(upbeat music) >> Hello, friends. Welcome back to The Cube's live coverage of AWS re:Invent 2022. We're in Vegas. Lovely Las Vegas. Beautiful outside, although I have only seen outside today once, but very excited to be at re:Invent. We're hearing between 50,000 and 70,000 attendees and it's insane, but people are ready to be back. This morning's keynote by CEO Adam Selipsky was full of great messages, big focus on data, customers, partners, the ecosystem. So excited. And I'm very pleased to welcome back one of our alumni to the program, David Shacochis, VP Enterprise Portfolio Strategy Product Management at Lumen. David, welcome back. >> Lisa, good to be here. The Five Timers Club. >> You are in the Five Timers Club. This is David's fifth appearance on the show. And we were talking before we went live- >> Do we do the jacket now and do we do the jacket later? >> Yeah, the jacket will come later. >> Okay. >> The Five Timers Club, like on SNL. We're going to have that for The Cube. We'll get you measured up and get that all fitted for you. >> That'd be better. >> So talk a little bit about Lumen. 'Cause last time you hear it wasn't Lumen. >> We weren't Lumen last time. So this is the first time... last time we were here on The Cube at re:Invent. This was probably 2019 or so. We were a different company. The company was called CenturyLink back then. We rebranded in 2020 to really represent our identity as a delivery of...as a solutions provider over our fiber network. So Lumen is the corporate brand, the company name. It represents basically a lot of the fiber that's been laid throughout the world and in North America and in enterprise metropolitan areas over the past 10 to 15 years. You know, companies like CenturyLink and Quest and Level 3, all those companies have really rolled up into building that core asset of the network. So Lumen is really the brand for the 21st century for the company, really focused on delivering services for the enterprise and then delivering a lot of value added services around that core network asset. >> So rebranding during the pandemic, what's been the customer feedback and sentiment? >> Yeah, I think customers have really actually appreciated it as certainly a more technology oriented brand, right? Sort of shifting away a little bit from some of the communications and telecom background of the company and the heritage. And while those assets that were built up during that period of time have been substantial, and we still build off of those assets going forward, really what a lot of the customer feedback has been is that it puts us in a posture to be a little bit more of a business solutions provider for customers, right? So there's a lot of things that we can do with that core network asset, the fiber networking a lot of the services that we launch on that in terms of public IP, you know, public internet capacity, private networking, private VPNs, VoIP and voice services. These are services that you'd expect from a company like that. But there's a lot of services inside the Lumen brand that you might surprise you, right? There's an edge computing capability that can deliver five milliseconds of latency within 95% of North American enterprise. >> Wow. >> There's a threat detection lab that goes and takes all of the traffic flowing over the public side of our network and analyzes it in a data lake and turns it into threat intelligence that we then offer off to our customers on a subscription basis. There's a production house that goes and, you know, does production networking for major sports arenas and sports events. There's a wide range of services inside of Lumen that really what the Lumen brand allows us to do is start talking about what those services can do and what networking can do for our customers in the enterprise in a more comprehensive way. >> So good changes, big brand changes for Lumen in the last couple of years. Also, I mean, during a time of such turmoil in the world, we've seen work change dramatically. You know, everybody...companies had to pivot massively quickly a couple years ago. >> Yep. >> Almost approaching three years ago, which is crazy amazing to be digital because they had to be able to survive. >> They did >> Now they're looking at being able to thrive, but now we're also in this hybrid work environment. The future of work has changed. >> Totally. >> Almost permanently. >> Yep. >> How is Lumen positioned to address some of the permanent changes to the work environments? Like the last time we were at re:Invented- >> Yeah. >> In person. This didn't exist. >> That's right. So really, it's one of the things we talk to our customers almost the most about is this idea of the future of work. And, you know, we really think about the future of work as about, you know, workers and workloads and the networks that connect them. You think about how much all of those demands are shifting and changing, right? What we were talking about, and it's very easy for all of us to conceptualize what the changing face of the worker looks like, whether those are knowledge workers or frontline workers the venues in which people are working the environments and that connectivity, predictability of those work desk environments changes so significantly. But workloads are changing and, you know we're sitting here at a trade show that does nothing but celebrate the transformation of workloads. Workloads running in ways in business logic and capturing of data and analysis of data. The changing methodologies and the changing formats of workloads, and then the changing venues for workloads. So workloads are running in places that never used to be data centers before. Workloads are running in interesting places and in different and challenging locations for what didn't used to be the data center. And so, you know, the workloads and the workloads are in a very dynamic situation. And the networks that connect them have to be dynamic, and they have to be flexible. And that's really why a lot of what Lumen invests in is working on the networks that connect workers and workloads both from a visibility and a managed services perspective to make sure that we're removing blind spots and then removing potential choke points and capacity issues, but then also being adaptable and dynamic enough to be able to go and reconfigure that network to reach all of the different places that, you know, workers and workloads are going to evolve into. What you'll find in a lot of cases, you know, the workers...a common scenario in the enterprise. A 500 person company with, you know, five offices and maybe one major facility. You know, that's now a 505 office company. >> Right. >> Right? The challenge of the network and the challenge of connecting workers and workloads is really one of the main conversations we have with our customers heading into this 21st century. >> What are some of the things that they're looking forward to in terms of embracing the future of work knowing this is probably how it's going to remain? >> Yeah, I think companies are really starting to experiment carefully and start to think about what they can do and certainly think about what they can do in the cloud with things like what the AWS platform allows them to do with some of the AWS abstractions and the AWS services allow them to start writing software for, and they're starting to really carefully, but very creatively and reach out into their you know, their base of enterprise data, their base of enterprise value to start running some experiments. We actually had a really interesting example of that in a session that Lumen shared here at re:Invent yesterday. You know, for the few hundred people that were there. You know, I think we got a lot of great feedback. It was really interesting session about the...really gets at this issue of the future of work and the changing ways that people are working. It actually was a really cool use case we worked on with Major League Baseball, Fox Sports, and AWS with the... using the Lumen network to essentially virtualize the production truck. Right? So you've all heard that, you know, the sports metaphor of, you know, the folks in the booth were sitting there started looking down and they're saying, oh great job by the guys or the gals in the truck. >> Yep. >> Right? That are, you know, that bring in that replay or great camera angle. They're always talking about the team and their production truck. Well, that production truck is literally a truck sitting outside the stadium. >> Yep. >> Full of electronics and software and gear. We were able to go and for a Major League Baseball game in...back in August, we were able to go and work with AWS, using the Lumen network, working with our partners and our customers at Fox Sports and virtualize all of that gear inside the truck. >> Wow. That's outstanding. >> Yep. So it was a live game. You know, they simulcast it, right? So, you know, we did our part of the broadcast and many hundreds of people, you know, saw that live broadcast was the first time they tried doing it. But, you know, to your point, what are enterprises doing? They're really starting to experiment, sort to push the envelope, right? They're kind of running things in new ways, you know, obviously hedging their bets, right? And sort of moving their way and sort of blue-green testing their way into the future by trying things out. But, you know, this is a massive revenue opportunity for a Major League Baseball game. You know, a premier, you know, Sunday night baseball contest between the Yankees and the Cardinals. We were able to go and take the entire truck, virtualize it down to a small rack of connectivity gear. Basically have that production network run over redundant fiber paths on the Lumen network up into AWS. And AWS is where all that software worked. The technical director of the show sitting in his office in North Carolina. >> Wow. >> The sound engineer is sitting in, you know, on his porch in Connecticut. Right? They were able to go and do the work of production anywhere while connected to AWS and then using the Lumen network, right? You know, the high powered capabilities of Lumens network underlay to be able to, you know, go and design a network topology and a worked topology that really wasn't possible before. >> Right. It's nice to hear, to your point, that customers are really embracing experimentation. >> Right. >> That's challenging to, obviously there was a big massive forcing function a couple of years ago where they didn't have a choice if they wanted to survive and eventually succeed and grow. >> Yeah. >> But the mindset of experimentation requires cultural change and that's a hard thing to do especially for I would think legacy organizations like Major League Baseball, but it sounds like they have the appetite. >> Yeah. They have the interest. >> They've been a fairly innovative organization for some time. But, you know, you're right. That idea of experimenting and that idea of trying out new things. Many people have observed, right? It's that forcing function of the pandemic that really drove a lot of organizations to go and make a lot of moves really quickly. And then they realized, oh, wait a minute. You know... I guess there's some sort of storytelling metaphor in there at some point of people realizing, oh wait, I can swim in these waters, right? I can do this. And so now they're starting to experiment and push the envelope even more using platforms like AWS, but then using a lot of the folks in the AWS partner network like Lumen, who are designing and sort of similarly inspired to deliver, you know, on demand and virtualized and dynamic capabilities within the core of our network and then within the services that our network can and the ways that our network connects to AWS. All of that experimentation now is possible because a lot of the things you need to do to try out the experiment are things you can get on demand and you can kind of pat, you can move back, you can learn. You can try new things and you can evolve. >> Right. >> Yep. >> Right. Absolutely. What are some of the things that you're excited about as, you know, here was this forcing function a couple years ago, we're coming out of that now, but the world has changed. The future of work as you are so brilliantly articulated has changed permanently. What are you excited about in terms of Lumen and AWS going forward? As we saw a lot of announcements this morning, big focus on data, vision of AWS is really that flywheel with Adams Selipsky is really, really going. What are you excited about going forward into 2023? >> Yeah, I mean we've been working with AWS for so long and have been critical partners for so long that, you know, I think a lot of it is continuation of a lot of the great work we've been doing. We've been investing in our own capabilities around the AWS partner network. You know, we're actually in a fairly unique position, you know, and we like to think that we're that unique position around the future of work where between workers, workloads and the networks that connect them. Our fingers are on a lot of those pulse points, right? Our fingers are on at really at the nexus of a lot of those dynamics. And our investment with AWS even puts us even more so in a position to go where a lot of the workloads are being transformed, right? So that's why, you know, we've invested in being one of the few network operators that is in the AWS partner network at the advanced tier that have the managed services competency, that have the migration competency and the network competency. You can count on one hand the number of network operators that have actually invested at that level with AWS. And there's an even smaller number that is, you know, based here in the United States. So, you know, I think that investment with AWS, investment in their partner programs and then investment co-innovation with AWS on things like that MLB use case really puts us in a position to keep on doing these kinds of things within the AWS partner network. And that's one of the biggest things we could possibly be excited about. >> So what does the go to market look like? Is it Lumen goes in, brings in AWS, vice versa? Both? >> Yeah, so a lot of being a member of the AWS partner network you have a lot of flexibility. You know, we have a lot of customers that are, you know, directly working with AWS. We have a lot of customers that would basically look to us to deliver the solution and, you know, and buy it all as a complete turnkey capability. So we have customers that do both. We have customers that, you know, just look to Lumen for the Lumen adjacent services and then pay, you know, pay a separate bill with AWS. So there's a lot of flexibility in the partner network in terms of what Lumen can deliver as a service, Lumen can deliver as a complete solution and then what parts of its with AWS and their platform factors into on an on-demand usage basis. >> And that would all be determined I imagine by what the customer really needs in their environment? >> Yeah, and sort of their own cloud strategy. There's a lot of customers who are all in on AWS and are really trying to driving and innovating and using some of the higher level services inside the AWS platform. And then there are customers who kind of looked at AWS as one of a few cloud platforms that they want to work with. The Lumen network is compatible and connected to all of them and our services teams are, you know, have the ability to go and let customers sort of take on whatever cloud posture they need. But if they are all in on AWS, there's, you know. Not many networks better to be on than Lumen in order to enable that. >> With that said, last question for you is if you had a bumper sticker or a billboard. Lumen's rebranded since we last saw you. What would that tagline or that phrase of impact be on that bumper sticker? >> Yeah, I'd get in a lot of trouble with our marketing team if I didn't give the actual bumper sticker for the company. But we really think of ourselves as the platform for amazing things. The fourth industrial revolution, everything going on in terms of the future of work, in terms of the future of industrial innovation, in terms of all the data that's being gathered. You know, Adam in the keynote this morning really went into a lot of detail on, you know, the depth of data and the mystery of data and how to harness it all and wrangle it all. It requires a lot of networking and a lot of connectivity. You know, for us to acquire, analyze and act on all that data and Lumen's platform for amazing things really helps forge that path forward to that fourth industrial revolution along with great partners like AWS. >> Outstanding. David, it's been such a pleasure having you back on The Cube. We'll get you fitted for that five timers club jacket. >> It sounds good. (Lisa laughs) >> I'll be back. >> Thanks so much for your insights and your time and well done with what you guys are doing at Lumen and AWS. >> Thanks Lisa. >> For David Shacochis, I'm Lisa Martin. You've been watching The Cube hopefully all day. This is our first full day of coverage at AWS re:Invent '22. Stick around. We'll be back tomorrow, and we know we're going to see you then. Have a great night. (upbeat music)

>>Welcome back to Falcon 2022. This is Dave LAN. We get a special presentation segment for you today. This is Walter Wall day one of day two's cube coverage, JC Herrera. Here's my designated cohost. Who's the chief human resource officer at CrowdStrike. Craig Neri is to my left. He's the beneficiary and the beneficiary trustee and ambassador of, of operation Motorsport and former us air force. Thank you for your service. Thank you. And Deel Lauder, who is CEO and co-founder of operation Motorsport. Jen, welcome to the cube. Thanks so much for coming on. Great to be JC set this up for us. Explain your role, explain the corporate giving the whole student connection and the veterans take us through that. >>Yeah, sure. Yeah. So as, as head of HR, one of the, one of the things that we do is, is help manage part of the corporate giving strategy. And, and one of those things that, that we love to do is to also invest in students and in our veterans, it's just a part of our giving program. So this partnership with operation Motorsport is really critical to that. And if you want to dive a little bit deeper into that, we just see that there's a gigantic skills gap in cyber security. And so when we, when there's over millions of open roles around the world and 700,000 of 'em in the us alone, we've gotta go close that gap. And so our next gen scholarships that come out of the, that are giving funds are, are awarded to students who are studying cyber security or AI. And the other side of that is that this partnership with operation motor sport, then we get the opportunity to do some internships with veterans through operation motor sport as well, the >>Number 700,000 now, but pre pandemic. I remember number 3 50, 300 50,000. It's it's doubled now just in the us. Amazing. All right, diesel, tell us about the mission of operation motor sport, like who are the beneficiaries let's get into it. >>So operation motor sport engages ill, injured, wounded service members, those that are medically retiring from the service or disabled veterans, these individuals be taken out of their units. They lose their team identity, their purpose. And, and what we do is those that apply to the program and have a desire to work around shiny objects and fast cars and all the great smells or just car guys or gals that we have some of those as well. They, we, we bring them onto the teams as beneficiaries. So embed them into a race team and give them opportunity to find something new. We're a recovery program. We're not about, you know, finding jobs for these folks. It's about networking and getting outta that, you know, outta the dark places where some of them end up going, because this is a, a huge change for them. And, and in doing so, we now expose them to crowd strike. You know, that's, that's one of the new relationships that, that we have where potentially if they want to, they can pursue new opportunities in areas like cyber security. >>And they're chosen through an application process. You're I'm, I'm inferring. >>Yeah. They just go online and say, you know, through word of mouth or through a friend or through the, the USO and other organizations, they go online and they click the apply here and they fill it out. And our beneficiary trustee, Craig, and calls 'em up and says, Hey, tell me about what you're looking for. And, and we, we pair them up with the race team and Craig, >>You're also a, a beneficiary in addition to being the beneficiary trustee. So explain that, what's your story? >>Right. So I started in this organization as a beneficiary. I was the one that hit the button on the website. And, and then a few minutes later, I got a phone call from then Tiffany Lader, diesel's wife, who's our executive director in the organization. And, and I had that same conversation that I now have with beneficiaries today. I did a, I did a full season with them last year in 2021 as a beneficiary. But at the end I realized how big of an impact that this has with folks. Transition can be very difficult, especially if they're ill injured or wounded. And so I asked if I could help if I could give back, cuz it meant such it had such a big impact on me. I'd like to, to help other veterans as well. Can I >>Ask you what made you hit that button? What made you apply? >>That's a great question. So I was one of the very fortunate ones that had a transition coach. I was in the military for 29 years and had a lot of great connections in the military and, and was connected to a coach, a transition coach and just exploring, you know, what that, what that would look like. And she was the one who said, Hey, why don't we, why don't we explore this passion of Motorsports that you have? My family had been going to, to Motorsports events for, you know, 50 years. And so, so I thought back, all right, this is, I like this idea. Let's, let's pursue this. So a quick Google search and operation Motorsport popped up and I hit the button and >>What programs are available in operation >>Motorsport? Yeah. So diesel kind of outline outlined it. We have basically three different programs. We have the, our immersion program, which is exactly what diesel described, where we take that veteran. And we actually immerse them in a race team. They're doing the, exactly what I was doing, doing tires and fuel and whatever the team needs them to do. We also have our emo sports program where folks who can't do the immersion program, immersion program is takes a pretty big time commitment sometimes. And so they just don't have the capacity or abilities to be able to do those. We could put 'em in our emo sports program where they can do it all virtually we're actually, we have a season going on right now where we, we have veterans racing in that emo sports program. And then we have a, a diversionary therapy program where we have a, a Patriot car corral set up at all these tracks. So they can go out with like-minded individuals and spend the day out there with those folks, other veterans. And we do pit pit tours and, and we get 'em out on the track for a little bit of a, you know, highway speeds, nothing ridiculous. But we, we did doing some highway speeds. So we have a, a few, few different ways for them to be >>Involved. So, so the number three is like a splash in the pond, whereas number ones, the, to like full immersion. Right? Correct. And so what are you doing in the full immersion? What is, what is that like? I mean, you're literally changing tires and, and, and you're >>Yeah. You name it. You're >>In the you're you're you're in that sort of sphere of battle, if you will. Right. >>The beauty of this is we could take somebody's capabilities and skill set and we can match it to whatever that looks like on a race team. Some people come in and have no experience whatsoever. And so we find a team that needs, you know, that has a development opportunities where they could come in, their, their initial job might be to fuel fuel cans or, you know, take tires off the car, wipe the car down, it's little things in the beginning. And then slowly as they start to grow and learn, then they take on bigger roles. But we also have different positions. They can be immersed in, in teams, but they can also be immersed in the series. So we have folks that are doing like tech inspections. We have folks that are doing race control up in the, up in the tower, directing race operations. So we have lots of opportunities, tons of potential. We, we foster those relationships and take the folks, whatever their capabilities and, and abilities are and find the right position for >>'em think, thinking about your personal experience, how, how did it, how would you say it affected you? >>Yeah. To understand that you really have to understand military transition. And I think that's where a lot of the folks that have never experienced this really struggle transition from the military is really difficult. And it's really difficult, even if you're, if you're not broken or you don't have some kind of illness or injury, but you add that factor into at the same time and it could be extremely difficult. And that's why we see like the 22, a day suicide rates with veterans, it's very, very high. Right? And so when you, when you come into this program, it, it is a little bit of a leap of faith, right? This is very new experience for somebody, right? For somebody like myself who had 29 years of experience in the military, very senior person in the military. And now you're at the bottom of the totem pole and trying to figure it all out again, it's, it's a, it's a big jump. But what you realize really quickly is a lot of the things that you experience in the military, you experience in that Pata, same exact things, lots of small team environment, lots of diversity, lots of challenges, lots of roadblocks ups downs, you, you deploy just like you would deploy in, in the military, you bring the cars to a track, you execute a mission, then you pack it up and bring it home. So it's, there's so many similarities in >>The process. I mean, yeah. Diesel hearing Craig explained that there are the similarities sound very clear, but, but, but how did how'd you come up with this idea? It makes sense now in retrospect, but somebody just said, Hey, you know, we have this and we have this and we can marry him or no, not >>Really. And it it's a funny story because I always said, I, I, I don't believe in reinventing the wheel, I believe in stealing the car. And so there's a sister organization that we have in the UK called mission Motorsport. And, and, and they invented this five years before we did. And, and they were successful. And I was, you know, through, through friendships and opportunities, I got to witness it in, in 2016. So went over to, to Wales in the UK and, and watched it in action. And we were there for one race weekend, race of remembrance, which is where we go back to, we'll be going back to November, taking 13 beneficiaries over to race in our own race team for a 12 hour race. And that's a whole other story, but that's where it all started. You know, we, we saw the opportunities and said, wow, they're changing lives through recovery, you know, through motor sport and the similarities and what they were achieving. >>Our initial goal was let's just come back and do this again next year, because we need to bring north American transitioning members over to, to witness this and take part. And then fast forward, we said, why stop there? And we stood up an organization. Now I'll tell you that the organization is not what it was, the, the initial vision. This is not where, I mean, I never imagine that we get to this point this day, especially with the announcement this morning, you know, with the partnership with CrowdStrike, it it's huge for us, but we've evolved into something that was very similar to the initial vision. And that was helping, helping medically transitioning service members with their own personal struggles and recovery. You know, the reason we call it operation Motorsport is because operations have no beginning and no end and our, and what we do makes us so different in that we're not a one and done, we take care of these guys. Even when they become alumni, they, they still come back. They, they come back to volunteer, they come back to check in their friends and, and all kinds. It's really, really neat. And, >>And JC of course, CrowdStrike has an affinity for Motorsports, right? You got the logo on the Mercedes. You you've got the safety car at, this is, I think it's called the safety car. Right. That's it? Yeah. So, okay. So that's an obvious connection, but, but where did the idea germinate for this partnership? >>There's so many things, but first and foremost, I think that the, the values of CrowdStrike and those of operation motors were very much aligned. If you think about it, we, we focus a lot on teamwork. There's no way we do these jobs without the teamwork part. We all love data. These guys are all in the data all the time, trying to figure out, you know, what your adversaries are doing. So there's that kind of component to it. And I'd say the last bit is critical thinking. So when we think about our organizations and how well aligned they are, that was a, that was a no brainer. And into the other side of it, we get the opportunity to do mentorship programs. I mean, I think both ways, hopefully I get invited to the Patriot corral. At some point I can go, go work on a car, but we'll do those both ways or mentorship opportunities. If folks from operation motor sport win a team up with a crowd striker. So >>Do you ever get to drive the car? Or is that just an awful question? No, that's >>A good question. Actually I do from the, from the track to the pits, very slow >>Speeds. They don't let you out in the train. That's right. No, I don't get to go out on the track. Diesel, you ever, you ever drive one >>Of these? I, I, I I've been on, on the track on, on different cars, not in the race cars that, that, that, that are on the team, but something that's unique in the Patriot corral, for instance, because JC brought that up is that when we do these Patriot corrals, part of that program at lunchtime is, is taking the individuals and doing parade laps. And now, you know, a parade lap. Well, what's the fun in that, but you drive highway speeds on a racetrack and your own personal car, following a pace car. That's a pretty cool experience. Cool. >>Yeah, that's very cool guys. Congratulations on this program and all your success and all the, the giving that you do for the community and, and your peers really appreciate you guys coming on the cube and telling me great story. Thanks >>For having, thanks for the opportunity. You're very >>Welcome. All right. Keep it right there. Everybody. Dave ante and Dave Nicholson, we'll be back from Falcon 2022 at the area in Las Vegas. You watching the cube.

>> It's no surprise that 73% of organizations indicate analytics spend will outpace other software investments in the next 12 to 18 months. After all as we know, data is changing the world and the world is changing with it. But is everyone's spending resulting in the same ROI? This is Lisa Martin. Welcome to "theCUBE"'s presentation of democratizing analytics across the enterprise, made possible by Alteryx. An Alteryx commissioned IDC info brief entitled, "Four Ways to Unlock Transformative Business Outcomes from Analytics Investments" found that 93% of organizations are not utilizing the analytics skills of their employees, which is creating a widening analytics gap. On this special "CUBE" presentation, Jason Klein, product marketing director of Alteryx, will join me to share key findings from the new Alteryx commissioned IDC brief and uncover how enterprises can derive more value from their data. In our second segment, we'll hear from Alan Jacobson, chief data and analytics officer at Alteryx. He's going to discuss how organizations across all industries can accelerate their analytic maturity to drive transformational business outcomes. And then in our final segment, Paula Hansen, who is the president and chief revenue officer of Alteryx, and Jacqui Van der Leij Greyling, who is the global head of tax technology at eBay, they'll join me. They're going to share how Alteryx is helping the global eCommerce company innovate with analytics. Let's get the show started. (upbeat music) Jason Klein joins me next, product marketing director at Alteryx. Jason, welcome to the program. >> Hello, nice to be here. >> Excited to talk with you. What can you tell me about the new Alteryx IDC research, which spoke with about 1500 leaders, what nuggets were in there? >> Well, as the business landscape changes over the next 12 to 18 months, we're going to see that analytics is going to be a key component to navigating this change. 73% of the orgs indicated that analytics spend will outpace other software investments. But just putting more money towards technology, it isn't going to solve everything. And this is why everyone's spending is resulting in different ROIs. And one of the reasons for this gap is because 93% of organizations, they're still not fully using the analytics skills of their employees, and this widening analytics gap, it's threatening operational progress by wasting workers' time, harming business productivity and introducing costly errors. So in this research, we developed a framework of enterprise analytics proficiency that helps organizations reap greater benefits from their investments. And we based this framework on the behaviors of organizations that saw big improvements across financial, customer, and employee metrics, and we're able to focus on the behaviors driving higher ROI. >> So the info brief also revealed that nearly all organizations are planning to increase their analytics spend. And it looks like from the info brief that nearly three quarters plan on spending more on analytics than any other software. And can you unpack, what's driving this demand, this need for analytics across organizations? >> Sure, well first there's more data than ever before, the data's changing the world, and the world is changing data. Enterprises across the world, they're accelerating digital transformation to capitalize on new opportunities, to grow revenue, to increase margins and to improve customer experiences. And analytics along with automation and AI is what's making digital transformation possible. They're providing the fuel to new digitally enabled lines of business. >> One of the things that the study also showed was that not all analytics spending is resulting in the same ROI. What are some of the discrepancies that the info brief uncovered with respect to the changes in ROI that organizations are achieving? >> Our research with IDC revealed significant roadblocks across people, processes, and technologies. They're preventing companies from reaping greater benefits from their investments. So for example, on the people side, only one out of five organizations reported a commensurate investment in upskilling for analytics and data literacy as compared to the technology itself. And next, while data is everywhere, most organizations, 63% from our survey, are still not using the full breadth of data types available. Yet data's never been this prolific, it's going to continue to grow, and orgs should be using it to their advantage. And lastly organizations, they need to provide the right analytics tools to help everyone unlock the power of data. >> So they- >> They instead rely on outdated spreadsheet technology. In our survey, nine out of 10 respondents said less than half of their knowledge workers are active users of analytics software beyond spreadsheets. But true analytic transformation can't happen for an organization in a few select pockets or silos. We believe everyone regardless of skill level should be able to participate in the data and analytics process and be driving value. >> Should we retake that, since I started talking over Jason accidentally? >> Yep, absolutely we can do so. We'll just go, yep, we'll go back to Lisa's question. Let's just, let's do the, retake the question and the answer, that'll be able to. >> It'll be not all analytics spending results in the same ROI, what are some of the discrepancies? >> Yes, Lisa, so we'll go from your ISO, just so we get that clean question and answer. >> Okay. >> Thank you for that. On your ISO, we're still speeding, Lisa, so give it a beat in your head and then on you. >> Yet not all analytics spending is resulting in the same ROI. So what are some of the discrepancies that the info brief uncovered with respect to ROI? >> Well, our research with IDC revealed significant roadblocks across people, processes, and technologies, all preventing companies from reaping greater benefits from their investments. So on the people side, for example, only one out of five organizations reported a commensurate investment in upskilling for analytics and data literacy as compared to the technology itself. And next, while data is everywhere, most organizations, 63% in our survey, are still not using the full breadth of data types available. Data has never been this prolific. It's going to continue to grow and orgs should be using it to their advantage. And lastly, organizations, they need to provide the right analytic tools to help everyone unlock the power of data, yet instead they're relying on outdated spreadsheet technology. Nine of 10 survey respondents said that less than half of their knowledge workers are active users of analytics software. True analytics transformation can't happen for an organization in a few select pockets or silos. We believe everyone regardless of skill level should be able to participate in the data and analytics process and drive value. >> So if I look at this holistically, then what would you say organizations need to do to make sure that they're really deriving value from their investments in analytics? >> Yeah, sure. So overall, the enterprises that derive more value from their data and analytics and achieve more ROI, they invested more aggressively in the four dimensions of enterprise analytics proficiency. So they've invested in the comprehensiveness of analytics across all data sources and data types, meaning they're applying analytics to everything. They've invested in the flexibility of analytics across deployment scenarios and departments, meaning they're putting analytics everywhere. They've invested in the ubiquity of analytics and insights for every skill level, meaning they're making analytics for everyone. And they've invested in the usability of analytics software, meaning they're prioritizing easy technology to accelerate analytics democratization. >> So very strategic investments. Did the survey uncover any specific areas where most companies are falling short, like any black holes that organizations need to be aware of at the outset? >> It did, it did. So organizations, they need to build a data-centric culture. And this begins with people. But what the survey told us is that the people aspect of analytics is the most heavily skewed towards low proficiency. In order to maximize ROI, organizations need to make sure everyone in the organization has access to the data and analytics technology they need. And then the organizations also have to align their investments with upskilling in data literacy to enjoy that higher ROI. Companies who did so experience higher ROI than companies who underinvested in analytics literacy. So among the high ROI achievers, 78% have a good or great alignment between analytics investment and workforce upskilling compared to only 64% among those without positive ROI. And as more orgs adopt cloud data warehouses or cloud data lakes, in order to manage the massively increasing workloads- Can I start that one over. >> Sure. >> Can I redo this one? >> Yeah. >> Of course, stand by. >> Tongue tied. >> Yep, no worries. >> One second. >> If we could do the same, Lisa, just have a clean break, we'll go your question. >> Yep, yeah. >> On you Lisa. Just give that a count and whenever you're ready. Here, I'm going to give us a little break. On you Lisa. >> So are there any specific areas that the survey uncovered where most companies are falling short? Like any black holes organizations need to be aware of from the outset? >> It did. You need to build a data-centric culture and this begins with people, but we found that the people aspect of analytics is most heavily skewed towards low proficiency. In order to maximize ROI organizations need to make sure everyone has access to the data and analytics technology they need. Organizations that align their analytics investments with upskilling enjoy higher ROI than orgs that are less aligned. For example, among the high ROI achievers in our survey, 78% had good or great alignment between analytics investments and workforce upskilling, compared to only 64% among those without positive ROI. And as more enterprises adopt cloud data warehouses or cloud data lakes to manage increasingly massive data sets, analytics needs to exist everywhere, especially for those cloud environments. And what we found is organizations that use more data types and more data sources generate higher ROI from their analytics investments. Among those with improved customer metrics, 90% were good or great at utilizing all data sources, compared to only 67% among the ROI laggards. >> So interesting that you mentioned people, I'm glad that you mentioned people. Data scientists, everybody talks about data scientists. They're in high demand, we know that, but there aren't enough to meet the needs of all enterprises. So given that discrepancy, how can organizations fill the gap and really maximize the investments that they're making in analytics? >> Right, so analytics democratization, it's no longer optional, but it doesn't have to be complex. So we at Alteryx, we're democratizing analytics by empowering every organization to upskill every worker into a data worker. And the data from this survey shows this is the optimal approach. Organizations with a higher percentage of knowledge workers who are actively using analytics software enjoy higher returns from their analytics investment than orgs still stuck on spreadsheets. Among those with improved financial metrics, AKA the high ROI achievers, nearly 70% say that at least a quarter of their knowledge workers are using analytics software other than spreadsheets compared to only 56% in the low ROI group. Also among the high ROI performers, 63% said data and analytic workers collaborate well or extremely well compared to only 51% in the low ROI group. The data from the survey shows that supporting more business domains with analytics and providing cross-functional analytics correlates with higher ROI. So to maximize ROI, orgs should be transitioning workers from spreadsheets to analytics software. They should be letting them collaborate effectively and letting them do so cross-functionally. >> Yeah, that cross-functional collaboration is essential for anyone in any organization and in any discipline. Another key thing that jumped out from the survey was around shadow IT. The business side is using more data science tools than the IT side. And it's expected to spend more on analytics than other IT. What risks does this present to the overall organization, if IT and the lines of business guys and gals aren't really aligned? >> Well, there needs to be better collaboration and alignment between IT and the line of business. The data from the survey, however, shows that business managers, they're expected to spend more on analytics and use more analytics tools than IT is aware of. And this isn't because the lines of business have recognized the value of analytics and plan to invest accordingly, but a lack of alignment between IT and business. This will negatively impact governance, which ultimately impedes democratization and hence ROI. >> So Jason, where can organizations that are maybe at the outset of their analytics journey, or maybe they're in environments where there's multiple analytics tools across shadow IT, where can they go to Alteryx to learn more about how they can really simplify, streamline, and dial up the value on their investment? >> Well, they can learn more on our website. I also encourage them to explore the Alteryx community, which has lots of best practices, not just in terms of how you do the analytics, but how you stand up in Alteryx environment, but also to take a look at your analytics stack and prioritize technologies that can snap to and enhance your organization's governance posture. It doesn't have to change it, but it should be able to align to and enhance it. >> And of course, as you mentioned, it's about people, process, and technologies. Jason, thank you so much for joining me today, unpacking the IDC info brief and the great nuggets in there. Lots that organizations can learn and really become empowered to maximize their analytics investments. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you, it's been a pleasure. >> In a moment, Alan Jacobson, who's the chief data and analytics officer at Alteryx is going to join me. He's going to be here to talk about how organizations across all industries can accelerate their analytic maturity to drive transformational business outcomes. You're watching "theCUBE", the leader in tech enterprise coverage. >> Somehow many have come to believe that data analytics is for the few, for the scientists, the PhDs, the MBAs. Well, it is for them, but that's not all. You don't have to have an advanced degree to do amazing things with data. You don't even have to be a numbers person. You can be just about anything. A titan of industry or a future titan of industry. You could be working to change the world, your neighborhood, or the course of your business. You can be saving lives or just looking to save a little time. The power of data analytics shouldn't be limited to certain job titles or industries or organizations because when more people are doing more things with data, more incredible things happen. Analytics makes us smarter and faster and better at what we do. It's practically a superpower. That's why we believe analytics is for everyone, and everything, and should be everywhere. That's why we believe in analytics for all. (upbeat music) >> Hey, everyone. Welcome back to "Accelerating Analytics Maturity". I'm your host, Lisa Martin. Alan Jacobson joins me next. The chief of data and analytics officer at Alteryx. Alan, it's great to have you on the program. >> Thanks, Lisa. >> So Alan, as we know, everyone knows that being data driven is very important. It's a household term these days, but 93% of organizations are not utilizing the analytics skills of their employees, which is creating a widening analytics gap. What's your advice, your recommendations for organizations who are just starting out with analytics? >> You're spot on, many organizations really aren't leveraging the full capability of their knowledge workers. And really the first step is probably assessing where you are on the journey, whether that's you personally, or your organization as a whole. We just launched an assessment tool on our website that we built with the International Institute of Analytics, that in a very short period of time, in about 15 minutes, you can go on and answer some questions and understand where you sit versus your peer set versus competitors and kind of where you are on the journey. >> So when people talk about data analytics, they often think, ah, this is for data science experts like people like you. So why should people in the lines of business like the finance folks, the marketing folks, why should they learn analytics? >> So domain experts are really in the best position. They know where the gold is buried in their companies. They know where the inefficiencies are. And it is so much easier and faster to teach a domain expert a bit about how to automate a process or how to use analytics than it is to take a data scientist and try to teach them to have the knowledge of a 20 year accounting professional or a logistics expert of your company. Much harder to do that. And really, if you think about it, the world has changed dramatically in a very short period of time. If you were a marketing professional 30 years ago, you likely didn't need to know anything about the internet, but today, do you know what you would call that marketing professional if they didn't know anything about the internet, probably unemployed or retired. And so knowledge workers are having to learn more and more skills to really keep up with their professions. And analytics is really no exception. Pretty much in every profession, people are needing to learn analytics to stay current and be capable for their companies. And companies need people who can do that. >> Absolutely, it seems like it's table stakes these days. Let's look at different industries now. Are there differences in how you see analytics in automation being employed in different industries? I know Alteryx is being used across a lot of different types of organizations from government to retail. I also see you're now with some of the leading sports teams. Any differences in industries? >> Yeah, there's an incredible actually commonality between the domains industry to industry. So if you look at what an HR professional is doing, maybe attrition analysis, it's probably quite similar, whether they're in oil and gas or in a high tech software company. And so really the similarities are much larger than you might think. And even on the sports front, we see many of the analytics that sports teams perform are very similar. So McLaren is one of the great partners that we work with and they use Alteryx across many areas of their business from finance to production, extreme sports, logistics, wind tunnel engineering, the marketing team analyzes social media data, all using Alteryx, and if I take as an example, the finance team, the finance team is trying to optimize the budget to make sure that they can hit the very stringent targets that F1 Sports has, and I don't see a ton of difference between the optimization that they're doing to hit their budget numbers and what I see Fortune 500 finance departments doing to optimize their budget, and so really the commonality is very high, even across industries. >> I bet every Fortune 500 or even every company would love to be compared to the same department within McLaren F1. Just to know that wow, what they're doing is so incredibly important as is what we're doing. >> So talk- >> Absolutely. >> About lessons learned, what lessons can business leaders take from those organizations like McLaren, who are the most analytically mature? >> Probably first and foremost, is that the ROI with analytics and automation is incredibly high. Companies are having a ton of success. It's becoming an existential threat to some degree, if your company isn't going on this journey and your competition is, it can be a huge problem. IDC just did a recent study about how companies are unlocking the ROI using analytics. And the data was really clear, organizations that have a higher percentage of their workforce using analytics are enjoying a much higher return from their analytic investment, and so it's not about hiring two double PhD statisticians from Oxford. It really is how widely you can bring your workforce on this journey, can they all get 10% more capable? And that's having incredible results at businesses all over the world. An another key finding that they had is that the majority of them said that when they had many folks using analytics, they were going on the journey faster than companies that didn't. And so picking technologies that'll help everyone do this and do this fast and do it easily. Having an approachable piece of software that everyone can use is really a key. >> So faster, able to move faster, higher ROI. I also imagine analytics across the organization is a big competitive advantage for organizations in any industry. >> Absolutely the IDC, or not the IDC, the International Institute of Analytics showed huge correlation between companies that were more analytically mature versus ones that were not. They showed correlation to growth of the company, they showed correlation to revenue and they showed correlation to shareholder values. So across really all of the key measures of business, the more analytically mature companies simply outperformed their competition. >> And that's key these days, is to be able to outperform your competition. You know, one of the things that we hear so often, Alan, is people talking about democratizing data and analytics. You talked about the line of business workers, but I got to ask you, is it really that easy for the line of business workers who aren't trained in data science to be able to jump in, look at data, uncover and extract business insights to make decisions? >> So in many ways, it really is that easy. I have a 14 and 16 year old kid. Both of them have learned Alteryx, they're Alteryx certified and it was quite easy. It took 'em about 20 hours and they were off to the races, but there can be some hard parts. The hard parts have more to do with change management. I mean, if you're an accountant that's been doing the best accounting work in your company for the last 20 years, and all you happen to know is a spreadsheet for those 20 years, are you ready to learn some new skills? And I would suggest you probably need to, if you want to keep up with your profession. The big four accounting firms have trained over a hundred thousand people in Alteryx. Just one firm has trained over a hundred thousand. You can't be an accountant or an auditor at some of these places without knowing Alteryx. And so the hard part, really in the end, isn't the technology and learning analytics and data science, the harder part is this change management, change is hard. I should probably eat better and exercise more, but it's hard to always do that. And so companies are finding that that's the hard part. They need to help people go on the journey, help people with the change management to help them become the digitally enabled accountant of the future, the logistics professional that is E enabled, that's the challenge. >> That's a huge challenge. Cultural shift is a challenge, as you said, change management. How do you advise customers if you might be talking with someone who might be early in their analytics journey, but really need to get up to speed and mature to be competitive, how do you guide them or give them recommendations on being able to facilitate that change management? >> Yeah, that's a great question. So people entering into the workforce today, many of them are starting to have these skills. Alteryx is used in over 800 universities around the globe to teach finance and to teach marketing and to teach logistics. And so some of this is happening naturally as new workers are entering the workforce, but for all of those who are already in the workforce, have already started their careers, learning in place becomes really important. And so we work with companies to put on programmatic approaches to help their workers do this. And so it's, again, not simply putting a box of tools in the corner and saying free, take one. We put on hackathons and analytic days, and it can be great fun. We have a great time with many of the customers that we work with, helping them do this, helping them go on the journey, and the ROI, as I said, is fantastic. And not only does it sometimes affect the bottom line, it can really make societal changes. We've seen companies have breakthroughs that have really made great impact to society as a whole. >> Isn't that so fantastic, to see the difference that that can make. It sounds like you guys are doing a great job of democratizing access to Alteryx to everybody. We talked about the line of business folks and the incredible importance of enabling them and the ROI, the speed, the competitive advantage. Can you share some specific examples that you think of Alteryx customers that really show data breakthroughs by the lines of business using the technology? >> Yeah, absolutely, so many to choose from. I'll give you two examples quickly. One is Armor Express. They manufacture life saving equipment, defensive equipments, like armor plated vests, and they were needing to optimize their supply chain, like many companies through the pandemic. We see how important the supply chain is. And so adjusting supply to match demand is really vital. And so they've used Alteryx to model some of their supply and demand signals and built a predictive model to optimize the supply chain. And it certainly helped out from a dollar standpoint. They cut over a half a million dollars of inventory in the first year, but more importantly, by matching that demand and supply signal, you're able to better meet customer demand. And so when people have orders and are looking to pick up a vest, they don't want to wait. And it becomes really important to get that right. Another great example is British Telecom. They're a company that services the public sector. They have very strict reporting regulations that they have to meet and they had, and this is crazy to think about, over 140 legacy spreadsheet models that they had to run to comply with these regulatory processes and report, and obviously running 140 legacy models that had to be done in a certain order and length, incredibly challenging. It took them over four weeks each time that they had to go through that process. And so to save time and have more efficiency in doing that, they trained 50 employees over just a two week period to start using Alteryx and learn Alteryx. And they implemented an all new reporting process that saw a 75% reduction in the number of man hours it took to run in a 60% run time performance. And so, again, a huge improvement. I can imagine it probably had better quality as well, because now that it was automated, you don't have people copying and pasting data into a spreadsheet. And that was just one project that this group of folks were able to accomplish that had huge ROI, but now those people are moving on and automating other processes and performing analytics in other areas. So you can imagine the impact by the end of the year that they will have on their business, potentially millions upon millions of dollars. And this is what we see again and again, company after company, government agency after government agency, is how analytics are really transforming the way work is being done. >> That was the word that came to mind when you were describing the all three customer examples, transformation, this is transformative. The ability to leverage Alteryx, to truly democratize data and analytics, give access to the lines of business is transformative for every organization. And also the business outcome you mentioned, those are substantial metrics based business outcomes. So the ROI in leveraging a technology like Alteryx seems to be right there, sitting in front of you. >> That's right, and to be honest, it's not only important for these businesses. It's important for the knowledge workers themselves. I mean, we hear it from people that they discover Alteryx, they automate a process, they finally get to get home for dinner with their families, which is fantastic, but it leads to new career paths. And so knowledge workers that have these added skills have so much larger opportunity. And I think it's great when the needs of businesses to become more analytic and automate processes actually matches the needs of the employees, and they too want to learn these skills and become more advanced in their capabilities. >> Huge value there for the business, for the employees themselves to expand their skillset, to really open up so many opportunities for not only the business to meet the demands of the demanding customer, but the employees to be able to really have that breadth and depth in their field of service. Great opportunities there, Alan. Is there anywhere that you want to point the audience to go to learn more about how they can get started? >> Yeah, so one of the things that we're really excited about is how fast and easy it is to learn these tools. So any of the listeners who want to experience Alteryx, they can go to the website, there's a free download on the website. You can take our analytic maturity assessment, as we talked about at the beginning, and see where you are on the journey and just reach out. We'd love to work with you and your organization to see how we can help you accelerate your journey on analytics and automation. >> Alan, it was a pleasure talking to you about democratizing data and analytics, the power in it for organizations across every industry. We appreciate your insights and your time. >> Thank you so much. >> In a moment, Paula Hansen, who is the president and chief revenue officer of Alteryx, and Jacqui Van der Leij Greyling, who's the global head of tax technology at eBay, will join me. You're watching "theCUBE", the leader in high tech enterprise coverage. >> 1200 hours of wind tunnel testing, 30 million race simulations, 2.4 second pit stops. >> Make that 2.3. >> Sector times out the wazoo. >> Way too much of this. >> Velocities, pressures, temperatures, 80,000 components generating 11.8 billion data points and one analytics platform to make sense of it all. When McLaren needs to turn complex data into winning insights, they turn to Alteryx. Alteryx, analytics automation. (upbeat music) >> Hey, everyone, welcome back to the program. Lisa Martin here, I've got two guests joining me. Please welcome back to "theCUBE" Paula Hansen, the chief revenue officer and president at Alteryx, and Jacqui Van der Leij Greyling joins us as well, the global head of tax technology at eBay. They're going to share with you how Alteryx is helping eBay innovate with analytics. Ladies, welcome, it's great to have you both on the program. >> Thank you, Lisa, it's great to be here. >> Yeah, Paula, we're going to start with you. In this program, we've heard from Jason Klein, we've heard from Alan Jacobson. They talked about the need to democratize analytics across any organization to really drive innovation. With analytics, as they talked about, at the forefront of software investments, how's Alteryx helping its customers to develop roadmaps for success with analytics? >> Well, thank you, Lisa. It absolutely is about our customers' success. And we partner really closely with our customers to develop a holistic approach to their analytics success. And it starts of course with our innovative technology and platform, but ultimately we help our customers to create a culture of data literacy and analytics from the top of the organization, starting with the C-suite. And we partner with our customers to build their roadmaps for scaling that culture of analytics, through things like enablement programs, skills assessments, hackathons, setting up centers of excellence to help their organization scale and drive governance of this analytics capability across the enterprise. So at the end of the day, it's really about helping our customers to move up their analytics maturity curve with proven technologies and best practices, so they can make better business decisions and compete in their respective industries. >> Excellent, sounds like a very strategic program, we're going to unpack that. Jacqui, let's bring you into the conversation. Speaking of analytics maturity, one of the things that we talked about in this event is the IDC report that showed that 93% of organizations are not utilizing the analytics skills of their employees, but then there's eBay. How Jacqui did eBay become one of the 7% of organizations who's really maturing and how are you using analytics across the organization at eBay? >> So I think the main thing for us is when we started out was is that, our, especially in finance, they became spreadsheet professionals instead of the things that we really want our employees to add value to. And we realized we had to address that. And we also knew we couldn't wait for all our data to be centralized until we actually start using the data or start automating and being more effective. So ultimately we really started very, very actively embedding analytics in our people and our data and our processes. >> Starting with people is really critical. Jacqui, continuing with you, what were some of the roadblocks to analytics adoption that you faced and how did you overcome them? >> So I think eBay is a very data driven company. We have a lot of data. I think we are 27 years around this year, so we have the data, but it is everywhere. And how do you use that data? How do you use it efficiently? How do you get to the data? And I believe that that is definitely one of our biggest roadblocks when we started out and just finding those data sources and finding ways to connect to them to move forward. The other thing is that people were experiencing a lot of frustration. I mentioned before about the spreadsheet professionals. And there was no, we were not independent. You couldn't move forward, you would've put it on somebody else's roadmap to get the data and to get the information if you want it. So really finding something that everybody could access analytics or access data. And finally we have to realize is that this is uncharted territory. This is not exactly something that everybody is used to working with every day. So how do you find something that is easy, and that is not so daunting on somebody who's brand new to the field? And I would call those out as your major roadblocks, because you always have, not always, but most of the times you have support from the top, and in our case we have, but at the end of the day, it's our people that need to actually really embrace it, and making that accessible for them, I would say is definitely not per se, a roadblock, but basically a block you want to be able to move. >> It's really all about putting people first. Question for both of you, and Paula we'll start with you, and then Jacqui we'll go to you. I think the message in this program that the audience is watching with us is very clear. Analytics is for everyone, should be for everyone. Let's talk now about how both of your organizations are empowering people, those in the organization that may not have technical expertise to be able to leverage data, so that they can actually be data driven. Paula. >> Yes, well, we leverage our platform across all of our business functions here at Alteryx. And just like Jacqui explained, at eBay finance is probably one of the best examples of how we leverage our own platform to improve our business performance. So just like Jacqui mentioned, we have this huge amount of data flowing through our enterprise and the opportunity to leverage that into insights and analytics is really endless. So our CFO Kevin Rubin has been a key sponsor for using our own technology. We use Alteryx for forecasting all of our key performance metrics, for business planning, across our audit function, to help with compliance and regulatory requirements, tax, and even to close our books at the end of each quarter. So it's really going to remain across our business. And at the end of the day, it comes to how do you train users? How do you engage users to lean into this analytic opportunity to discover use cases? And so one of the other things that we've seen many companies do is to gamify that process, to build a game that brings users into the experience for training and to work with each other, to problem solve and along the way, maybe earn badges depending on the capabilities and trainings that they take. And just have a little healthy competition as an employee base around who can become more sophisticated in their analytic capability. So I think there's a lot of different ways to do it. And as Jacqui mentioned, it's really about ensuring that people feel comfortable, that they feel supported, that they have access to the training that they need, and ultimately that they are given both the skills and the confidence to be able to be a part of this great opportunity of analytics. >> That confidence is key. Jacqui, talk about some of the ways that you're empowering folks without that technical expertise to really be data driven. >> Yeah, I think it means to what Paula has said in terms of getting people excited about it, but it's also understanding that this is a journey and everybody is at a different place in their journey. You have folks that's already really advanced who has done this every day. And then you have really some folks that this is brand new or maybe somewhere in between. And it's about how you get everybody in their different phases to get to the initial destination. I say initial, because I believe a journey is never really complete. What we have done is that we decided to invest, and built a proof of concept, and we got our CFO to sponsor a hackathon. We opened it up to everybody in finance in the middle of the pandemic. So everybody was on Zoom and we told people, listen, we're going to teach you this tool, it's super easy, and let's just see what you can do. We ended up having 70 entries. We had only three weeks. So and these are people that do not have a background. They are not engineers, they're not data scientists. And we ended up with a 25,000 hour savings at the end of that hackathon from the 70 entries with people that have never, ever done anything like this before. And there you have the result. And then it just went from there. People had a proof of concept. They knew that it worked and they overcame the initial barrier of change. And that's where we are seeing things really, really picking up now. >> That's fantastic. And the business outcome that you mentioned there, the business impact is massive, helping folks get that confidence to be able to overcome sometimes the cultural barriers is key here. I think another thing that this program has really highlighted is there is a clear demand for data literacy in the job market, regardless of organization. Can each of you share more about how you're empowering the next generation of data workers? Paula, we'll start with you. >> Absolutely, and Jacqui says it so well, which is that it really is a journey that organizations are on and we as people in society are on in terms of upskilling our capabilities. So one of the things that we're doing here at Alteryx to help address this skillset gap on a global level is through a program that we call SparkED, which is essentially a no-cost analytics education program that we take to universities and colleges globally to help build the next generation of data workers. When we talk to our customers like eBay and many others, they say that it's difficult to find the skills that they want when they're hiring people into the job market. And so this program's really developed just to do just that, to close that gap and to work hand in hand with students and educators to improve data literacy for the next generation. So we're just getting started with SparkED. We started last May, but we currently have over 850 educational institutions globally engaged across 47 countries, and we're going to continue to invest here because there's so much opportunity for people, for society and for enterprises, when we close the gap and empower more people with the necessary analytics skills to solve all the problems that data can help solve. >> So SparkED has made a really big impact in such a short time period. It's going to be fun to watch the progress of that. Jacqui, let's go over to you now. Talk about some of the things that eBay is doing to empower the next generation of data workers. >> So we basically wanted to make sure that we kept that momentum from the hackathon, that we don't lose that excitement. So we just launched the program called eBay Masterminds. And what it basically is, is it's an inclusive innovation in each other, where we firmly believe that innovation is for upskilling for all analytics roles. So it doesn't matter your background, doesn't matter which function you are in, come and participate in in this where we really focus on innovation, introducing new technologies and upskilling our people. We are, apart from that, we also said, well, we shouldn't just keep it to inside eBay. We have to share this innovation with the community. So we are actually working on developing an analytics high school program, which we hope to pilot by the end of this year, where we will actually have high schoolers come in and teach them data essentials, the soft skills around analytics, but also how to use Alteryx. And we're working with, actually, we're working with SparkED and they're helping us develop that program. And we really hope that at, say, by the end of the year, we have a pilot and then also next year, we want to roll it out in multiple locations in multiple countries and really, really focus on that whole concept of analytics for all. >> Analytics for all, sounds like Alteryx and eBay have a great synergistic relationship there that is jointly aimed at especially going down the stuff and getting people when they're younger interested, and understanding how they can be empowered with data across any industry. Paula, let's go back to you, you were recently on "theCUBE"'s Supercloud event just a couple of weeks ago. And you talked about the challenges the companies are facing as they're navigating what is by default a multi-cloud world. How does the Alteryx Analytics Cloud platform enable CIOs to democratize analytics across their organization? >> Yes, business leaders and CIOs across all industries are realizing that there just aren't enough data scientists in the world to be able to make sense of the massive amounts of data that are flowing through organizations. Last I checked, there was 2 million data scientists in the world, so that's woefully underrepresented in terms of the opportunity for people to be a part of the analytics solution. So what we're seeing now with CIOs, with business leaders is that they're integrating data analysis and the skillset of data analysis into virtually every job function, and that is what we think of when we think of analytics for all. And so our mission with Alteryx Analytics Cloud is to empower all of those people in every job function, regardless of their skillset, as Jacqui pointed out from people that are just getting started all the way to the most sophisticated of technical users. Every worker across that spectrum can have a meaningful role in the opportunity to unlock the potential of the data for their company and their organizations. So that's our goal with Alteryx Analytics Cloud, and it operates in a multi cloud world and really helps across all sizes of data sets to blend, cleanse, shape, analyze, and report out so that we can break down data silos across the enterprise and help drive real business outcomes as a result of unlocking the potential of data. >> As well as really lessening that skill gap. As you were saying, there's only 2 million data scientists. You don't need to be a data scientist, that's the beauty of what Alteryx is enabling and eBay is a great example of that. Jacqui, let's go ahead and wrap things with you. You talked a great deal about the analytics maturity that you have fostered at eBay. It obviously has the right culture to adapt to that. Can you talk a little bit and take us out here in terms of where Alteryx fits in as that analytics maturity journey continues and what are some of the things that you are most excited about as analytics truly gets democratized across eBay? >> When we're starting up and getting excited about things when it comes to analytics, I can go on all day, but I'll keep it short and sweet for you. I do think we are on the top of the pool of data scientists. And I really feel that that is your next step, for us anyways, is that how do we get folks to not see data scientists as this big thing, like a rocket scientist, it's something completely different. And it's something that is in everybody in a certain extent. So again, partnering with Alteryx who just released the AI ML solution, allowing folks to not have a data scientist program, but actually build models and be able to solve problems that way. So we have engaged with Alteryx and we purchased the licenses, quite a few. And right now through our Masterminds program, we're actually running a four month program for all skill levels, teaching them AI ML and machine learning and how they can build their own models. We are really excited about that. We have over 50 participants without a background from all over the organization. We have members from our customer services. We have even some of our engineers are actually participating in the program. We just kicked it off. And I really believe that that is our next step. I want to give you a quick example of the beauty of this is where we actually just allow people to go out and think about ideas and come up with things. And one of the people in our team who doesn't have a data scientist background at all, was able to develop a solution where there is a checkout feedback functionality on the eBay side where sellers or buyers can verbatim add information. And she built a model to be able to determine what relates to tax specific, what is the type of problem, and even predict how that problem can be solved before we as a human even step in, and now instead of us or somebody going to verbatim and try to figure out what's going on there, we can focus on fixing the error versus actually just reading through things and not adding any value, and it's a beautiful tool and I was very impressed when I saw the demo and definitely developing that sort of thing. >> That sounds fantastic. And I think just the one word that keeps coming to mind, and we've said this a number of times in the program today is empowerment. What you're actually really doing to truly empower people across the organization with varying degrees of skill level, going down to the high school level, really exciting. We'll have to stay tuned to see what some of the great things are that come from this continued partnership. Ladies, I want to thank you so much for joining me on the program today and talking about how Alteryx and eBay are really partnering together to democratize analytics and to facilitate its maturity. It's been great talking to you. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Thank you so much. (cheerful electronic music) >> As you heard over the course of our program, organizations where more people are using analytics who have deeper capabilities in each of the four Es, that's everyone, everything, everywhere, and easy analytics, those organizations achieve more ROI from their respective investments in analytics and automation than those who don't. We also heard a great story from eBay, great example of an enterprise that is truly democratizing analytics across its organization. It's enabling and empowering line of business users to use analytics, not only focused on key aspects of their job, but develop new skills rather than doing the same repetitive tasks. We want to thank you so much for watching the program today. Remember you can find all of the content on thecube.net. You can find all of the news from today on siliconangle.com and of course alteryx.com. We also want to thank Alteryx for making this program possible and for sponsoring "theCUBE". For all of my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. We want to thank you for watching and bye for now. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome, everyone, to theCUBE's presentation of the AWS Startup Showcase. And this episode two of season two is called "Data as Code," the ongoing series covering exciting new startups in the AWS ecosystem. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. Today, we're excited to be joined by Jon Dahl, who is the co-founder and CEO of MUX, a hot new startup building cloud video for developers, video with data. John, great to see you. We did an interview on theCube Conversation. Went into big detail of the awesomeness of your company and the trend that you're on. Welcome back. >> Thank you, glad to be here. >> So, video is everywhere, and video for pivot to video, you hear all these kind of terms in the industry, but now more than ever, video is everywhere and people are building with it, and it's becoming part of the developer experience in applications. So people have to stand up video into their code fast, and data is code, video is data. So you guys are specializing this. Take us through that dynamic. >> Yeah, so video clearly is a growing part of how people are building applications. We see a lot of trends of categories that did not involve video in the past making a major move towards video. I think what Peloton did five years ago to the world of fitness, that was not really a big category. Now video fitness is a huge thing. Video in education, video in business settings, video in a lot of places. I think Marc Andreessen famously said, "Software is eating the world" as a pretty, pretty good indicator of what the internet is actually doing to the economy. I think there's a lot of ways in which video right now is eating software. So categories that we're not video first are becoming video first. And that's what we help with. >> It's not obvious to like most software developers when they think about video, video industries, it's industry shows around video, NAB, others. People know, the video folks know what's going on in video, but when you start to bring it mainstream, it becomes an expectation in the apps. And it's not that easy, it's almost a provision video is hard for a developer 'cause you got to know the full, I guess, stack of video. That's like low level and then kind of just basic high level, just play something. So, in between, this is a media stack kind of dynamic. Can you talk about how hard it is to build video for developers? How is it going to become easier? >> Yeah, I mean, I've lived this story for too long, maybe 13 years now, when I first build my first video stack. And, you know, I'll sometimes say, I think it's kind of a miracle every time a video plays on the internet because the internet is not a medium designed for video. It's been hijacked by video, video is 70% of internet traffic today in an unreliable, sort of untrusted network space, which is totally different than how television used to work or cable or things like that. So yeah, so video is hard because there's so many problems from top to bottom that need to be solved to make video work. So you have to worry about video compression encoding, which is a complicated topic in itself. You have to worry about delivering video around the world at scale, delivering it at low cost, at low latency, with good performance, you have to worry about devices and how every device, Android, iOS, web, TVs, every device handles video differently and so there's a lot of work there. And at the end of the day, these are kind of unofficial standards that everyone's using. So one of the miracles is like, if you want to watch a video, somehow you have to get like Apple and Google to agree on things, which is not always easy. And so there's just so many layers of complexity that are behind it. I think one way to think about it is, if you want to put an image online, you just put an image online. And if you want to put video online, you build complex software, and that's the exact problem that MUX was started to help solve. >> It's interesting you guys have almost creating a whole new category around video infrastructure. And as you look at, you mentioned stack, video stack. I'm looking at a market where the notion of a media stack is developing, and you're seeing these verticals having similar dynamics with cloud. And if you go back to the early days of cloud computing, what was the developer experience or entrepreneurial experience, you had to actually do a lot of stuff before you even do anything, provision a server. And this has all kind of been covered in great detail in the glory of Agile and whatnot. It was expensive, and you had that actually engineer before you could even stand up any code. Now you got video that same thing's happening. So the developers have two choices, go do a bunch of stuff complex, building their own infrastructure, which is like building a data center, or lean in on MUX and say, "Hey, thank you for doing all that years of experience building out the stacks to take that hard part away," but using APIs that they have. This is a developer focused problem that you guys are solving. >> Yeah, that's right. my last company was a company called Zencoder, that was an API to video encoding. So it was kind of an API to a small part of what MUX does today, just one of those problems. And I think the thing that we got right at Zencoder, that we're doing again here at MUX, was building four developers first. So our number one persona is a software developer. Not necessarily a video expert, just we think any developer should be able to build with video. It shouldn't be like, yeah, got to go be a specialist to use this technology, because it should become just of the internet. Video should just be something that any developer can work with. So yeah, so we build for developers first, which means we spend a lot of time thinking about API design, we spend a lot of time thinking about documentation, transparent pricing, the right features, great support and all those kind of things that tend to be characteristics of good developer companies. >> Tell me about the pipe lining of the products. I'm a developer, I work for a company, my boss is putting pressure on me. We need video, we have all this library, it's all stacking up. We hired some people, they left. Where's the video, we've stored it somewhere. I mean, it's a nightmare, right? So I'm like, okay, I'm cloud native, I got an API. I need to get my product to market fast, 'cause that is what Agile developers want. So how do you describe that acceleration for time to market? You mentioned you guys are API first, video first. How do these customers get their product into the market as fast as possible? >> Yeah, well, I mean the first thing we do is we put what we think is probably on average, three to four months of hard engineering work behind a single API call. So if you want to build a video platform, we tell our customers like, "Hey, you can do that." You probably need a team, you probably need video experts on your team so hire them or train them. And then it takes several months just to kind of to get video flowing. One API call at MUX gives you on-demand video or live video that works at scale, works around the world with good performance, good reliability, a rich feature set. So maybe just a couple specific examples, we worked with Robin Hood a few years ago to bring video into their newsfeed, which was hugely successful for them. And they went from talking to us for the first time to a big launch in, I think it was three months, but the actual code time there was like really short. I want to say they had like a proof of concept up and running in a couple days, and then the full launch in three months. Another customer of ours, Bandcamp, I think switched from a legacy provider to MUX in two weeks in band. So one of the big advantages of going a little bit higher in the abstraction layer than just building it yourself is that time to market. >> Talk about this notion of video pipeline 'cause I know I've heard people I talk about, "Hey, I just want to get my product out there. I don't want to get stuck in the weeds on video pipeline." What does that mean for folks that aren't understanding the nuances of video? >> Yeah, I mean, it's all the steps that it takes to publish video. So from ingesting the video, if it's live video from making sure that you have secure, reliable ingest of that live feed potentially around the world to the transcoding, which is we talked a little bit about, but it is a, you know, on its own is a massively complicated problem. And doing that, well, doing that well is hard. Part of the reason it's hard is you really have to know where you're publishing too. And you might want to transcode video differently for different devices, for different types of content. You know, the pipeline typically would also include all of the workflow items you want to do with the video. You want to thumbnail a video, you want clip, create clips of the video, maybe you want to restream the video to Facebook or Twitter or a social platform. You want to archive the video, you want it to be available for downloads after an event. If it's just a, if it's a VOD upload, if it's not live in the first place. You have all those things and you might want to do simulated live with the video. You might want to actually record something and then play it back as a live stream. So, the pipeline Ty typically refers to everything from the ingest of the video to the time that the bits are delivered to a device. >> You know, I hear a lot of people talking about video these days, whether it's events, training, just want peer to peer experience, video is powerful, but customers want to own their own platform, right? They want to have the infrastructure as a service. They kind of want platform as a service, this is cloud talk now, but they want to have their own capability to build it out. This allows them to get what they want. And so you see this, like, is it SaaS? Is it platform? People want customization? So kind of the general purpose video solution does it really exist or doesn't? I mean, 'cause this is the question. Can I just buy software and work or is it going to be customized always? How do you see that? Because this becomes a huge discussion point. Is it a SaaS product or someone's going to make a SaaS product? >> Yeah, so I think one of the most important elements of designing any software, but especially when you get into infrastructure is choosing an abstraction level. So if you think of computing, you can go all the way down to building a data center, you can go all the way down to getting a colo and racking a server like maybe some of us used to do, who are older than others. And that's one way to run a server. On the other extreme, you have just think of the early days of cloud competing, you had app engine, which was a really fantastic, really incredible product. It was one push deploy of, I think Python code, if I remember correctly, and everything just worked. But right in the middle of those, you had EC2, which was, EC2 is basically an API to a server. And it turns out that that abstraction level, not Colo, not the full app engine kind of platform, but the API to virtual server was the right abstraction level for maybe the last 15 years. Maybe now some of the higher level application platforms are doing really well, maybe the needs will shift. But I think that's a little bit of how we think about video. What developers want is an API to video. They don't want an API to the building blocks of video, an API to transcoding, to video storage, to edge caching. They want an API to video. On the other extreme, they don't want a big application that's a drop in white label video in a box like a Shopify kind of thing. Shopify is great, but developers don't want to build on top of Shopify. In the payments world developers want Stripe. And that abstraction level of the API to the actual thing you're getting tends to be the abstraction level that developers want to build on. And the reason for that is, it's the most productive layer to build on. You get maximum flexibility and also maximum velocity when you have that API directly to a function like video. So, we like to tell our customers like you, you own your video when you build on top of MUX, you have full control over everything, how it's stored, when it's stored, where it goes, how it's published, we handle all of the hard technology and we give our customers all of the flexibility in terms of designing their products. >> I want to get back some use case, but you brought that up I might as well just jump to my next point. I'd like you to come back and circle back on some references 'cause I know you have some. You said building on infrastructure that you own, this is a fundamental cloud concept. You mentioned API to a server for the nerds out there that know that that's cool, but the people who aren't super nerdy, that means you're basically got an interface into a server behind the scenes. You're doing the same for video. So, that is a big thing around building services. So what wide range of services can we expect beyond MUX? If I'm going to have an API to video, what could I do possibly? >> What sort of experience could you build? >> Yes, I got a team of developers saying I'm all in API to video, I don't want to do all that transit got straight there, I want to build experiences, video experiences on my app. >> Yeah, I mean, I think, one way to think about it is that, what's the range of key use cases that people do with video? We tend to think about six at MUX, one is kind of the places where the content is, the prop. So one of the things that use video is you can create great video. Think of online courses or fitness or entertainment or news or things like that. That's kind of the first thing everyone thinks of, when you think video, you think Netflix, and that's great. But we see a lot of really interesting uses of video in the world of social media. So customers of ours like Visco, which is an incredible photo sharing application, really for photographers who really care about the craft. And they were able to bring video in and bring that same kind of Visco experience to video using MUX. We think about B2B tools, videos. When you think about it, all video is, is a high bandwidth way of communicating. And so customers are as like HubSpot use video for the marketing platform, for business collaboration, you'll see a lot of growth of video in terms of helping businesses engage their customers or engage with their employees. We see live events obviously have been a massive category over the last few years. You know, we were all forced into a world where we had to do live events two years ago, but I think now we're reemerging into a world where the online part of a conference will be just as important as the in-person component of a conference. So that's another big use case we see. >> Well, full disclosure, if you're watching this live right now, it's being powered by MUX. So shout out, we use MUX on theCUBE platform that you're experiencing in this. Actually in real time, 'cause this is one application, there's many more. So video as code, is data as code is the theme, that's going to bring up the data ops. Video also is code because (laughs) it's just like you said, it's just communicating, but it gets converted to data. So data ops, video ops could be its own new category. What's your reaction to that? >> Yeah, I mean, I think, I have a couple thoughts on that. The first thought is, video is a way that, because the way that companies interact with customers or users, it's really important to have good monitoring and analytics of your video. And so the first product we ever built was actually a product called MUX video, sorry, MUX data, which is the best way to monitor a video platform at scale. So we work with a lot of the big broadcasters, we work with like CBS and Fox Sports and Discovery. We work with big tech companies like Reddit and Vimeo to help them monitor their video. And you just get a huge amount of insight when you look at robust analytics about video delivery that you can use to optimize performance, to make sure that streaming works well globally, especially in hard to reach places or on every device. That's we actually build a MUX data platform first because when we started MUX, we spent time with some of our friends at companies like YouTube and Netflix, and got to know how they use data to power their video platforms. And they do really sophisticated things with data to ensure that their streams well, and we wanted to build the product that would help everyone else do that. So, that's one use. I think the other obvious use is just really understanding what people are doing with their video, who's watching what, what's engaging, those kind of things. >> Yeah, data is definitely there. You guys mentioned some great brands that are working with you guys, and they're doing it because of the developer experience. And I'd like you to explain, if you don't mind, in your words, why is the MUX developer experience so good? What are some of the results you're seeing from your customers? What are they saying to you? Obviously when you win, you get good feedback. What are some of the things that they're saying and what specific develop experiences do they like the best? >> Yeah, I mean, I think that the most gratifying thing about being a startup founder is when your customers like what you're doing. And so we get a lot of this, but it's always, we always pay attention to what customers say. But yeah, people, the number one thing developers say when they think about MUX is that the developer experience is great. I think when they say that, what they mean is two things, first is it's easy to work with, which helps them move faster, software velocity is so important. Every company in the world is investing and wants to move quickly and to build quickly. And so if you can help a team speed up, that's massively valuable. The second thing I think when people like our developer experience is, you know, in a lot of ways that think that we get out of the way and we let them do what they want to do. So well, designed APIs are a key part of that, coming back to abstraction, making sure that you're not forcing customers into decisions that they actually want to make themselves. Like, if our video player only had one design, that that would not be, that would not work for most developers, 'cause developers want to bring their own design and style and workflow and feel to their video. And so, yeah, so I think the way we do that is just think comprehensively about how APIs are designed, think about the workflows that users are trying to accomplish with video, and make sure that we have the right APIs, make sure they're the right information, we have the right webhooks, we have the right SDKs, all of those things in place so that they can build what they want. >> We were just having a conversation on theCUBE, Dave Vellante and I, and our team, and I'd love to get you a reaction to this. And it's more and more, a riff real quick. We're seeing a trend where video as code, data as code, media stack, where you're starting to see the emergence of the media developer, where the application of media looks a lot like kind of software developer, where the app, media as an app. It could be a chat, it could be a peer to peer video, it could be part of an event platform, but with all the recent advances, in UX designers, coders, the front end looks like an emergence of these creators that are essentially media developers for all intent and purpose, they're coding media. What's your reaction to that? How do you see that evolving? >> I think the. >> Or do you agree with it? >> It's okay. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Well, I think a couple things. I think one thing, I think this goes along through saying, but maybe it's disagreement, is that we don't think you should have to be an expert at video or at media to create and produce or create and publish good video, good audio, good images, those kind of things. And so, you know, I think if you look at software overall, I think of 10 years ago, the kind of DevOps movement, where there was kind of a movement away from specialization in software where the same software developer could build and deploy the same software developer maybe could do front end and back end. And we want to bring that to video as well. So you don't have to be a specialist to do it. On the other hand, I do think that investments and tooling, all the way from video creation, which is not our world, but there's a lot of amazing companies out there that are making it easier to produce video, to shoot video, to edit, a lot of interesting innovations there all the way to what we do, which is helping people stream and publish video and video experiences. You know, I think another way about it is, that tool set and companies doing that let anyone be a media developer, which I think is important. >> It's like DevOps turning into low-code, no-code, eventually it's just composability almost like just, you know, "Hey Siri, give me some video." That kind of thing. Final question for you why I got you here, at the end of the day, the decision between a lot of people's build versus buy, "I got to get a developer. Why not just roll my own?" You mentioned data center, "I want to build a data center." So why MUX versus do it yourself? >> Yeah, I mean, part of the reason we started this company is we have a pretty, pretty strong opinion on this. When you think about it, when we started MUX five years ago, six years ago, if you were a developer and you wanted to accept credit cards, if you wanted to bring payment processing into your application, you didn't go build a payment gateway. You just probably used Stripe. And if you wanted to send text messages, you didn't build your own SMS gateway, you probably used Twilio. But if you were a developer and you wanted to stream video, you built your own video gateway, you built your own video application, which was really complex. Like we talked about, you know, probably three, four months of work to get something basic up and running, probably not live video that's probably only on demand video at that point. And you get no benefit by doing it yourself. You're no better than anyone else because you rolled your own video stack. What you get is risk that you might not do a good job, maybe you do worse than your competitors, and you also get distraction where you've just taken, you take 10 engineers and 10 sprints and you apply it to a problem that doesn't actually really give you differentiated value to your users. So we started MUX so that people would not have to do that. It's fine if you want to build your own video platform, once you get to a certain scale, if you can afford a dozen engineers for a VOD platform and you have some really massively differentiated use case, you know, maybe, live is, I don't know, I don't have the rule of thumb, live videos maybe five times harder than on demand video to work with. But you know, in general, like there's such a shortage of software engineers today and software engineers have, frankly, are in such high demand. Like you see what happens in the marketplace and the hiring markets, how competitive it is. You need to use your software team where they're maximally effective, and where they're maximally effective is building differentiation into your products for your customers. And video is just not that, like very few companies actually differentiate on their video technology. So we want to be that team for everyone else. We're 200 people building the absolute best video infrastructure as APIs for developers and making that available to everyone else. >> John, great to have you on with the showcase, love the company, love what you guys do. Video as code, data as code, great stuff. Final plug for the company, for the developers out there and prospects watching for MUX, why should they go to MUX? What are you guys up to? What's the big benefit? >> I mean, first, just check us out. Try try our APIs, read our docs, talk to our support team. We put a lot of work into making our platform the best, you know, as you dig deeper, I think you'd be looking at the performance around, the global performance of what we do, looking at our analytics stack and the insight you get into video streaming. We have an emerging open source video player that's really exciting, and I think is going to be the direction that open source players go for the next decade. And then, you know, we're a quickly growing team. We're 60 people at the beginning of last year. You know, we're one 50 at the beginning of this year, and we're going to a add, we're going to grow really quickly again this year. And this whole team is dedicated to building the best video structure for developers. >> Great job, Jon. Thank you so much for spending the time sharing the story of MUX here on the show, Amazon Startup Showcase season two, episode two, thanks so much. >> Thank you, John. >> Okay, I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. This is season two, episode two, the ongoing series cover the most exciting startups from the AWS Cloud Ecosystem. Talking data analytics here, video cloud, video as a service, video infrastructure, video APIs, hottest thing going on right now, and you're watching it live here on theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(tubular bells chiming) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage, AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm John Furrier your host of theCUBE. We're here, get all the action wall-to-wall coverage. The keynotes with the new CEO, Adam Leschi just happened. A lot of action wall-to-wall coverage for days, and we'd love cloud computing because it impacts business. We love all that, but when it impact sports, we love it even more because it can relate to it. You can see the two great guests here from the NHL Formula 1. We got David Lehanski the EVP of business development and innovation at the NHL, Rob Smedley, director of data systems at Formula 1. Gentlemen, thanks for joining me today in theCUBE. >> Thanks for having us. >> So obviously formula one we know is very data driven. Pun intended, NHL has a lot of action going on as well with innovation streaming, et cetera. Let's get into it. You're both Amazon customers, right? We'll start with you. Formula 1, big partnership with AWS. What's that about? how you guys look at this cloud as you guys go to the next level? Cause you're under a lot of pressure with the data, from the cars and standards and all that good stuff. What's up. >> What's going on? >> Well, I mean, you know, it started probably four or five years ago with the acquisition of Liberty media and formula 1, and there was a real drive towards data. There was a real drive towards, you know, unearthing all of the data that we've got, you know, formula 1, arguably probably generates the most data, this most sports data of any sport on the planet. You know, we have car telemetry data, timing data, metadata, image data, you know, we own all the video data, and the audio data of driver radio, tire data, weather data, you put all that together. You got to, you know, a real massive data. And it was just about trying to unearth that and, and engage the fans more. And that's where the partnership with AWS come from. >> And the competitiveness in formula one I know is really high. You got a lot of smart people on these teams looking for an edge. And I know it's like, it's a whole new world with data as things get exposed. So I got to ask you, what is your job? Are you there to like to corral the data that kind of set standards? What's your role? >> Well, my role is essentially, to use the data at central league level, if you want, for all the franchises, that's all 20 drivers, within the 10 teams to try to, you know, use that data in whatever way possible, whether it's the new car or whether it's the F1 insights powered by AWS to try to engage the fans more. You know, we've understood that data, is really important to tell the story of Formula 1. And it's really important to reach different demographics as well. The younger demographics, the young, the gen Zedders is, you know, those types of guys, it's really important to get to them, because you can condense and at one hour 45 race down to five minutes, right. Which is what they want. So this has been a really important step for us. And a really important part of that journey has been the enablement. >> And I can see the whole e-sports thing I could see after a race. Okay. Now the fans race amongst themselves, as the technology simulation gets better, only headroom there. So to speak. >> Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's what we're, you know, that's probably the next generation of what we want to do with the data is we want to make it much more interactive. We're already giving, you know, through the insights and through, you know, the way that, we're trying to tell stories with the different data assets we're already trying to do that, in a much more proactive way of telling the story. The next level of that. is completely immersive, is interactive. And that's what we call the 21st drivers. So there's 20, formula 1 drivers. Right. But, we want to build systems using the data and gamification where you can embed yourself and immerse yourself in that, in the races, the 21st driver and race against the other guys on a Sunday afternoon. >> Awesome. Dave, let's get to the NHL National Hockey League. You guys are doing a lot of good stuff. You're the EVP of innovation and what's going on over there. How do you see the cloud helping you guys innovate. what's on your agenda and what's your role? >> Wow. I don't know if we have enough time, but at the highest level, you know, we're trying to expand and enhance the way we produce and present our game to the world. You know, our sport, we have some similarities, but there's a lot of differences based on the uniqueness of the sport. Statistics, hadn't really been a big part of the National Hockey League in the way people consume the game. I always say, you know, goaltenders have two statistics that have been used to evaluate them. And they were the same ones that were used to evaluate them back in 1917. So almost again a hundred years where it hasn't really evolved that much, but we think there's so much there that can really enrich and transform the game. So we're trying to partner with AWS and the best technology companies in the world to figure out how we can start to capture that data and turn it into meaningful content and experiences that allow fans to go a little bit deeper and a little bit broader. >> Yeah, I can see the data being used for also seeing what the NFL is doing a lot with the safety. Hits are getting harder and faster in the NHL. I mean, the collisions, the equipment, everyone is going faster. That's a big safety issue too. Isn't it? >> There is a safety component too. And it, look, that is one of the unique things about our sports. Both of us are speed involved. The speed though, for us, it's not just on the ice, it's also the pace of play, right? So when you have a stoppage, it's typically 10 or 15 seconds long. So there's not a lot of time to integrate data, to tell stories, to build and graphics and visualizations. So the first phase for us was to build the tracking system that could capture the positional, the positions of the puck and the players throughout the course of every game. And that's generating a massive amount of new data. Now we're trying to add video to that data so we could start to use it to create entirely new experiences. >> What are you guys thinking about from a fan experience as you look at the analytics. Are they interested in more like the, where the puck is, how fast people are going, what are some of the analytics sharing? >> So it depends, Right? So from a fan standpoint, you know, avid fans really want to, they want to go deep and they want understand controlled zone entries and like, you know, things that are really inherent to, you know, the core factors for determining outcome. Casual fans, they like just on knowing speed, right? How fast is the puck moving? How fast are the players moving. Before we had the system, we weren't able to produce it. Before we had AWS, you won't be able to produce that in real time and overlay it onto a game. So we could go even deeper when it comes to players and coaches and media partners, but the ability to build a solution that works in real time to give them the data and the video that they can use to tell those stories is born from AWS. >> And that brings up a great point. I'd love to ask both of you, if you can answer this question about the fan expectations. One of the big trends coming out of this re-invent this year as cloud is creating more capabilities, but the users and the consumers have new expectations. They want it on mobile, they want the highlights, they want everything. They want the data, there are data junkies. They want everything, cause they're immersing, into the experience with multiple touchpoints. TV, app. Whatever. >> I think that's right. And I think that it's up to, you know, as David's just saying that the two sports here with a lot of similarities and you can see that we're both on the same journey and that's because it's been driven in the end by the consumers, it's been driven by our customers. And, I think that now we're on, you know, what I would call the data flywheel, where there's a lot of inertia and it's just getting stronger and stronger and stronger. And this was, if we go back say three, four years when we started the partnership with AWS and we started to get really deep into the data and understand, you know, what the objectives of this whole exercise were, we always knew that there'd be a point where it started to build a lot of momentum and have a lot of inertia and that's, what's happening now. There's a real thirst for it, right? And it's not just, you know, even the naysayers, you know, even the people that kind of looked at it and went, well, why are you filling my screen with data exactly the same as what Dave says, you know, since you know, the goaltender since 1917, you've used the same two stats to evaluate that particular player. In formula 1 it's been exactly the same. So we started to introduce stuff which had been the same state as core for 70 years. And they say, well, what's all this about. Now, those people can't live without that. Right? It's become, a key part of the broadcast. >> And it creates new products, like things like Netflix, who would've thought a series would be on Formula 1, a soap opera for formula 1 in behind the scenes, driving to survive has been quite an acceleration for fan base. I mean, techies in Silicon valley and all around the world have told us like, hey, you know what? That exposes the nerdiness of Formula 1. Kind of cool. So who would have thought, I mean, there's going to be shows on this whole other level. >> I think, another point to add it is about increasing your distribution points and getting your content out to as many people as possible through as many platforms as possible. But I think in addition to that, it's really about, Rob started to touch on this personalization and customization. What can you do within those platforms to give fans the ability to sort of create their own experience? Right? So data highlights, huge, huge, huge level of importance. >> I think community is going to be a big part of this too. As you start to see the data creates more interactions and more progression, if you will. Community, I'm a Bruins fan in California. There's not a lot of Bruins fans, mostly sharks fans, but I got to get online. Where am I? Where's my tribe. I want to hang, that's not just on Twitter. >> Yeah >> So there's a whole another level coming. How do you guys see community developing in your sports? >> I think the community is the biggest factor in all of this. Right? And it's kind of bringing together. It's a global sports community, first and foremost, but then you've got these pockets. So you've got NHL, NFL, you've got formula 1 and they're all gaining popularity, but it's all through really everybody being on this same journey. Everybody's on this same journey of involving tech in the sport of revolutionizing their particular sport. And it's building this global community. I mean, In formula 1, we've got a billion fans worldwide, but that's growing, it's growing every single year, but it's only growing because we're starting now to get to that younger demographic, formerly one could never get to the demographic, you know, formula 1 fans looked like us, but now it's starting to really improve our system. >> The virtualization of this hybrid world we're living in opens up the doors for more access. >> Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's the key point here. And again, they've touched on it. It's the personalization. It's using data and platforms and packages to personalize somebody's engagement with their particular sport. >> I got a couple of questions from the fan base, I knew you guys were coming on. I want to get to you , first, Rob, how has F1 been using Amazon and the cloud to develop the new 2022 race car? >> Well, I mean, it, I would say it's no exaggeration to say Amazon technology enabled, was the key enabler in as being able to design that 2022 car, you know, we designed it in a virtual environment called computational fluid dynamics. You know, the simulations, when we were first running design iterations, were taking something like 40 hours with when we started running it on the EC2, you know, spinning up 7,000 calls, something like that. We got that down to seven hours, manageable. We designed the whole new car. >> Awesome. On the NHL, the question here for you, is that okay, how is the young generation coming into the game? What's changed with the innovation that's impacting, how the games played and how the young guns are coming up? Is there any in technology enabling that? >> Sure. You know, so we're looking at the type of content that younger fans are gravitating to, obviously highlights and dance games, but we talked about it before the ability to see what they want to see with regard to that. So, you know, where we're trying to get to is where you could watch a game and ultimately decide whether or not you want to turn on a right rail of real-time statistics for your favorite player, for your favorite team, for a specific event, whether or not you want to turn on the ability to network with your friends across social platforms, whether or not you want to turn on the betting functionality, whether or not you want to turn on the game functionality. Right? So this is how the younger generation really wants to consume the data, like sort of, they want to see what they want to see, when and how they want to see it. So we're working on that. And then there's everything that goes beyond that. The world of NFTs and VR and AR and alternate forms of content distribution, none of that would be capable or available if not for the ability to capture process and distribute data and video in an aggregate in real time. >> You know, I really think we're onto something so new here. And if you guys are really kind of illustrating the whole point of how being in person, the old model of physical, I don't have to go into arena to watch hockey or go watch formula 1, and hopefully it's on TV. Maybe it's got coverage here and there, but now with hybrid, you can integrate the experiences from the physical in-person where the asset is. >> Absolutely. >> And to virtual and just open up completely new hybrid use cases. I mean, this is brand new. There's no standards. >> Not, exactly. And that's something that we're really starting to look at, which is the event of the future. You know? So how would you bring, how do you mismatch? How would you bring that whole data experience and that whole broadcast experience to the actual event, the live event, and how would you bring the live event to somebody's front room? It's the hybrid model, right? And this is definitely next generation of how we're using the data. We're working with AWS. We're calling it event of the future. It's really, really exciting. I mean, you can imagine going there, to a formula 1 race, you're sat in the stands. You're no longer, you know, watching a car pass every few seconds and wondering what's going on. You've now got AR, VR that you can kind of put up and lay-up across what's going on the track. >> Well, a lot of people would love to get you guys' reaction to this comment online. Cause this is big, I see a lot of naysayers out there because they're so locked into the business model of the physical location. There's a lot of investment in events like this, wants me to buy tickets and show up. So they call it a one-way door here in the industry, they don't want to go through that one way door, but I'm saying that door has already been passed. It's like you're in this hybrid world is here. If you don't get out in front of it, you're going to be toast. So the question is, how do you guys think about this when you talk about the business model of experience? Cause you have to get in there and it's not super great right now on virtual. It could be better. It has to get better. So it's a balance. How do you guys talk about that in your respective fields to educate the potential? I won't say naysayers, but yeah. >> Yeah no, no, no. So we believe it wholeheartedly. You know, when you think about the inner arena experience, there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be in place to be able to deliver those types of experiences to fans, while they're in the building, we wholeheartedly believe that the people who are paying the most to see our games should get the best possible experience. So there should be no replay, they don't get, there should be no game that they can't access, no application that they couldn't have on their phone, but you need to have, you know, fairly advanced wireless in the arena infrastructures in place. You need to have a lot of cloud infrastructure and services there. So, you know, that's why we're leveraging Kinesis and SageMaker and AWS elemental services to get all of it condensed, operating in the cloud and distributed. So if you're a fan at a game, they're 18,000 other people, like you trying to access a mobile phone to place a bet on a real-time event that just happened, you can actually do it, but a lot needs to go into that. >> Yeah, that's really good insight because what you're pointing out is is that the physical location is the first party asset. That's the key. You build on that, invest in that and then feed it out into the next world and then figure that out. Do you agree with that. >> Absolutely. 100 percent correct. Well, 100 percent agree with everything that David just said. And we've got probably, you know, an even bigger challenge because we've got these 20 sites where we lift and shift 20, 23 races, you know, all round the world where we lift and shift every couple of weeks, and they're not arenas either. They're, you know, these are huge sites. These are you know, five, six kilometer by five, six kilometer square sites. So trying to do everything that David just said in that space, we can open it. >> Yeah, we just turn the lights off, it's over, he's got to pack it all up. >> The private 5G is going to totally help. You can run drones and have full blanket coverage over the location. That's good. That's good stuff. Final question for you guys on data, because I think this is something that we've been kind of talking about on theCUBE over the past year, we see open source software has become a huge success. Do you guys see opening up the data to your fan base and seeing e-sports races in formula 1, is just going crazy. Everyone loves it. It's not there yet but the equipment having your own car in your living room, but it's close, pretty close, it's there. Opening up the data, how do you see that potential? Because there are people who want to maybe code on top of it. How do you guys view that? >> Well, I think it, has to, I mean, Dave, again, touched on this earlier when he talked about, you know, the difference between the casual and the avid. The avid, you'll never, ever satisfy the average thirst for data, right. They want to do what I did and sit on a pit wall and manage a grand Prix team. And that's great, you know, it shouldn't just be for a privilege, you know, 10, 20 people in the world to do that. We should be able to give everybody that experience because we have the technology and the ability and the know how to be able to do that. And that's where, you know, again, partnership with AWS, where we're talking about something called the virtual pit wall. So, you know, the pit stands where it's kind of like the mission control. We want to be able to bring that to the average. And it's just getting deeper and deeper layers where you can set up your bespoke environment. You can set it up just as if you were a race engineer or a team strategist, one of those guys, and you can just get deeper and deeper. And then you start to lay over that. You start to build your own models. We bring in simulation into that whole area. And, you know, it's exactly the same as what you have in the teams. You just go deeper and deeper and deeper. >> What's it like to be on the pit wall there, managing teams. what's it. (men laughing) >> Hmm scary sometimes >> Nerve wrecking. >> Nerve-wracking, I mean, I talked about, you know, the gen Zedders who want the, you know, a two hour race to pass in five minutes, it passes in five minutes. Cause there's so much going on. You know, it's kind of like being the coach or the, you know, the football manager, you know, you're under a lot of pressure. You've got to make the right decisions. You've got to, you know, you've got to make decisions in split seconds. Everybody's an expert 10 seconds after the decision has been made. It's that type of thing, but it's great fun, you know. >> I can see virtual Formula 1 being a hot total hit because with all the data and now autonomous vehicles, you can almost have a collective kind of team approach, like swapping out AI in the cars in real time from the virtual pit. >> Yeah. And again, you know, I'm just going to name check deep racer because you know, AWS deep racer, you know, we formula 1, and AWS deep racer. We did an activation about a year back in the first lockdown, in the first COVID lockdown. So we took a couple of formula 1 drivers, Daniel Ricardo being one of them. And then we built out this deep racer platform and we're trying to look at how we can bring that more, you know, more together. So you've got this virtual, sorry, this AI car, this autonomous car, and you've got formula 1. And how do we merge those two worlds together? And again, that's just trying to immerse people more in the experience. >> Alright, final question. What's the coolest thing you got going on in each of your respective innovation fields with AWS? What would you highlight your favorite innovation or coolest thing you're doing? >> Well, I can't tell you about the coolest, right. That's for sure. Look, I just think what we're doing with AWS with regard to AIML around data and statistics analytics, based on what I said earlier, the evolution of statistics and analytics and hockey really hasn't taken hold, we're there now. The ability to really take a game that's has so much volatility, and we're the only professional teams sport that has personnel changes occurring in life play. So you never really know who's on the ice and the ability now to deliver real-time graphics and visualizations in the broadcast based on movements that had just played within milliseconds. And, we're starting to do that today with shot and save analytics with AWS. So where that can go in the future is really, what's probably the most exciting because it'll totally transform the way fans consumer our game. >> The NHS has always been on the cutting edge on the tech. Been following you guys for years, congratulations. Rob, the coolest thing you're working on, from Amazon, that's cool, and in formula 1 that's in your plate right now. >> Do you know what, I mean, there's so much going on at the minute. It's really difficult to choose any one thing. I think the whole partnership it's everything that we wanted it to be that, you know, the whole way that we're moving data forward and where we're revolutionizing this sport in a lot of ways, you know, sport has sat still for a long time. And to go through that digital transformation, you know, with Amazon and you know, in all the various areas that we're working on, I just think it's all, you know, it's all really, really cool. I mean, it's just moving forward at such a pace. Now. >> If you don't mind me asking why I got you here on the whole data thing, I'm just thinking about if I was on a team, I'd be like, okay, there's a whole new wild west. It's this arbitrage of data, we'll get over on the other team. Do you have to watch out, do you guys talk about like watching teams actually, I mean, it's actually innovative that they can get an edge, but an unfair advantage if they actually had used the data, is there like discussion around, like who can use the data, which teams? >> Of course. I mean, you know, when you get down to the franchises, each team can only use its individual data. You know, that's where we have key insight up at the league level because we've got, you know, a subset of all of the teams data. So we can kind of see everything that's going on. >> And watch out for the hackers coming in and get that data. >> Oh, well, alright, we've got pretty good security. >> Guys, thanks for coming on. I love the sports angle on this. It's really awesome. I think this is a great example of how cloud and digital lifestyle is coming together. The tech integration with the fan experience and the business models are super compelling, and I think that's illustration to just every other business. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate it. >> Awesome. >> Thank you. >> Okay so theCUBE's coverage here at AWS re:Invent. I'm John furrier, your host in theCUBE. You're watching the leader in event tech covers theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (soul music)

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of next level network experience event brought to >>you by info blocks. Okay, welcome back, everyone. This is the Cube's coverage of the next level networking experience. Virtual event within four blocks. I'm John Furrow, your host of the Cube. We're here in our Palo Alto, Calif. Studios as part of our remote access during Covic, getting the interviews and the stories and sharing that with you. We got a great guest here, then savages the network operations manager at Morgan School District in Utah. A customer of info blocks to share a story. Then thanks for coming on. >>Thanks for having >>me. First of all, the Red Sox had a plus interview. I would say right now is gonna go great. Go Sox. Which baseball was in season. Great to have you on. Um, >>we'll get there. We'll >>get there. Um, my Yankee fans say when I say that. But anyway, Miss baseball, um, you know. But that brings up covert 19 baseball season sports. Life has been impacted. Your district. Like many school districts around the world, we're told to shut down, send workers home. That meant sending kids home, too. So we got the educators, get the administration, and you've got the kids all going home. >>Yeah. >>What did you do to keep things going? Because then stop. They had to do the remote learning and new things were emerging. New patterns, new traffic, new kinds of experiences. What did you learn? What's going on? >>Well, first we tried to lock the doors and pretend we weren't there, but they found us. Um, really? I mean, real quickly in our school district, we're not a 1 to 1 operation, so the, uh that caused a big change for us. Um, we had to quickly adapt. And we chose to use chromebooks because that's what we have for the students to use in their classes. So getting that, uh, squared away and send out into the family's was was a big challenge. But then on top of that being the school district, we then had to decide. Okay, how do we protect and filter provide the filtering that the students are gonna need even though they're at home? So there's some relative safety there when they're online and and accessing your email and things like that. So those were. Our two are probably our two. Biggest hurdles was, you know, ramping up the devices and then and then providing, making sure, you know, the network access from a filtering and consistency standpoint was going to work. >>You know, I got to ask you because I see this kind of disruption you don't You don't read about this in the i t. Manual around disaster recovery and, you know, disruption to operations. But essentially, the whole thing changes, but you still got to connect to the network, DNS. You gotta get the access to the content. You got content, you get systems. You got security all to be managed while in flight of dealing with connection points that remote. So you've got the disruption and the craziness of that, and then you've got this big I o t experiment basically edge of the network, you know, in all over the place. You know, on one hand, you kind of geek out and say, Wow, this is really kind of a challenge is an opportunity to solve the problem at the same time, you know, What do you do? So take us through that because that's a is a challenge of locking down the security in a borderless environment. People are everywhere. The students business has to get done. You got to resolve to. The resource is >>so thankfully, we had migrated If it blocks several years ago. Um and just this last, I would say in October, I finally got us on. Ah, cloud the blocks. One threat defense Cloud portion of it too. So from a security standpoint, we already had a really good, um foundation in place from both the DNs aspect and the DNS security aspect. Um so that was to be honest, most users. It was seamless transition. In many regards, both users didn't even realize they were being, You know, pushed through the info blocks is cloud DNs server, you know, which was providing security and filtering. So that was a big plus for us because it it was less man hours. We had to spend troubleshooting people's DNS resolutions. Why sites Wouldn't you know? Maybe they weren't being filtered correctly. All that was was to be honest, perfect. Where other platforms we had previously were just a nightmare to manage, >>like, for example, of the old way versus the new way here and marital, is it? What files configuration will take us through? What? You >>know, it was like a separate. It was a separate product content filter that works in conjunction with the firewall. Um, and I'm not going to name the company's name. I don't want, you know, even though many company but it seemed with that product we were spending, on average about 3 to 4 hours a day fixing false positives just from a filtering aspect because it would interfere with the DNS. And it does. It didn't really do it. I mean, how it filters is not based on DNS. Totally right. So by migrating temple blocks are DNS and the filtering the security is all handling at the DNs level. And it was just much more, um, to be I mean, frankly, honestly, is much more invisible to the end user. So >>more efficient. You decouple filtering from DNs resolution. Got it. All right, this is the big topic. I've been talking with info blocks people on this program in this event is on how this new d d I layer DNs d XP and I p address management kind of altogether super important. It's critical infrastructure Yeah. No spoilers, Enterprise. You're borderless institution. Same thing you go to school as a customer. How does the d I lay out this foundational security play for delivering this next level experience? What's your take on that? >>Well, for our like, for a school platform, we we use it in a number of ways. Besides, I mean, the filtering is huge, but just for the ability, like, for example, one of the components is is response policy zones or DNS firewalls what they call it, and that allows you one to manage, um, traditional, like DNS names, right? P addresses you can. You can manage those by creating essentially a zone that is like a white list of blacklist rewrite. So you've got a lot of control, and again it's filtering at the DNs level, so it's looking based on DNS responses inquiry. The other aspect of that is, is the feeds that you receive from info blocks. So by subscribing to those, we, um we have access to a lot of information that info Blocks and their partners have created identifying, you know, bad actors, malware attack vectors based on again DNs, uh, traffic, if you will, and so that takes a load office. Not having to worry. I'm trying to do all that on our own. I mean, we've seen a lot of attacks minimized because of the feeds themselves. So that again frees us up. We're a very small school district. In some regards, there's a I am the only network person in the district, and there's like, a total of four of us that manage, you know, kind of the support aspect. And so, being able to not have to spend time researching or tracking down, you know, breaches and attacks as much because of the DNS. Security frees me up to do other things, you know, like in the more standard networking realm, from a design and implementation. >>Great. Thanks for sharing that. I want to ask about security as a very competitive space security here and everyone promising it different things at different security things. You know, by I gotta ask you, why did you guys decide to use info blocks and what's the reason behind it? >>Well, to be frankly honest, I'm actually in info blocks trainer and I've been training for 15 years, so I kind of had an agenda when I first took this job to help out the school district. In my experience, I've been doing working in networking for over 20 years. And in my experience, I ever boxes one of the most easy and in best managed DNS solutions that I've come across. So, um, you know, I might be a little biased, but I'm okay with that. And so I I pushed us to be honest, to get there and then from the security aspect has all that has evolved. It just makes to me it makes sense. Why not wrap the more things you can maybe wrapped together. And so you know, when you're talking about attacks, over 90% of attacks use DNS. So if I have a solution that is already providing my DNS and then wraps the security into it, it just makes the most sense for me. >>Yeah. I mean, go back. The info box is DNA. You got cricket. Liu Stuart Bailey, the founder, was this is zero. This didn't just wake up one day and decided to start up these air practitioners early days of the Internet. They know DNS cold and DNS is we've been evolved. I mean, and when it needs that when you get into the DNS. Hacks and then you realize Okay, let's build an abstraction layer. You've seen Internet navigation discovery, all the stuff that's been proven. It is a critical infrastructure. >>Well, and to be honest, it's It's one of those services that you can't can't filter the firewall right. You have to have it. You have to. It's that foundation layer. And so it makes sense that Attackers air leveraging it because the fire will has to let it through in and out. And so it's a natural, almost a natural path for them to break in. So having something that speaks native DNS as part of your security platform makes more sense because it it can understand and see those attacks, the more sophisticated they become as well. >>So I gotta ask you, since you're very familiar info blocks and you're actually deploying its great solution. But I got this new DD I Layer, which is an abstraction, is always a great evolution. Take away complexity and more functionality. Cloud certainly cloud natives everywhere. That's but if it's for what is the update, if if I'm watching this month, you know I've been running DNS and I know it's out there. It's been running everything. And I got a update, my foundation of my business. I got to make my DNS rock solid. What's the new update? What's info blocks doing now? I know they got DNS chops seeing that on it. What's new about info blocks? What do you say? >>Well, it's, you know, they have a couple things that they've been trying to modify over the last several years. In my opinion, making more DNS like a you know, like software as a service, you know, service on demand, type of approach. That's a yes. So you have the cloud components to where you can take a lot of the heavy lifting, maybe off of your network team's shoulders. Because it is, it is. Um, I think people will be surprised how many customers out there. I have, ah, teams that are managing the DNS and even the D HCP aspect that that's not really what their experiences and then they don't They don't have, ah, true, maybe background Indians, and so having something that can help make that easier. It's almost, you know, hey, maybe used this term it almost sounds like it's too simple, but it's almost like a plug and play approached for some. For some environments, you know you're able to pop that in, and a lot of probably the problems they've been dealing with and not realizing what the root cause was will be fixed. So that's always a huge component with with info blocks. But their security is really what's come about in the last several years, Um, and and back as a school district, you know, our besides securing traffic, which every customer has to do, um, we have our you know, we're We have a lot of laws and regulations around filtering with with students and teachers. So anyone that's using a campus own device And so for us this I don't think people realized that the maturity that the filtering aspect of the blocks one defence now it's it's really evolved over the last couple of years. It's become a really, really good product and, like I said earlier, just work seamlessly with the data security. So it is going to be using >>an SD Wan unpacked everything. You go regular root level DNs is it? So I gotta ask you. How is the info blocks helping you keep network services running in system secure? >>Well, I think I think we're more on just the DNs d It does R d eight DNS and DCP. So from that standpoint, you know, in the five years almost we've been running that aspect. We have had very little if if maybe one or two incidents of problems with, you know from a DNS TCP so so are our users are able to connect, you know, when they turn on their computer To them, the Internet's up. You know, there's no there's no bumps in the road stopping them from from being able to connect. So that's a huge thing. You know, you don't have to deal with those Those constant issues again is a small team that just takes time away from the big projects. You're trying to, um, and then to the being able to now combine things. Security filtering solution. Uh, that alone has probably saved us. Oh, we'll probably you know, upwards of 500 man hours in the last eight months. So where normally we would be spending those hours again, troubleshooting issues that false positives, things like that. And there's a small team that just sucks the life out of you when you have to. You always spend time on that. >>I mean, you always chasing your tails. Almost. You want to be productive. Automation plays >>a >>key role in that, >>right? Yeah. >>So I got to ask you, you know, just a general question. I'm curious. You know, one of the things I see is sprawling of devices. WiFi was a great example that put an access point up a rogue access point, you know, as you get more connections. De HCP was amazing about this is awesome. But also, you had also de HCP problem. You got the the key Management is not just around slinging more d HDP around. So you got the trend? Is more connections on the eyepiece? Not how does info blocks make that easier? Because for people who may not know, the DNS ends announcing TCP and IP address management. They're all kind of tied together. Right? So this >>is the >>magic of DD I in my head. I want to get your thoughts on how you see that. Evolving. >>Yeah, I think that's another kind of back twice. It's kind of almost like a plug and play for a lot of customer environments. They're getting, you know, you're getting the DSP, DNs and eye Pam all wrapped in once you have this product that speaks, well, those languages, if you will and that And, um along with some of the reporting services and things of that nature. Um, when I look for, like, a Mac address in my influx database, I'm not just going to get ah, Mac address and what the i p addresses. I'm not just going to get the DNs like the host name. Maybe you know, the beauty and fully qualified domain name. Either I have the ability to bring in all this information that one. The client is communicating with the DCP DNS server on top of things like metadata that you can configure in the database to help really color in the picture of your network. So when you're looking at what device is using this I p when we talk about rogue devices or things like that, uh, I can get so much more information out of info blocks that almost almost to the point where you're almost being able to nail down the location of where the devices that even if it's a wireless client because it works in conjunction with some of our wireless appointments, too. So within, you know, a matter of minutes we have almost all the information we would need to take whatever action is appropriate for something like that, that getting used to take us hours and hours to troubleshoot. >>Appreciate a lot of the other interviews I've done with the info blocks, folks. One of the things that came out of them is the trailing. You can see the trail they're getting. They got to get in somewhere. DNS is the footprints of there you got? That's the traffic, and that's been helping on a potential attacks in D DOS is, for example, no one knows what that is, but DNS is what he said. A lot of the surface areas, DNS. With the hackers are makes it easier to find things. >>Well, you know, by integrating with the cloud I've I've got, you know, that the cloud based with the blocks one, it added a advanced DNS security, which helps protect skins Adidas as well as any cast to help provide more availability because I'm pushing on my DNs traffic through those cloud servers. It's like I've I'm almost equivalent of a very large organization that would normally spend millions of millions of dollars trying to do this on their own. So I'm getting the benefits and kind of the equivalent from that cloud hybrid approach that normally we would never have have. The resource is, >>Well, then I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to remote into the Cube studios. Talk about next level networking experience, so I want to just ask you, just put your experience hat on. You've been You've seen some waves. You've seen the technology evolve when you hear next level networking and when you hear next level networking experience almost two separate meetings. But next level networking means next level. Next level networking experience means is some experience behind it. One of those two phrases mean to you next level networking and next level networking experience. >>Well, to me, I always look at it as the evolution of being able to have a user experience that's consistent no matter where you're located, with your home in your office and special with in today's environment. We have to be able to provide that consistent experience. But what I think what a lot of people may not think about or my overlook if you're just, you know, more of an end user is along with that experience, it has to be a consistent excess security approach. So if I'm an end user, um, I should be able to have the access the, um and the security, which, you know, you know, filtering all that fun stuff to not just allow me the connectivity, but to bring me, you know, that to keep the secure wherever I met. And ah, um, I think schools, you know, obviously with code and in the one the one that everyone was forced to do. But I think businesses And generally I think that's, you know, years ago, Cisco when I worked with Cisco, we talked about, you know, the remote user of the mobile user and how Cisco is kind of leading, uh, the way on that. And I think, you know, with the nature of things like this pandemic, I think being able to have your your users again have that consistent experience, no matter where they're at is going to be key. And so that's how I see when I think of the network evolution, I think that's how it it has to go. >>Well, we appreciate your your time sharing your insights Has a lot of a lot of people are learning that you've got to pour the concrete to build the building. DNS becoming kind of critical infrastructure. But final question for you. I got you here, you know? How you doing? Actually, schools looks like they're gonna have some either fully virtual for the next semester or some sort of time or set schedule. There's all kinds of different approaches. This is the end of the day. It's still is this big i o t experiment from a traffic standpoint. So new expectations create new solutions. What do you see on the horizon? What challenges do you see as you ride this way? Because you've got a hold down the fort, their school district for 3000 students. And you got the administration and the faculty. So you know What are you expecting? And what do you hope to see Evolve Or what do you want to stay away from? What's your opinion? >>I think? I think my my biggest concern is, you know, making sure our like, our students and staff don't, uh, you know, run into trouble on by say that more from, you know, you know, by being, you know, being exposed to attacks, you know, their data with Delta becomes, you know, comes back to our data as a district. But, you know, the student data, I think I think, you know, with anything kids are very vulnerable. Ah, very role, vulnerable targets for many reasons. You know, they're quick to use technology that quick to use, like social media, things like that. But they're they're probably the first ones to do security Does not, you know, across their mind. So I think my big my big concern is as we're moving this, you know, hybrid, hybrid approach where kids can be in school where they're going to be at home. Maybe they'll change from the days of the week. It'll fluctuate, uh, keeping them secure, you know, protecting them from themselves. Maybe in a way, if I have to be the guy is kind of the grumpy old dad it looked at. I'm okay with wearing that hat. I think that's my biggest. Our concern is providing that type of, uh, stability and security. So parents at the end of that could be, you know, I have more peace of mind that their kids you know, our online even more. It's great >>that you can bring that experience because, you know, new new environments, like whether it zooming or using, try and get the different software tools that are out there that were built for on premise premises. You have now potentially a click here. Click there. They could be a target. So, you know, being safe and getting the job done to make sure they have up time. So the remote access it again. If you've got a new edge now, right? So the edge of the network is the home. Exactly. Yeah. Your service area just got bigger. >>Yeah. Yeah, we're in. You know, I'm everybody's guest, whether they like it or not. >>I appreciate that. Appreciate your time and good luck. And let's stay in touch. Thanks for your time. >>Hey, thanks for having me. You guys have a good rest of your weekend? Day two. State State. >>Thank you very much. It's the Cube's coverage with info blocks for a special next level networking experience. Pop up event. I'm John for the Cube. Your host. Thanks for watching. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>>From Miami beach, Florida. It's the queue covering a chronics global cyber summit 2019 brought to you by Acronis. >>Okay, welcome back. Everyone's the cubes covers two days here in Miami beach. The Fontainebleau hotel for the Kronos has global cyber summit 2019. It's inaugural event around a new category emerging called cyber protection. Um, this isn't a wave that's going to be part of the modernization a week we've been calling cloud 2.0 or whatever you want to call it. A complete modernization of the it technology stack and development environment includes core data center to the edge and beyond. Our next guest is Dan havens, chief growth officer per Chronis. Dan, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. And thank you for having me, Dan. So, uh, what does chief growth officer mean? You guys obviously are growing, so obviously we see some growth there. Yeah, numbers are there. What she, what she, we have a couple of divisions in the company where we see we can really accelerate the business. >>So we came in and we wanted to make some large investments here. One of those areas was sports. You're seeing race cars out here on the floor, you're seeing all kinds of baseball teams, soccer teams, and we're talking to everybody. We have 40 teams now that are using our technology for competitive advantage on the field. Uh, the other areas, OEM, so, uh, original equipment manufacturers, everybody from making a camera to a server somewhere, having a Cronus be embedded, that's a big angle for us and we just didn't have a lot of focus. So I came into to build those divisions. I've actually joined the CEO before in a prior life in his last company and did something similar for him on a similar, uh, back there and we had violent success. So yeah, it's been a lot of fun. I've been here a year and a half and we're killing it. >>We got triple digit growth in the sporting category and similar in the OEM. It's interesting, you know, I look at a lot of these growth companies and the kind of a formula. You see, you guys have a very efficient and strong product platform engineering group. A lot of developers, a lot of smart people in the company, and a strong customer facing for the lack of a better word, field. The group you're in, you're involved, this is not, and you got marketing supporting it in the middle. Yep. So nice, efficient organizational structure on a massive way. But cyber, because this isn't your grandfather's data projection, this is a platform. What's the pitch? So the key here for us is we have to always say, and, and it, it's, it's hard to simplify and we're easy. In fact, we're cost-effective. Sometimes I'll even say I'm cheap and I'm easy. >>And that does not go out of style for an enterprise, right? So our ability to take good old fashioned backup and these things that other people need and basically extend that across. Now I can have one window where I can control, keep 'em out. If somebody gets in or from the inside or a disaster happens. I from this one place can recover my data. I'm secure with my data. I have the ability to notarize my data. So this one, and by the way, key simple interface. Customers love simple. This one simple interface to be able to do that. Now it takes a lot of engineering that goes behind that. I have plenty of, I have fancy engineering degrees and all that, but I try forget that when I'm talking to a customer because at the end of the day it's gotta make sense. A mind that doesn't know, says no. >>And I think we do a pretty good job of simplifying the message, but as they get under the covers and they roll it out, they recognize that there's, you know, we, we, we have more engineers per employee capita than any company that would have 1600 employees. Simple, easy to use. It reduces the steps it takes to do something as a winning business model. You kind of come from that school you mentioned, you know, cheap and easy. That's what is key. Yeah. But we're in a world where complexity is increasing and costs are increasing. Yep. These are two dynamics that are facing every enterprise, cyber it everywhere. What's your story when you want to educate that person so they can get to that? Yes. I want to work with you guys. What's that? What's that getting to? Yes. Processed motion look like. So the beautiful part is is we sell software right now. >>Software can be purchased complex. You install it, you can figure, you do everything yourself. We also can sell that from a cloud standpoint. So now you consume it like a service. Just like you consume Netflix at home, right? I can now consume this protection as a service. You have bolts spectrums covered. Most enterprises are somewhere in the middle. We call that hybrid. So the idea here is that there's going to be components where this data's not leaving these four walls. It might be government agency, it might be some compliance factor, but the ability to be able to say yes anywhere on that spectrum, it makes it very easy for an executive to say, okay, but we have a very, as you leverage the cloud, the OnRamp for this can be as simple as turning on the surface and pointing it at a data source. I mean, you're a student of history, obviously even in this business for awhile, you've done been there longer than you'd think. >>Data protection was kind of like that. Afterthought, backup data recovery all based upon, yeah, we might have an outage or a flood or hurricane Sandy who knows what's going to happen. You know, some force majority out there might happen, but security is a constant disrupter of business continuity. The data's being hijacked and ransomware to malware attacks. This is a major disruption point of a world that was supposed to be a non disruptive operational value proposition. Yeah, so the world has changed. They went from a niche, well, we've got their architecture of throwing back up. You've got to think about it from day one at the beginning. This seems to be your, your story for the company. You think about security from the beginning with data protection. There's only one club in the bag, so to speak. Talk about that dynamic and how's that translating into your customer's storytelling customer engagements to show you, you used an interesting word at the beginning, disaster recovery years ago, I started my tech industry in 1992 right? >>Disaster recovery is when we're going to have a flood or a hurricane and the building's going to burn down. What we find is most of our customers, that's certainly happens, but that's not the driver. The driver now is somebody after my data because the world has changed. Not only has the amount of data we're collecting change, but the ability to illegally monetize somebody else's data has become reality and you have social media that is socializes if you get breached and so forth. So there's a number of drivers. Number one, I don't want to be turned out of business. Number two, I don't want to be ransom. Then number three, I certainly don't want to do the cover of the wall street journal tomorrow morning as a top executive who looked past data. We literally watch brands, I won't mention the brand now, but a very large fortune 1000 what's called out yesterday. >>We see it every few days and we watched the carnage of their brand get deluded because they weren't protected. So I think it's the perfect storm up. I've got a ton of data, so it's coming in from all directions. Secondly, I I'm concerned about, you know, my brand and been able to protect that data and then you know, what do I do? And the disaster in this case is not necessarily flood or fire. It's that somebody from the inside or outside got in the gym. Pretend that I'm a decision maker. I'm like, my head's exploding. I'm got all this carnage going on. I don't want to get fired yet. I know I'm exposed. Nothing's yet happened yet. Maybe I settled the ransomware thing, but I know I'm not in a good place. What's your story to any, what's your pitch to me? What's in it for me? Tell me. >>Tell me the posture and the, well, we're halfway home. If you say, I know I'm not in a good place, right? Cause oftentimes somebody has to get bit first or they have to see their neighbor get bit first and then they say, Hey come in. One of my first plays would be let's find out what place you really are. I can do that very quickly and an assessment, we can gather your systems, we can get a sense for our, where's your data? Where it's flowing from. What are you doing? What are you doing to protect it? We typically will come back and there's going to be spots where there's blind spots. Sometimes they're fully naked, right? But the good news is is now we know the problem, so let's not waste any time, but you can get onboard and baby steps or you know, we can bandaid it or we can really go into full surgery however you want to move forward. >>But the idea is recognizing this has to be addressed because it's a beast. Every single device that's out there on the floor, in any enterprise, any company is a way in and a POC are critical for your business model. You want to get them certainly candy taste, show the value quickly has a POC, gets structured unit assessment. You come in on a narrow entry nail something quick, get a win. What's the, what's the playbook? Love PLCs because we're so fast and easy meaning oftentimes you do PLCs cause you're complex software and you're trying to prove your point and so forth. I love to push a POC cause I can do it inside of days, but I get the customer to take the drive. It's just on the car lot. If I get you to drive it down the block, you're not bringing it back. You're bringing it home to the neighbors. >>Right. That is the case with our software and our hit rate is key. But again it's because it's straightforward and it's easy. So though most sales cycles don't push for pilot. I can't wait to get a pilot but we don't need 30 days to do it in a couple of days. They're going to recognize I can do this too. You have a good track record of POC. If I get, this is going to be the most conceding. You might have to edit this out. If I get an audience, I will win. That is the most conceited statement on the planet. And if I get the audience and they will look, and this is why we use the sports teams. Sports teams are the cool kids using this. And if I get an executive to say, what are you guys doing with the red Sox? If I could get him or her to look, it's game over. >>Hey being bad ass and having some swagger. It's actually a good thing if you got the goods to back it up. That's not fun. Piece here is that the product works well and it's not this massive mountain to hurdle. It is. We can get started today and take bites as we go, but you mentioned sports. Let's get into that talk track. As we have been covering sports data for now six years on the cube in San Francisco. We were briefly talking about it last night at the reception, but I think sports teams encapsulates probably the most acute use case of digital transformation because they have multiple theaters that are exploding. They got to run their business, they got a team to manage and they got fan experience and their consumers, so you've got consumerization of it. You got security of your customers either in a physical venue from a potential terrorist disaster could happen to just using analytics to competitive venture from the Moneyball model to whatever sports really encapsulates what I call the poster child of using digital into a business model that works. >>You've been successful with sports. We interviewed Brian shield yesterday. Yup. Red Sox, vice-president technology. He was very candid. He's like, look it, we use analytics. It helps us get a competitive, not going to tell you the secrets, but we have other issues that people not thinking about drone strikes while the games going on, potential terrorist attacks, gathering the people, you know, adding on East sports stadium to Fenway park. They have a digital business model integrating in real time with a very successful consumer product and business in sports. This has been a good market for you guys. What's been the secret to success? >> Explosive market? Couple things. First off, you summarized well, sports teams are looking for competitive advantage, so anything that can come in under that guys is gonna get some attention plus data, fan data, system data, ticket data. Um, in baseball, they're studying every single pitch of pictures ever thrown. >>They have video on everything. This is heavy lift data, right? So a place to put it saved money, a place to protect it, a pace to access it so that all of my Scouts that are out in the field with a mobile device have the ability to upload or evaluate a player while they're out still on them and on the field somewhere maybe in another country. And then add the added caveat in our sexiest piece. And that's artificial intelligence. You mentioned Moneyball, right? Uh, the, the entire concept of, of stat of statistics came out in the Moneyball concept and you know, we all saw the movie and we all read the book, but at the end of the day, this is the next step to that, which is not just written down statistics. Now we can analyze data with machine learning and we have very, we have unique baseball examples where there's absolutely no doubt they have the data. >>It's the ability to, how do I turn that to where I can be more competitive on our racing team. So we're actually working with teams improving, changing the car on the track during the race, using our software fact. We always look forward to opportunities where somebody says, Hey, come in and talk about that because it's incredibly sexy to see. Um, but sports are fun because first off they're the cool kids. Secondly, they're early adopters. If it's gonna give competitive advantage, uh, and third, they hit all the vectors. Tons of data have to protect it. >> It's our life in the business models digital too. So the digital transformation is in prime time. We cannot ignore the fact that people want wifi. They got Instagram, Facebook, all of these, they're all conscious of social media. There are all kinds of listening sports club, they have to be, they have to be hip, right? >>And being out front like that, think about the data they have come in at. And so not just to be smart on the field, they have to be smart with our customer. They're competing with that customer for four of their major sports or whatever. Major sports in the, in the, in the, in our case in this fashionable to be hip is cool for the product, but now you think about how they run their business. They've got suppliers, um, that have data and trusting suppliers with data's. There's a difficult protection formula. They've got national secure security issues. They have to protect, well they have to protect as a big part, but they have to protect, well first off these, these archives of data that are of 20 races ago or of this pitcher pitched three years ago and I have a thousand of his pitches and I'm looking for towels. >>That is, that's mission critical. But also, uh, to boot you have just business functions where I'm a, I'm a team and I have a huge telco sponsor and we are shifting back and forth and designing what their actual collateral is going to be in the stadium. They're actually using a Chronis to be able to do that up in the cloud where they can both collaborate on that. Not only doing it, but being able to protect it that way. It's, it's more efficient for them. It's interesting. I asked Brian shield this question, I asked her how does baseball flex and digital with the business model of digital with the success of the physical product or their actual product baseball. And he said an interesting thing. He's like the ROI models just get whacked out because what's the ROI of an investment in technology? It used to be total cost of ownership. >>The class that's right under the under the iceberg to sharpen whatever you use, you use that. We don't use that. We think about other consequences like a terrorist attack. That's right. So so the business model, ROI calculation shifting, do you have those kinds of conversations with some of these big teams and these sports teams? Because you know they win the world series, their brand franchise goes up if they win the national championship, but whatever their goal is has real franchise value. There's numbers on that. There's also the risk of say an attack or some sort of breach. >> Well, I won't mention the names, I won't mention the teams by name, but I have a half a dozen teams right now and two that are actually rolling out that are doing facial recognition just for security, a fan's entering their stadium. So they are taking the ownership of the safety of their fan to the level of doing visual or facial recognition coming into their stadium. >>Obviously the archive to measure against is important and we can archive that, but they're also using artificial intelligence for that. So you're absolutely right. They owe their fan a safe experience, not only a safe experience with good experience and so forth. And we love to be associated whenever we can with wins and losses. But to your point, how do you get, or how do you show a TCO on a disaster and nobody wants to, and by the way, we've seen enough of that to know it's looming. And there's also the supply chain too. I can buy a hotdog and a beer from Aramark, which is the red socks. They say supplier that's not owned by the red Sox. They have a relationship. But my data's in, I'm a consumer of the red Sox. I'm procuring a, you know, some food or service from a vendor. Yeah, yeah. My data's out there. >>So who protects that? Well, these are unique questions that come up all the time. Again, that's a business decision for the customer. The idea is with cloud collaboration, it's technically quite easy, but again, they have to decide where they're gonna commingle their data, how they're going to share. But the idea here is, again, back to the spectrum, fully cloud and accessible and locked down airtight government's scenario where we have a, you know, a lock bottom line is you get to pick where you want to be on there and there's going to be times where my example of talking to the, uh, the telco vendor, we're, we're actually going to share our data together and we're going to make us faster, make a quicker return and design this collateral for our stadium faster. Those are business decisions, but they're allowed because it, Coronas can be as hybrid as you need to be along the site. >>And again, that resonates with an executive. They never want to be wearing handcuffs and they don't want to pay overpay for stuff to not use our stuff. And if you decide to consume cloud, you, you just pay as you go. It's like your electricity bill. All right. So the red Sox are a customer of you guys. You have or they use your service. What other sports teams have you guys engaged with who you're talking to? Give a taste of some of the samples. So European, we have a couple of formula one teams. We have a racing point. We have the Williams team and formula E we have to cheetah the dragon team. We have a adventury, we also have Neo. So we have a good presence in the racing clubs. We have a ton of a world rally cars and, and, and motorcycle motorcross and so forth. >>Then you step over into European football. So we, we, we started in cars and recognize this is hot. So then we got our first, uh, European team, uh, and we had arsenal. As a matter of fact, we have one of the legends here signing with us today. And you know, I mean, they're rock stars, right? People follow them. Anyway, so we have arsenal and we did man city. Um, and we just landed, uh, Liverpool just did that this quarter, two weeks ago. I literally just, the ink is still drying. Um, and then you move into the United States, which I brought the, you know, I brought the circus to town on January one, 2019. First when was the Boston red Sox. We quickly followed that up. You'll see us on the home run fence at San Diego Padres. Volts bought for different reasons, but both very sexy reasons. So it's the reason. >>What were the main drivers? So in the case of the Boston red Sox, it was, it was a heavy lift on video. A lot of on the protection side. Um, the, uh, San Diego was file sync and share. So the example I was giving of, um, being able to share with your largest telco vendor or with your largest investors slash sponsor for your stadium, um, that was the driver. Now what's funny about both is as they get started, he's always expanding, right? So we have the baseball teams, we did land this quarter, the Dallas stars. So that's our first hockey club. I really want. And my goal is to try to get a couple in each of the main four categories and then some of the subs, um, just cause you get the cool kids, you get a tipping point. Everybody then wants to know what's going on. I have a hundred and play. >>And so we, we typically try to qualify regional where it makes sense. Um, uh, we're, you know, we're very close with a team here in the region. So, you know, they, in the feedback from, from the, from the successes you had implementations, why, what's uh, what's been the feedback from the customers. So here's the file in this. Sounds like I'm just tripping with sales guy and I apologize. Warning signs. Okay. If they use it, we're home free. So when you get Brian or any one of these guys that are using it, all I have to do is make sure that a new customer hears this person who has no reason to say anything else and just expose them to it. Because it's this unknown, scary thing that we're trying to protect against and being able to do that and have the freedom of how aggressive or you know, what metaphor am I going to cover that? >>And then also, uh, you know, the, obviously the economics work is you pay as you go. Um, it's, you know, it's a good story. Well, Dan, congratulations on the success. Um, great to see you guys really digging in and getting those PLCs and being successful. We watching your growth. Final question for you yes. Is all the data and the patterns that you see and all of customers. What's the number one reason why a Cronus is selected and why you women? I think that's an interesting question and I think that it's a couple of reasons. Number one, we work, we're easy. We have an enormous footprint. So there's a lot to reference from. Many people have already used us on the consumer side, so we're safe. So that's one reason I would also tell you however, that we have a great ecosystem because a Kronos is different than most software companies. >>Most software companies have a huge outside sales force that sells direct to customer a Chronis. Everybody here is a partner. We sell through a service provider to a channel member through a, through a, a, a, an ISV. Um, and then we have some direct enterprise. But the idea is there's a variety of solutions that can be baked on this foundation. And I think people like that variety. I, they, they like the, like the freedom of I'm not just trapped with this one thing. I can buy it and all options are available and I will tell you an it, nobody wants to be locked down. Everybody wants options, safety in numbers. They want their data protected with the whole cyber land lens. And they know everything's changing every six months. Something's different. And I don't want to be handcuffed in my desk. I want all options available. I think that's our best value from all right, Dan, thanks for coming on. Dan havens, chief growth officer, but Krohn is weird. The Chronis global cyber summit. I'm John Ford. Stay tuned for more cube coverage after this short break.

>> From Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back, everyone, to CUBE coverage here in Bahrain for AWS Summit. Cloud computing's changing the landscape, startups, business, government, and society. We're here with a special guest, His Excellency, Aymen Tawfiq Almoayed. Thank you very much, thanks for coming, thanks for joining us. >> Thank you for having me. >> And of course Max Peterson, Vice President of International Sales, Worldwide Public Sector for Amazon Web Services. >> Good to be here, John. >> Your Excellency, this program you're doing with Amazon, this MOU you've signed is interesting, I want to unpack it, because it speaks to the bigger picture of how the region is shaped by its generational shift of cloud computing and the people here. This is a really big part of this modernization plan. >> No question, no question. So the program that the government adopted, so Vision 2030, which was adopted a while ago, is based on one premise, one key premise. That the government is going to move from operator to regulator, and our focus would be to focus on and establish, create almost, an open, just, competitive environment. So the idea is for us to provide the platform and then allow the meritocratic system to let those that can aspire to opportunities and reach these opportunities come up through the system. So this program really sets the stage to get a new level going. >> Explain the difference with this program and why it's different than some of the things we've been hearing. We saw a cloud computing degree coming out of the University of Bahrain. We're seeing a lot of job skill training. This is different, this is a unique thing. Can you give a more detail around how it works. >> So, what we're doing is we're looking at very quick wins. And for us, six months, for somebody to spend six months, one year, in Amazon is a very quick win. This is not an extended degree. What this is is it's an opportunity to interact with the best of the best in their world sector. And to, honestly it's almost like a reset, where what Max and I were talking about earlier is somebody that spends a year with Amazon, I think that something happens to the pulse rate, right. So your pulse literally starts to beat much faster. >> Max knows all about that. >> Exactly, exactly. We hear about their traveling patterns, and that in itself is amazing. So in any case, so the reason it's different from a degree is it gives you real-life vocational experience. It gives you the networking opportunity. It gives you the lifestyle exposure. And then it gives you the shortcuts in organization. >> So you're exposing them to the excellence of what a culture looks like, Amazon in this case. They're hard-charging, they're fast. Anyone who's worked with Amazon knows that they move pretty quickly. But they're disciplined. It's a world-class organization. It's like a sports team being promoted to varsity or the pro team. Work their way up from the entry-level. >> So maybe the difference as well is, in this sort of program it's sink or swim. It's really as simple as that. I mean, you need to hit the ground running and take off. Maybe with a degree, it's much less so. With a degree, you go through your first year, your second year, your sophomore and so on. So what we do, what we want, is we want our youth to hit the ground running. We want very quick wins and I have no doubt that once the first trench, first team goes out to Amazon, comes back, I'm sure that the ripple effect that you see in industry and you see in the marketplace will be tremendous. >> Max, what's your take on this? 'Cause obviously you're on the Amazon side. You're taking them in Amazon Web Services here in Bahrain, or is it outside corporate headquarters in Seattle? Is there a definition around? >> All good questions. First, we're excited to be the first company that is partnered with the Ministry on this effort. We're sure many others are going to join, but we're excited to be first. I think what makes it different is the aspect of experiential. There's a lot of experiential learning that's going on different than the academic learning. Equally or maybe even more necessary is the sort of organizational cultural learning. Just what does it take to operate at world scale or at pace. And then to be able to bring that back to the region. We'll do that wherever we've got the right mix of skills. So it could be in Bahrain, where we've got a big office now, it could be in London, could be Washington, D.C., could be Seattle. >> Your Excellency, we always talk about on theCUBE over the years, tech athletes. Because, you know, to be an athlete, you got to have durability, intelligence, stability. Being a tech athlete, the travel schedules, we were just joking last night about it, you mentioned it. But also the intelligence and the integrity to do this at this speed. So this is kind of, I love the theme, so I want you to elaborate why this connects in with your vision and how did this idea get started, what was the origination around this effort? >> So initially the, again, if one takes a step back, we started experimenting about a year ago, a year and a half ago with the sports sector. So what we were doing with the sports sector, because it was a much smaller sector. What we're trying to experiment there is, if you were to allow our athletes to interact with the best in class, what would happen? Would they live up to that experience or not? And so one of the segments that we were looking at is, for example, triathlons. So about two years ago, this sport, triathlons in general, just simply didn't exist in the region. So two, maximum three years ago, they just, they were nonexistent. So His Highness had ordered that we go ahead and see if we can develop this and see if we can develop the athletes for it. And so what we needed to do, essentially, was pick some-- >> Find the athletes. (laughs) >> Is find the athletes, exactly. Send them out, we did a few triathlons. They did Kuna and Florida, came back, loved it, the addiction and the adrenaline kicked in, and then we started arranging duathlons and then triathletes here in Bahrain. Of course, I don't know if you know this, a year, fast forward, a year and a half later, and BE13, which is our triathlon team, is number one in the world. Simply it's number one in the world. Now we're doing this, we tried this with biking. So we sent a team to the Tour de France, and we started to do exactly the same thing. We were aspiring to look at greats like Sky team and the rest, and just learning from them, imitate, and then innovate, and-- >> One, if you have to have the talent to begin with, your theory is put 'em in, let 'em see it, and they'll either level up or they won't. It's self selection. >> Absolutely, no question. >> And you want to bring that formula to tech. >> It's pure meritocratic sink or swim. So we've got, so there's two, there's two phrases that we live by, all right. Number one, our role is open, competitive, just environment. That's it, all right. The number two is we open doors with no hand-holding. Simply no hand-holding, but we'll get you the opportunity. But if Amazon calls us and says participant number 606 or whatever isn't up to the cut, then they're not up to the cut. And what our youth have proven to us time after time is they're always up to the cut. As long as you make that clear, they-- >> The expectation defines the experience. So if you say this is what it is, you can swim or you can sink, your choice, people will tap out, they won't even jump in. >> I like the tech athletes piece. >> Yeah, I'm loving it, absolutely. >> Well, I mean, a lot of tech athletes, it takes a lot of energy, it is like you said, you don't know what it takes to build a company, it's really hard, I mean, it's not easy. >> It is, and the thing, just like this program, the thing that was interesting about the University of Bahrain idea was they're going to try and immerse everybody, because cloud and technology now is immersed in any field. I mean, anything becomes digital. And we were talkin' earlier about e-sports, so you need a whole bunch of great tech athletes to start bringing e-sports services to the world. >> Absolutely. >> Do you see e-sports emerging? >> Yeah, no doubt. So what we did on Friday is we signed the first agreement, this is the first time that a region hosts, we're hosting BLASTPro's finals in Bahrain, this is going to be on the 13th and the 14th of December, and that's running, streaming on Twitch. So we're excited, we're excited to be doing this with the guys at BLASTPro, and we're excited to be using Amazon's infrastructure to do it. So yes, absolutely, there is amazing things to be seen in e-sports and we're excited. >> This is awesome, digital disruption, you guys have been so proactive on this. I was commenting this morning on Twitter, then stats went out about entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley in the U.S., 51% of all ventures fail. And some other ones, 4% become unicorns, but it was all about optionality, et cetera, et cetera, and entrepreneurs are about getting on the right wave and falling and trying again, and this is, you guys have been very proactive on this. >> Right, so that's exactly why we think that sports plays a big role. So the idea behind the program was simply to gamify everything. The idea behind this program, the idea behind adopting the new bankruptcy law in Bahrain, and the new reform regulations that are coming in, all we're doing is we're gamifying things. What we're simply saying is when you fall, it's OK to fall. As long as you get back up and hit the ground running once again, we're OK with that. So you'll start to hear phrases that are pretty interesting. Like I said, with the entrepreneurships, what we're looking at is unlocking levels. So we're gamifying. With education we're doing exactly the same thing, we're looking at vocational training where you get to unlock levels. So as long as people know that the name of the game is just to stay in the game, and then outpace everybody else, then we're good. >> And the funding's been fantastic. You guys have been supporting it with resources. Now that the region's up and running, Max, do you feel good about the development so far with the new region? Therese was just on earlier, she mentioned first day they turned it on, a bunch of companies were launched already. >> Besides the cannons and the confetti that shot out today at the summit, the other exciting thing's I think when we launched the region, we had over 350 different companies, many small businesses, small and medium enterprises that put their offerings into the AWS Marketplace. When it was launched, anybody in the region, anybody in Bahrain, could literally turn on 1,700 different types of software solutions at the push of a button, so I think that's big. I think we heard how 35 local companies have created migration offerings and fast-start offerings. We heard from one great entrepreneur on stage today and we heard from government about how government's operating faster than business, I think Sheikh Salman threw down a bit of a challenge to the rest of the government and state enterprises and even corporations. And then of course I think we saw the digital bank of the future from Bank ABC with their first virtual banking assistant up on stage who, by the way, lives in the cloud over Bahrain. >> Yeah, digital employee, we had a great chat about that. This speaks to the generational shift, this is something that's going to be an interesting footnote in history. The sea change around expectations, you brought this up earlier, I think this is important. The younger generation, they want the world to be at a different speed, and they don't want an intolerant blockers in their way. And so whoever can be out front on setting up the environment, whether it's society, government, citizen services, but money-making potential, banks got to operate. So this is the replatforming of society is happening. >> No question, yeah, no question. I'll give you just the, when you compare ministries, when you compare government entities, you would walk in and you'd assume the ultra-bureaucratic system is still in place where you've got to go through tiers and so on and so forth. As far as the youth at the Ministry of Youth is involved, these guys are running things with chats, we've got internal chat systems, and so there is no memo-writing process where you then have to escalate it, and then it goes to the minister's office and so on. Absolutely not. These guys are on the likes of Slack, the likes of Teams from Microsoft and so on, and that's how government is run. >> Max, email's for old people like us. >> Hey, modern digital governments are redesigning the way all this stuff works, and it doesn't, the thing that's interesting to me is it doesn't just impact these things that you would think of as tech. I thought the example of going from 130 days to 5 days for permitting approvals-- >> For building permits, sure. >> That takes out a massive amount of inefficiency from the industry, right, and it enables that very industry to then move faster, instead of government as a blocker to so many of these things, becomes an enabler. And I think it's that attitude about modernized, customer-focused or citizen-focused that is the hallmark of what folks are doing now to make a difference. >> Well, thanks for coming in and sharing the insights. Your Excellency, great to see you. I have one final question, take a minute to explain to the folks what is the Ministry of Youth and Sports Affair, what's the charter, you going to add tech athletes to the mix now that we've kind of defined that term? But take a minute to explain-- >> Tech athletes. So the vast majority of the population is under the age of 35. The ministry's mandate is to make sure that anybody within that constituency, their touchpoints are being managed in the right way. So our job, very, very simply, is to be effectively the change agent for them, number one, and number two, to protect their interests. So we're the ones that are negotiating regulations that come in, but what touchpoint really is relevant? We're negotiating new laws that impact youth when it comes to their trades, new laws that impact youth when it comes to their rights, new laws-- >> Whether it's culture or art or whatever. >> Any touchpoints, so effectively we're customer-relations for youth, or client relations for youth. So that's that from one perspective. With regards to sports, we're simply regulators. So what we're doing is we're moving from an operator model to a regulator model, and what we're trying to do is we're trying to create a sports industry. So instead of us focusing on the actual tournament itself only, we're looking at sports diplomacy, we're looking at sports industry, we're looking at human performance and things like that. So any sectors that we can catalyze to grow in Bahrain that relates in any way, shape, or form to sports, whether it was medicinal development, technological development, regulations or otherwise, that falls under Ministry of Youth and Sports. >> You're charged to look at the whole individual across all spectrums touchpoints. >> Exactly >> That's awesome. >> So we're a horizontal as opposed to a vertical. >> Your Excellency, great to have you on theCUBE, great topic, could talk about it forever. We love sports, of course, on theCUBE, we love talkin' sports, Max, you're a tech athlete. >> I'm a tech athlete, I learned that today. Brilliant. >> You go from city to city, hit a home run everywhere you go. >> I'm looking for the next league to compete in. >> Guys, thanks so much for the insights. CUBE coverage here at AWS Summit in Bahrain, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (bright music)

>> Narrator: Live from San Francisco celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage, It's the Cube! Covering VM World 2019 Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners >> Hello everyone and welcome to the Cube's coverage here in San Francisco, California of the VMWorld 2019. I'm John Furrier with my cohost Dave Vellante Dave, 10 years covering VMWorld since 2010, it's been quite a ride, lot of changes. >> Dave: Sure has. >> John: We're going to do a Power Panel our format we normally do it remote guests in our Palo Alto and Boston studios in person because we're here. Why not do it? Of course, Keith Townsend, CTO Advisor friend of the Cube, Cube host sometimes and Sarbjeet Johal, cloud architect cloud expert, friends on Twitter. We're always jammin' on Twitter. So we'll have to take it to the video. Guys, thanks for joining us on the Power Panel. >> Good to see you, Gents. >> Good seein' ya. >> Good to be here. >> Yeah, I, I hope we don't come to blows, Sarbjeet. I mean we've had some passionate conversations over the past couple months. >> Yeah, Santoro, yes, yes. >> John: The activity has been at an all time high. I mean, snark aside, there's real things to talk about. >> Yes. >> I mean we are talking about VMware a software company, staying with their roots. We know what happened in 2016 The Amazon relationship cleared the air so to speak, pun intended. Vcloud air kind of goes it's way stock prices go up and to the right Yeah, fluctuations happening but still financially doing well. >> Keith: Yeah. >> Customers have clarity. They're an operate. They run, they target operators not developers. We're living in a DevOps world we talk about this all the time dev and ops this is the cloud world that they want Michael Dell was on the Cube Dell Technologies owns VMware they put Pivotal on VMware moves are being made. Keith, how do you make sense of it? What's your take? You've been on the inside. >> Well, you know, VMware has a tough time. Pat came in, 2013, we remember it. He said we are going to double down on virtualization. He is literally paying the cost for that hockey stick movement VMware has had this reputation of being an operator based company Infrastructure based, you go into accounts, you're stuck in this IT Infrastructure cells movement. VMware has done awesome over the past year. Few years, I had to eat a little crow and say that the move to eject Pivotal was the right thing for the Stock but for the reputation, VMware is stuck so Pat, what, tallied up 5 billion dollars in sales, in purchases last week to get out of this motion of being stuck in the IT Infrastructure realm Will it pay off? I think it's going to be a good conversation because they're going to need those Pivotal guys to push this PKS vision of theirs. This PKS and Kubernetes vision that they have >> Well they got to figure it out but certainly it's a software world and one of the things that's interesting we were talking before we started is, they are stuck in that operator world but it's part of DevOps, Dev and Ops. This is the world that they operate in Google's cloud shows how to do it. You got SRE's run things and developers this program infrastructure is code. This is the promise of this new generation. Sarbjeet, we talk about it all the time on Twitter developers coding away not dealing with the infrastructure, that's the goal >> Yeah, traditionally, developers never sort of mucked around with infrastructure. Gradually we are moving into where developers have to take care of infrastructure themselves the teams are like two person teams we hear that all the time. They are responsible for running the show from beginning to the end. Operations are under them, it's Dev and Ops are put together, right? But I'll speak from my own personal experience with working at VMware in the past that from all the companies which are operations focused, that's HP, IBM, and Oracle to a certain extent. So portfolio and all that. And BMC, and CA, those are pure companies in the operations space, right? I think VMware is one of those which values software a lot. So it's a purely, inside the VMware it's purely software driven. But to the outside, what they produce what they have produced in the past that's all operations, right? So I think they can move that switch because of the culture and then with Pivotal acquisition I think it will make it much easier because there's some following of the Pivotal stack, if you will the only caveat I think on that side is it is kind of a little bit of interlocking-ish, right? That is one of the fears I have. >> Who's not, even RedHat these days is, locking you in. >> Yeah, you know, I pulled some interesting stat metadata from a blog post from Paul Fazzone announcing the Pivotal acquisition. He mentioned Kubernetes 22 times. He mentioned Pivotal Cloud Foundry once. So VMware is all in on this open-shift type movement I think VMware is looking at the Red shift I mean Red OpenShift acquisition by IBM and thinking, "Man, I wish we didn't have this "Sense of relationship with Pivotal "So we could have went out and bought RedHat." >> Well that's a good point about Kubernetes, I think you're right on that. And remember, we've been covering Open Stack up until about a year ago, and they changed the name it's now something else, but I remember when Open Shift wasn't doing well. >> Keith: I do too! >> And what really was a tipping point for them was they had all the elements, but it was Kubernetes that really put them in a position to take advantage of what they were trying to do and I think you're right, I think VMware sees that, now that IBM owns RedHat and Open Shift, it's clear. But I think the vSphere deal with Project Pacific points out that they want to use Kubernetes as a distraction layer for developers, and have a developer interface to vSphere. So they get the operators with vSphere, they put Kubernetes in there and they say, "Hey developers, use us." Now I think that's a hedge also against Pivotal 'cause if that horse doesn't come across the track to the finish line, you know... >> It's definitely a hedge on Containers just a finer point of what you were saying there was a slight difference in the cash outlay for RedHat, 34 billion versus the cash outlay for Pivotal was 800 million. So they picked up an 800 million dollar asset or a 4 billion dollar asset for 2.7 billion. >> Hold on, explain that because 2.7 billion was the number we reported you're saying that VMware put out only 800 million in cash, which, what's that mean? >> That's correct. So they put out 800 million in cash to the existing shareholders of Pivotal, which is a minority of the shareholders. Michael Dell owns 70% of it, VMware owns 15% of it. So they take the public shareholders get the 800 million >> John: They get taken out, yep. >> Michael Dell gets more VMware stock, so now he owns more of VMware. VMware already owns 15% of Pivotal, so for 800 million, they get Pivotal. >> So, the VMware independent shareholders get... they get diluted. >> Right. >> Did they lose out in the deal is the question and I think the thing that most people are missing in this conversation is that Pivotal has a army of developers. Regardless of whether developers focus on PCF or Kubernetes is irrelevant. VMware has a army, a services army now that they can point towards the industry and say, "We have the chops to have "The conversation around why you should "Come to us for developing." >> So I want to come back to that but just, a good question is, Do the VMware shareholders get screwed? Near term, the stock drops, right? Which is what happens, right? Pivotal was up 77% on the day that the Dow dropped 800 points. Here's where I think it makes sense, and there are some external risks. Pivotal plus Carbon Black, the combination they shelled out 2.7 billion in cash. They're going to add a billion dollars to VMware's subscription business next year. VMware trades at 5x revenue multiple, so the shareholders will, in theory, get back 5 billion. In year two, it's going to be 3 billion that they're going to add to the subscription revenue so in theory, that's 15 billion of value added. I think that goes into the thinking, so, now, are people going to flock to VMware? Are Kubernetes developers going to flock to VMware? I mean to your point, that to me, that's the value of Pivotal is they can get VMware into the developer community. 'Cause where is VMware with developers? Nobody, no developers in this audience. >> That's true. >> What are your guys' thoughts on that? >> Yeah, I think that we have to dissect the workload of applications at the enterprise level, right? There are a variety of applications, right, from SAPs Oracles of the world those are two heavyweights in the application space. And then there's a long trail of ISVs, right. And then there's homegrown applications I think where Pivotal plays a big role is the homegrown applications. When you're shipping a lot as an ISV or within your enterprise, you're writing software you're shipping applications to the user base. It could be internal for partners, for customers, right, I think that's where Pivotal plays Pivotal is pivotal, if you will. >> I think that's a good bet too, one of the things we've been pulling the CESoEs data for when we got reinforced we started pulling CESoEs in our network, and it's interesting. They're under the gun to produce security solutions and manage the vendors and do all that stuff they're all telling us, the majority of them are telling us that they're building their own stacks internally to handle the crisis and the challenge of security, which I think's a leading indicator versus the kind of slow, slower CIO which LOVES multi-anything. Multi-vendor, control, a deal with contracts CESoEs, they don't have the DOGMA because they can't have the DOGMA. They got to deliver and they're saying, "We're going to build a stack "On one cloud. "Have a backup cloud, "I want all my developer resources "On this cloud, not fork my team "And I'm going to build a stack "And then I'm going to ship APIs "And say to my suppliers, in the RFP process, "If you support these APIs, "You could do business with us." >> Keith: So, if you don't -- >> That's kind of a cutting edge. If you don't, you can't, you can't. And that's the new normal. We're seeing it with the Jedi deal with Oracle not getting, playing 'cause they're not certified at the level that Amazon is, and you're going to start to see these new requirements emerging this is a huge point. I think that's where Pivotal could really shine not being the, quote, developer channel for VMware. I think it's more of really writing apps >> And John, I think people aren't even going to question that model. Capital One is probably the poster child for that model they actually went out and acquired a start-up, a security, a container security start up, integrated them into their operations and they still failed. Security in the cloud is hard. I think we'll get into a multi-cloud discussion this is one of the reasons why I'm not a big fan of multi-cloud from an architecture perspective, but from a practical challenge, security is one of the number one challenges. >> That's a great point on Capital One in fact, that's a great example. In fact, I love to argue this point. On Twitter, I was heavily arguing this point which is, yeah, they had a breach. But that was a very low-level it's like the equivalent of a S3 bucket not being configured, right? I mean it was so trivial of a problem but still, it takes one whole-- (hearty laughing) One, one entry point for malware to get in. One entry point to get into any network where it's IOT This is the huge challenge. So the question there is, automation. Do you do the, so, again, these are the, that's a solvable problem with Capital One. What we don't know is, what has Capital One done that we don't know that they've solved? So, again, I look at that breech as pretty, obviously, major, but it was a freakin' misconfigured firewall. >> So, come back to your comments on multi-cloud. I'm inferring from what you said, and I'd love to get your opinion, Sarbjeet. That multi-cloud is not an architectural strategy. I've said this. It's kind of a symptom of multiple vendors playing but so, can multi-cloud become, because certainly VMware IBM RedHat, Google with Anthos, maybe a little bit less Microsoft but those three-- >> Dell Technologies. >> Cisco, Cisco and certainly Dell all talking about multi-cloud is the clear strategy that's where CIOs are going, you're not buying it. Will it ever become a clear strategy from an architectural standpoint? >> Multi-cloud is the NSX and I don't mean NSX in VMware NSX it's the Acura NSX of enterprise IT. The idea of owning the NSX is great it brings me into the showroom, but I am going to buy, I'm going to go over to the Honda side or I'm going to go buy the MDX or something more reasonable. Multi-cloud, the idea, sure it's possible. It's possible for me to own a NSX sports car. But it's more practical for me to be able to shop around I can go to Google via cloud simple I mean I can go via cloud simple to Azure, GCP or I can go BMC, I have options to where I land, but to say that I am going to operate across all three? That's the NSX. >> If you had a NSX sports car, by the way, to use the analogy in my mind is great one, the roads aren't open yet. So, yeah, okay great. (hearty laughing) >> Or you go to Germany and you're in California. So, the transport, and again in the applications you could build tech for good applications all you want, and they're talking about tech for good here but if it's insecure, those apps are going to create more entry points. Again, for cyber threats, for malware, so again, the security equation, and you're right is super important, and they don't have it. >> Dave: What's your thought on all (mumble)? >> Sarbjeet: I think on multi-cloud you are, when you are going to use multi-cloud you going to expand the threat surface if you will 'cause you're putting stuff at different places. But I don't think it, like as you said Dave, the multi-cloud is not more of an architectural choice, it's more like a risk mitigation strategy from the vendor point of view. Like, Amazon, who they don't compete with or who they won't compete with in the future we don't know, right? So... >> You mean within the industry. >> Yeah, within the industry right-- >> Autos or healthcare or... >> Sarbjeet: Yeah, they will, they are talking about that, right? So if you put all, all sort of all your bets on that or Azure, let's say even Azure, right? They are not in that kind of category, but still if you go with one vendor, and that's mission critical and something happens like government breaks them up or they go under, sideways, whatever, right? And then your business is stuck with them and another thing is that the whole US business, if you think about it at a global scale, like where US stands and all that stuff and even global companies are using these hourglass providers based in US, these companies are becoming like they're becoming too big to fail, right? If you put everything on one company, right, and then something happens will we bail them out? Right, will the government bail them out? Like stuff like that. Like banks became too big to fail, I think. I think from that point of view, bigger companies will shift to multi-cloud for, to hedge, right, >> Risk Mitigation >> Risk mitigation. >> Yeah, that's, okay, that's fair. >> I mean, I believe in multi-cloud in one definition only. I think, for now, the nirvana of having different workload management across utility bases, that's fantasy. >> Keith: Yeah, that's fantasy. >> I think you could probably engineer it, but there might not be a workload for that or maybe data analytics I could see moving around as a use case, certainly, but I think-- >> D-R! >> The reality is, is that all companies will probably have multiple clouds, clearly like, if you're going to run Office 365, and it's going to be on Azure, you're an Azure customer, okay. You have Azure cloud. If you're building your security stack on Amazon, and got a development team, you're on Amazon. You got two clouds. You add Google in there, big tables, great for certain things you know, Big Query, you got Google. You might even have Alibaba if you're operating in China So, again, you going to have multiple clouds the question is, the workloads define cloud selection. So, I've been on this thing, if you got a workload, an app, that app should choose its best infrastructure possible that maximizes what the outcome is. >> And John, I think what people fail to realize, that users, when you give them a set of tools, they're going to do what users do, which is, be productive. Just like users went out and took credit cards swiped it and got Amazon. If you, if in your environment you have Amazon you have GCP, you have Azure, you have Salesforce, O-365, and a user has access to all five platforms, whether or not you built a multi-cloud application a user's going to find a way to get their work done with all five, and you're going to have multi-cloud fallout because users will build data sets and workloads across that, even if IT isn't the one that designed it. >> All right, guys, final question of the Power Panel Dave, I want to include this for you too, and I'll weigh in as well. Take a minute to share what you're thinking right now is on the industry. What's taking up your attention? What's dominating your Twittershpere right now? What's the bee in your bonnet? What's the hot-button issue that you're kicking the tires on, learning about, or promoting? Sarbjeet, we'll start with you. What's on top of the mind for you these days? >> I think with talk about multi-cloud all the time, that's in discussions all the time and then Blockchain is another like slow-moving train, if you will, I think it's arriving now, and we will see some solutions coming down the pike from different, like a platformization of the Blockchain, if you will, that's happening, I think those are two actually things I keep my eyes on and how developers going to move, which side to take and then how the AWSs dominance is challenged by Microsoft and Google there's one thing I usually talk about on Twittersphere, is that there's a data gravity and there's a scales gravity, right? So people who are getting trained on Amazon, they will tend to stay with them 'cause that's, at the end of the day, it's people using technology, right? So, moving from one to another is a challenge. Whoever throws in a lot of education at the developers and operators, they will win. >> Keith, what are you gettin' excited about? >> So, CTO advisor has this theory about the data framework, or data infrastructure. Multi-cloud is the conversation about workloads going here, there, irrelevant, it's all about the data. How do I have a consistent data policy? A data protection policy, data management policy across SAS, O-365, Sales Force Workday, my IAF providers, my PATH providers, and OMPRIM, how do I move that data and make sure another data management backup company won Best of VMWorld this year. This is like the third or fourth year and a reason it's not because of backup. It's because CIOs, CDOs are concerned about this data challenge, and as much as we want to talk about multi-cloud, I think well, the industry will discover the problem isn't in Kubernetes the solution isn't in Kubernetes it's going to be one of these cool start-ups or one of these legacy vendors such as NetAp, Dell, EMC that solves that data management layer. >> All right, great stuff. My hot button is cloud 2.0 as everyone knows, I think there's new requirements that are coming out, and what got my attention is this enterprise action of VMware, the CIA deal at Amazon, the Jedi deal show that there are new requirements that our customers are driving that the vendors don't have, and that's a function that cloud providers are going to provide, and I think that's that's the canary in the coal mine. >> I've got to chime in. I've got to chime in. Sorry, Lenard, but it's the combination what excites me is the combination of data plus machine intelligence and cloud scale. A new scenario of disruption moving beyond a remote set of cloud services to a ubiquitous set of digital services powered by data that are going to disrupt every industry. That's what I get excited about. >> Guys, great Power Panel. We'll pick this up online. We'll actually get the Power Panels working out of our Palo Alto studio. If you haven't seen the Power Panels, check them out. Search Power Panels the Cube on Google, you'll see the videos. We talk about an issue, we get experts it's an editorial product. You'll see more of that online. More coverage here at VMWorld 2019 after this short break. (lively techno music)

(rhythmic techno music) >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCube. We're at Oracle Park on the shores of McCovey Cove. We're excited to be here, it's a pretty interesting event. Sports Tech Tokyo World Demo Day. It's kind of like an accelerator but not really, it's kind of like Y Combinator but not really, it's a little bit different. But it's a community of tech start-ups focusing on sports with a real angle on getting beyond sports. We're excited to have our next guest, who's an investor and also a mentor, really part of the program to learn more about it and she is Gayatri Sarkar, the managing partner from Hype Capital. Welcome. >> Thank you. Thank you for inviting me here. >> Pretty nice, huh? (laughs) >> Oh, I just love the view. >> So you said before we turned on the cameras, well first off Hype Capital, what do you guys invest in? What's kind of your focus? >> So Hype Capital is part of one of the biggest ecosystems in sports which is Hype Sports Innovation. We have 13 accelerators all around the world. We are just launching the world's first E-sports accelerator with Epsilon and SK Gaming, one of the biggest gaming company. So we are part of the ecosystem for a pretty long time. And now, we have Hype Capital, VC Fund investing in Europe, Israel, and now in U.S. >> So you mentioned that being a mentor is part of this organization. It's something special. I think you're the first person we've had on who's been a mentor. What does that mean, what does that mean for you? But also what does it mean for all the portfolio companies? >> Sure, I'm a mentor at multiple accelerators. But being a part of Sports Tech Tokyo I saw the very inclusive community that is created by them and the opportunity to look at various portfolio companies and also including our portfolio companies as part of it. One of our portfolio company where we had the lead investors, 'Fun with Balls' they're part of this. >> What's it called, Fun with Balls? >> Fun with Balls, very interesting name. >> Good name. (laughs) >> Yeah, they're from Germany and they came all the way from Germany to here. So, yeah, I'm very excited, because as I said it's an inclusive community, and sports is big. So we are looking at opportunities where deep-techs, where it can be translated into various other verticals, but sports can also be one of the use cases, and that's our focus as investors. >> Right, you said your focus was really on AI, machine learning, you have a big data background a tech background. So when you look at the application of AI in sports what are some of the things that you get excited about. >> Yeah, so for me when I'm looking at investments definitely the diversification of sports portfolio. How can I build my portfolio from esports, gaming, behavioral science in sports to AI, ML, AR, opportunities in material science and various other cases. Coming back to your question it's like how can I look into the market and see the opportunities that, okay can I invest in this sector? Like what's the next big trend? And that's where I want to invest. Obviously, product/market fit, promise/market fit because there's a fan engagement experience that you get in sports, not in any other market the network effect is huge, and I think that's what VVC's are very excited in sports and I think this is right now the best time to invest in sports. >> So promise/market fit, I've never heard that before what does that mean when you say promise/market fit? >> Interesting question so promise/market fit was coined by Union Square Venture VC fund. And they think that where there's the network effect or your engagement with your consumers, with your clients, and with your partners can create a very loyal fan base and I think that is very important. You may see that in other technology sector but, not, it is completely unparalelled when it comes to sports. So, I request all the technologies that are actually trying to build they are use cases, they should focus on sports because the fan engagement, the loyal experience the opportunities, you will not get anywhere else. >> Right >> And I think this is the market that I, and other investors are looking for that, if deep-tech investors and deep-tech technologies are coming into this market we see the sports ecosystem not to be a trillion dollar but a multi-trillion dollar market. >> Right, but it's such a unique experience though, right? I mean some people will joke that fans don't necessarily root for the team, they root for the jersey, right? The players come and go, we're here at Oracle Park which was AT&T park, which was SBC Park, which was I can't even remember, Pac bell I think as well. So you know, is it reasonable for a regular company that doesn't have this innate connection to a fanbase that a lot of sports organizations do that's historical, and family-based, and has such deep roots that can survive maybe down years, can survive a crappy product, can survive kind of the dark days and generally they'll be there when things turn back around. Is that reasonable for a regular company to get that relationship with the customer? >> So, you asked me one of the most important questions in the investors relationship, or investors life which is the cyclicality of the industry and I feel like sports is one industry that has survived the cyclicality of that industry. Because, as you say, a crappy product will not survive you have to focus on customer service so you have to focus, that, okay even if you have the best product in the world how can I make my product sticky? These are the qualities that we are looking into when we are investing in entrepreneurs. But the idea is that if we are targeting startups and opportunities, our focus is that okay, you may have the worlds best product but the founder's should have the ability to understand the market. Okay, there are opportunities, if you look at Facebook if you look at various other companies they started with a product that was maybe like okay, friend site, dating site and they pivoted, so you need to understand the economy you need to understand the market and I think that's what we are looking into the entrepreneurs. And, to answer your question, the family offices they are actually part of this whole startup ecosystem they are saying if there is an opportunity because they are big, they are giant and they are working with legacy techs like Microsoft, Amazon. It's very difficult for the legacy techs to be agile and move fast, so it's very important for them if they can place themselves at a 45 degree angle with the startup ecosystem, and they can move faster. So that's the opportunity for them in the sport's startup ecosystem. >> All right, well Gayatri thanks for taking a few minutes and hopefully you can find some new investments here. >> No, thank you so much thank you so much for your time. >> Absolutely, she's Gayatri, I'm Jeff you're watching The Cube, we are at Oracle Park On the shores of historic McCovey Cove I got to get together with Big John and practice this line thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time. (rhythmic techno music)

>> Hey, welcome back. You're ready, Jeff? Rick! Here with the Cube were Oracle Park recently, A T and T Park just renamed. It's a beautiful day home in San Francisco Giants. They're on the road. We're here at a pretty interesting event is called Sports Tech. Tokyo World Demo Day brought together a coalition of about 100 startups. 25 of them are given demos today on technology as it relates to sports. But even more importantly, that can then be used in other in others. Beyond sports. We're excited to have an athlete on not just another tech crazy guy. He's Brendan Harris. He's an athlete in residence at 76 Capital. Brendan. Thanks for stopping by. >> Thanks for having me. >> So what is the effort, Principles and entrepreneur in residence? Where is the athlete residents do? It is >> essentially a play on the entrepreneur in residence. I was introduced to 76 Capital finished playing in 15 and I was doing my MBA at Warden and in Philly and got introduced Thio Wayne and the guys at 76. And they are kind of putting together an athlete venture group. Whether they're bringing in a lot of athletes don't wannabe investors and kind of providing them access to deal >> flow and >> um, >> and then also leveraging their social capital. So, uh, he was He was kind of tickled when he came when he coined the term athlete residents and he threw it on my business card. And and that's where we're at, >> right? So I'm just curious your perspective as an athlete as you look around at all the technology that's going into sports, right? Kind of the big categories are, you know that which helps the players play better. There's that which helps the people run, the team's better. And then there's that, which is really kind of part of the fan experience. I mean, you actually to go down and try to put wood on a ball coming at you in 90 plus miles an hour. All this other stuff. Do you see it as is it interesting is distraction. Is it entertaining? I mean, how do you look at it from an athlete's perspective? >> So yeah, so a lot to impact. So first of all, I have this ah, equally the equal view of fascination and frustration where a lot of this wasn't he wasn't around when I when I was playing it, certainly from the field. Now we're taking in things like recovery and rest and sleep. Ah, but I think players and me personally are fascinated with How can we improve on field performance? And I think baseball. It's such a perfect game and you fail so often, being able to turn to turn things that were previously subjective and applied data and in tech to make them objective and give you answers. I think it's fascinating and the ways that we can use data to to kind of promote performance and health and and all those things air Very fascinating. So from players, point of view, we're all about it. But at the same time, I think it certainly says why I've loved to get into sports. Tech is there's a lot of data that's just noise that's coming in and things. And so the tough part is, um, kind of weeding through and what is actionable info on what can actually help improve the on field performance? And then along with that, you know, we want to feel the product on the field, but also what the service is for the consumer and the fans are. And how can we improve that and then engage them? Because certainly sports are part of the culture and part of life now, and it's fascinating. These fans want to know more and more and more, certainly what's going >> on. And it's been It's been a >> great journey, >> right? So on the fan experience specifically, and we've been we've been here a number of years. Bill Styles, a good friend of mine off another word and other work. Brad and and, you know, talking about high density WiFi and you know the app on your phone and delivered, you know, food delivered to your seats. I mean, >> as a as an >> athlete on the field. Do you look at kind of all these things is as a distraction. Do you appreciate? It's kind of a more competitive environment these days in terms of people's attention and kind of that entertainment dollar. But I would imagine from between the lines it looks like Hey, you know, the game's down here people. It's been >> interesting because, um, you know, one of the problems of a major league baseball's been trying to address his pace of games right. And if you really look at the data, they're not that much longer. What's different? We're wired differently, right? So our attention spans are short and we're constantly so our technology. So these, you know, guys like Bill, you are trying to leverage that and try to have your food delivered and try to increase the social component. Increased the value in the in venue experience so that you're not only watching the game, but you're socially enjoying at the same time and kind of fill in those gaps. Ah, lot of it is yes on. And I think there's been balls flying into the stands since baseball's been playing, but they need to put the netting up. Has come a lot of times because nobody's watching. Some people aren't not nobody, but a lot of people aren't watching. The games are getting hit with a lot of these foul balls. So there is that component where you know there's there's some unbelievable things are going off on the sides. But um, you know it's baseball is still gonna be kind of very somewhat within within the confines. >> The other piece that I find really interesting on the data side, right? Is there so much data? Right? There's data data data. Obviously, baseball is built on data and arguments about data and conversations about data, but now it's kind of gone to this next Gen with, you know, wins over replacement and all these other things. But sometimes it's funny to me. It feels like they're forgetting the object of the game is to win the game. And it feels like sometimes the metadata has now become more important than the data. Did you win or lose and is not necessarily being used as a predictor for future performance? But it's almost like a standalone game in and of itself. Like we forget. The object is to win the game and win a championship, not to have the highest war number views since that frustration is that sound? Yeah, I think what you're getting >> into a lot of times is our know how are we making decisions right? And in the game? A lot of times people forget that human beings are out there performing and so I think that's how we've gotten into Moneyball 2.0, looking at development and certainly mental health in focus and game preparation have come into play more and you're seeing some managers. I mean, Mickey Callaway just came out and said 80% my, you know, Susan's go against the data, which which I thought was a little bit interesting, but, ah, so there is that fine line right where you have to filter in what's noise and what's actionable. And at the same time, um, you know, allow you know, your managers and your decision makers some flexibility to go with, You know, they're they're in the heat of the battle and they kind of know their guys. And they know the human element that's involved. So it's it's an interesting, you know, trying to balancing act, >> right? So from your from your new job in your new role, what are some of the things you hope to see today? What are some things that you're excited about? Um, you know, from kind of an investor. And having played the game as well. As you know, I'm looking forward to the evolution of sports. Two >> things specifically how the, uh certainly bias the performs on the field in the human element. And certainly everybody wants workout secrets, and I don't feel like it's whether it's athletes or the kind of weekend warrior or people that are, you know, kind of your senior citizens. And I don't think it's a simple as this has worked, and you should do this. It's a very personalized experience now. And I think some of this personalized digital fitness is fascinating to me on and then how it relates to and how your body relates to, you know, your diet and nutrition, your sleep, your recovery. I think all those air fascinating that, uh, advances that I want to look into more. And the second is a CZ, I kind of mentioned is the fan engagement aspect. How do we drive those those fans that digital, >> um, and >> make it actionable and monetize, right? So that you know, you have your fans that are following you know, your Facebook, twitter and all those things. And so how do you not only gauge them, but collect that data and then kind of personalized that experience? Engage your fan in a way that can kind of grow your brand. Yeah, it's interesting to me, >> really interesting to have to have your perspective, and I'm sure will be a great day and you see all kinds of crazy stuff. So thanks for taking a few minutes. >> Yeah, Any time. >> All right. He's Brendan. I'm Jeff. You're watching The Cube were at Oracle Park in San Francisco. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

>> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeffrey here with the Cube were Rhetorical Park in San Francisco on the shores of McCovey Cove. I just love saying that we >> haven't been here since >> 2014. We're excited to be back for a really interesting event is called Sports Tech Tokyo World Demo Day. This next guest has been at it for a number of years. A really cool technology. We're excited for the conversation and to welcome Mark Philip. He's the founder and CEO of Are >> You watching this Mark? >> Great to see you. Good to see you, too. Absolutely. So, first off, you've been Thio Park before. Here I have. It's been way too long. >> There are >> a few iconic stadiums in the world, and this has got to be one of the great. So let's get into it. So what is are you watching this all about? >> We are the best friend that is >> giving the digital tap on the shoulder when it's time to run to the couch. We monitor pitch by pitch, shot by shot data to figure out when the game gets exciting. I love my Yankees till death, but the >> Yankees Red Sox occasionally tend to >> take over my entire night when they play each other. So being able to get that tap on the shoulder saying, Hey, it's time to tune in or stop raking the leaves, there's a no hitter through eight. Okay, that's what we try to do. Okay, so let's break it down before we get some of the applications into which actor doing So You guys air, You're actively watching these games. You've got some type of an algorithm based on scoring plays. Pitch count. Are we? What are some of the things that drive? Whether this is an exciting game or not, it's a great question. The easiest way to think about it is if you imagine what a win probability graph looks like. So game probably starts off in the middle. Might go up or down based on who's winning, the more violently that graph goes up and down generally, the more exciting the game is, so when probability is a big factor. But also you think about rarity whether it's we had a no hitter last night, we had the Astros with a four picture no hitter a few weeks ago. You know, those sort of things that you don't see often, even if the game's nine nothing, even if the wind probabilities and changing. If that's a no hitter, that's something you want to turn into, right? And so are you tapping into just kind of some of the feeds that are out there in terms of what's happening in the game or you actually watching and using a I in terms of actually looking at a screen and making judgments? Sure, thankfully, I'm not watching or else I would never leave the house. But for us, it's about getting that real time live data. Okay, so I can see balls and strikes on my servers faster than I can see it on live TV, which is a little bit mind bending of time. So we work with the the official data sources. So whether it's a company like sport radar or stats or opt or Abels and pretty much anyone around the globe, we pull in that real time data so we can give people that tap on. The show says Hey, run to the couch. Run to the bar, tune in. Something interesting is about to happen, right? But what's entering your B to B play. So your customers are not me. Jeff, go to the couch. You're working through other people that might be motivated to have me run to the count. So how does your business model work? Who are some of your customers? What are some of the ways that they use your service? >> I'm I'm the guy behind the guy. I'm behind the >> Red Curtain, pulling the strings, you know, for us not to paint with an overly broad brush. But we're based in Austin, Texas, and one of the big things about a city like ours versus the city like this is that our companies tend to skew very B to B versus the Bay Area, which generally excuse a lot more B to C. So pitching to the cable companies, the sports providers, probably CBS Sports is our oldest customer right now. We work with small startups, more established folks, and everyone uses this differently. But the goal is the vision. Is that whether it's your DVR recording automatically when the game gets good or just making sure that, you know, maybe you want to place a bet on the Giants or if you are, ah, glutton for punishment my lowly Knicks if the if the spreads. Good enough, you know, getting that nudge when games get exciting is an accelerant. Not just for watching in, but I think, for fandom. Yeah, well, when Kevin Durant comes back, you'll get a bit more exciting >> Nets, not Nick's. I'm gonna give you one free one. So we had a conversation >> before we turn the cameras on about, you know, kind of this. This never ending attention span competition and the never ending shrinking of consumable media. And how you guys really play an interesting role in that evolution, where if you can give us a little bit deeper background, >> I think it's fascinating. You look at >> the N B A. That really any league. If you rewind five years ago, you have to pay to 5300 bucks to get access to anything digitally, and then you got access to everything, and then the NBA's said, Well, maybe just want to buy one team, so we'll let you pay things around 80 bucks and they just want to watch. One game will sell it to you for eight. I just want 1/4 with such for dollar 99 if you just want a few minutes with silty for 99 >> cents, and now they've done that really, really quietly. >> But I think it's seismic because I think all leagues we're gonna have to follow and do this. So if you look at these snack passes and especially as thes NFL rights are coming up, I could easily imagine someone like a YouTube or, I should say, a Google if they were to grab these rights, how easy would be to go to YouTube and get a game for a few bucks and how well their entire infrastructure would work. But rewind to today when you have 10 to 20 states that are online. As far as gambling goes, you take gambling. You take excitement analytics and you take the snack passes and you kind of mix him up in a pot and you get this vision of I can send you a Texas is Hey, LeBron has 60 points with 3/4. Do you want to pay 99 cents tow, Watch the finish, or do you want, let's say, place a wager on if he's gonna be Kobe's 81 point Lakers record and then we'll let you watch for free. And so getting both sides of that equation, whether your die hard or casual fan, it's hard to say no to both those options, right? And do you see within your customer base that drive to the smaller segmentation of snack packs? Is that driven by customer demand, or are they trying to get ahead of it a little bit and offer, you know, kind of different sizes of consumption, I guess, would be the right. >> Sure, I think the horse is out of the barn. I mean, imagine if >> we were still buying complete albums. Of course, we're buying tracks when we just wanna track the idea that we have to buy an entire season. No foul, 2430 games in an MLB season. Why won't you let me buy just one game? I say MLB leaves a million dollars on the table every single time is no hit bid because there's tons of people who have cut the cord, don't want to run to the bar, but would happily pay 99 cents to stream the last inning of a game on their phone on their commute. So I think it is a combination of digital. What shoring in that We're able to do these three single track sort of purchases, but also its people continue to cut the cord and rethink about how they spend their media dollars. It makes sense really interesting. So we're here. It's sports Tech, World Demo Day. What do you hope to get out of today? Why are you here? Gosh, at least to pay homage to the reason why I went to Tokyo for the first time and had life changing Rama and I feel like I need to sort of complete >> the cycle. Uh, sports like >> Tokyo is an amazing program. There's lots of different events that have shaped different ways. But there's something really unique about this. And when we all lands in Tokyo, I think it was something like 80 different entrepreneurs that came into met to meet with all of the Japanese sponsors. Everyone had the same vibe of just really happy >> to be there. >> They didn't take a percentage of these startups coming in, so you really saw different sizes, not just early stage, but late stages well and everyone was there, too. Connects and innovate and do interesting things together. So many of us were there for the first time that there's just a vibe to this event that I haven't seen in my 10 plus years in sports. Tak interesting. Well, Mark, great to sit down with you. Really cool story. And, um, I guess I'll be watching for your watching for your app. Is the man behind the man coming through my phone? Real sand Sounds great. >> All right. He's >> Mark. I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube World. World Tech demo today here at Oracle Park. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick with The Cube. If you can't tell over my shoulder, we are at Oracle Park. It's a glorious day. The marine layer is burning off and it is really spectacular. We're happy to be here. Haven't been here since, I think 2014. It's an interesting event called Sports Tech Tokyo World Demo Day. About 25 technology companies in the sports area are giving demos all day today. It's a huge program, and we're excited to have our next guest coming from the analytics side. She's Sezin Aksoy, Global Data Strategy and Analytics for AXS. >> Correct. >> Welcome. >> Thank you. >> Absolutely. >> Glad to be here. >> So Global Data Strategy. Everything's all about data. >> Correct. >> So, somebody's really happy to have you on board. What are so... What do you, what are you working on, what was top of line. >> Sure, so it's going to sound cheesy but data is the power of the world. >> Yes. >> It's going to empower people making better decisions, so that's kind of my role is at AXS. So AXS is the ticketing platform for live entertainment events. We operate in the US, Europe, as well as in Japan. And, if you think about it, when a consumer comes to your website, that's the first touchpoint that you have. Whether they buy the ticket or don't. Whether they buy or sell, and transfer the ticket, or they attend the event, all those are various touchpoints that we are collecting. So that we can inform our clients to make better decisions with data. >> Right. >> Whether it's pricing decisions, or marketing decisions, or scanning an event, which gates will be more busier than others. So, that's kind of what my team works on. >> Excellent. So, let's jump into a little bit on the dynamic pricing. >> Sizen: Hm mm. >> Because we saw, we've seen dynamic pricing. And you said you were in the airline industry. >> Correct. >> We've seen it in the hotel industry. >> Yup. >> My father in law talks about when he was doing dynamic pricing as a young kid. >> Sizen: Okay. Just making a call when somebody came through the door, at eleven o'clock. >> Sizen: Yeah. (laughs) >> Jeffrey: What's my marginal cost... >> Okay, yep. >> Jeffrey: with somebody in that room or not. There's really slow to get beyond, kind of the entertain, oh excuse me, the travel industry for other people... >> Hm mm. Yep. >> To kind of get on board the dynamic pricing. >> Yeah. We saw the Giants here... >> Yep. >> Actually a couple of years ago. We came by, they were starting to do dynamic pricing. >> Sizen: Hm mm. >> A Friday night Dodger game, compared to a Tuesday day... >> Sizen: Yep. >> Milwaukee game, very, very different. >> Sizen: Hm mm. >> So, what are some of the factors going in, what are some of the resistance, >> Sizen: Yeah. >> that had to be overcome for people to actually accept that it's okay to charge more for a Friday night Dodger game, than a Tuesday afternoon Milwaukee game. >> Yep, so yeah, so my background start with the airlines, which is where dynamic pricing, revenue management started at, specifically the American Airlines. If you think about there are a lot of similarities between airlines and live entertainments. Fixed costs, you have to, flight has to go, or the game has to be played no matter how many people are there. So, you really have a limited time to really maximize your revenue. And you kind of have a product that the demand level is different by day, whether it's a Tuesday game or Friday game. It really something you have to study the sort of the behavior from the consumers when they buy their tickets. What are the factors they put into play to make that decision? And in that mix, San Francisco Giants was one of the first teams that actually incorporated dynamic pricing about ten years ago, that slowly. The challenges with it is we are not as the consumer, not as trained to know that the price may change. Hotels, airlines been doing it for years and years. >> Right. >> And for them, also it didn't start from like doing all the flights in day one. So it's really needs to be a phased approach. It needs to be a lot of education for the public, and to think about the right way to think about it is, you want incentivize people to buy early. And you want to make sure they are the ones that getting the best price, and not necessarily the people that are buying last minute. >> Right. >> If you're buying last minute, then you must accept that it maybe the available today you're not looking for or the price not you looking for. But I will say though that plans change, people decide to not attend the game. The reason is that, potential for finding other seats for that similar game. But, really for you, have your plans. It's better to buy early, and that's kind of what the industries needs to be trained on, more and more. >> Right. >> Was there more opportunity in getting additional value out of that high demand game? Or was the bigger opportunity in getting, kind of lowering the prices on the less desirable games, and getting kind of marginal revenue on that side. Where was the easy money made, >> Yeah. >> Jeffrey: On dynamic pricing? I mean the immediate impact is from the high value seats for the high value games, cause that's really is your premium product at that point. But in the meantime, there's always a low number of seats that you have in your premium area. And if you find the right price, and if you start earlier. And really the goal is to sell all the seats, and to fill all the seats. >> Right. >> Also, just selling the seats is not, doesn't get you far enough. You want to make sure people actually come to the game, and they're the people that are going to attend the game. Right? >> Right. >> So, if you kind of, the lower level has many more seats, so it's really has to be both ways. It can't be in one area, either dynamic pricing and you don't do it. It's just all about training the public and consumers. >> Right. Now, the other interesting you said in your kind of intro, was keeping track of... What are the busiest turnstiles? And where people coming? And the flow within the game. >> Sizen: Yep. >> What are some of the analytics that you do there, >> Sizen: Yep. >> And how are teams using those... >> Sizen: Yep. >> that information to provide a better fan experience? >> Yeah, so we have scanned data, and we actually have it real time. So, we are able to provide the teams. We have kineses streams, not to go too technical, to kind of empower them to do their game operations in a certain way. So example would be, you could study the past games and understand where people came from. Typically for a Friday game verse a Tuesday game, your crowd will look different, right. The Friday game, maybe the more the families or Saturday or Sunday. But Tuesday may be more corporate world, right. So understanding they're patterns, but also than having that data accessible to you to real time. So, that way you're able to see how many people are coming in from this one gate to other. You can man the gates differently that way. And the real time data is not something that comes just easily. There's a lot of infrastructure built for it. >> Right. >> But we've done it at AXS, and we've been able to provide to the teams so they can manage their getting in better. >> Right. >> So real time's interesting cause you know a lot of these conversations about real time, and I would say, "How do you define real time?" And in my mind, it's in time to do something about it. >> Exactly. >> So, using real time, I mean are there things they can do in real time to either lighten the load at an overdone gate, or... >> Sizen: Yeah. >> What are some of the real time impacts that people are using this data to do? >> Yeah, so exactly the example you provided. Like making sure there are more people at this one gate as opposed to others. But also, like knowing who's coming into the arena. So AXS's I-D ticketing, I-D based ticketing platform, so we actually know who's coming in. It's a rotating barcode, so if you just copy-paste the ticket, and text your friend. That doesn't work, that eliminates fraud as well. But because we know who's coming in, you can actually empower your sales reps as a team to make sure you are, you know, if they are coming to a suite or a premium area. So in so actually just scanned in, so you kind of come up with ideas for sales reps. As well as some of the marketing activations, like... It could be that you have people that typically come in late. You want to incentivize them. You could actually come up with promotions on merch and food and beverage to incentivize them early, right? Or at the same time you can actually, there are some platforms that do marketing activation. You may have had a lot of hotdogs left that you couldn't sell. Towards the late quarter, you could send a message to everyone saying, "Okay, ya know, hot dogs are 20 percent off." >> Right, right. >> So that, you need real time for it, for data for that. Cause you again need to know how many people scanned in. You may want to know how many people scanned out. So for some conferences and other type events, you want to make sure there's a Fire Marshall rules, so you want to make sure. So all the real time data is helpful for that if you just look at the purchaser data, you're not going to get that specifically there. >> That's really interesting cause I was going to say, What are some of the next things that we can expect to see dynamic pricing applied to, and you just went through them which are really situational specific. >> Yep. >> Opportunities to clear inventory, to do whatever. >> Exactly, it's not just a ticket purchase. It could be applied to other things as well. >> Right, Right. >> Yeah. >> How cool. So what other kind of data sets are you looking at to help teams that maybe we're not thinking about. >> Sure, just when people buy their tickets. What marketing may have they done, so that we can understand the web traffic, and did they buy the ticket when you send out that email. Or did they buy it three days later. So that's one area. As well as sort of, the inventory that you have available for that game. Does it sell faster for that Friday game versus a Tuesday game? We also, we're a comprehensive marketplace where we have both primary and secondary in the same map. To give the convenience back to the consumers, so you kind of have a chance to see all the inventory available in front of you. So, a bit of understanding how tickets transact in the secondary marketplace is helpful for the teams to really price their product better. Cause sometimes we have... I work for a team, so I have that background where you may have just 20 price points, and you've done it for 20 years but it's been certainly changing then. But now that you have all these different data points on the second, you also you kind of maybe is like, 'Okay I need 40 price points really because there's that much differentiation demand. >> Wow, really sophisticated analysis... >> Yeah, it's a passion area for me, so... >> And doing the real time, real time data flow and everything. >> Yeah, yeah. A really interesting, interesting conversation. >> Yeah. >> To go so far beyond just dynamic pricing. >> Exactly. >> It uses more sophisticated methods to get more value, provide better experience for the fans. >> And actually in Japan, they do more about dynamic pricing. So they utilize our platform to actually able to price every seat differently if they wanted to. We've just went out with on sales for Big League teams, and that's how they apply that. So it's been used elsewhere, maybe in the U-S in sports. It's definitely catching up, and it's much much big difference from the 10 years ago. But, I think Japan has already been kind of doing that. >> Excellent. >> Mm hm. >> Well Sizen, thanks for taking a few minutes, and sharing those stories. There's a lot going on behind the scenes that may not be conscious of, but hopefully we're getting the benefit of. >> Yeah, thank you. >> All right. Sizen, and I'm Jeff. Yes, we're live. They're banging on something down there. I'm not sure what, but keep watching. We'lls be here at Oracle Park in San Francisco. Thanks for watching, and see ya next time. (upbeat music)

>> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jefe Rick here with the Cube. Where? It Oracle Park in San Francisco, on the stork with cubby code. We're excited to be here. They're moving a lot of dirt, I think downstairs. But we're at a very cool event. It's called Sports Tech Tokyo World Demo Day. And we're excited. Have our next guest. He's Todd Simms s VP of corporate development from access taught. Great to see you. Great >> to be here. Thank you. Absolutely. So, for people are familiar with access. Give us kind of the company over here. >> We're a global ticketing company. We were launched out of ah global sports and entertainment company called E E G in 2011. And we serve live the live entertainment market and ticketing. Excellent. >> All over the world, >> different types of events. >> E e g. Is a global company with a run venues worldwide. And we serve them as well as third party clients. >> Okay, great. So we're here. It's sports tech, Tokyo. It's a little bit different. Type of an organization. Kind of an incubator. Not really an incubator kind of association, early association, but certainly a community. Why are you guys here. What is this organization mean to you? Why is that important? >> Yeah, it's really important. We We launched our ticketing service in Tokyo last year, and you know, that's a market that we love. It's a vibrant large market with super passionate fans, both on the sports side and on the music side. What it really needs is more of an ecosystem. It can't just be a new, innovative ticketing platform needs all the bells and whistles around it to really innovate the fan experience. And that's what these startups are doing. I >> just I just love this job because, you know, you think of many industries if you're not familiar with them, and they seem really simple on the outside and like everything, once you get under the covers, >> a lot more going on. So >> from the outside, looking in a ticket is a ticket. Yeah, what's the innovation and tickets? What's different about somebody in Japan buying a ticket to watch a baseball game than >> somebody find a ticket to come here to talk >> a little bit about what we're bringing to Tokyo and what we brought to our platform of clients here in the States as well as in Europe, and that's really a digital I. D based ticketing system. So when you walk into the Staples Center at L. A live in Los Angeles, that thing that's getting scanned is not a ticket. It's an identity, it's you. And what's being reviewed is whether you have access to that building on that night or not. So what that allows for is full data around the customer base. Every president of every team wants to know two things. They want to know who's in there building, and they wanna have some control, whether it's economic control or otherwise on the secondary market. Our digital I D ticketing system enables both of that, and that's kind of the innovation that we're bringing to the Tokyo market. >> But I would imagine when you say, you know it's me, you know the opportunities way beyond that because now you know what in my preference is, how often do I come? What kind of beer do I like to drink? It just opens up a whole kind of CR m ah, world of opportunity for this relationship between the team now in that person with that barker, >> absolutely, and that happens today, but what you're missing is every time someone comes in with a paper ticket, you're really not sure who's entering the building. So that eliminates that piece of that. And it gets all these teams with analytic departments to really have a full picture of their fan base. So, you know, they may have been investing in some of this and capturing 60 70% of their who's in the building. Now they have 100% right, >> and I would imagine they've been doing this for a long time, with kind of their season ticket base and knowing they're in the building. But it got a lot of data on their season ticket holders. How is that? You know, changed. What can they apply there to? The casual fan that maybe bought a ticket on the secondary market and his, you know, common is sitting in the bleachers? >> Well, it's huge >> for up sales and establishing that relationship. A lot of teams, if you've you know, just buying a single ticket off a secondary market, you're nowhere in that database now because of our I D based system. Those people are now prospects for either mini pack or a season ticket back. It's right. Just >> curious how the rise of the secondary market really impacted the teams and how they think about their own ticket based. I think the 1st 1 is probably StubHub back in the day for some, and it all happened kind of outside the purveyor of leagues and outside the purveyor of the teams. Likely, they're pretty smart and figured out we need to be a piece of this. So how did that kind of evolution change the way the teams think about their fans? Well, look, I mean, teams >> like music promoters, they Sometimes they like the brokers getting involved because it takes risk off the table. I think teams air realizing, though, that a riel yield management perspective on their ticket inventory to really revenue manage this appropriately. They have to take a holistic approach on their >> tickets, and any time you >> have a segment of your >> ticket base where you really don't have control of pricing distribution, >> all of that, it really hurts and it has an impact on your unsold primaries. So what teams are looking to do is gain more control and manages inventory more holistically to do that you really need to know all the data. And again, the I. D based ticketing system enables secondary sales. But at least you are tracking those sales and, you know, from one person to the next who who sold it, who bought it >> right? I'm curious to get your perspective on on the difference between if you arm or >> entertainment focused. So you know, the Rolling Stones were in town a couple nights ago, and it's really a one shot deal for the Rolling Stones in the Bay Area that night versus the Giants game, right where you're hoping that your people come back over and over. Did they think of it differently? Or is it Maur? You know, Jeff, you like music? You went to the Rolling Stones last night. Maybe you'll come and see somebody else tonight. Is that is that well, can't were they? No doubt, sports teams are >> a lot smarter about their fan base. They have loyalty built in. They have got history, you know there's variability. There's night of game. And then there's weather in who's on the mound and all of those factors. But promoters are, ah, lot more in the dark about, you know, Is this an artist that you know? How much credence can they put in the last two? Or they did. It's too been two years. Is that artist still going to sell appropriately or similarly than they did last time again? The secondary market on the music side is made a bigger issue because of that variability, and those promoters are willing to take risk off the table. But the same thing applies in order for them to really manage and revenue manage that tour. They really need to know who's buying and grab some of that secondary economics out of the system. Right? And that's again, what our platform enables, and that's what we're really bringing to the Tokyo market. It's really exciting. That's a great market for >> us. I was gonna say just to close. >> You know what's special about the Tokyo market either? From an opportunity side, we're kind of a unique way which they do things or unique way in which the kind of the fan experiences as you look at that market. >> Well, it's interesting. I mean, in a culture that is so reliant on such interesting technology, these ticketing technology is actually quite old, and so we're excited to bring that. We've got great partners past Revo is our partner there, and they're really selling that through the Yahoo ticketing channel. Uh, they we have we just signed the B league, which is the professional basketball league will be rolling them out in their fall season coming up soon here. But basically, they are looking for the same things. We're looking for more data and Maura capturing of the secondary market, and we can bring that to them. >> All right. Well, Todd, thanks for taking a few minutes. Pull the covers back off ticketing A lot more going on than people think. Thank you very much. All right, He's >> taught. I'm Jeff. You're watching The Cube. Were Rhetorical Park on the shores of >> McCovey Cove in San Francisco. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

>> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jefe Rick here with the Cube were at Oracle Park, and they're moving a bunch of dirt downstairs, but we're happy to be her. Anyway. We're here to really cool thing called Sports Tech Tokyo World Demo Day. And we're excited to have our next guest. He's heavier. Altamirano, the director of innovation for sport Radar of your Nice to see you. >> Hi. Nice to see you, Jeff. Thank you for having me. >> So for people aren't familiar with sport radar. What you guys all about? >> Yes, the world all about sports date on day and fan engagement. So whenever you want to place a a safe ah, bad Latina market, that's biddings. Regulated are mostly in Europe, for example. Ah, you would use ultimately our data also, whenever you're looking for first time Ah, stat line coming out or you're one to power your fantasy game. That data ultimately comes from us. So >> we talked about before we turn the cameras on. There's lots of sources of data, but your guy's unique value proposition, speed and accuracy is all right. >> Absolutely, Absolutely. You want to think >> of sports data like the same us? Your ticker from the stock market, right? You want to have it fast and reliable as possible. We've been doing that for almost two decades. We have experience, keys and experience in many different ways of collecting. Collecting data from around the world were 2000 people strong 30 offices around the world, dedicated just to collect and into into work with data and evolve and change the narrative of how people talk about sports. >> Okay. Were you guys base? Where's headquarters, >> eh? So we're ahead course in St Gallen, Switzerland, and in the US we have offices in San Francisco in a Minneapolis, uh, New York and endless magazines. All >> right, cool. So we're here in sports Tech? Tokyo will Demo day. What do you doing here? What does this event all about for you? >> Absolutely. This is >> Ah, great events. The grain. And they were shot out to Michael Pearlman and scram Ventures, and they're putting together this ecosystem, right? They want to bring all the best technology, the best sports technology that's out there in the world. Uh, you know, with Japan having all these events leading up to the Olympics next year, bowl so all the way through 2026 what they do, Jeff. They come up and they bring all of those large, great companies that they have conglomerates. And they make you make all of this, um, big opportunity for everyone who's due in something with sports technology in some way, shape or form. And then there's a lot of collaboration. There's investment. There's a lot of things happening there. We we definitely would certainly fit in, especially with our accelerator program. >> Okay. And then, are you guys already in the market in Japan, or is this just kind of a new boost? Into what? What you've already got? >> Things definitely knew boost >> for us. Uh, Asia? Absolutely. Ah, A future focus of also pressing and future focus of us. There's great things happening there, for sure. >> Okay, Now you're director of innovation. So you're actually looking for Toby to be opportunities to take your technology in some different directions, tell us a little bit more about what you're working on? >> Absolutely. Um, I leave the accelerate our program where we provide our data to Some early stage companies were doing something innovative with sports data, so that allows us to a keep tabs on, keep a pulse on innovation that's happening outside of our walls s Oh, that's our external innovation initiatives. But that allows early stage companies to get data and to use their funds into product or marketing or what have you so that they can really develop it and really, you know, uh, deliver something that which we think they can >> write. And you said, you have a couple of partner companies that are here today, correct? >> Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, we have two companies who made it to the finalists were absolutely, very, very proud of those that Edison and also a really So So the guy's a shock. It ah, Edison and Colin and steam, Really, they're great people, and I'm really in a really happy and on really proud to to see them here. >> Good. So what are they doing with your data that's unique in it? Different? >> Absolutely. So what? Edison? What is Zoom with our data's? Our data allows him to better tag and better identify each player that's showing on on the screen. Edison's technology allows for a personalization that its unique you and I could be watching the same game. Let's say we're watching European soccer and your run all the fun, and I'm a messy fun. So you would see targeted messaging and targeted information on Mass. And I will see targeted information on Ronaldo even though we're both watching the same game. That's what, uh, their technology allows an hour. Data propels >> them coming through the lower thirds and the graphics. And how is that house that >> excited zone over late? So it's overlays. >> Html overlays that they can. They provide. So especially for O. T t providers. >> Okay, because obviously I need to have the apse. They know it's me watching and not you for for >> what, exactly that allows for personalization. It's all about personalization, and that's that's definitely something We're very interested in a sport. Reiter. We believe that's the future personalization of the experience watching and engaging with sports. >> It's interesting, though, gives so much of the sports is the communal effect, right? I mean, so much of so much of the greatness of sports is that, you know, two people from different sides of the city can come together and stand shoulder to shoulder and root for their team. So I don't know. Is there some some downside to >> the civilization >> because they kind of or does. It doesn't support the community, because now I hang out with a bunch of other messy A fans and you hang out with their own, although family curious, kind of where personalization fits with community in kind of engaging >> with think baseball park, you know, putting the move to send that and a nice curveball, But definitely you, maybe you you have a >> lot of massive fans who, you know, But they may not be watching the game with you, right? So when you're watching at home, then you're gonna have that experience, and that can allow them for more communication with other people who like the same things that you like, right. But really, personalization is out there in and it's everywhere, right? Like you're everything that you're getting it more and more targeted and we want to avoid you was one of always spam, right? So if anything, a message, that is, if somebody wants to sell your allow those shirt while you're ah, big messy fund, you're probably not gonna like seeing that ad right. So and neither the advertiser will want to advertise you something that you? Definitely not like so that's exactly >> yeah. No, it's interesting. One of my favorite lines about Big Data, right is when it's done well, it's magic. And when it's done poorly, it's creepy. Definitely. Make sure you're gonna tell me the right jersey and other wrong. Absolutely. Alright. Well, Javier. Well, thanks for taking a few minutes. And good luck to your to your two. Ah, entrance into the finals. >> Absolutely. I Thank you so >> much for the opportunity, Jeff. And you're looking forward to seeing the finals >> here. All right. He saw me have Jeff, You're watching. The Cube were in Oracle Park on the shores of McCovey Cove. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.