to get your reaction to and thoughts more on this constant adapts or decentralized applications or dimension when you call it, this is applications and that take advantage of, of the architecture and then this idea of users owning their own data. And this absolutely reverses the script today. Today, you see Facebook, you see LinkedIn, all these silos, they own the data. The, you are the product here. The users are in control. They have their data, but the apps are being built for it for the paradigm shift here. Right. That's what's happening. Is that right now? >>Totally, totally. And, and so it all starts, I mean, DAP is just this crazy term. It feels like it's this like really foreign, weird thing. All it means is that you sign in with your wallet instead of signing in with a username and password where the data is stored inside of that app, like inside of Facebook. So that's, that's the only real, like core underneath difference to keep in mind signing in with a wallet. But that is like a complete sea change in the way the internet works, because I have this, this key, this private key it's on my phone or my device or whatever. And I'm the only one that has it. So if somebody wanted to hack me, they need to go get access to my device. Two years ago, when Twitter got hacked, Barack Obama and Elon Musk were tweeting the same stuff. >>That's because Twitter had all the data. And so you needed to hack Twitter instead of each individual person, it's a completely different security model. It's, it's way better for users to have that. But if you're thinking from the user perspective what's going to happen is, is that instead of Facebook storing all of my data, and then me being trapped inside of Facebook, I'm going to store it. And I'm gonna move around on the internet, logging in with my web three username, my, my, my NFT domain name. And I'm going to have all my data with me. And then I could use a hundred different Facebooks all in one day. And it would be effortless for me to go and move from one to the other. So the monopoly situation that we exist in as a society is because of the way data storage works. >>So that's the huge point. So let's just, let's double down on that for one more. Second, this is huge point. I want to get your thoughts. I think people don't understand that in the mainstream having that horizontal traversal or, or, or the ability to move around with your identity in this case, your unstoppable domain and your data allows the user to take it from place to place. It's like going to other apps that could be Facebook where the user's in charge. And they're either deciding whether to share their data or not, or are certainly continually their data. And this allows for more of a horizontal scalability for the user, not for a company. >>Yeah. And what's going to happen is, is users are building up their reputation. They're building up their identity in web three. So you have your username and you have your, your profile and you have certain badges of, you know, activities that you've done. And you're building up this reputation. And now apps are looking at that and they're starting to create social networks and other things to provide me services because I, it started with the user as, or the user is starting to collect all this valuable data. And then apps are saying, well, Hey, let me give you a special experience based on that, but the real thing, and this is like, this is like the core mean, this is just like a core capitalist idea. In general, you have more competition, you get a better experience for users. We have not had competition on, on, in web two for decades because these companies have become monopolies. And what web three is really allowing is this wide open competition. And, and that is what, that's the core thing. Like, it's not like, you know, it's going to take time for, for, for web three to get better than web two. You know, it's very, very early days, but the reason why it's going to work is because of the competitive aspect here. Like you can just, it's just so much better for consumers when this happened. >>I would also add to that, first of all, great point, great insight. I would also add that the web presence technology based upon DNS specifically is first of all, it's asking, so it's not foreign characters. It's not union code for, for the geeks out there, but that's limiting to its limits you to be on a site. And so I think the combination of kind of inadequate or antiquated DNS has limitations. So if, and that doesn't help communities, right? So when you're in the communities, you have potentially marketplaces, that could be anywhere. So if you have a ID and just kind of thinking it forward here, but if you have your own data and your own ID, you can jump into a marketplace two-sided marketplace anywhere. And app can provide that if the community is robust, this is kind of where I see the use case going. How do you guys, do you guys agree with that statement and how do you see that ability for the user to take advantage of other competitive or new emerging communities or marketplace? >>So I think it all comes down. So I identity is just this huge problem in web two. And part of the reason why it's very, very hard for new marketplaces and new communities to emerge is because you need all kinds of trust and reputation. And it's very hard to get, to get real information about the users that you're interacting with. If you're, if you're in the web three paradigm, then what happens is, is you can go and check certain things on the blockchain to see if they're true. And you can know that they're true. A hundred percent. You can know that I have used unit swab in the past 30 days and open, see in the past 30 days, you can know for sure that this wallet is mine. The same owner of this wallet also owns this other wallet, owns this certain asset. So all of having the ability to know certain things about a stranger is really what's going to change behavior. >>And one of the things that we're really excited about is being able to prove information about yourself without sharing it. So I can tell you, Hey, I'm a unique person. I'm an American, I'm not an American, but I don't have to tell you who I am. And, and you can still know that it's true. And, and that is that concept is going to be what enables, what you're talking about. I'm going to be able to show up in some new community that was created two hours ago, and we can all trust each other that a certain set of facts are true. And that's possible because of >>Exchange and exchange value with smart contracts and other no middlemen involved activities, which is the promise of the new decentralized web. All right. So let me ask you a question on that, because I think this is key. The anonymous point is huge. If you look at any kind of abstraction layers or any evolution in technology over the years, it's always been about cleaning up the mess or the, or extending capabilities of something that was inadequate. We mentioned DNS. Now you got this, there's a lot of problems with web two, 2.0, social bots. You mentioned bots, bots are anonymous and they don't have a lot of time in market. So it's easy to start bots and everyone who does either scraping bots, everyone knows this. What you just pointed out was an ops environment that was user choice, but has all the data that could be verified. So it's almost like a blue check mark on Twitter without your name, >>Kind of, it's good. It's going to be hundreds of check marks, but exactly, because there's so many different things that you're going to want to be, you're going to want to communicate to strangers, but that's exactly the right. That's exactly the right mental model. It's going to be these check marks for all kinds of different contexts. And that's, what's going to enable people to trust that they're, you know, you're talking to a real person or you're talking to the type of person you thought you were talking to, et cetera. But yeah, it's, it's, you know, I, I think that the issues that we have with bots today are because a web tool has failed at solving identity. I think Facebook at one point was deleting half a billion fake accounts per quarter. Something like the entire number of user profiles. They were deleting per you know, per year. So it's just a total. >>They spring up like mushrooms. They just pop up the thing. This is the problem. I mean, the data that you acquire in new siloed platforms is used by them, the company. So you don't own the data. So you become the product as the cliche goes. But what you're saying is if you have an identity and you pop around to multiple sites, you also have your digital footprints and your exhaust that you own. Okay. That's time. That's reputation data. I mean, you can cut it any way you want, but the point is, it's your stuff over time, that's yours and that's immutable. It's on the blockchain. You can store it and make that permanent and add to it. Exactly. That's, that's a time-based thing versus today, bots that are spreading misinformation can, can get popped up when they get killed. They just start another one. So time actually is a metric for quality here. >>Absolutely. And people already use it in the crypto world to say like, Hey, this wallet was created greater than two years ago. This wallet has had, you know, head has had transactions for at least three or four years. Like this is probably a real, you know, this is probably a legit legitimate user and anybody can look that up. I mean, we could go look it up together right now on, on ether scan. It would take, you know, a minute. >>Yeah. It's awesome. Yeah. I'm a big fan. I can tell, I love this product. I think you guys are gonna do really well. Congratulations. I'm a big fan. I think this is needed. What are some of the deals you've done? blockchain.com has won an opera. Can you take us through those deals and why they're working with you? We'll start with blockchain.com. >>Yeah. So the whole thing here is that this identity standard for web three apps need to choose to support it. So we spent several years as a company working to get as many crypto wallets and browsers and crypto exchanges to support this, to support this identity standard. Some of the, some of the, the, the largest, and probably, you know, most, most popular companies to have done. This are blockchain.com. For example, blockchain.com, one of the largest crypto wallets in the world. And you can use your domain names instead of crypto addresses. And, and, and this is, this is, this is super cool because blockchain.com in particular focuses on onboarding new users. So they're very focused on how we're going to get the next 4 billion internet users to use this tech. And they said, you know, usernames are going to be essential. Like, how can we onboard this next several billion people? If we have to explain to them about all these crazy addresses, and it's not just one, like we want to give you 10 40 character addresses for all these different contexts. Like, it's just, it's just, it's just no way people are gonna be able to do that without, without having a username. So that's why we're really excited about, about what blockchain that comes through. And they, they, they want to train users that this is the way you should use it. >>Yeah. And certainly no one wants to remember. I remember writing down all my writing. I, I'm not, I was never a big wallet fan cause all the hacks, I used to write it down and store it in my safe. But if the house burns down or I, I kick the can I'm, who's going to find it. Right? So again, these are all important things, your key storing it, securing it, super important. Talk about opera. And that's an interesting partnership because it's got a browser and people know what it is, what are they doing? Different almost imagine they're innovating around the identity and what people's experiences with, what they touch. >>So this is, this is one of those things. That's a little bit easier. And I strongly encourage everybody to go and try dApps after this. Cause this is going to be one of those concepts to be a little easier. If you, if you try it, then if you hear about it, but the concept of a wallet and a browser are kind of merging. So it makes sense to have a wallet inside of your browser. Because when you go to a website, the website is going to want you to sign in with your wallet. So having that be in one app is quite convenient for users. And so opera was one of the trailblazers, a traditional browser that added a crypto wallet so that you can store money in there. And then also added support for domain names, for payments and for websites. So you can type in Brad dot crypto and you can send me money or you can type in Brad dot crypto into the browser and you can check out my website. I've got a little NFT gallery. You can see my collection up there right now. So that's the, that's the idea is that browsers have this kind of super power in a web three. And what I think is going to happen opera and brave have been kind of the trailblazers here. But I think is going to happen is that these traditional browsers are going to wake up and they're going to see that integrating a wallet is critical for them to be able to provide services to consumers. >>I mean, it is an app. I mean, why not make it a D app as well? Because why wouldn't I want to just send you crypto, like Venmo, you mentioned earlier, which people can understand that concept. Ben, let me make my cash. Same concept here, but built in to the browser, which is not a browser anymore. It's a, a reader, a D app reader, basically with a wallet. All right. So, so what does this mean for you guys in the marketplace? You've got opera pushing the envelope on browsing, changing the experience, enabling the applications to be discovered and navigated and consumed. You got blockchain.com, blockchain.com with the wallets and being embedded there. Good distribution. How, what, who are you looking for for partners? How do people partner? Let's just say the cube wants to do NFTs and we want to have a login for our communities, which are all open. How do we partner with you? Or do we have to wait? Or is there a, I mean, take us through the partnership strategy. How do we, how do people engage with unstoppable Dwayne's >>Yeah, so, I mean, I think that if you're, you know, if you're a wallet or a crypto exchange, it's super easy, we would love to have you support being able to send money using domains. We also have all sorts of different kind of marketing activities we can do together. We can give out free stuff to, to your communities. We have a bunch of education that we do. We're really trying to be this onboarding point to web three. So there's, I think a lot of, a lot of cool stuff we can do together on the commercial side and on the, the, the marketing side. And then the other category that we didn't talk about was dabs. And we now have this login with unstoppable domains, which you kind of alluded to there. And so you can log in with your domain name and then you can give the app permission to get certain information about you or proof of information about you, not the actual information, if you don't want to share it because it's your choice and you're in control. And so that would be, that would be another thing. Like if you all launch a DAP, we should absolutely have log-in with unstoppable. >>Yeah. There's so much headroom here. You've got a short-term solution with exchange. Get that distribution. I get that that's early days of the foundation, push the distribution, get you guys everywhere. But the real success comes in for the login. I mean, the sign-on single sign-on concept. I think that's going to be powerful, great stuff. Okay. Future, tell us something we don't know about ensemble domains that people might be interested in. >>I think it's really, I think the thing that you're going to hear about a lot from us in the future is going to be around this idea of identity, of being able to prove that you're a human and be able to tell apps that and apps are going to give you all kinds of special access and rewards and all kinds of other things, because, because you gave them that information. So that's the that's, that's probably, that's the hint I'm going to drop. >>Yeah. It's interesting. Brad, you bring trust, you bring quality verified data to intelligence, software, and machine learning, AI and access to distributed communities and distributed applications. Interesting to see what the software does, what that, cause it traditionally didn't have that before. I mean just in mindblowing, I mean, it's pretty crazy great stuff, Brad. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing the insight. Co-founder unstoppable domains, Brad camp. Thanks for stopping by the cubes. Showcase with unstoppable domains.

>>Yeah, >>approximately two years after HP split into two separate companies, antonioni Ranieri was named president and Ceo of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Under his tenure, the company has streamlined its operations, sharpened his priorities, simplified the product portfolio and strategically aligned its human capital with key growth initiatives. He's made a number of smaller but high leverage acquisitions and return the company to growth while affecting a massive company wide pivot to an as a service model. Welcome back to HPD discovered 2021. This is Dave Volonte for the cube and it's my pleasure to welcome back Antonio Neary to the program. Antonio it's been a while. Great to see you again. >>Hi, Dave. Thanks for having me. >>That's really our pleasure. It was just gonna start off with the big picture. Let's talk about trends. You're a trend spotter. What do you see today? Everybody talks about digital transformation. We had to force marks to digital last year. Now it's really come into focus. But what are the big trends that you're seeing that are affecting your customers transformations? >>Well, Dave, I mean obviously we have been talking about digital transformation for some time uh in our view is no longer a priority is a strategic imperative. And through the last 15 months or so since we have been going through the pandemic, we have seen that accelerated to a level we haven't never seen before. And so what's going on is that we live in a digital economy and through the pandemic now we are more connected than ever. We are much more distributed than ever before and an enormous amount of data is being created and that data has tremendous value. And so what we see in our customer's name, more connectivity, they need a platform from the edge to the cloud to manage all the data and most important they need to move faster and extracting that inside that value from the data and this is where HP is uniquely positioned to deliver against those experiences and way we haven't imagined before. >>Yeah, we're gonna dig into that now, of course you and I have been talking about data and how much data for decades, but I feel like we're gonna look back at 2030 and say, wow, we never, we're not gonna do anything like that. So we're really living in a data centric era as the curves are going exponential, What do you see? How do you see customers handling this? How are they thinking about the opportunities? >>Well, I think, you know, customer realized now that they need to move faster, they need to absolutely be uh much more agile and everything. They do, they need to deploy a cloud experience for all the work clothes and data that they manage and they need to deliver business outcomes to stay ahead of the competition. And so we believe technology now plays even a bigger role and every industry is a technology industry in many ways, every company, right, is a technology company, whether your health care, your manufacturer, your transportation company, you are an education, everybody needs more. It no less. It but at the same time they want the way they want to consumer dave is very different than ever before, right? They want an elastic consumption model and they want to be able to scale up and down based on the needs of their enterprise. But if you recall three years ago, I knew and I had this conversation, I predicted that enterprise of the future will be edge century, cloud enable and data driven. The edge is the next frontier, we said in 2018 and think about it, you know, people now are working remotely and that age now is much more distribute than we imagined before. Cloud is no longer a destination, it is an experience for all your apps and data, but now we are entering what we call the edge of insight, which is all about that data driven approach and this is where all three have to come together in ways that customer did envision before and that's why they need help. >>So I see that, I see the definition of cloud changing, it's no longer a set of remote services, you know, somewhere up there in the cloud, it's expanding on prem cross clouds, you mentioned the edge and so that brings complexity. Every every company is a technology company but they may not be great at technology. So it seems that there are some challenges around there, partly my senses, some of some of what you're trying to do is simplify that for your customers. But what are the challenges that your customers are asking you to solve? >>Well, the first they want a consistent and seamless experience, whatever that application and data lives, so, you know, for them, you know, they want to move away from running it to innovate in our 90 and then obviously they need to move much faster. As I said earlier about this data driven approaches. So they need help because obviously they need to digitize every every aspect of the company, but at the same time they need to do it in a much more cost effective way. So they're asking for subject matter expertise on process engineering. They're asking for the fighting the right mix of hybrid experiences from the edge to cloud and they need to move much faster at scale in deploying technologies like Ai deep learning and machine learning and Hewlett Packard Enterprise uh is extremely well positioned because we have been building an age to club platform where you provide connectivity where you bring computing and storage uh in a softer, define scalable way that you can consume as a service. And so we have great capabilities without HP Point next technology services and advice and run inside. But we have a portfolio with HP Green Lake, our cloud services, the cloud that comes to you that are addressing the most critical data driven warlords. >>Probably about 24 months ago you announced that HP was was going to basically go all in on as a service and get there by by 2022 for all your solutions. I gotta get, I gotta say you've done a good job communicating the Wall Street, I think, I think culturally you've really done a good job of emphasizing that to your, to the workforce. Uh, but but how should we measure the progress that you've made toward that goal? How our customers responding? I I know how the markets responding, you know, three or four year big competitors have now announced. But how should we measure, you know, how you're tracking to that goal? >>Well, I think, you know, the fact that our competitors are entering the other service market is a validation that our vision was right. And that's that's that's good because in the end, you know, it tells us we are on the right track. However, we have to move much faster than than ever before. And that's why we constantly looking for ways to go further and faster. You're right. The court of this is a cultural transformation. Engineering wise, once you state, once you state the North Star, we need to learn our internal processes to think Cloud first and data first versus infrastructure. And we have made great progress. The way we measure ourselves. Dave is very simple is by giving a consistent and transparent report on our pivot in that financial aspect of it, which is what we call the annualized revenue run rate, which we have been disclosed enough for more than a year and a half. And this past quarter grew 30% year over year. So we are on track to deliver a 30-40% Kegel that we committed two years ago And this business going to triple more than uh more than one year from now. So it's gonna be three times as bigger as we enter 2022 and 2023. But in the end, it's all about the experience you deliver and that's why architecturally uh while we made great progress. I know there is way more work to be done, but I'm really excited because what we just announced here this week is just simply remarkable. And you will see more as we become more a cloud operating driven company in the in the next months and years to come. >>I want to ask you kind of a personal question. I mean, COVID-19 is you know, sharpened our sensitivity and empathy to to a lot of different things. Uh and I think uh ceos in your position of a large tech company or any large company, they really can't just give lip service to things like E. S. G. Or or ethical uh digital transformation, which is something that you've talked about in other words, making sure that it's inclusive. Everybody is able to participate in this economy and not get left behind. What does this mean to you personally? >>Well, they remember I'm in a privileged position, right? Leading a company like Hewlett Packard Enterprise that has Hewlett and Packard on the brand is an honor, but it's also a big responsibility. Let's remember what this company stands for and what our purpose is, which is to advance the way people live and work, and in that we have to be able to create a more equitable society and use this technology to solve some of the biggest societal challenge you have been facing The last 18 months has been really hard on a number of dimensions, not just for the business but for their communities. Uh, we saw disruption, we saw hardships on the financial side, we saw acts of violence and hatred. Those are completely unacceptable. But if we work together, we can use these technologies to bring the community together and to make it equitable. And that's one is one of my passion because as we move into this digital economy, I keep saying that connecting people is the first step and if you are not connected, you're not going to participate. Therefore we cannot afford to create a digital economy for only few. And this is why connectivity has to become an essential service, not different than water and electricity. And that's why I have passion and invest my own personal time working with entities like World Economic Forum, educating our government, right, Which is very important because both the public sector and the private sector have to come together. And then from the technology standpoint, we have to architect these things that are commercially accessible and viable to everyone. And so it's uh it's I will say that it's not just my mission. Uh this is top of mind for many of my colleagues ceos that talked all the time and you can see of movement, but at the same time it's good for business because shareholders now want to invest in companies that take care about this, how we make, not just a word more inclusive and equitable, but also how we make a more sustainable and we with our technologies, we can make the world way more sustainable with circular economy, power, efficiency and so forth. So a lot of work to be done dave but I'm encouraged by the progress but we need to do way way more. >>Thank you for that Antonio. I want to ask you about the future and I want to ask you a couple of different angles. So I want to start with the edge. So it seems to me that you're you're building this vision of what I call a layer that abstracts the underlying complexity of the whether it's the public cloud across clouds on prem and and and the edge and it's your job to simplify that. So I as the customer can focus on more strategic initiatives and that's clearly the vision that you guys are setting forth on. My question is is how far do you go on the edge? In other words, it seems to me that Aruba for example, for example, awesome acquisition could go really, really deep into the far edge, maybe other parts of your portfolio, you're kind of more looking at horizontal. How should we think about HP. Es, positioning and participation in that edge opportunity? >>Well, we believe we are becoming one of the merger leaders at the intelligent edge. Right? These edges becoming way more intelligent. We live in a hyper connected world and that will continue to grow at an exponential pace. Right? So today we we may have billions of people and devices pursue. We're entering trillions of things that will be connected to the network. Uh, so you need a platform to be able to do with the scale. So there is a horizontal view of that to create these vertical experiences which are industry driven. Right? So one thing is to deliver a vertical experience in healthcare versus manufacturer transportation. And so we take a really far dave I mean, to the point that we just, you know, put into space 256 miles above the Earth, a supercomputer that tells you we take a really far, but in the end, it's about acting where the data is created and bringing that knowledge and that inside to the people who can make a difference real time as much as possible. And that's why I start by connecting things by bringing a cloud experience to that data, whatever it lives because it's cheaper and it's way more economical and obviously there's aspects of latest in security and compliance. They have to deal with it and then ultimately accelerate that inside into some sort of outcome. And we have many, many use cases were driving today and Aruba is the platform by the way, which we have been using now to extend from the edge all the way to the core into the cloud business. And that's why you HP has unique set of assets to deliver against that opportunity. >>Yes, I want to talk about some of the weapons you have in your arsenal. You know, some people talk about, hey, well we have to win the architectural battle for hybrid cloud. I've heard that statement made, certainly HP is in that battle. It's not a zero sum game, but you're a player there. And so when I, when I look at as a service, great, you're making progress there. But I feel like there's more, there's, there's architecture there, you're making acquisitions, you're building out as moral, which is kind of an interesting data platform. Uh, and so I want to ask you how you see the architecture emerging and where H. P. S sort of value add, I. P. Is your big player and compute you've got actually, you've got chops and memory disaggregate asian, you've done custom silicon over the years. How how should we think about your contribution to the next decade of innovation? >>Well, I think it's gonna come different layers of what we call the stock, right? Obviously, uh, we have been known for an infrastructure company, but the reality is what customers are looking for. Our integrated solutions that are optimized for the given world or application. So they don't have to spend time bringing things together. Right? And and spend weeks sometimes months when they can do it in just in a matter of minutes a day so they can move forward innovative on I. T. And so we were really focused on that connectivity as the first step. And Aruba give us an enormous rich uh through the cloud provisioning of a port or a wifi or a one. As you know, as we move to more cloud native applications. Much of the traffic through the connectivity will go into the internet, not through the traditional fixed networks. And that's what we did acquisitions like Silver Peak because now we can connect all your ages and all your clouds in an autonomous softer. The final way as we go to the other spectrum. Right? We talk about one load optimization and uh for us H. P. S my role is the recipe by which we bring the infrastructure and the software in through that integrated solution that can run autonomously that eventually can consume as a service. And that's why we made the introduction here of HP Green like Lighthouse, which is actually a fully optimised stack. They with the push of a bottom from HP Green Lake cloud platform, we can deploy whatever that that is required and then be able to Federated so we can also address other aspects like disaster recovery and be able to share all the knowledge real time. Swarm learning is another thing that people don't understand. I mean if you think about it. So I'm learning is a distributed Ai learning ecosystem and think about what we did with the D. C. Any in order to find cures for Alzheimer's or dementia. But so I'm learning is going to be the next platform sitting on this age to cloud architecture. So that instead of people worrying about sharing data, what we're doing is actually sharing insights And be able to learn through these millions of data points that they can connect with each other in a secure way. Security is another example, right? So today on an average takes 28 days to find a bridge in your enterprise with project Aurora, which we're going to make available at the end of the year by the end of the year. We actually can address zero day attacks within seconds. And then we're work in other areas like disaster recovery when you get attacked. Think about the ransom ramp somewhere that we have seen in the last few weeks, right? You know, God forbid you have to pay for it. But at the same time, recovery takes days and weeks. Sometimes we are working on technology to do it within 23 seconds. So this is where HP can place across all spectrums of the stack And at the same time of course people expect us to innovate in infrastructure layer. That's why we also partner with companies like Intel were with the push of a bottom. If you need more capacity of the court, you don't have to order anything. She's pushed the bottle, we make more calls available so that that warlord can perform and when you don't need it, shut it off so you don't have to pay for it. And last finalist, you know, I will say for us is all about the consumption availability of our solutions And that's what I said, you know, in 2019 we will make available everything as a service by 2022. You know, we have to say as you know, there is no need to build the church for Easter Sunday when you can rent it for that day. The point here is to grow elastically. And the fact that you don't need to move the data is already a cost savings because cost of aggression data back and forth is enormous and customers also don't want to be locked in. So we have an open approach and we have a true age to cloud architecture and we are focusing on what is most valuable aspect for the customer, which is ultimately the data. >>Thank you for that. One of the other things I wanted to ask you about, again, another weapon in your arsenal is you mentioned supercomputing before. Up in space, we're on the cusp of exa scale and that's the importance of high performance computing. You know, it used to be viewed as just a niche. I've had some great conversations with DR go about this, but that really is the big data platform, if you will. Uh can I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how that fits into the future. Your expertise in HPC, you're obviously a leader in that space. What's the fit with this new vision you're laying out? >>Well, HPC, high performance computing in memory computer are the backbone to be able to manage large data sets at massive scale. Um, and, you know, deployed technologies like deep learning or artificial intelligence for this massive amount of data. If we talked about the explosion of data all around us and uh, you know, and the algorithms and the parameters to be able to extract inside from the day is getting way more complex. And so the ability to co locate data and computed a massive scale is becoming a necessity, whether it's in academia, whether it's in the government obviously to protect your, your most valuable assets or whether it is in the traditional enterprise. But that's why with the acquisition of cray as G. I. And our organic business, we are absolutely the undisputed leader to provide the level of capabilities. And that's why we are going to build five of the top six exa scale systems, which is basically be able to process the billion billion, meaning billion square transactions per second. Can you imagine what you can do with that? Right. What type of problems you can go solve climate problems? Right. Um you know, obviously be able to put someone back into the moon and eventually in mars, you know, the first step to put that supercomputer as an edge computer into the international space station. It's about being able to process data from the images that take from the ice caps of the of the earth to understand climate changes. But eventually, if you want to put somebody in in into the Marks planet, you have to be able to communicate with those astronauts as they go and you know, you can't afford the latency. Right? So this is what the type of problems we are really focused on. But HPC is something that we are absolutely super committed and it's something that honestly, we have the full stack from silicon to software to the system performance that nobody else has in the industry. >>Well, I think it's a real tailwind for you because the industry is moving in that direction and everybody talks about the data and workloads are shifting. We used to be uh I got O. L. T. P. And I got reporting. Now you look at the workloads, there's so much diversity so I'll give you the last word. What what really is the most exciting to you about the future of HPV? >>Well, I'm excited about the innovation will bring it to the market and honestly as the Ceo I care about the culture of the company. For me, the last almost 3.5 years have been truly remarkable. As you said at the beginning, we are transforming every aspect of this company. When I became Ceo I had three priorities for myself. One is our customers and partners. That's why we do these events right to communicate, communicate, communicate. They are our North Star, that's why we exist. Second is our innovation right? We compete and win with the best innovation, solving the most complex problems in a sustainable and equitable way. And third is the culture of the company, which are the core is how we do things in our Team members and employees. You know, I represent my colleagues here, the 60,000 strong team members that had incredible passion for our customers and to make a contribution every single day. And so for me, I'm very optimistic about what we see the recovery of the economy and the possibilities of technology. Uh, but ultimately, you know, we have to work together hand in hand and I believe this company now is absolutely on the right track to not just be relevant, but really to make a difference. And remember That in the end we we have to be a force for good. And let's not forget that while we do all of this, we have some farm with technology. We have to also help some, uh, to address some of the challenges we have seen in the last 18 months and H. P. E. is a whole different company uh, that you knew 3.5 years ago. >>And as you said, knowledge is the right thing to do. It's good. It's good for business Antonio. Neary, thanks so much for coming back to the cube is always a pleasure to see you. >>Thanks for having me. Dave and >>thank you for watching this version of HP discover 2021 on the cube. This is David want to keep it right there for more great coverage. Mm

>>approximately two years after HP split into two separate companies, antonioni Ranieri was named president and Ceo of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Under his tenure, the company has streamlined its operations, sharpened his priorities, simplified the product portfolio and strategically aligned its human capital with key growth initiatives. He's made a number of smaller but high leverage acquisitions and return the company to growth while affecting a massive company wide pivot to an as a service model. Welcome back to HPD discovered 2021. This is Dave Volonte for the cube and it's my pleasure to welcome back Antonio. Neary to the program Antonio it's been a while. Great to see you again. >>Dave Thanks for having me. >>That's really our pleasure. I was just gonna start off with >>the big picture. >>Let's talk about trends. You're a trend spotter. What do you see today? Everybody talks about digital transformation. We had to force marks to digital last year now it's really come into focus. But what are the big trends that you're seeing that are affecting your customers transformations? >>Okay. I mean obviously we have been talking about digital transformation for some time uh in our view is no longer a priority is a strategic imperative. And through the last 15 months or so since we have been going through the pandemic we have seen that accelerated to a level we haven't never seen before. And so what's going on is that we live in a digital economy and through the pandemic now we are more connected than ever. We are much more distributed than ever before and an enormous amount of data is being created and that data has tremendous value. And so what we see in our customers need more connectivity, they need a platform from the edge to the cloud to manage all the data and most important they need to move faster and extracting that inside that value from the data and this is where HP is uniquely positioned to deliver against those experiences the way we haven't imagined before. >>Yeah, we're gonna dig into that now, of course, you and I have been talking about data and how much data for decades, but I feel like we're gonna look back at, you know, in 2030 and say, Wow, we never, we're not gonna do anything like that. So we're really living in a data centric era as the curves are going exponential. What do you see? How do you see customers handling this? How are they thinking about the opportunities? >>Well, I think, you know, customer realized now that they need to move faster, they need to absolutely be uh much more agile and everything. They do. They need to deploy a cloud experience for all the war clothes and data that they manage and they need to deliver business outcomes to stay ahead of the competition. And so we believe technology now plays even a bigger role and every industry is a technology industry in many ways. Every company right, is a technology company, whether your health care, your manufacturer, your transportation company, you are an education, everybody needs more. It no less I. T. But at the same time they want the way they want to consumer Dave is very different than ever before, right? They want an elastic consumption model and they want to be able to scale up and down based on the needs of their enterprise. But if you recall three years ago I knew and I had this conversation, I predicted that enterprise of the future will be edge centric cloud enable and data driven. The edge is the next frontier. We said in 2018 and think about it, you know, people now are working remotely and that age now is much more distribute than we imagined before. Cloud is no longer a destination, it is an experience for all your apps and data, but now we are entering what we call the edge of insight which is all about that data driven approach and this is where all three have to come together in ways that customer did envision before and that's why they need help. >>So I see that I see the definition of cloud changing, it's no longer a set of remote services, you know, somewhere up there in the cloud, it's expanding on prem cross clouds, you mentioned the Edge and so that brings complexity. Every every company is a technology company but they may not be great at technology. So it seems that there are some challenges around there, partly my senses, some of some of what you're trying to do is simplify that for your customers. But what are the challenges that your customers are asking you to solve? >>Well the first they want a consistent and seamless experience, whatever that application and data lives. And so um you know for them you know they want to move away from running I. T. to innovate in our 90 and then obviously they need to move much faster. As I said earlier about this data driven approaches. So they need help because obviously they need to digitize every every aspect of the company but at the same time they need to do it in a much more cost effective way. So they're asking for subject matter expertise on process engineering. They're asking for the fighting the right mix of hybrid experiences from the edge to cloud and they need to move much faster as scale in deploying technologies like Ai deep learning and machine learning. Hewlett Packard Enterprise uh is extremely well positioned because we have been building an age to cloud platform where you provide connectivity where you bring computing and storage uh in a soft of the fine scalable way that you can consume as a service. And so we have great capabilities without HP Point next technology services and advice and run inside. But we have a portfolio with HP Green Lake, our cloud services, the cloud that comes to you that are addressing the most critical data driven warlords. >>Probably about 24 months ago you announced that HP was, was going to basically go all in on as a service and get there by by 2022 for all your solutions. I gotta get, I gotta say you've done a good job communicating the Wall Street, I think. I think culturally you've really done a good job of emphasizing that to your, to the workforce. Uh, but but how should we measure the progress that you've made toward that goal? How our customers responding? I know how the markets responding, you know, three or four year big competitors have now announced. But how should we measure, you know, how you're tracking to that goal? >>Well, I think, you know, the fact that our competitors are entering the other service market is a validation that our vision was right. And that's that's that's good because in the end, you know, it tells us we are on the right track. However, we have to move much faster than than ever before. And that's why we constantly looking for ways to go further and faster. You're right. The court of this is a cultural transformation. Engineering wise, once you step, once you state the North Star, we need to learn our internal processes to think cloud first and data first versus infrastructure. And we have made great progress. The way we measure ourselves. Dave is very simple is by giving a consistent and transparent report on our pivot in that financial aspect of it, which is what we call the annualized revenue run rate, Which we have been disclosed enough for more than a year and a half. And this past quarter grew 30% year over year. So we are on track to deliver at 30 to 40% cake or that we committed two years ago And this business going to triple more than uh more than one year from now. So it's gonna be three times as bigger as we enter 2022 and 2023. But in the end it's all about the experience you deliver and that's why architecturally uh while we made great progress. I know there is way more work to be done, but I'm really excited because what we just announced here this week is just simply remarkable. And you will see more as we become more a cloud operating driven company in the next month and years to come. >>I want to ask you kind of a personal question. I mean, COVID-19 has sharpened our sensitivity and empathy to a lot of different things. And I think ceos in your position of a large tech company or any large company, they really can't just give lip service to things like E. S. G. Or or ethical uh digital transformation, which is something that you've talked about in other words, making sure that it's inclusive. Everybody is able to participate in this economy and not get left behind. What does this mean to you personally? >>Well, they remember I'm in a privileged position, right? Leading a company like Hewlett Packard Enterprise that has Hewlett and Packard on the brand is an honor, but it's also a big responsibility. Let's remember what this company stands for and what our purpose is, which is to advance the way people live and work. And in that we have to be able to create a more equitable society and use this technology to solve some of the biggest societal challenge you have been facing Last 18 months has been really hard on a number of dimensions, not just for the business but for their communities. Uh, we saw disruption, we saw hardships on the financial side, we saw acts of violence and hatred. Those are completely unacceptable. But if we work together, we can use these technologies to bring the community together and to make it equitable. And that's one is one of my passion because as we move into this digital economy, I keep saying that connecting people is the first step and if you are not connected you're not going to participate. Therefore we cannot afford to create a digital economy for only few. And this is why connectivity has to become an essential service, not different than water and electricity. And that's why I have passion and invest my own personal time working with entities like World Economic Forum, educating our government, which is very important because both the public sector and the private sector have to come together. And then from the technology standpoint, we have to architect these things. They are commercially accessible and viable to everyone. And so it's uh it's I will say that it's not just my mission. Uh this is top of mind for many of my colleagues ceos that talked all the time and you can see of movement, but at the same time it's good for business because shareholders now want to invest in companies that take care about this. How we make, not just a world more inclusive and equitable, but also how we make a more sustainable and we with our technologies we can make the world way more sustainable with circular economy, power, efficiency and so forth. So a lot of work to be done dave but I'm encouraged by the progress but we need to do way way more. >>Thank you for that Antonio I want to ask you about the future and I want to ask you a couple of different angles. So I want to start with the edge. So it seems to me that you're you're building this vision of what I call a layer that abstracts the underlying complexity of the whether it's the public cloud across clouds on prem and and and the edge And it's your job to simplify that. So I as the customer can focus on more strategic initiatives and that's clearly the vision that you guys are setting forth on. My question is is how far do you go on the edge? In other words, it seems to me that Aruba for example, for example, awesome acquisition can go really, really deep into the far edge. Maybe other parts of your portfolio, you're kind of more looking at horizontal. How should we think about HP es positioning and participation in that edge opportunity? >>Well, we believe we are becoming one of the merger leaders at the intelligent edge. Right. These edges becoming more intelligent. We live in a hyper connected world and that will continue to grow at an exponential pace. Right? So today we we might have billions of people and devices pursue. We're entering trillions of things that will be connected to the network. Uh, so you need a platform to be able to do with the scale. So there is a horizontal view of that to create these vertical experiences which are industry driven. Right? So one thing is to deliver a vertical experience in healthcare versus manufacturer transportation. And so we take a really far dave I mean, to the point that we just, you know, put into space 256 miles above the earth, a supercomputer that tells you we take a really far, but in the end it's about acting where the data is created and bringing that knowledge and that inside to the people who can make a difference real time as much as possible. And that's why I start by connecting things by bringing a cloud experience to that data wherever it lives because it's cheaper and it's where more economical and obviously there is aspects of latest in security and compliance that you have to deal with it and then ultimately accelerate that inside into some sort of outcome and we have many, many use cases were driving today and Aruba is the platform by the way, which we have been using now to extend from the edge all the way to the core into the cloud business and that's why you HP has unique set of assets to deliver against that opportunity. >>Yes, I want to talk about some of the weapons you have in your arsenal. You know, some people talk about a week and we have to win the architectural battle for hybrid cloud. I've heard that statement made, certainly HPV is in that balance is not a zero sum game, but but you're a player there. And so when I when I look at as a service, great, you're making progress there. But I feel like there's more, there's there's architecture there, you're making acquisitions, you're building out as moral, which is kind of an interesting data platform. Uh, and so I want to ask you, so how you see the architecture emerging and where H. P. S sort of value add i. P. Is your big player and compute you've got actually you've got chops and memory disaggregate asian, you've done custom silicon over the years. How how should we think about your contribution to the next decade of innovation? >>Well, I think it's gonna come different layers of what we call the stock, right? Obviously, uh, we have been known for an infrastructure company, but the reality is what customers are looking for Our integrated solutions that are optimized for the given workload or application. So they don't have to spend time bringing things together. Right? And and spend weeks sometimes months when they can do it in just in a matter of minutes a day so they can move forward innovative or 90. And so we we are really focused on that connectivity as the first step. And Aruba give us an enormous rich uh through the cloud provisioning of a port or a wifi or a one. As you know, as we move to more cloud native applications. Much of the traffic through the connectivity will go into the internet, not through the traditional fixed networks. And that's what we did acquisitions like Silver Peak because now we can connect all your ages and all your clouds in an autonomous software defined way as you go to the other spectrum, right. We talk about what load optimization and uh for us H. P. S. My role is the recipe by which we bring the infrastructure and the software in through that integrated solution that can run autonomously that eventually can consume as a service. And that's why we made the introduction here of HP Green like lighthouse which is actually I fully optimised stack the with the push of a bottom from HP Green Lake cloud platform we can deploy whatever that that is required and then be able to Federated so we can also address other aspects like disaster recovery and be able to share all the knowledge real time. So I'm learning is another thing that people don't understand. I mean if you think about it. So I'm learning is a distributed Ai learning uh ecosystem and think about what we did with the D. C. Any in order to find cures for Alzheimer's or dementia. But swam learning is gonna be the next platform sitting on this age to cloud architecture so that instead of people worrying about sharing data, what we're doing is actually sharing insights And be able to learn to these millions of data points that they can connect with each other in a secure way. Security is another example, right? So today on an average takes 28 days to find a bridge in your enterprise with project Aurora, which we're gonna make available at the end of the year, by the end of the year. We actually can address zero day attacks within seconds. And then we're work in other areas like disaster recovery when you get attacked. Think about the ransom ramp somewhere that we have seen in the last few weeks, right? You know, God forbid you have to pay for it. But at the same time, recovery takes days and weeks. Sometimes we are working on technology to do it within 23 seconds. So this is where HP can place across all spectrums of the stack. And at the same time, of course, people expect us to innovate in infrastructural layer. That's why we also partnered with companies like Intel, we're with the push of a bottle. If you need more capacity of the court, you don't have to order anything, just push the bottle. We make more calls available so that that will load can perform and when you don't need to shut it off so you don't have to pay for it. And last finalist, you know, I will say for us is all about the consumption availability of our solutions And that's what I said, you know, in 2019 we will make available everything as a service by 2022. You know, we have to say as you know, there is no need to build the church for easter sunday when you can rent it for that day. The point here is to grow elastically and the fact that you don't need to move the data is already a cost savings because cost of aggression data back and forth is enormous and customers also don't want to be locked in. So we have an open approach and we have a through age to cloud architecture and we are focusing on what is most valuable aspect for the customer, which is ultimately the data. >>Thank you for that. One of the other things I wanted to ask you about, and again, another weapon in your arsenal is you mentioned uh supercomputing before up in space where we're on the cusp of exa scale and that's the importance of high performance computing. You know, it used to be viewed as just a niche. I've had some great conversations with Dr go about this, but that really is the big data platform, if you will. Uh can I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how that fits into the future. Your expertise in HPC, you're obviously a leader in that space. What's the fit with this new vision? You're laying out? >>Well, HPC, high performance computer in memory computer are the backbone to be able to manage large data sets at massive scale. Um and, you know, deployed technologies like deep learning or artificial intelligence for this massive amount of data. If we talked about the explosion of data all around us and uh, you know, and the algorithms and the parameters to be able to extract inside from the day is getting way more complex. And so the ability to co locate data and computed a massive scale is becoming a necessity, whether it's in academia, whether it's in the government obviously to protect your, your most valuable assets or whether it is in the traditional enterprise. But that's why with the acquisition of Cray, S. G. I. And our organic business, we are absolutely the undisputed leader to provide the level of capabilities. And that's why we are going to build five of the top six exa scale systems, which is basically be able to process they billion billion, meaning billion square transactions per second. Can you imagine what you can do with that? Right. What type of problems you can go solve climate problems? Right. Um you know, obviously be able to put someone back into the moon and eventually in mars you know, the first step to put that supercomputer as an edge computer into the international space station. It's about being able to process data from the images that take from the ice caps of the, of the earth to understand climate changes. But eventually, if you want to put somebody in in into the Marks planet, you have to be able to communicate with those astronauts as they go and you know, you can't afford the latency. Right? So this is where the type of problems we are really focused on. But HPC is something that we are absolutely uh, super committed. And it's something that honestly we have the full stack from silicon to software to the system performance that nobody else has in the industry. >>Well, I think it's a real tailwind for you because the industry is moving that direction. Everybody talks about the data and workloads are shifting. We used to be uh, I got LTP and I got reporting. Now you look at the workloads, there's so much diversity. So I'll give you the last word. What what really is the most exciting to you about the future of HPV? >>Well, I'm excited about the innovation, will bring it to the market and honestly, as the Ceo, I care about the culture of the company. For me, the last almost 3.5 years have been truly remarkable. As you said at the beginning, we are transforming every aspect of this company. When I became CEO, I had three priorities for myself. One is our customers and partners. That's why we do these events right to communicate, communicate, communicate. Uh they are our North Star, that's why we exist. Uh, second is our innovation right? We compete to win with the best innovation, solving the most complex problems in a sustainable and equitable way. And third is the culture of the company, which are the core is how we do things in our Team members and employees. You know, I represent my colleagues here, the 60,000 strong team members that have incredible passion for our customers and to make a contribution every single day. And so for me, I'm very optimistic about what we see the recovery of the economy and the possibilities of technology. But ultimately, you know, we have to work together hand in hand. Uh and I believe this company now is absolutely on the right track to not just be relevant, but really to make a difference. And remember that in the end we we have to be a force for good. And let's not forget that while we do all of this, we have some farm with technology. We have to also help some uh to address some of the challenges we have seen in the last 18 months. An H. P. E is a whole different company, uh, that you knew 3.5 years ago. >>And as you said, it's, it's knowledge is the right thing to do. It's good. It's good for business Antonio. Neary. Thanks so much for coming back to the cube. Is always a pleasure to see you. >>Thanks for having me Dave >>and thank you for watching this version of HP discover 2021 on the cube. This is David want to keep it right there for more great coverage. >>Mm

>>Yeah. >>Welcome back for our last session of the day how to deliver career making business outcomes with Search and AI. So we're very lucky to be hearing from Canada. Canadian Tire, one of Canada's largest and most successful retailers, have been powered 4.5 1000 employees to maximize the value of data with self service insights. So today we're joining us. We have Yarrow Baturin, who is the manager of Merch analytics and planning to support at Canadian Tire and then also Andrea Frisk, who is the engagement manager manager for thoughts. What s O U R Andrea? Thanks so much for being here. And with >>that, >>I'll pass the mic to you guys. >>Thank you for having us. Um, already, I I think I'll start with an introduction off who I am, what I do. A Canadian entire on what Canadian pair is all about. So, as a manager of Merch analytics at Canadian Tire, I support merchant organization with reporting tools, and then be I platform to enable decision making on a day to day basis. What is? Canadian Tire's Canadian tire is one of the largest retailers in Canada. Um, serving Canadians with a number of lines of business spanning automotive fixing, living, playing and SNG departments. We have a number of banners, including sport check Marks Party City Phl that covers more than 1700 locations. So as an organization, we've got vast variety of different data, whether it's product or loyalty. Now, as the time goes on, the number of asks the number off data points. The complexity of the analysis has been increasing on banned traditional tools. Analytical tools such as Excel Microsoft Access do find job but start hitting their limitations. So we started on the journey of exploring what other B I platforms would be suitable for our needs. And the criteria that we thought about as we started on that journey is to make sure that we enable customization as well as the McCarthy ization of data. What does that mean? That means we wanted to ensure that each one of the end users have ability to create their own versions off the report while having consistency from the data standpoint, we also wanted Thio ensure that they're able to create there at hawks search queries and draw insights based on the desired business needs. As each one of our lines of business as each one of our departments is quite unique in their nature. And this is where thoughts about comes into play. Um, you checked off all the boxes? Um, as current customers, as potential customers, you will discover that this is the tool that allows that at hawks search ability within a matter of seconds and ability to visualize the information and create those curated pin boards for each one of the business units, depending on what the needs are. And now where? I guess well, Andrea will talk a little bit more about how we gained adoption, but the usage was like and how we, uh, implemented the tool successfully in the organization. >>Okay, so I actually used to work for Canadian tire on DSO. During that time, I helped Thio build training and engaging users to sort of really kick start our use cases. Andi, the ongoing process of adopting thought spot through Canadian Tire s 01 of the sort of reasons that we moved into using thought spot was there was a need Thio evolve, um, in order to see the wealth of data that we had coming in. So the existing reporting again. And this is this sort of standard thoughts bought fix is, um, it brings the data toe. Everyone on git makes it more accessible, so you get more out of your data. So we want to provide users with the ability to customize what they could see and personalized three information so that they could get their specific business requirements out of the data rather than relying on the weekly monthly quarterly reporting. That was all usually fairly generic eso without the ability to deep dive in. So this gave the users the agility thio optimize their campaigns, optimize product murder, urgency where products are or where there's maybe supply chain gaps. Andi just really bring this out for trillions of rose to become accessible. Thio the Canadian tire. That's what user base think. That's the slide. >>That's the slight, Um So as Andrea talked about the business use of the particular tool, let's talk a little bit about how we set it up and a wonderful journey of how it's evolved. So we first implemented 5.3 version of that spot on the Falcon server on we've been adding horsepower to it over time. Now mhm. What I want to stress is the importance off the very first, Data said. That goes into the tool toe. Actually engage the users and to gain the adoption and to make sure there is no argument whether the tool is accurate or not. So what we've started with is a key p I marked layer with all the major metrics that we have and all the available permutations and combinations off the dimensions, whether it's a calendar dimension, proud of dimension or, let's say, customer attribute now, as we started with that data set, we wanted to make sure that we're we have the ability to add and the dimensions right. So now, as we're implementing the tool, we're starting to add in more dimension tables to satisfy the needs off our clients if you want to call it that way as they want to evolve their analytics. So we started adding in some of the store attributes we started adding in some of the product attributes on when I refer to a product attributes, let's say, uh, it involves costs and involves prices involved in some of the strategic internal pieces that we're thinking about now as the comprehensive mark contains right now, in our instance, close to five billion records. This is where it becomes the one source of truth for people declaring information against right so as they go in, we also wanted to make sure when they Corey thought spot there, we're really Onley. According one source of data. One source of truth. It became apparent over time, obviously, that more metrics are needed. They might not be all set up in that particular mark. And that's when we went on the journey off implementing some of the new worksheets or some of the new data sets particularly focused on the four looking pieces. And uh, that's where it becomes important to say This is how you gain the interest and keep the interests of the public right. So you're not just implementing a number off data sets all at once and then letting the users be you're implementing pieces and stages. You're keeping the interest thio, the tool relevant. You're keeping, um, the needs of the public in mind. Now, as you can imagine on the Falcon server piece, um, adding in the horsepower capacity might become challenging the mawr. Billions of Rosie erratic eso were actually in the middle of transitioning our environment to azure in snowflake so that we can connect it. Thio embrace capability of thoughts cloud. And that's where I'm looking forward to that in 2021 I truly believe this will enable us Thio increase the speed off adoption Increase the speed of getting insights out of the tool and scale with regards Thio new data sets that we're thinking about implementing as we're continuing our thoughts about journey >>Okay, so how we drove adoption Thio 4500 plus users eso When we first started Thio approach our use case with the merchants within Canadian Tire We had meetings with these users with who are used place is gonna be with and sort of found out. What are they searching for, Where they typically looking at what existing reports are available for them. Andi kind of sought out to like, What are those things where you're pulling this on your own or someone else's pulling this data because it's not accessible yet And we really use that as our foundation to determine one what data we needed to initially bring into the system but also to sort of create those launchpad pin boards that had the base information that the users we're gonna need so that we could twofold, make it easy for them, toe adopt into the tool and also quickly start Thio, deactivate or discontinue those reports. And just like these air now only available in thought spot because with the sort of formatting within thought spot around dates, it's really easy to make this year's report last year report etcetera. Just have everything roll over every month or a recorder s. So that was kind of some of the pre work foundation when we originally did it. But really, it's been a lot of training, a lot of training. So we conducted ah, lot of in person training, obviously pre co vid eso. We've started to train the group that we targeted, which was the merchants and all of the like, surrounding support groups. Eso we had planners going in and training as well, so that everyone who was really closely connected to the merchants I had an idea of what thoughts about what was and how to use it and where the reports were, and so we just sort of rolled it out that way, and then it started to fly like wildfire. Eso the merchants start to engage with supply chain to have conversations, or the merchants were engaging with the vendors to sort of have negotiations about pricing. And they're creating these reports and getting the access to the information so quickly, and they're sharing it out that we had other groups just coming to us asking, How do I get into thoughts about how can I get in on DSO on top of those groups, we also sought out other heavy analytics groups such a supply chain where we felt like they could have the same benefits if they on boarded into thought spot with their data as well on Ben. Just continuing to evolve the training roll out. Um, you know, we continued to engage with the users, >>so >>we had a newsletter briefly Thio, sort of just keep informing users of the new data coming in or when we actually upgraded our system. So the here are the new features that you'll start seeing. We did virtual trainings and maintaining an F A Q document with the incoming questions from the users, and then eventually evolved into a self guided learning so that users that were coming to a group, or maybe we've already done a full rollout could come in and have the opportunity to learn how to use thought spot, have examples that were relevant to the business and really get started. Eso then each use case sort of after our initial started to build into a formula of the things that we needed to have. So you need to understand it. Having SMEs ready and having the database Onda worksheets built out sort of became the step by step path to drive adoption. Um, from an implementation timeline, I think they're saying, Took about two months and about half of that waas Kenny entire figuring out how figuring out our security, how to get the data in on, Do we need the time to set up the environment and get on Falcon? So then, after that initial two months, then each use case that we come through. Generally, we've got users trained and SMEs set up within about 2 to 3 weeks after the data is ingested. It's not obviously, once snowflakes set up on the data starts to get into that and the data feeds in, then you're really just looking at the 2 to 3 weeks because the data is easily connected in, >>um, no. All right, let's talk about some of the use cases. So we started with what data we've implemented. Andrea touched upon what Use a training look like what the back curate that piece wants. Now let's talk a little bit about use cases and how we actually leverage thoughts bought together the insights. So the very first one is ultimately the benefit of the tool to the entire organization. Israel Time insights. To reiterate what Andrea said, we first implemented the tool with our buyers. They're the nucleus of any retail organization as they work with everybody within the company and as the buyer's eyes, Their responsibility to ensure both the procurement and the sales channel, um, stays afloat at the end of the day, right? So they need information on a regular basis. They needed fast. They needed timely, and they needed in a fashion that they choose to digest it. It right? Not every business is the same. Not every individual is the same. They consume digest, analyze information differently. And that's what that's what allows you to dio whether it's the search, whether it's a customized onboard, please now supply chain unexpected things. As Andrea mentioned Irish work a lot of supply chain. What is the goal of supply chain to receive product and to be able to ship that product to the stores Now, as our organization has been growing and is doing extremely well, we've actually published Q three results recently. Um, the aspect off prioritization at D C level becomes very important, And what drives some of that prioritization is the analysis around what the upcoming sales would be for specific products for specific categories. And that's where again thoughts. But is one of the tools that we've utilized recently to set our prioritization logic from both inbound and outbound us. It's right because it gives you most recent results. It gives you most granular results, depending on the business problem that you're trying to tackle. Now let's chat a little bit about covert 19 response, because this one is an extremely interesting case as a pandemic hit back in March. Um, as you can imagine, the everyday life a Canadian entire became as business unusual is our executives referred to it under business unusual. This speed and the intensity of the insights and the analytics has grown exponentially. And the speed and the intensity of the insights is driven by the fact that we were trying Thio ensure that we have the right selection of products for our Canadian customers because that's ultimately bread and butter off all of the retailers is the customers, right? So thoughts bought allowed us to have early trends off both sales and inventory patterns, where, whether we were stalking out of some of the products in specific stories of provinces, whether we saw some of the upload off different lines of business, depending on the region, ality right as pandemic hit, for example, um, gym's closed restaurants closed. So as Canadian pack carries a wide variety of different lines of business, we actually offer a wide selection of exercise equipment and accessories, cycling products as well as the kitchen appliances and kitchen accessories pieces. Right? So all of those items started growing exponentially and in certain areas more than others. And this is where thoughts about comes into play. A typical analysis on what the region ality of the sales has been over the last couple of days, which is lifetime and pandemic terms, um, could have taken days weeks for analysts to ultimately cobbled together an Excel spreadsheet. Meanwhile, it can take a couple of seconds for 12 Korean tosspot set up a PIN board that can be shared through a wide variety of individuals rather than fording that one Excel spreadsheet that gets manipulated every single time. And then you don't get the right inside. So from again merch supply chain covert response aspect of things. That spot has been one of those blessings and one of those amazing tools to utilize and improve the speed off insights, improved the speed of analytics and improve the speed of decision making that's ultimately impacting, then consumer at the store level. So Andrea talked about 4500 users that we have that number of school. But what I owe the recently like to focus on, uh, Andrew and I laughing because I think the last time we've spoken at a larger forum with the fastball community, I think we had only 500 users. That was in the beginning >>of the year in in February, we were aiming to have like 1000 >>exactly. So mission accomplished. So we've got 4500 employees now. Everybody asked me, Yeah, that's a big number, but how many times do people actually log in on a weekly or daily basis? I'm or interested in that statistic? So lately, um, we've had more than 400 users on the weekly basis. What's what's been cool lately is, uh, the exponential growth off ad hoc ways. So throughout October, we've reached a 75,000 ad hoc ways in our system and about 13,000 PIN board views. So why is that's that's significant? We started off, I would say, in January of 2020 when Andrea refers to it, I think we started off with about 40 45,000 ad hoc worries a month. So again, that was cool. But at the end of the day, we were able to thio double that amount as more people migrate to act hawk searches from PIN board views, and that's that's a tremendous phenomena, because that's what that's about is all about. So I touched upon a little bit about exercise and cycling. So these are our quarterly results for Q two, um, that have showed tremendous growth that we did not plan for, that we were able to achieve with, ultimately the individuals who work throughout the organization, whether it's the merch organization or whether it's the supply chain side of the business. But coming together and utilizing a B I platform by tools such a hot spot, we can see triple digit growth results. Eso What's next for us users at Hawks searches? That's fantastic. I would still like to get to more than 1200 people on the weekly basis. The cool number to me is if all of our lifetime users were you were getting into the tool on a weekly basis. That would be cool. And what's proven to be true is ultimately the only way to achieve it is to keep surprising and delighting them and your surprising and delighting them with the functionality of the tool. With more of the relevant content and ultimately data adding in more data, um, is again possible through ET else, and it's possible through pulling that information manually. But it's expensive, expensive not from the sense of monetary value, but it's expensive from the size time, all of those aspects of things So what I'm looking forward to is migrating our platform to azure in snowflake and being able thio scale our insights accordingly. Toe adding more data to Adam or incites more, uh, more individual worksheets and data sets for people to Korea against helps the each one of the individuals learn. Get some of the insights. Helps my team in particular be, well, more well versed in the data that we have existing throughout the organization. Um, and then now Andrea, in touch upon how we scale it further and and how each one of the individuals can become better with this wonderful >>Yeah, soas used a zero mentioned theater hawk searches going up. It's sort of it's a little internal victory because our starting platform had really been thio build the pin boards to replicate what the users were already expecting. So that was sort of how we easily got people in. And then we just cut off the tap Thio, whatever the previous report waas. So it gave them away. Thio get into the tool and understand the information. So now that they're using ad hoc really means they understand the tool. Um, then they they have the data literacy Thio access the information and use it how they need. So that's it's a really cool piece. Um, that worked on for Canadian tire. A very report oriented and heavy organization. So it was a good starting platforms. So seeing those ad hoc searches go up is great. Um, one of the ways that we sort of scaled out of our initial group and I kind of mentioned this earlier I sort of stepped on my own toes here. Um is that once it was a proven success with the merchants and it started to spread through word of mouth and we sought out the analyst teams. Um, we really just kept sort of driving the insights, finding the data and learning more about the pieces of the business. As you would like to think he knows everything about everything. He only knows what he knows. Eso You have to continue to cultivate the internal champions. Um Thio really keep growing the adoption eso find this means that air excited about the possibility of using thought spot and what they can do with it. You need to find those people because they're the ones who are going to be excited to have this rapid access to the information and also to just be able to quickly spend less time telling a user had access it in thought spot. Then they would running the report because euro mentioned we basically hit a curiosity tax, right? You you didn't want to search for things or you didn't want to ask questions of the data because it was so conversed. Um, it was took too much time to get the data. And if you didn't know exactly what you were looking for, it was worse. So, you know, you wouldn't run a query and be like, Oh, that's interesting. Let me let me now run another query of all that information to get more data. Just not. It's not time effective or resource effective. Actually, at the point, eso scaling the adoption is really cultivating those people who are really into it as well. Um, from a personal development perspective, sort of as a user, I mean, one who doesn't like being smartest person in the room on bought spot sort of provides that possibility. Andi, it makes it easier for you to get recognized for delivering results on Dahlia ble insights and sort of driving the business forward. So you know, B b that all star be the Trailblazer with all the answers, and then you can just sort of find out what really like helping the organization realized the power of thought spot on, baby. Make it into a career. >>Amazing. I love love that you've joined us, Andrea. Such a such an amazing create trajectory. No bias that all of my s o heaps of great information there. Thank you both. So much for sharing your story on driving such amazing adoption and the impact that you've been able to make a T organization through. That we've got a couple of minutes remaining. So just enough time for questions. Eso Andrea. Our first questions for you from your experience. What is one thing you would recommend to new thoughts about users? >>Um, yeah, I would say Be curious and creative. Um, there's one phrase that we used a lot in training, which was just mess around in the tool. Um, it's sort of became a catchphrase. It is really true. Just just try and use it. You can't break. It s Oh, just just play around. Try it you're only limitation of what you're gonna find is your own creativity. Um, and the last thing I would say is don't get trapped by trying to replicate things. Is that exactly as they were? B, this is how we've always done it. Isin necessarily The the best move on day isn't necessarily gonna find new insights. Right. So the change forces you thio look at things from a different perspective on defined. Find new value in the data. >>Yeah, absolutely. Sage advice there. Andan another one here for Yaro. So I guess our theme for beyond this year is analytics meets Cloud Open for everyone. So, in your experience, what does What does that mean for you? >>Wonderful question. Yeah. Listen, Angela Okay, so to me, in short, uh, means scale and it means turning Yes. Sorry. No, into a yes. Uh, no, I'm gonna elaborate. Is interest is laughing at me a little bit. That's right. >>I can talk >>Fancy Two. Okay, So scale from the scale perspective Cloud a zai touched upon Throw our conversation on our presentation cloud enables your ability Thio store have more data, have access to more data without necessarily employing a number off PTL developers and going toe a number of security aspect of things in different data sources now turning a no into a yes. What does that mean with more data with more scalability? Um, the analytics possibilities become infinite throughout my career at Canadian Tire. Other organizations, if you don't necessarily have access thio data or you do not have the necessary granularity, you always tell individuals No, it's not possible. I'm not able to deliver that result. And quite often that becomes the norm, saying no becomes the norm. And I think what we're all striving towards here on this call Aziz part the conference is turning that no one say yes on then making a yes a new, uh, standard a new form. Um, as we have more access to the data, more access to the insights. So that would be my answer. >>Love it. Amazing. Well, that kind of brings in into this session. So thank you, everyone for joining us today on did wrap up this dream. Don't miss the upcoming product roadmap eso We'll be sticking around to speak thio some of the speakers you heard earlier today and I'll make the experts round table, and you can absolutely continue the conversation with this life. Q. On Q and A So you've got an opportunity here to ask questions that maybe keep you up at night. Perhaps, but yet stay tuned for the meat. The experts secrets to scaling analytics adoption after the product roadmap session. Thanks everyone. And thank you again for joining us. Guys. Appreciate it. >>Thank you. Thanks. Thanks.

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Hallowell to California, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hi and welcome to theCUBE. I'm your host Sonia Tagare and we're here at the Palo Alto Cube studios for an amazing conversation about women in tech and bringing men to the conversation. With us today is our guest, Eva Helen, who is the CEO and founder of EQ Inspiration and the Board Director of PrinterLogic. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> So let's get started, so give us a brief overview of your background. >> So, I was actually in tech for close to two decades. I came from Sweden in the mid-90's and joined a hardware company here in Silicon Valley and started selling hardware. One thing led to the next and then I was part of starting two software companies, both with good exits. The last one we exited in 2015 when it was acquired by Citrix. And the name of that company was Sanbolic. So I was deep in the trenches of tech for many, many years. >> That's very inspiring. And from tech, you went to being an advocate for women in tech, so tell us a little about that. >> Well, it was interesting, I mean, I was a woman the whole time myself but I didn't take the time to reflect over a lot of what the other women were experiencing. When you run a business, your head is down and you work really, really hard all the time so, I didn't come up for air very often. But as we had been transitioned, we were on the East Coast and we were transitioned back to Silicon Valley, I started to really network as much as I could and met a lot of women, enjoyed a lot of organizations and went to tons of events. And I thought they were fantastic, and it was great energy and women sharing things and stories with each other and supporting each other, but I couldn't figure out where the guys were. And I'd been working in this industry for so long, I knew that all the decisions were made by men and I didn't understand why they weren't part of the discussion. So I went to a couple of guys and I said, well, if I start something called Women in Tech events for guys, will you come? And they're like, absolutely, we would love that. So, said and done, a couple of years ago, I did my first EQ Inspiration. Which is an event where 50% of the audience is men, 50% are women and in a typical format, I will have experts, or in the beginning, I wasn't en expert myself at all. So I would have experts come in and speak and then eventually I could take over some of those pieces, talking about equality, good things to do for women and so on. And then, I would always have a panel of men that I would ask, what are you actively and actually doing for women in the workplace? Your peers or your colleagues, your staff, how are you helping them? And all these amazing stories were coming out. So I thought how can I get more of those stories and make them available to a broader audience? So that's kind of where I was in the beginning of last winter. >> And what spurred you to become a part of this movement? Was it an experience you had in your workplace or just something you saw in the larger women in tech community? >> Well, I think I'd had my own experiences, obviously, since I'd been in the industry for so long. And every woman has a way to tackle being the only women in the room, the only one in the meeting, the only one at dinner and so on. We all have ways to tackle and deal with that but, like I said, I hadn't really reflected much over what other women were experiencing. So, just by hearing what all these other women were dealing with, I thought I kind of need to help here. Because, I'm not saying that my ways of dealing with it were the best or the way that I would recommend for others to be. I can be super pushy, very assertive and a lot of women are not like that. So, my model didn't necessarily work for them. So I had to try to figure out how can I actually help them. And because there are so many ways that women are supporting each other already, that are functioning really, really well, forums for talking about delicate things and, you know, more open things, I wanted to bring the men into the conversation because they're ultimately 50% of the population and a lot more than that in the workplace. So I just we needed to engage them to make them feel more safe in how they are supporting us. >> And do you find that the men who do come to these events, are they more at the leadership level or are they varied? Who generally shows up? >> So it varies a lot but if I could take a step back just to what I did when I said, okay let me find out more of these stories. Because that will answer your question. I did 60-hour long interviews with men in tech. At all levels of the organization. From CEO to individual contributors. And then I took all of that scripted material and I broke these people down into seven characters of men. And I say generously because we, as women, have been categorized into two categories by most men, for thousands of years. Seven characters, with different names. And at the top of what I call my matrix, we have Mark, James, Sameer, that are advocates for women. Then we have Memo, Al and Chris, that are allies of women. And at the bottom of the matrix, we have Richard, who is opposed to change and concerned that women will take over men's positions in the workplace. But by doing that categorization, I can see that it doesn't matter if it's a leader or if it's an individual contributor, it's a range of men that come to my events but typically, they're sitting at the higher end of the matrix. Not the lower part. Because they're still a little hesitant to thinking, well, what can I do? How can I help? >> Right, so it doesn't matter exactly what their exact position is, but how far up the matrix they are or how far low the matrix they are. >> Yes, exactly. Exactly. >> So can you tell us a little bit more about the different categories in the matrix and why you found those seven categories? >> Yeah sure. So, if we start from the top, the top character is called Mark and Mark is, he's really an expert. He has been working in HR or he's a diversity consultant or he can be a man who has lots of friends and he's very comfortable speaking up on behalf of women in front of these men. But he doesn't just address women or mixed groups, he actually talks directly to groups of men. The next category is James. James is a change agent. He's a leader. He has a very visible presence in the organization and he will take on things like culture change. If he notices in his organization that the culture is not exactly what it should be to promote equality, he will actually get to the bottom of it and dig deep to figure things out and solve them. Maybe by hiring an external consultant like a Mark. The next level is Sameer, he's the sponsor. And there are lots of women out there that have had great sponsors and often at the EQ Inspiration event, I'll bring up a women who talks about a sponsorship story. The sponsors make women visible and they also put their own name on the line. They're very comfortable promoting women. And often, they have experienced being an outsider themselves at some point, so they're very empathetic. The next level, now we get into the allies, and the allies are Memo, Al and Chris. Memo is the mentor. Mentorship is a very interesting thing because it's a big step up from the level below. It really is not necessarily promoting, but really asking a woman what can I do to help? How can I help you? And there's a lot of informal mentorships that are going on and there are lots of formal mentorship programs out there. It's really important to formalize mentorship programs in organizations where there's a greater fear among men to do something that's not right. And I think that a lot of the informal mentorships are suffering because of the Me Too movement and all the negative press that we have out there. The next to allies are Al and Chris. And these two categories have the greatest potential to actually grow into something bigger, because the objective, of course, is to climb from one step to the next on the matrix. And Al is a happy-go-lucky guy. He says I love working with women, I think it's fantastic, just tell me what to do, I would love to help. But he's not necessarily sure what to do. And Chris, the guy below him, he gets uncomfortable more easily. So, if a situation gets a little sticky in the office, when they start talking about equality or something like that, he might actually withdraw and close his door and say, no I don't want to be part of this discussion. But if you talk to Chris, he's already helping somebody who's close to him. Maybe his sister, maybe his partner, his wife or his daughter. And it's really interesting when you get to the point where they understand and they realize, they go oh, I am actually doing something. Maybe it's not helping somebody in the workplace but maybe it's somebody who's close to me. And then Richard at the bottom of the matrix, he's the chauvinist and he's there and there's lots of them and they're opposed to the change. And in the beginning, I was thinking maybe I just leave him out of the discussion. But he's a really important reference point for the rest of the characters. >> And so, as I liked that how you said that we want to have men go up the levels, to essentially become a Mark or James or Sameer, but suppose you have a Richard in your workplace, is there any hope for him ever becoming a Mark or is it even likely? >> Well, so the important thing is here, you know, I'm not a big fan of the kinds of workshops where you throw all men into the same room and you give them the same message. Because you'll lose 70% of the audience right away. So the key thing here is to make them understand that you can climb one step on the ladder and that may be enough. And if you choose to stay where you are, but as long as you're getting a little bit more awareness of what you're doing, that's okay too. But we're not trying to get Al or Chris, the people who are towards the bottom, to become Marks. We just want them to climb one step. And Richard, he's absolutely not a hopeless case. The thing with him is you can't tell him what to do, but you need to find his motivator. What is it that motivates him to start thinking outside of the little comfort zone that he is in right now? And so, maybe that motivator is maybe he does have a sister who's experienced a difficult situation. And so, how does that relate to what's going on? Maybe his team is not coming up with any new ideas. So having the discussion of diversifying the team, he might be ready for that one. But just finding his motivator is how we get him to, at least, get up to the level of Chris. >> And you mentioned that by the year 2030, you want 50-50 gender equality. Now, for people who are at leadership positions, who are Richards, who maybe do have some hope that they might change into even a Chris, but they still aren't on board with 50-50 gender equality, what do you say to those men and how can women deal with those men in their workplace? >> Well, it's that, you know, is the pie this big or is there two pies or is the pie growing? 50-50 is sort of something that a lot of people that ae working towards equality are saying. Now, I'm really trying to support women in the workplace to get to higher levels. And we are, more than 50%, at the very bottom level of most industries and most working positions. And we know that, I think it's 53% of all graduates today are women. So, it's not so much a we need to be 50-50, it's just that we need to change the parameters a little bit and change the format and change the expectations of how we lead our organizations so that it's not always done in a man's way. But rather, something that's more accepting towards not just women, but all minorities that haven't had a place there before. And would you say to somebody who's a Richard? Well if he's open to having the discussion and conversation, try to meet him where he is and say, we're not taking your job away from you, but we will give a woman the opportunity to apply for the job at the next level, alongside with you. And it's the most qualified that will win. But the way that the criteria are set right now and the qualifications and expectations are set right now, are really created very much so for men. So they end up winning that battle every single time. And Chris can't or Richard can't change that. That needs to be changed from a higher level. >> And also, alongside with them worrying that we're going to take their jobs, also because of the Me Too movement, they might be worried, oh I don't even want to work with women because I'm worried they're going to say I harass them or do something to them so I'd rather just not even bother with it. So with those kind of people, how would you try to convince them that they're safe with women or that that it's okay for them to be a part of this discussion? >> So, Chris, who is just above Richard on the matrix, he supports women who are very close to him. So, like I said, family members or maybe it's somebody, a woman on his team, that he's worked with for a long time. And by making him aware that he's already supporting people that are very close to him and he's super comfortable in those relationships and that kind of support that he's providing, I'm saying, what if you were to take that support to somebody you don't know as well? Maybe there's a woman in the extended team or next to you and you say to her, what can I do to help you? Is there anything I can do to help? And then treat that relationship the same way that you're treating the relationship that you have with that family member or whatnot. You know, make sure that it's completely transparent. Let the door be open. Make sure that you're inviting other people to the meetings. Sit in an open area. Do things that are completely transparent. That way nobody will ever question what your motives are, why you're doing this or if you're suggesting or saying something that's inappropriate. >> Right, right. And do you feel that more men are coming to these events or do you think that there's still a lot of progress to be made? >> So, when I started this a couple years ago, I said, okay, within a year, most of the women's organizations here in the Bay Area will have a track for men. And it's starting to happen so I'm so excited about that. I'm really, really happy that EQ Inspiration is not the only place to go, but that there's other organizations that are doing the same thing. And I will continue to, beyond the EQ Inspiration format, my objective is to go and speak at as many tech events as possible. Where I know that the majority of the audience will continue to be mostly men, for, at least, the near future. Hopefully that will change quickly. But now that I have material and I have a method and I know that there is a way to move men and make them individual contributors and make them excited about this. I want to bring that message directly to the core audience while all of the women's organizations that are sitting here in Silicon Valley will continue to build their tracks for men. >> That's amazing and you also mentioned that your material's coming out in Spring, so what's next for you? >> Well, I mean, so writing a book is a difficult thing and for all the men who are listening to this, it will be a very accessible, easy book. Not a lot of words, some pictures, images. Hopefully it's going to be, you know, a nice feel to it so people will be happy to have it lying around. And, really, for me, it's trying to create a language that both men and women are comfortable with. Having names on these characters. Jokingly being able to talk about it. De-dramatizing the whole conversation around this. There is a big seriousness to it, don't get me wrong. But for what I'm trying to do, I really want to lighten it up a little bit and make sure that people don't feel intimidated, threatened, judged or anything like that by it. And so, once the book becomes available in the Spring, I'm hoping that tech organizations will pick it up and use it as conversational material. Both for women's work groups, for mixed groups. One woman called me and said, I found a great use case. She specializes in going into organizations that already have programs and processes set up to move the needle, but not enough is happening. And then she can use this material to actually plug in and engage the men more deeply. So, I think, the book will have its life and with the book, I will make sure that it gets in front of as many people in tech as possible, both men and women. And then I'm hoping to be able to speak about it in as many difficult places as possible, because that's how I grow. >> Well, that's very heroic. It's such a great support for the women in tech community to have someone who's willing to kind of go out of their comfort zone and talk to men about women in tech issues and that's really not happening. So, we really appreciate all the work you're doing and thank you so much for coming in today. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> She's Eva, I'm Sonia, thanks so much for watching theCUBE, til next time. (upbeat music)

>> live from Las Vegas it's the cube, covering Magento Imagine 2019. Brought to you by Adobe. >> Hey welcome back to the cube, Lisa Martin with Jeff Frick live at The Wynn Las Vegas for Magento Imagine 2019, with about 3500 people here give or take a few. We're very pleased to welcome Magento evangelist Ben Marks to the Cube, Ben welcome >> Thank you for having me, I appreciate you making time. >> And thanks for bringing the flair to our set. >> I've got to let people know where my allegiances lie, right? >> So this is the first Magento Imagine post adobe acquisition, that was announced about a year ago completed about six or seven months ago. You have a very strong history with Magento the last 10 years, Magento is very much known for their developer community, their open source history and DNA. Talk to us about, how things are now with the community and really the influence that the developers have. >> Well if it's up to me we retain this really strong influence in the business. I mean at the the core of Magento since its inception the very humble beginnings that it had back in back in 2007 has been this this developer ecosystem. And that is what takes the software basically all the output and all of the expertise and intuition that we have that we put into our products and our services, it only goes so far. Now it is a platform that tends to fit in a lot of places but it only goes so far and we have that last mile, that is the most important distance that we cross and we cannot do it without this ecosystem. They are the ones that they know, they understand the merchant requirements, they understand the vertical, they understand the region, they understand cross border concerns, whatever it may be they know our product from an expert perspective and then they take that and they make it make sense. That being the case, Adobe I think so far has shown excellent stewardship in terms of recognizing the value. A big part of that 1.7 billion price tag, they paid for the community. They knew this ecosystem was the real, has always been the x-factor in Magento and so they've been very diligent, well now that I'm an employee we've been very introspective about what that means as part of adobe, is part of this this massive set of opportunities and new addressable market that we have. And we're just all trying to make sure that we look after all of these people who are at the end of the day probably our biggest champions. >> Just curious how you've been able to maintain that culture because to be kind of open source and open source first timer, first isn't the right word but open source neutral or pro, along with your proprietary stuff and to really engage developers it's such a special town and as a special culture because by rule you're saying that there's more smart people outside of our walls than inside of our walls and embracing and loving that. But you guys have gone through all kinds of interesting kind of evolutions on the business side in terms of ownership and management. How've you been able to maintain that? And what is kind of the secret sauce? Why are the developers so passionate to continue to develop a Magento? Because let me tell you we go to a lot of conferences and a lot of people are trying really hard to get that developer to spend that next time working on their platform versus a different one. >> Yeah, well you know it's endemic to our culture that whether it's a developer, someone who's working who's an expert in administering Magento stores, just whatever someone's focus is in this ecosystem, it is interesting we've always had at the underpinning everything has been this open source ethos. So from the very beginnings of Magento, the creators Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner, they sought out as they announced this Magento thing back in the day. They intentionally made it open-source because they knew that, that had been proved by a previous open-source commerce software and they knew that that was really where they were going to win that was the force multiplier. Again the thing that would get them into markets that they couldn't address with their very small agency that they were walking out of. So through the years that grew and in large part we can thank the Doc community, especially in Germany, the Dutch community, there's just the general open source ethos there. But I learned about open source from Magento, I had someone help me out when I was first starting at my first week working with Magento as a developer there was no documentation, I had to go into a chatroom and ask for help and this guy he actually spent about a couple of hours helping me and we remain close friends to this day. But at the end of it I'm like so should I pay you? And he was this guy this guy from outside of Heidelberg he's just no this is open source, is like just as you learn give it back. And that's a perfect summation for a big part of the spirit here. It helps who are in commerce, there's money kind of flowing all around but at the end of the day we provide options, we provide flexibility where there's nothing wrong with the sass platforms there's nothing wrong with some of the the larger like API driven platforms, it's just at some point if you have a custom requirement that they can't satisfy and that happens regularly, guess what? You got to go with the platform that gives you the extensibility. So they feel a sense of ownership I think because of that and they're sort of proud to take this wherever they can. >> So with the Adobe acquisition being complete around six eight months you mentioned Adobe doing a good job of welcoming this community but you also talked about this core ethos that Magento brings. I believe in the press release, announcing the acquisition last year, Adobe said open source is in our DNA. Have you found that one to be true? And two how much has the Magento open source community been able to sort of open the eyes and maybe open the door to Adobe's ethos of embracing it? >> Let's see how much trouble can I get in to today? >> So I have a good counterpart over Alberto Dobby and it's a stretch for me to call him a counterpart. He's got his JD,he's been big in the open source world for since forever but, Matt Asay probably... >> CUBE alum >> ...if you follow tech online, you've seen this post, you've seen him as an postulating on open source and it was interesting a lot of us were asking the same question from Magento world because a lot of us remembere the eBay days and an eBay had a sort of a different plan and vision for Magento that ultimately, that whole thing they were trying to create just didn't work out. Magento survived, but we're a bit wary we all knew it was coming it's the natural progression from private equity ownership but really, where is this open source that we were told about? And Matt is a kind of a big a piece there but as it turns out he jumped on Twitter immediately when none of us was supposed to be talking about anything of course but that's in Matt's nature. Because there is a lot of open source at Adobe in fact there's a lot of open source technology that underpins even these Enterprise Solutions that they offer. I visited with with several of our team members in the Basel office and there are Apache Software Foundation board members. I mean you want to to talk about the beginnings of open source and the impact its had on the world? These are some of these people and so yes it's there I think it's not a secret to say that Adobe really hasn't done a great job of telling that story. So as I've met and kind of toured around with some of the Adobe vice presidents who've been visiting here and I love that they're engaged. They get this, they want this to expand. It's been it's been really interesting watching them and encounter this and then start to be inspired by us as much as we are inspired by again the opportunities that exist as we all come together. >> It's great, yeah and Matt's been on his Trevi a week cover, CNCF and will be a cube con I think next week and in Barcelona so we're huge advocates, but so it's such a different way of looking at the world again accepting that there's more smart people outside your four walls than are inside your four walls. Which just by rule is the way that it has to be, you can't hire all the smart people. So to use that leverage and really build this develop wrapped advocacy is a really tremendous asset. >> Better together, is what we say, and it could not be true. I mean there there is no way we could know at all, we can't hope to. So what we've done actually in the last couple of years really under some brilliant leadership by Jason Woosley we've been able to double down on our open-source investment and I'd say that was a moment when we truly became an open-source company with through and through because we spun up and we took our best architects and just put them on a project called community engineering that they're dedicated to enabling contribution of fixes improvements and features from our ecosystem. So by doing that we all of a sudden we now have worldwide engineering that is that they're all experts in their individual domains so that line of code that some contributor from somewhere is contributing, he or she has become an expert let's say in something as glamorous like totals calculation like the logic that has to go into that. Because of their real-world experience we get the highest quality code that's just backed up by a lot of trial and tribulation. And from that we basically get to cover all of our bases and they tend to write things in a way that's way more extensible than probably we could ever envision. I don't know of a better formula for having a product that satisfies something so varied and challenging and just constantly evolving as e-commerce. >> Well and I think Jason mentioned this morning that the community engineering program was only launched a couple of years ago. >> Literally a two years ago February. >> So significant impacts in a very short period of time. >> Yeah we were fascinated to see that while we'd had this kind of haphazard almost ad hoc open source engagement up to that point, once we really built machinery around it We've we've managed to build something that is a model for any other company that wants to try to do this. Once we did that we very quickly got to some of our big releases where over 50% of the new lines of code were written externally. And that was cool for about a week and then we realized that that's not even the story the story is everything else I talked about which is just that degree of ownership that degree of informed engineering that we would never come up with on our own. And it was a real signal to this very patient and resilient ecosystem that hey, we're all in this together. And of course we've done that also, we've replicated that with our developer documentation, it's all open source and able to be contributed to and we sort of look at how that can expand and even to the point where our core architecture team now all of their discussions so you can go to github.com/magento, you can see our backlog, you could see where we're discussing features and kind of planning what's coming next. You can also go to our architecture repository and you see all of our core architects having their dialogue with each other in public so that the public is informed and they can be involved and that is literally the highest stage I believe of open source evolution. >> That's a great story now the other great thing though that it don't be brought to you is some really sophisticated marketing tools to drive the commerce in your engine, so I'm just curious your perspective. You've been playing in this for a long time but you guys are really kind of taken over at the transactional level now to have that front-end engagement tools, partners, methodologies, I mean you got to be excited. >> Well really so going back to my, I remember my agency days I remember why some of the Google Analytics code looks the way it does because I remember the product that it was before. Urgent analytics right and I remember when we could first do split tests and one of the first cool projects I ever worked on in Magento 1.1 was sort of parsing Google's cookies to be able to sort of change the interface of Magento and test that for conversion rights. And to think of how far we've come, now we have the power and the mandate really to absolutely know everything about the customer experience, the customer journey and then I'm sitting there in our keynotes you know in the general session yesterday, looking up and I'm looking at the slide and I'm seeing like 14 trillion transactions that are captured in our various apparatus and I think that it's tremendous responsibility, it's tremendous power. And if we if we combine, if we use this insight responsibly, what we do is we continue to do what I think Magento has done all along which has allowed us to be at not just at the forefront of where commerce evolves but really to set the standard that consumers begin to expect. And I know we've all felt it, when you have when you have that experience and it feels very full of friction I know we can do better and I will immediately go away from any website that makes it hard for me to do what I want to do any website that seems like they are kind of a partner on my journey that's where I mean that's we're going to spend my time and my money and that's really what we're trying to really lean into here. >> Which is essential, because as you mentioned if I'm doing something on my phone I expect a really fast transaction and there's friction points, I'm gone. I will be able to find another service or product that meets my need because there is so much choice and there's so much competition for almost every product and service. So being able to leverage the power of advertising, analytics, marketing and commerce to really deliver the fundamentals of the business needs to truly manage the customer experience is a game changer. >> Yap it is so what we're what we're looking to these days you know Magento, just before the acquisition was announced made a tremendous investment to start up it's completely independent trade association called the Magento Association. It's a place for our community to collect under. And and when we're here and Magento is still a big champion of ours a big source of investment and we are you know we are looking and I kind of wear both hats right because I'm a board member of that group as well as being a Magento Adobe employee. But one of the focus that we have is still that collaborative spirit where we start to carry the message and the capabilities of this tooling so that we can ensure that this ecosystem remains and powered to deliver the experiences that our customers and their customers expect. >> Absolutely, well Ben thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and your enthusiasm and passion >> Yeah did that come through I was hoping. >> You could next time dial it up a little bit more. >> Okay good. >> Awesome and bring more flair. >> I'll bring more flair next time. [Lisa Mumbling] >> I'm still wondering what happened to the capes? >> The magician master capes yes. >> I can I can probably go grab you a couple. >> That would be awesome orange is my favorite color. >> Good to know. >> Ben it's been a pleasure having you on the program we look forward to next year. >> Likewise thank you both. >> Our pleasure. For Jeff Rick, I'm Lisa Martin and you are watching theCube live at Magento imagine 2019 from Vegas. Thanks for watching. (upbeatmusic)

(soft techno music) >> Live from Las Vegas It's The Cube covering Service Now, Knowledge 2018. Brought to you by Service Now. (soft techno music) >> Welcome back to The Cube's live coverage of Service Now, Knowledge '18. I'm your host Rebecca Knight along with my co-host Dave Vellante. We are The Cube, we are the leader in live tech coverage. We are joined now by Alan Marks, he is the Chief Communications Cfficer of Service Now. So thanks so much for coming on the show. >> Thank you, great to be here. >> So the new brand identity of Service Now is we make the world of work, work better for people. >> That's right >> That's your baby, you came up with it so tell us a little bit about your creative process and coming up with that idea and why it works for Service Now. >> Well, it's been a team effort and we think of that identity as our purpose as a company. And as John talked about in his keynote today, purpose is really the center of who you are as a company and what you believe in and what you aspire to do, and I think it's so important in your own life to have a sense of purpose and meaning and I think that's true for companies as well, companies are just collections of people, right? And so as we thought about the next phase of growth for Service Now and how do we build the company awareness and build the brand, we started with, who are we, and why do we exist? And so we did a process where we met with a leadership team we did employee focus groups around the world we met with about a dozen customers to just talk about how do you think about Service Now, what does Service Now mean to you, and that's what lead to our purpose statement of "we make the world of work, work better for people" and really emphasizing people, cause that's something we believe deeply in, that technology should enable people. And what we do is really trying to help people have more meaningful work. Take some of the routine task out of your job so you can focus on things that matter more to you and create more meaningful work for you and create more productivity for your company and your enterprise. >> Dave: I'm always, oh go ahead please. >> Well so, we started with our purpose and then that lead to the brand identity we have a new tagline; Works For You. So, Service Now Works For You, is kind of our version of a Just Do It kind of tagline. >> Dave: (laughs) >> And so we've got our purpose statement we've got a new brand identity, what you see here at Knowledge and we've got a new tagline called, Works For You and you'll see us rolling that out now more. This was the launch of it. We spent the first quarter rolling it out to our employees we did a global tour in eight locations around the world rolling out our purpose to our employees and now this is the first public launch of the new brand. >> I was fascinated by that process. I love that you guys start with wide, big fan of Simon Sinek Google him if you don't know him, his Ted Talk is fantastic and we heard John Donahoe this morning talking about he started with why, so okay, so you do all this research but somehow you have to put that into a creative package the idea of putting the person in the center of the logo and whether it's color scheme or, you know little snippets. How do you come up with that, is that just in your DNA is that really by committee, I mean how does that all work? >> Well we put together a creative team, this is the fun part once you've landed the purpose, this is take out the crayons and let's start decorating something, right? And so when we landed our purpose, and we said well if we're really focused on technology enabling people the former logo of the company was the power button so that was more purely about technology and so we started playing, we had a creative team we put together, we had our in-house creative team we also were using some outside creative support and we started playing with well, how can you change the power button to more reflect people and that's what morphed into the logo today of really using the yellow in the word Now to symbolize people, to symbolize the "you" in "Works For You" instead of the power button as a symbol for the company. >> So you, the last Knowledge, Knowledge '17 you had just started. >> Just started, first week. >> First week on the job, trial by fire here. So tell us a little bit about your first year, reflect on some of the things that might have surprised you during the year, some of your challenges, what would you say? >> Oh it's been wonderful. I say to Pat Waters our Chief Human Resources Officer, every new employee should start the week of Knowledge. It was just such a wonderful way to start, I literally did sign the papers and got on a plane and came to Knowledge '17. And so, to come into the company being able to experience this, and meet our customers and really understand the culture of the company was an extraordinary way to get grounded in the company and understand the, you know, Service Now has just a deep commitment to customers, and listening to our customers, and then responding to their needs. So, given the brand work I've done over the past year that I couldn't think of a better way to start. And then after Knowledge '17, a week or two after that I went down to San Diego and spent an afternoon with Fred Luddy, our founder. And I just said "Fred, tell me your story.", and two hours later Fred was still talking, such a wonderful person, and what struck me in that conversation with Fred is we were spending, really two hours talking about the history of the company and why he founded it, and I realized he was talking mostly about people he wasn't talking about technology and Fred's a product guy. And so it just started to hit me from day one just how focused we are on helping people and helping companies succeed and our customers succeed and that's really what lead to where we are today, and the branding, and so it's an amazing company, amazing culture, and what we're trying to do with this brand the product is well known, we've got deep customer loyalty but the company is not that well known and so as we think about growing the company and reaching other state coders, as we think about expanding our business with existing customers and engaging new customers at the C-suite level, we felt we needed to really elevate the company and that's what this is about. How do we continue to have a strong product brand but elevate the company brand both to drive greater awareness of the company but then also the talent brand piece is important as well and how do we use our brand identity and our purpose to engage the right talent worldwide as we continue to grow and recruit from around the world. >> And that's a big part of why John Donahoe was brought in. I remember I was talking to Frank Slootman, I'm like Frank is so young, he goes look, we found the right guy to take this to the new level. He's been kind of working at it for a while so the timing was perfect. As you do all this research as you talk to customers about their future of work. I mean they're telling you what they need maybe what some of their challenges are, but you guys still have to figure out how to get there. It's almost like Steve Jobs inventing this smart phone, nobody told him no customer told him, this is what we need. >> Alan: Right. >> So you're minds have to put that together, I know it's only a year in, but what are you seeing in terms of your ability to shape the future of work? >> Well I think it starts with the Service Now platform and to me that's the secret sauce. A lot of people have focus, cause people know the ITSM product suite and how the company, the flagship product of the company and a lot of people think of the company in that way but its really the platform itself that can cut across the enterprise and connect different work flows and different work streams particularly work streams are cross-functional areas and the ability to understand that and leverage that with our product suite that really is unlocking the potential of how we can partner with a customer and really drive transformation in the way enterprises operate and drive transformation in how work gets done in a company. >> So with your consumer background, did you like, when you first heard about Service Now say, "really, IT service management?", or did you say "hey, why should the consumer guys have all the fun I want to bring this to the enterprise". >> Exactly, well part of it, this is my first job in the B2B world my background is in consumer, but as John has talked about we really do see the things that we've enjoyed as consumers coming into the workplace. So I really do see a lot of B2C type creative thinking and ideas coming into the workplace to drive this transformation and that's so exciting to take the best of traditional B2B marketing and branding and bring in B2C to help reflect this new wave of technology and how it's changing the way we work and the way we think about work. >> As you're now embarking on this strategy to get Service Now to have wider recognition in the market and you're background in consumer, particularly at Nike, what do you think makes a great brand and what really makes it sort of take hold of customer's imagination. >> That's a great question and I would go back to purpose. I can't say enough about purpose, a company that is clear about who it is and why it exists and what it aspires to achieve in the world, and the impact it aspires to achieve in the world, that's what connects people emotionally, right? You can connect people intellectually but really connect heart and mind, that's the secret sauce. And you said consumer brands, obviously that's what they do right, that's what you have to do. In the B2B world, you see a broader spectrum but that ability to say, how do we take this technology and the more intellectual aspects of our business and really connect it to how you help people and how you enable people and connect it more emotionally. I think that's the (inaudible) NOC, and today, you look at millennial employees today they really do care about what is the purpose, what's the higher value of working for this company vs. that company, and what kind of impact are we going to try to have in the world, and it really does matter. I see it today where you're talking to potential employees and they're asking that question. About if I'm going to join this company, what are the values tell me about the culture of the company. And I think at the end of the day, culture and talent really is what differentiates a company. And strategy is obviously important, but companies that have strong purpose, strong brand, strong identity and that get expressed through strong culture that gets expressed through the kind of people they attract to the company, the kind of talent they have in the company. I think that's what creates great, enduring companies over time. >> So thinking about transparency, I go back to Fred. The self deprecating humor, always, if there's a wart in the software, he talks about it, he's not shy about that. Frank continued that tradition certainly with Wall Street and I'm sure employees, and Mike Scarpelli, very much transparent, John is continuing that tradition. It's obviously worked for Wall Street, you've built trust with investors. How do you take that brand and build trust beyond the investor community, it's a challenge. What are you trying to accomplish there? >> You'll see us marketing more and that's part of what you see here, expressing the brand in a bigger way, you'll start to see us do more marketing at the company level in addition to what we already do at the product level. You'll see us do more marketing directed to talent and being a great place to work. You'll see us expressing this in a variety of ways the kind of culture we create, what we do in the community, the broader impact we have in the world and so I think it's all of those things together and communicating but ultimately you've got to walk the talk, right, it's not just the marketing, you've got to be authentic in what you're doing and have people experience you in an authentic way to really create that sense of trust and engagement over time. And you see we've got that today in our customers. The loyalty we have with our customers the renewal rate the company has with our customers and now we're just trying to continue to build on that and engage other stakeholders as we grow as a company. >> So making work better, okay that's good. The new sort of focus, expanded focus, but what do you want people to say about you, how do you want them to describe you, what are the adjectives you'd like them to use? >> Human, we're "work for people" right, "make work better for people". I think we're a human company, we're an authentic company we're a company that cares, we're a company that really understands technology should help you, it shouldn't be technology for technology's sake, that the end result should be making your life better and we're trying to do that in a work context and I hope that people look at our brand and our identity and how we show up in the world and think that's a copmany I want to be associated with as an employee, as a customer, as an investor, as a partner, as a stakeholder because that's a company that really cares about people and really understand how to apply technology and innovative technology to help people have better lives and in this context, have a better life at work. >> We've been talking a little bit about how you're company is working to attract the best talent, and it's really at a time when the skill sets are changing and we were talking about Fred not being an IT guy, he's a product guy, but you really need the sort of confluence of the two together, you need people who are thinking about the technology but also about the human idea. How hard is it to find the right people or do you just say "we can train them", what's your approach? >> It's always hard to find great talent all over the world it's very competitive, and particularly in technology but I think it gets back again to purpose and culture really being clear about who you are so a potential employee can say "is that a place that I want to work at, when I see the purpose of Service Now, does the resonate for me?". If I'm an engineer, do I want to create product that really is focused on helping people have better work lives and again it really, purpose is the essence of it and I think that really is the center of everything and if you can connect people with your purpose then you will attract the right talent and it'll build on itself through word of mouth and reputation that that's company that I feel attached to and that I want to a part of, and I want to work at.

>> live from Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the Cube covering E M C. World 2015. Brought to you by E. M. C Brocade and D. C. >> You're watching E m C World Live here on the Q. Looking Angles Flagship program. We go out to the event they start the season noise. I'm John Kerry of my coast Dude. Minutemen. Our next guest is a cube. Alumni have been on a cute many times before and back again. 2011 John Thompson is the CEO of Virtual Instruments and also the chairman of a company called Microsoft. Um, welcome back to the cubes. Nice to be about Great to see you in the A M World week didn't interview on Virtual Instruments with CEO, and we were really riffing on this whole idea of data instrumentation. And we it was really free Internet of things. So give us the update. What's going on with virtue Instruments here? I see Microsoft has a conference going on ignite. Even though you're chairman. The board. You're also the CEO of Virgin Instruments and you're gonna do some business here. What's going on? What business are you doing? Well, this is an important conference for virtual instruments. DMC is one of our strongest go to market partners, and candidly, many of their customers are virtual instruments customers. And so it's an opportunity for me to be here to spend time with our partners and our customers in one venue. Our business is doing quite well. We just had a very, very strong March quarter, which is always a little bit of a down quarter for most tech companies. But we were up 27 28% year over year for the calendar. Q. One so we feel pretty good about that. This is the most important quarter of the year, though, which is always the case in Texas. So we're hoping that we can knock the ball out of the park again this quarter. We launched our virtual wisdom for platform in the spring of last year, and it is gaining tremendous traction, certainly in the U. S. And around the globe. It is all about health utilization in performance of the infrastructure, and we've defined a model where you can look at an application inside that infrastructure, monitor its performance and its availability, and that idea is so critical in a world where everything will someday live in the cloud and will you will want to assure a level of performance and, quite frankly, a level of responsiveness to customers as they come on says it's a reset to share the folks out. This is not a new concept for you guys. We talked about this years ago. It's not like you woke up one boys. Hey, things is trendy. This data center in fermentation takes us quickly back. Where did it come from? Was an itch to scratch. What original product as you have and how does that morph into today's crazy, data driven world, where dash boring riel time is actually competitive advantage and now table stakes? Well, if you were to go back to the genesis of virtual instruments, we started as a small technology investment inside a larger company called Venice are that was trying to solve the inevitable performance problem in the fibre channel world. And as the market crashed in 7 4008 the team at Venice or had to decide, how are we gonna clean up our portfolio? And the result waas. They sold off the assets? Were we, in fact, created virtual instruments. So a small group of investors, led by Jim Davidson from Silver Lake and Michael Marks from Riverwood, helped to fund the original investment and virtual instruments. We've been at it now for about seven years. We have clearly evolved the product quite a bit since then, and we've captured a number of very, very strong venture capital investment so long away as we made the choice. That said, we need the shift from being a fiber channel company to be in an infrastructure performance management company because the inevitable movement to the cloud will drive an opportunity for us. Yeah, and you're a senior executive private equity. I mean, this is pretty much a big bet. There's a lot of money involved with private equity. So it wasn't like you're, like, throw in the Silicon Valley startup together. It was really like, Okay, there's big money behind it. Well, you guys, did you see it turning out this way? What? What was learning that have been magnified from that trajectory? Well, I think in the early days we thought the path was a little different than what we've actually followed. We thought the path waas that the fibre channel World was so big and it needed better visibility. This would in fact give the world better visibility in the fibre channel space. What we have observed, however, is that the entire infrastructure has become Maur and more opaque, and therefore you need to not just drive visibility in the storage layer, but across the entire converge staff. And so the platform that we have evolved is all about supporting this converged platform not just fibre Channel, but filed a storage not just VM where, but all virtualized server environments. And we believe that's, ah, multibillion dollar market. And that's why we were able to attract both private equity initially and venture capital later as we built out of product. It's interesting. You see some of these ideas come a come around full circle. I'm curious. Just in industry trend. Your your opinion on Veritas, you know, being spun out. It's it's It's both sad for me personally, but I think it speaks to how difficult the cultural integration might have been between the two companies. While I really had a vision back in the old four or five days of security and backup coming together, I think It was a really, really difficult thing to make happen in the context of what has evolved at Samantha, so the fact that they've chosen to spend it out, it's perhaps a little disappointing for me personally, but not a surprise. So what is your vision of security today? My understanding, You advise, even sit on the board of ah Lumia company. We've way we've talked to the company really, what's happening in security. So if you think about how security has evolved once upon a time, it was about protecting the device candidly and a cloud based world. It's going to be more about protecting the workloads as they move around. And that's one of the elements of what a lumia does, in fact, provide. Furthermore, I have believed for a very, very long time that as time goes on, security will have to get closer and closer to that which is deemed to be most critical. In other words, you can't protect all of the data. You can't protect all of the instances that air on the Web, but you can identify those that are most critical and therefore need a level of protection beyond what the standard would be. And so my belief is that companies like a Loom EO and others that will evolve will get closer to the workload, and we'll get closer to the data that's most critical. And so data classification and things of that nature will become much, much more important than they have. You're an investor in aluminum. You on the board are okay, so you're on the board of director and investor. We covered their launch. Great company. The cracking is low slides, as as Alan Cohen would say, they phenomenal funding round gone from stealth two years and now the big $100,000,000 really funding round massive guerrilla marketing. Still going on at the air say, was kind of clever. The perimeter lists cloud is a factor. And what tech enabled? Do you see the key thing? Alan Cohen described it as 1000 foot shoulds soldiers protecting assets because there's no more perimeter that no front door any more. What is the technology driver for that? Well, the whole idea behind the loom Eo, is to have a what I would call a portable policy enforcement engine that can move as the workload moves around the cloud. So policy management, security policy management has been a very, very difficult task for most large enterprises. So if I can define security policies for every server of where workloads can go to and from on that server and make sure that nothing violates that policy, hence I enforce it routinely. Oh, I can change. The dynamic of House security gets delivered in a cloud based world because no workload is gonna run in any single place on a cloud world. That workload is gonna move to where there is capacity to handle. I gotta ask you because we have a lot of people out there that follow tech business test tech athletes that you are. But also, you're a senior executive who has a lot of experience, and we could be presenting to Harvard Business School, Stanford Business School. I want to get your kind of business mind out to the audience. And that is, is that as an executive who's seen the big, big companies, the big battleships, the big aircraft carriers, from the IBM days to the M in a world of the nineties and the transformation of the Internet now in a complete shift, an inflection point with things like a Loom, Eo and Cloud and and Virtual instruments and the new Microsoft and the Silicon Angles and the crowd shots out there, What do you advise managers out there to operate from a management perspective. I mean, there's a classic business school numbers quarter on the challenges of going public, managing enormous dynamic technology change. So every theater is kind of exploding the technology theater, the business theater, the social theater as an executive. How would you advise someone as a CEO are rising growing startup how they should stitch themselves together? If you can draw in from previous experiences? Or is there a pattern recognition you can share? Well, it's It's never simply about the numbers, while the numbers air always important and the numbers will always be the underpinning of evaluation or whatever. In reality, it's about having a team that is able to rally around a leader with vision that says, Here's how we're gonna change the world. Here's how we're going to make an impact as this industry goes through, the natural inflection points that it always does. And if you look at what has occurred in this industry about every 8 to 10 years, something significant changes. And so a company that may have missed an opportunity six or eight years ago has another shot at it six or eight years later because of the inflection points that we go through. So it's important for the leader of a company toe. Believe that I can change the world based upon the industry that I'm a part of and have a compelling point of view about what changing the world means for that company and that team. And if you could get the team together around that idea, what about cloud and big data and mobile thes dynamics that you would? If someone just wants a roadmap for navigation or what decked me to go after, What would you say? What do you say? You know, get it all in the cloud or go poke at a duel are indeed new, agile management. Things were happening like, Well, I think it starts with what are the court confidence is that you have as a team or company, so you can't say g I'm gonna go and do cloud and oh, by the way, I have no confidence in the management infrastructure for large enterprises or I'm gonna go do mobile and I really have no experience in the mobile space whatsoever. So core competencies matter and leveraging the core strengths of the company matters now. Oftentimes, what companies will do its supplement their core strengths through M, and we'll go out and acquire something and bolted on the hard part of M and A, which is what we were referencing early around. Veritas is Can you integrate it? Can you really make it work after you bought it? Buying it is the easy part. Generating it and making it work is the really, really tough part. And arguably we didn't do is good a job as I would have liked with Samantha. And so basically you're saying is if you as an executive, you want to look at the winds of change for hand, get the sails up, if you will, to confuse the metaphor and get into that slipstream so you can actually drive and you can't. Being an amateur, you gotta actually have some competency. You have a leverage point. Look, one of the great things about this industry is it doesn't take some brilliant business leader to create a new idea. I mean, no one ever would have viewed Zucker Bird as a business leader or some of the young, really, really powerful CEO built phenomenal, phenomenal companies in this industry. But they had an idea, and they were able to create a team around that idea and go change the world. And that's what's so powerful about this industry that I've had the pleasure to be a part of for 40 some years. Yes. Speaking about CEOs that changed the industry, John Chambers announced that he's stepping aside from the CEO role this morning. So you know when you look back, you know John was one of the four horsemen of the Internet era and 20 years there. Chuck Robbins is coming in. He's been there since C. I think 97. What do you think of that move? And you know what's happening with Cisco in leadership for the big companies? Well, John's a really, really good friend, and I admire him for all of what he's done and Cisco and I wish him well as he makes this transition. Interestingly enough, the transition is to executive chairman, with the new CEO stepping in so What that says is that John plans that have a little more involvement, perhaps in what goes on in the company. Then I do it. Microsoft. My title is not executive chairman of Microsoft. Thank goodness I wouldn't want it to. But it also speaks to the fact that John spend the CEO. It just goes since 1995 like that. So he has an enormous amount of knowledge and insight about the company industry, its customers, partners, culture, all of those culture. And so all of those things will be valuable and important to the new CEO. And I think him stepping into that role is trying to leverage that. Cenedella came in and made his voice heard really instantly. And Microsoft has been a great company to watch, you know, since Auntie's came on board, you know, just Cisco need to make some bold moves or are they pretty stable where they are is kind of the dominant? That's a better question for John and CEO. I think what is clear is that all all companies, at some point after find a way to redefine and Sasha's role at Microsoft. He has redefined Microsoft as a cloud first mobile first, and that's all about recognizing. Were acts are gonna run on what devices and what kind of service is. And that redefinition, I think, is important for any industry leader, regardless of how long you just brought us to the tagline of this show, M C World is redefined. So any comments, How's the emcee doing it? Redefining themselves, I think the emcees a terrific company. Joe's a longtime friend of mine. I mean, I know Joe forever on. It's been amazing to see how it's gone from being a storage company to this federation of companies that have capabilities that are so broad and so diverse. I hope they don't get pushed to do something that isn't in the best interest of customers, but maybe enamored by some investors. The angel of the activist pressure. Yeah, that's always and that that's unfortunate, but I think they have a nice balance now. They have a huge installed base and this competitive pressure so they gotta push that. But I have to. I have to ask, is that? You know, I was getting some tweets earlier about Microsoft, and I know you, you know, you're only chairman of the board executive chairman. But you were involved in a very historic where you were on the executive search committee for the CEO replacement for Steve Balmer, of which they chose sake. Nutella Cube alumni We interviewed at the XL Partners Innovation Summit in Stanford that that's about culture. That's about transitions, about inflection points. And Sister used to mention Cisco. Not similar situation. But Microsoft is the legend company. I think the computer industry like an apple. Microsoft was their big part of the computer revolution. Big seismic changing. You were right there. Just share some color on what that whole experience like for you personally. And if you can share any insights to the audience, I know it's a sense might be sensitive topic. But what's that like? And, you know, the outcomes. Looking good. As he says, he's doing great. What? What can you share? Well, I think it would be fair to say that it was a more consuming process than I ever thought it would be. I went from being a new board member of Microsoft in the spring of 2012 to be in the lead independent director in the fall of 2012 to leading the search starting in the summer of 2013. I mean, I never could have imagine my involvement there changing that dramatically, Nor would I have imagined that searching for a CEO of a company would consume 80% of my time when I was also running a company. So for a period of about six months, it's like athlete right there. I had two full time jobs where I was on the phone all day, every day, trying to get something done for the eye and on the phone all day, every day, trying to get something done for Microsoft as well. It was, I would also have to say and incredibly incredibly exhilarating experience. I talked to some phenomenal leaders from around the world way had hard, long look anywhere we wanted at any CEO or candidate that we wanted, and we settled on someone who was a Tech athlete. We believe that the company was at a really, really important inflection point where over the course of the next 12 to 24 months, we're gonna have to make some really, really important technology decisions that would set the course from Microsoft for many, many years to come. And so, while there was much speculation in the press about this person or that person, and what a great business leader, that person waas What we, as a board concluded, was that what our company needed at that moment in time was a true technology visionary who could drive the strategy of the company because it had assets. I mean, they had a whole search thing that they quote missed on paper. But they had, like you said, they could come back at it again with being the subtle art of assets. Here, Cloud was built out. Everything was kind of like in place for that tech athlete on. And I think soccer has done an amazing job. I'm quite proud of them. I'm happy toe say I have some small part in that, but I'm or happy for the way he has executed in the job. I mean, he steps into the job with a level of humility but confidence that is so important for the CEO of a company of that size, and to maintain that cultural DNA because you have one of most competitive companies on the planet. A question to the point where they had to be almost broken up by the DOJ from the Bill Gates kind of DNA and bomber to continued, be competitive, live in this new era. Really tough challenge. Well, he's he's a bright guy. He, as I said, has great humility and has the respect of the team. And it's been interesting to see the internal shift behavior and attitude with a guy who I jokingly say he has two ears and one mouth and he uses them proportionately. And that's a very important lesson for someone trying to transform a company. You must listen more than you talk, and I think he does a great job. We try to do that. The Cuban we talk all day long way do interviews, but I gotta ask you back to virtual instruments. Okay, gets a good business going on with the emcee Goto partner about the anywhere in the federation of a partner with you as well, say, Is it all Federation? It's mostly through E M. C. And while the em wears of small V I customer, we don't do much with them on the go to market side on the go to market side. We rely more heavily, if you will. On AMC, that partnership has evolved. I mean, from the early days it was viewed as G. We're not sure who you are and what you do and whether or not you're competitive with us today, we have very, very common go to market processes around the globe. I'd love to see them stronger. I just left to cheese office in San GI Joe. We could doom. Or but when it's when it's all said and gone, this is one of the strongest go to market partners we have that's also shared the folks out there what they might not know about insurance, that you could share their hearing this now for the first time and working on the radar future of your business, your division product, extensive bility. Future of Internet of everything. Future Internet of things, whatever you want to put on a big data and the data center now, and the migration of cloud is all here. So at our core, we believe that every large enterprise will inevitably have some, if not all, of their work in the class. So the question is, how do you help them manage that inevitable migration to the cloud by de risking the migration and ensuring appropriate infrastructure performance management. Once you arrive there, we focus on the largest enterprises in the world. So unlike many tech startups, that will start with a midsize or small company and work their way up well, the largest banks in the universe, the largest insurance companies in the universe, the largest of every sector in the universe is a customer of the eye or will be someday. And that notion of solving very, very complex problems is something that our team has great pride in our ability to do that I want to get philosophical with you. You can for second kind of sit back and, you know, have a glass of wine and kind of talk to the younger generation out there with all your history on experience. How great of an opportunity for the young entrepreneurs and CEOs out there right now. Given the the confluence of the shift and inflection points, can you compare this to an error? We on the Cubes say It's like the PC revolution bundled in with the clients, terrorists and the Internet. All kind of at once do you agree? And would you say it? Guys, you have an amazing opportunity. Well, I think example of just how crazy it is. I I was driving to the airport this morning, and what I thought would be our long drive took two hours. Because there's so many people on the road in the Valley going to work. There's just so much going on in Silicon Valley right now. It is amazing. And for anyone who has a really, really great idea, the thing that's equally amazing is there's lots of capital out there to support those ideas. And so I would encourage any young entrepreneur who has a thought socialize your thought, Get it out so people can learn about it and then go get money to support and back that though. There's lots of money out there for good ideas. Lots of money. \ewelry officially taking the time coming out. Your busy schedule. CEO Virtual Instruments, chairman of Microsoft Here inside the Cube tech athletes is a big deal. You are one of the great great. Always have a conversation with you, sharing your thanks so much. Just the Cuban. Be right back with more insights and the signal from the noise at this short break