>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Boomi World 2018. Brought to you by Dell Boomi. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of the 2nd Annual Boomi World 2018 from Las Vegas. I am Lisa Martin with John Ferrier, and we're welcoming to theCUBE, for the first time, the chief operating officer and chief customer officer, Chris Port. Chris, thanks so much for joining us on the program today. >> Thank you for having me. >> So, 2nd Annual Boomi World. Over 1,000 people here. The keynote was streaming, in what, 17 countries this morning. Big impact, 7,500 customers. You also said, Dell Boomi, we're adding five new customers every day. >> Yes. >> You have this opportunity to get your customers together with Crass, and Analysts, and your Partner Ecosystem. Talk to us about some of the strong messages that have come out from Dell Boomi in the last couple of days about your technology partner program, how you're re-defining iPaaS. >> Yes. Yeah, I think it's about the leadership that we've talked about effectively since there was a Gartner Magic Quadrant from our space, we've been in the leader of quadrants. So, incredibly excited about that, but the goal is how do we become a leader for the next 10, 20, 30 years. And, I think this week is not just the start, it's a continuation of that. So, we talked about the new technology partner program, which, to me, is just the continued evolution. We've always had a partner program, but it's just continuing on that journey and really starting to explore ways for partners to now start to build solutions on top of Boomi that they can then take to market that we support. Obviously, leveraging Boomi's technology, but then, building on our platform. I think we're talking about exploring and expanding our GSI and SI capabilities. So that force multiplier that Chris talked about. We have a great group of Boomi team members, but we know that those SIs and GSIs provide that force multiplier. We've also launched new services around enterprise innovation and enterprise architecture. We listen, this is 100% customer-driven. Customers talk to us. They love professional services from us, but they love to see it in a much more predictable, provided deliverables, in a subscription model, so we launched that this week. And then Steve Wood's going to talk tomorrow about a multitude of things from a product perspective that we feel are really kind of, this is where the iPaaS 2.0, as Chris called it, tomorrow is the start of that, and I think you guys will see that journey. >> There's a lot of challenges in this marketplace with cloud-native and on-premise legacy applications. They have great value as they get modernized in cloud. You guys are born in the cloud. Everything that Boomi has done since the start-up days has been cloud-native. So, that's an interesting perspective. That's going to be helpful as you guys take the customers to the next level. But, this connected business market that's developing is complicated. You got smart contracts around the corner with Blockchain. You've got integrating multiple developer environments, multiple toolchains. Just on and on. A lot of complexity. And, what team leaders want is less complexity. So, they don't want more complexity to solve more complexity. So, this is the struggle. How do you guys talk to customers who come to you and say, look, I've got complexity and I want to simplify but I still want to scale. I want to do these things. I want to be prepared for Blockchain. I want to be prepared for the next level of business. >> Yeah, I mean, I would say a couple things. I think, first off, we're agnostic in terms of on-prem versus cloud from an application perspective. Our predominant use case is a SaaS-based application that's in the cloud and an on-premise application. So, I think 7,500 customers, the 10 billion minutes of experience we talked about, that experience spans both on-prem and cloud. So, I think we have a really unique opportunity to see and live in both universes. The architecture is 100% cloud-native which gives us fundamental advantages. Now, in terms of what you talk about, in terms of the simplification. That's what everybody's striving for. They want to reduce the tools sets. And, again, I think that's the power of the platform. Steve Wood talks about it, drop the mic, we're the best at integration, low-code, high productivity. It's where we were born. It's what we built the back of the company on, but that said, over the last five to seven years, we've built a true platform around that core capability to now encompass master data management with Hub, API with MIDI, EDI with Exchange, and ultimately Flow that kind of brings everything together from that workflow low-code app piece. >> So, foundationally... Congratulations by the way. It's a good job. But, that's just the foundation. >> Absolutely. >> You guys talk about the keynote today. Michael Dell kind of hit it hard with the scale and the data tsunami with AI. >> Yes. >> As IoT is right around the corner or here with edge, whole new processes are developing. That not necessarily are predictable. Sometimes architecture might change over night. This is kind of the next Boomi way that we're seeing you guys set up for. How are you guys building that out? What are the key business model components? You mentioned the community that you have now, an ecosystem that's best developed and growing. How are you guys looking at configuring the business to build on the foundation and not skip a beat? >> Yeah, I mean, I think when you start talking about kind of the tsunami of data, as you put it, or that Michael put it this morning. When you think about Boomi, and how lightweight the out-of-market texture is, it creates this really incredibly fast way to create that data fabric. The data fabric, ultimately, is what will drive AI. It's being able to aggregate and see that, and then ultimately, put it in the AI engines. As we call it the fuel, or Michael or someone, coined it this morning the fuel. And, I think our architecture, and again, this is where being cloud-native, that you talked about, this is our profound differentiation. This is why we have the advantage in that space. It's up to us to take advantage of it, but I think, first off, it's that lightweight architecture that will allow us to really work within customers to create that data fabric that then drives AI, drives it into their organizations. We just heard from the panel that Mandy was on, and Blue/Green, and the chief security officer, chief privacy officer from Dell. And, again, everybody is talking about AI and howling about data and data privacy, but Boomi's in a unique place to kind of create that data fabric. I think the second one is being able to deploy AI into our own product and into our own community. And, in talking about staying ahead of the curve, that's paramount, that's our fundamental. In my opinion, that's the fundamental differentiator. It's the moat that we have today because we are single instance multi-tenants. So, people will talk about the number of customers they have, but all of ours live on one instance of Boomi. So, that 30 terabytes of anonymous metadata, that's all on one instance. So, we see that it's our opportunity, and you see it with suggest and assure and some of the things we pioneered in AI. It's our opportunity to take advantage of that with the future of things and Steve Wood will start talking about that tomorrow. I'm excited of how we deploy AI in Arctic community and our support in a much more proactive way help our customers solve problems and opportunities that they have every day. >> Michael Dell has talked numerous times on theCUBE, and even again today, and in the keynote that companies need to express their competitive differentiation with their data. Enterprises that has mostly been the sweet spot for Dell Boomi. Large organizations not born on the cloud, many of them, have a huge advantage of having a ton of data. You guys are a great example of how you are also using almost 30 terabytes of anonymous metadata, to tune... And that's too soft of a word. To really empower the platform. So, you're an example of, with the kind of transforming, using what you're saying is what companies need to differentiate. When you're in customer conversations, as the chief customer officer, how often does sort of that Boomi on Boomi transformation story come up and help customers get even more trust in the brand? >> That's a great question. I think it comes up more and more, and I would say it's Boomi on Boomi, but it's Boomi on Dell technologies as well. Because Michael talked about it, Dell went on this acquisition bench, and if you go look at it, it started roughly nine, 10 years ago. And, Boomi was literally the second, if you go look at kind of the assets that they purchased, Boomi was the second. And it was about 12 months after the first acquisition. And everybody is learning about what it can do, and they're like, wait a minute. We acquired this other company 12 months ago, and we're still trying to figure out, simply, how to make the two instances of Salesforce talk so that sales makers can just share leads and understand what they're doing in each other's accounts. We're, like, well that's kind of what Boomi does and within six weeks that problem was solved for that acquisition, and obviously the Boomi acquisition, and then, kind of carried that on. >> So, you use your own technology to solve the internal problem. >> Exactly, drink your own champagne. And that's just become more and more. I mean, we have a multitude of people from Dell technologies, IT here, this week, talking at some of the breakouts in terms of how they leverage it. They're now leveraging that. They're now leveraging Flow for different opportunities. Dell's got one of the largest service cloud deployments in the world happening. A lot of that will be powered by Boomi. And, so, those conversations come up all the time within customers. I think the Boomi on Boomi, I think the onboarding app will certainly give us an opportunity to talk more and more about that. Obviously, our application stack underneath the covers is integrated by Boomi. So, it absolutely comes up, but I think we're kind of at this inflection point in terms of these discussions where I would tell you they come up in a step function way more today than they did when I kind of came back to Boomi three years ago. >> You know, Chris, I got to ask your perspective. You made me think of some question. You mentioned that Internally Amazon had the same challenge with AWS. They solved their internal problems. And then, the rest is history. Dell has an interesting architecture now, and if you look back at the history of Dell, I know you look at how it was built out, Michael has been very successful in merging in as an equal with EMC, the acquisitions that came in, tuck-ins, and some in storage all over the place. You guys have a culture of acting like a startup. The founder on stage is, like, I'm jazzed, I'm going to go the next 30 years. I'm like, that's 85 I'll be like... (Chris laughing) Okay, so, this is a culture of startups. How does Boomi keep that startup edge? Because they were really SaaS first, early on. How does that maintain the culture? And, now, the power of Dell technologies. VMWare, the relationships. They've got some muscle within Dell, but mostly don't want to put the wet blanket on the innovation engine of Boomi. How do you guys operate that? Because you want to tap the internal. >> Yup. >> Build that, make that, feed into growth. Same time, be nimble and fast like a startup, and grow. >> Yeah, well, this is like the unique opportunity that I've had, right? I led the strategy that ultimately led to the acquisition of Boomi, led the due diligence, and then rolled out and was part of the leadership team eight years ago. Eight years ago to the day yesterday was the anniversary. And, part of the design point of the acquisition though, part of the selling point to Michael and his leadership team at the time, was incubate Boomi. Please, don't try to integrate it. >> Don't force it too early. >> No, let's leverage the power of Dell where we can, particularly from a go-to-market perspective and a branding perspective, but in terms of truly integrating when you think about integration in terms of M&A, that wasn't the playbook that we ran. In fact, my job as kind of the chief integration officer at the time was to really protect versus integrating. And, I would argue that that's kind of carried on eight years later. And, Chris McNabb and the team have, you know, Chris has built an incredible culture at Boomi. And, it's probably the first thing that we talk about at every leadership meeting which is we're trying to grow heads, and grow team members, and grow Boomers, 40, 50, 60% year-over-year in terms of our hiring. The one thing that we cannot relax on is that culture. And, Chris has infused that in us. Michael's absolutely an incredible backer of that. >> So, strategic since day one. >> Absolutely. >> You know that cloud's around the corner, but still you know you're early, so you probably got a good price on the deal anyway. But, you said, okay, cloud-native. You got VM, you got Pivotal. >> Yup. >> It's maturing in real-time every day. So, you guys had a plan from day one to be strategic that way. Not jam the revenue up and try to get the numbers up. >> No, and I would say even today, I think we're absolutely, we think there's incredible opportunities with partnerships with, obviously, Dell technologies, but with Pivotal, with Vitrustream, with potentially VMware. I think you'll continue to see us announce things and explore those, but Michael, he holds Chris, and ultimately the Boomi team, accountable to our P&L. We have to go meet our numbers. And, there is no forcing of partnerships. It's, like, it's where it makes sense, and there absolutely are things where there's logical sense. >> Well, now you're in the inflection point. You got to grow the business. But, the data is still going to be, that could be the next kick up. You don't know where you are in the inflection point, I'd imagine. Are you down here or is it hockey sticking up? Because if the data comes home, and you're a trust platform for the data, that feeds into the apps. >> Absolutely. >> That feeds into the API 2.0 economy. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, I mean, yeah, it's a fair question. I don't know that we'll know until five years from now where we are today in terms of that inflection point. I would say typically we're actually seeing acceleration in our space, right? Like, usually, when you look at the Gartner, the Forrester stuff, that I stared at eight years ago. Usually they're very aggressive on their expectations. Their expectations for iPaaS were actually lower than what we've seen. And, we're actually seeing even acceleration and growth of the space. So, we know that we have this opportunity, I think, with data and the ability to create this data fabric and really drive those business results and insights into our customers. I think that's what puts us somewhere on that inflection point, but I would argue that it's more like this today than it is that. But, time will tell. >> So, customers, the bread and butter, the reason we're all here, right? 7,500 plus I mentioned in the beginning, five a day. You just today, Chris, recognized the first customer awards for Boomi customers, and you had some really cool categories, change agent, emerging technologies, innovator and ROI. Talk to us about the genesis of this customer awards program and how is that really kind of even internalized with the Boomi folks going, look at what we're enabling, so many different types of businesses to achieve. >> That's a great question. I mean, since I've been back, one thing that we try to instill in the sales cycle is really talking to customers, understanding what is the business value? What are you trying to get out of this? We're typically an ingredient of a broader project, so how do we articulate? What is that business value? What's the business outcome that you're trying to achieve? And, I think today was a way for us to talk aloud, and, ultimately, reward people that are leveraging technology. Boomi's a part of that, but, ultimately, what is the business value they're driving it? And, in a profound way, that's even amongst our 7,500 customers are unique in some way across those different four categories. So, that was really the genesis of the customer awards. It was trying to go find those types of customers that were somewhere much further along in their journey across one of those four pillars, but about their business outcomes. What they were trying to drive. Whether it be having a trading partner take six to 10 weeks down to three days. Whether it be driving better customer experience within customers trying to seek out advertising with charter. And, ultimately, get them, but, again, generating bottom-line results and top-line results. So it's about the business outcome, the business result. >> Final question, I know we got to break, but I want to get it out on the record. What are you investing in? What are you doubling down on? Obviously you're on a growth curve right now, so you can look back where you are in the next couple years, but certainly it's working. So, what are you doubling down on? Where is your key investment areas as you look at the next years, 24 months out. What's going down? How are you operating the business? >> Yeah, and maybe I'll highlight three things. I think first and foremost, it's our product, and I think you'll hear from Steve Wood tomorrow. So not just me, when you ask me that question, I'm going to talk about Boomi's investment priorities. So, first and foremost, the product. I think you'll see tomorrow. We started, I mean, look, three years ago we kind of did this separation from Dell technologies, where we're 100% owned, but that in terms of the profound impact and investment of the business, that's where we started this journey. But, in terms of the next 12 to 18 months, I'd tell you product, and you'll start to see that tomorrow, and how it's manifested itself, and where we're headed in the next 12 to 18 months. I'd tell you our go-to-market activity and there it's continuing to build out as global capabilities. It's continuing to really hone and focus our partner capabilities, and that's also figuring out how to leverage Dell technologies and really drive that, particularly to help bring us into those opportunities as we scale and continue to grow. And, then, I think the third is our customer success equation that I talked about this morning. Chris has been incredible. I genuinely mean it, success is a Boomi-wide initiative. We're only as good as our customer's experience today, and we invest in that every single day and that's been a profound investment area that we'll continue to ramp up to really plow down on that success equation we talked about. >> Well, Chris, thanks so much for joining John and me on the program. COO, chief customer officer and dare I also add chief listening officer. I've heard a lot about your listening to customers as well as employees. Thanks so much for your time, Chris. >> Thank you so much. >> I'm Lisa Martin with John Ferrier. You're watching theCUBE live from Boomi World 2018 in Las Vegas. John and I will be right back with our next guest. (upbeat music)