>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of IBM. Think 20, 21 brought to you by IBM. >>Hello everyone. And welcome back to IBM. Think 20, 21, the virtual edition, the cubes continuous coverage. And we're excited to talk about people. How do you align people and technology? Of course, there's a lot of process in between. Those are the hard, hard things. Technology is sometimes easy. Amy Wright is here. She's managing partner of talent transformation at IBM, Amy. Great to see you. >>Thanks. Great to be here. And Dave, >>Yeah, you know, we love to talk tech and sometimes we kind of sweep the really hard stuff under the rug. And we talk about transformation. I mean, it's, it's ongoing. I mean, you think about the pandemic last year, it was sort of this forced March to digital. We had to transform overnight, you know, the vast majority of leaders. I think that in figures like close to 95, 96% say that they've accelerated their digital transformation by half a half a decade. Uh, and of course that was a lot of, it was like I say, it's a forced March, so it wasn't really planful, but now they've got time to plan about a digital first approach and how to deal with remote workers. I wonder if you could talk about the role that people play in that digital transformation, >>Right. Thanks, Dave. Uh, I'm happy to, you know, a lot of people think of digital transformation about being technology oriented. It's a total shift in tech and it is, but it really can't be successful with just tech. So you're right with the pandemic has done for digital transformation. Is it really, it pushed us to these technology extremes more than anyone could have anticipated, particularly with our ways of working, being remote. It also pushed us to extremes and highlighted the role that humanity play played plays will continue to play. So we've been pushed to reimagine jobs, push to re-imagine workplaces, uh, push to re-imagine, how technology can deliver this connected enterprise, um, you know, through, through virtual reality, um, and virtual working, wasn't really something that was accepted before, but now we've been, you know, forced to accept it, which is, which is really great for the digital transformation because it accelerated that. >>So the connected enterprise though, isn't really just working virtually it's these new levels of productivity and decision-making that are enabled by intelligent workflows and cloud and data. And so the technology is absolutely critically important, but automation doesn't have empathy. So it takes people to turn these insights that are brought to us through technology and automation. It takes people to turn them into action and it's that human technology partnership that's required for the digital transformation to get to that desired impact. So when you think about, when we think about people in the role they play and, uh, you know, the pivotal role they play truly, multi-part, it's kind of three parts. One is people are the ones that build tech. And so they influence whether or not the automation is going to work, whether it meets the needs of the enterprise, if it takes advantage of the latest thinking, um, and it fits, you know, it was irresistible. >>If you will. The second is the people use the technology to gain this meaningful insight and turn it into action. And then the third is the people are the ones that embed this tech change into culture. So that's actually sustainable. So to be able to drive this sustainable digital transformation, the people, it requires the people to make it happen. So if you look at healthcare, Dave, think about the dramatic shift in healthcare in the past year where doctors have shifted to telemedicine, nurses have shifted to using iPads as caregivers at the, you know, with their patients that not only required to shift in the tech, but an adoption of caregivers have a new way of working that again, couldn't have been successful unless they adopted an embedded and embedded a different way of working in a different culture in everything that they do. >>You know, what you said is really important, especially we talk a lot about what machines can do that people can't and what people can do that machines can't and you just nailed it with, with empathy. And, and when you think about to the remote work, I think prior to the pandemic, it was probably around 15, 16% of workers were remote. And when you, when we do, we do surveys with a partner ETR out in New York and they, they project based on the surveys that, that that's going to double, but somewhere between 33, 35%, but people don't really know when, when you talk to people, they go, Hey, I kind of like working at home. Other people say, I can't wait to get back to the office. So people obviously critical part of the digital transformation, but how do you think about creating those meaningful experiences at work, whether that's remote, part-time remote, you know, full-time back at work. >>So this is a really great, great question because I think our point of view on this has changed. So first of all, most enterprises we talk to will move back to some hybrid kind of environment. We're never going to be everybody back in the office. Again, that's, that's, that's not who we will be moving forward, but the expectations of employees have changed. Um, we all know that, you know, think about your consumer lives and, and how we experienced that personalized ex that, that, that personalization, when we go to buy something online, that's now bled over into the workplace. So the employees expect that exact same personalized experience at work, but it's now so much more than that. Now it's not only personalization, which, you know, obviously tech enables quite dramatically, but the experience is broader to look at a holistic relationship between the employer and the employee. >>That's a little bit less, it's less transactional. Like I do my job and my company pays me for doing this, this set of activities, but it's more supportive and integrated with their personal selves. So, you know, we did a recent study in which we, uh, looked at consumers and employees and their highest priority areas for the expectations that they now have for their employers is career and skill advancement opportunities with speed. Second is work-life balances that might take the form of what hours they worked, our ability to, um, you know, manage with what they're doing in their home with, with their families and children, uh, you know, their ability to be camera ready or not at all times of day and night and actually where they work from. So people are now working, not only at home, but they're moving to different cities and want that flexibility. >>And then third, a high area of priority now is ethics and values. So not only diversity equity inclusion, obviously critically important, but ways of working and meaningful and purposeful work. So when you look at all of those together, the employee experience has grown to be not only that of personalization, like we have an art consumer world that is, that is critically important, but now, um, it's all of these other things, as well. As a matter of fact, they become so important, Dave, that in our recent research, it shows that one in four employees will change employers in 2021, one in four, one in four will also change professions in 2021. And while about 75% of employers, companies believe that they are doing a good job of meeting the needs. These expanded needs of their employees, less than half of employees feel the same way. So there's a lot of work to be done. So you asked the question, why is this people experience so important? It's important because it's required for the digital transformation. And it's so much broader than what we used to think that it's now a competitive differentiator for employers as they try to not only achieve their digital transformation, but as their organizations disrupt over and over again, um, it's, it's a requirement in order to meet their meet their enterprises objectives. >>So it was a great, uh, great stats, Amy, to just put out there. I mean the career advancement, I think, I feel like it's always been there, but it's now much more front and center employees are more vocal about it, the work life balance, same thing. I mean, you're seeing some organizations, you know, a hundred hour weeks where we're revolting and then, you know, the ethics and values piece to me is one of the most interesting, I often joke Milton Friedman rolling over in his grave because he was the economist that said, Oh, it's just about shareholder value. That's it. And that's not anymore. Um, in fact, there's clearly a relationship between shareholder value in, in ESG and ethics and, and young people are very, very concerned about it. So here's the question who's accountable for making sure that you have a positive employee experiences occur. >>Yeah, really, really, really good question. And the thing is, this is what makes it so hard. There's not one group or one person it's actually all of us. And I know that answer sounds like a little bit like a cop out, but this is why it makes it so hard. Every leader's responsible for the employee experience, every manager is responsible for the employee experience. Every employee is actually not responsible for the experience of their teammates. And actually speaking up if the experience isn't using inclusiveness as a, as an example, if it's not inclusive, every experience, every employee has the responsibility to speak up. So some companies actually have employee experience leaders. Some companies have digital transformation leaders that embodies that, that, that includes that employee experience, but most actually start this journey through the, through the partnership between it and HR. So I teach responsible for this technology architecture, the cloud strategy, the data strategy, architectural framework, all those pieces that put together the foundation and the building brought blocks and the security that helped to Mo um, modernize this employee experience. >>And by the way, they're doing this at the same time where they're modernizing their entire way in which the it function operates. Um, so you got it. That's kind of setting the stage and the foundation for what's possible. And then you have HR who's operating as the steward of the employee experience that those people experiences, um, and putting them in place in a consistent and consistent and a positive way across the entire enterprise. So things like design thinking, um, that puts the employee at the center of the way we, um, architect and create these experiences using rapid iterative design principles with, again, with this, with the employee at the center, making that the cultural norm across the enterprise is a really big deal. So HR is usually in the lead on making that happen. But again, this is a cultural shift, not just I have a project, you know, I'll kind of have a project plan and here's, here's what I'm going to execute on leadership roles. >>So HR is, is the steward of leadership and those characteristics of leaders now are changing very dramatically to be more, even in a big enterprise, large global enterprise entrepreneurial transparent, co-creation really at the core of everything. So being transplant transparent with your teams and be able to co-create, um, you know, procreate for the future. So data and AI, we can use data. And I AI now to actually IM uh, uh, predict the impact that the workforce and the cultural will have on business results, predict attrition, predict what different work workforce design scenarios will look like to the supply chain, um, uh, predict the speed of hiring and how that will impact literally bottom line business results. So you said it right, when, when, when you talked about shareholder value, the P people is at the center of shareholder value now. So, um, our functions need to be modernized, but it's really this partnership between HR and it that's gonna be able to make it happen in a big way. >>It's interesting. I'm just thinking that AI as well, can be a Canary in a coal mine when there's potential problems. Um, and I love this transparency. That's critical. Co-creation so, Oh, okay. So tech is a key part of that, especially in terms of when you go from analog to digital, taking friction out of the system shows the employees that we're investing in, in your experience. Uh, but it's more than that. You're saying it's, it's cultural as it makes it so kind of fuzzy cultural it's it's it takes a village. So that's, that's part of what makes it so hard. How do you think about, you know, the journey? Where do you start and how do you keep iterating? You're never done in this, this world. Are you, >>Yeah, that's a question, uh, everybody's asking now, w w where do I start? So, as you said, this is very hard, um, and it's hard. One of the reasons it's hard is it's because it revolves culture. Um, it's not only about technology. They are hard. Technologies are harder in their own, right? It's not just about data, that's hard in its own, right? But once you involve technology, it makes, it makes it even even harder. And of course the people aspect, unless done very proactively and meaningfully, it can be kind of a wild card right on, who's going to adopt what, so where do you start? So, um, the way we like to think about, um, giving advice to enterprises, uh, regarding where this is, we've seen this work well is to pick a business problem. So what's a business problem that if you solved, you can actually make an impact, not only for your people, but for your people, but for the enterprise. >>So if you could pick a business problem and actually fix it, using data, using cloud, using people, experiences using a cultural shift, then you'll get that. Buy-in, you'll get the buy-in that, yes, we can do this. This is this, this is very doable. We can repeat, it's repeating PETA repeatable over and over again. And it has an impact on our culture. That's a great place to start. Okay. So then you say, if that's a place to start, how do we actually, there's got to be foundational things that have to be in place to make that work. So one of them is a consistency in data and the use of AI and the ability to make insights meaningful, you know, that come through data and AI. And the other part that's really important once you pick your business problem is the shift in the way of working the shifts so that, um, it can impact cultural, um, cultural change, uh, shifts so that there's co-creation with your people and there's transparency. >>So each one of these business problems and the way companies, uh, pick to fix them, they, they won't all work. And the way you get that trust and transparency with your people is as scary as it is to share with them what you're attempting to do and share with them how you're doing along the journey. And if it fails, okay, fails, you know, pick yourself back up and start again, that trust and transparency with your people. That's the way, that's the way we all make this cultural impact. So it, you know, kind of the, none of this is to be, to make sustainable change. We can all make short term change. We can do projects, but to make sustainable change. The humanity aspect has to come to life in these digital transformations. And that only comes to life with this cultural shift, >>Amy, right? You've thought about this a lot deep expertise in the area. Really appreciate your sharing it with our audience. And thanks for coming on the cube, Dave, my pleasure. All right. Keep it right there. But this is Dave Volante. You're watching IBM think 2021, the virtual, is it addition from the queue.

>>from >>around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage >>of IBM. Think 20 >>21 brought to you by IBM. >>Hello, I want to welcome back to IBM think 2021 the virtual edition. The cubes continuous coverage. And we're excited to talk about people. How do you align people and technology? Of course there's a lot of process in between. Those are the hard, hard things technology sometimes easy amy right is here. She's managing partner of talent transformation at IBM Amy great to see you. >>Thanks Great to be here Dave >>Yeah. You know we love to talk tech and sometimes we kind of sweep the really hard stuff under the rug and we talk about transformation. I mean it's it's ongoing. I mean you think about the pandemic last year was sort of this forced march to digital, we had to transform overnight. You know the vast majority of leaders I think that figures like close to 95 96 say that they've accelerated their digital transformation by half a half a decade. And of course that was a lot of it was like I say, it's a forced march, so it wasn't really planned fel but now they've got time to plan about a digital first approach and how to deal with remote workers. I wonder if you could talk about the role that people play in that digital transformation. >>All right, thanks. Dave I'm happy to, you know, a lot of people think of digital transformation about being technology oriented. It's a total shift in tech and it is but it really can't be successful with just tech. So you're right with the pandemic has done for digital transformation, Is it really it pushed us to these technology extremes more than anyone could have anticipated, particularly with our ways of working being remote. It also pushed us to extremes and highlighted the role that humanity played place, it will continue to play. So we've been pushed to reimagine jobs, pushed to reimagine workplaces, push to reimagine how technology can deliver this connected enterprise. Um you know, through through virtuality. Um and virtual working wasn't really something that was accepted before, but now we've been forced to accept it, which is which is really great for the digital transformation because it accelerated that. So the connected enterprise though isn't really just working virtually. It's these new levels of productivity and decision making that are enabled by intelligent workflows and cloud and data. And so technology is absolutely critically important. But automation doesn't have empathy. So it takes people to turn these insights that are brought to us through technology and automation. It takes people to turn them into action. And it's that human technology partnership that's required for the digital transformation to get to that desired impact. So when you think about, when we think about people in the role they play, and, you know, it's the pivotal role they play. It's really multi part, it's kind of three parts. one is people are the ones that build the tech and so they influence whether or not the automation is going to work, whether it meets the needs of the enterprise, if it takes advantage of the latest thinking, um and if it's, you know, it's irresistible if you will. The second is the people use the technology to gain this meaningful insight and turn into action. And then the third is the people are the ones that embed this tech change into culture, so that's actually sustainable. So to be able to drive this sustainable digital transformation the people, it requires the people to make it happen. So, if you look at health care, Dave think about the dramatic shift in health care in the past year, where doctors have shifted to telemedicine, nurses have shifted to using ipads as caregivers at the, you know, with their patients that not only required to shift in the tech, but an adoption of caregivers of a new way of working that again, could have been successful unless they adopted and embedded, embedded a different way of working in a different culture and everything that they do. >>You know what you said is really important. Especially we talk a lot about what machines can do that people can what people can do that machines can you just nailed it with empathy. And and when you think about to the remote work, I think prior to the pandemic, it was probably around 15 16% of workers were remote. And when you when we do we do surveys with the partner E. T. R. In new york. And the They project based on these surveys that that that's gonna double somewhere between you know, 33 35%. But people don't really know when when you talk to people like I kind of like working at home, other people say I can't wait to get back to the office. So people obviously critical part of the digital transformation. But how do you think about creating those meaningful experiences at work? Whether that's remote? Part time, remote? Full time back at work? >>So this is a really great great question because I think our point of view on this has changed. So first of all, most enterprises we talked to will move back to some hybrid kind of environment. We're never going to be everybody back in the office again. That's that's that's not who we will be moving forward. But the expectations of employees have changed. Um We all know that, you know, think about your consumer lives and and how we experience that personalized that that that personalization when we go to buy something online that's now bled over into the workplace. So the employees expect that exact same personalized experience at work. But it's now so much more than that now. It's not only personalization which you know, obviously tech enables quite dramatically, but the experience is broader to look at a holistic relationship between the employer and employee. That's a little bit less, it's less transactional. Like I do my job and my company pays me for doing this set of activities, but it's more supportive and integrated with their personal cells. So, you know, we did a recent study in which we looked at consumers and employees and their highest priority areas for the expectations that they now have for their employers is career and skill advancement opportunities with speed. Second is work life balance is that might take the form of what hours they work. Their ability to um you know, manage with what they're doing in their home with their families and Children, uh you know, their ability to be camera ready or not at all times of day and night and actually where they work from. So people are now working not only at home, but they're moving to different cities and want that flexibility. And then third, hi, area of priority now is ethics and values. So not only diversity, equity, inclusion, obviously critically important, but ways of working and meaningful and purposeful work. So when you look at all of those together, the employee experience has grown to be not only that of personalization, like we have in our consumer world, that is that is critically important, but now um it's all of these other things as well as a matter of fact, they become so important dave that in our recent research, it shows that one in four Employees will change employers in 2021, 1 and 41 and four will also change professions in 2021. And while about 75 of employers, companies believe that they are doing a good job of meeting the needs, these expanded needs of their employees, less than half of employees feel the same way. So there's a lot of work to be done. So you ask the question why is this? People experience so important? It's important because it's required for the digital transformation and it's so much broader than what we used to think that it's now a competitive differentiator for employers as they try to not only achieve their digital transformation but as their organizations disrupt over and over again. Um It's a requirement in order to meet their meet their enterprises objectives. >>So it was a great great stats and you just put out there in the career advancement. I think I feel like it's always been there but it's now much more front and center employees are more vocal about it. The work like balance, same thing. I mean you're seeing some organizations in 100 hour weeks were revolting and and then you know, the ethics and values piece to me is one of the most interesting I often joke Milton Friedman rolling over in his grave because he was, the economist said uh it's just about shareholder value, that's it and that's not anymore. In fact there's clearly a relationship between shareholder value and E. S. G. And and ethics and young people are very very concerned about it. So here's the question who's accountable for making sure that you have a positive employee experiences occur. >>Yeah. Really really really good question. And the thing is this is what makes it so hard. There's not one group or one person it's actually all of us. And I know that answer sounds like a little bit like a cop out. But this is why it makes it so hard. Every leader is responsible for the employee experience, every manager is responsible for the employee experience. Every employee is actually not responsible for the experience of their teammates. And actually speaking up if the experience isn't using inclusiveness as an example if it's not inclusive. Every experience every employee has the responsibility to speak up. So some companies actually have employee experienced leaders. Some companies have digital transformation leaders that embodies that that that includes that employee experience. But most actually start this journey through the through the partnership between I. T. And H. R. So I. T. Is responsible for this technology architecture, the cloud strategy, the data strategy architectural framework. All those pieces that put together the foundation and the building blocks and the security that helped to um modernize this employee experience and by the way they're doing this at the same time with their modernizing their entire way in which the function operates. Um So you got I. T. That's kind of setting the stage and the foundation for what's possible. And then you have HR. Who's operating as the steward of the employee experience that those people experiences um and putting them in place in a consistent and consistent in a positive way across the entire enterprise. So things like design thinking um that puts the employee at the center of the way we um architect and create these experiences using rapid iterative design principles. With again with this with the employee at the centre making that the cultural norm across the enterprise is a really big deal. So HR is usually in the lead on making that happen. But again this is a cultural shift, not just I have a problem, you know kind of a project plan and here's here's what I'm going to execute on leadership roles. So HR is the steward of leadership and those characteristics of leaders now are changing very dramatically to be more even in a big enterprise large global enterprise entrepreneurial transparent co creation really at the core of everything. So being transplant transparent with your teams and be able to co create um you know co create for the future. So data and ai we can use data and I ai now to actually in uh predict the impact that the workforce and the cultural will have on business results, predict attrition, predict what different work workforce design scenarios will look like to the supply chain um uh predict the speed of hiring and how that will impact literally bottom line business results. So you said it right when when when you talked about shareholder value, the people is at the center of shareholder value now. So our functions need to be modernized. But it's really this partnership between HR. And I. T. That's going to be able to make it happen in a big way. >>It's interesting. I'm just thinking that Ai as well can be a canary in a coal mine when there's potential problems. And I love this transparency. That's critical co creation. So, okay, so tech is a key part of that, especially in terms of when you go from analog to digital, taking friction out of the system shows the employees that we're investing in in your experience. But it's more than that you're saying it's it's cultural and as it makes its kind of fun cultural, it takes a village. So that's that's part of what makes it so hard. How do you think about, you know the journey, where do you start and and how do you keep iterating? You're you're never done in this this world, are you? >>Yeah, that's a question uh everybody's asking now is where do I start? So as you said, this is very hard and and and it's hard. One of the reasons it's hard, it's because it revolves culture. Um it's not only about technology, they are hard. Technologies are hard in their own right. It's not just about data that's hard in its own right. But once you involve technology it makes it makes it even even harder. And of course the people aspect unless done very pro actively and meaningfully, it can be kind of a wild card right on who's gonna adopt what. So where do you start? So um the way we like to think about um giving advice to enterprises regarding where this is, we've seen this work well is to pick a business problem. So what's a business problem that if you solved you can actually make an impact not only for your people but for your people but for the enterprise. So if you could pick a business problem and and actually fix it using data using cloud using people, experiences using a cultural shift, then you'll get that. Buy in, you get the buy in that. Yes we can do this, this is this this is very doable. We can repeat it, repeat peat, repeatable over and over again and it has an impact on our culture. That's a great place to start. Okay so then you say if that's a place to start, how do we actually, there's got to be foundational things that have to be in place to make that work. So one of them is a consistency in data and the use of AI and the ability to make insights meaningful, you know that come through data and AI. And the other part that's really important once you pick your business problem is the shift in the way of working the shift so that it can impact cultural, a cultural change, a shift so that there's co creation with your people and there's transparency so each one of these business problems and the way companies pick to fix them, they won't all work. And the way you get that trust and transparency with your people is as scary as it is to share with them what you're attempting to do and share with them, how you're doing along the journey. And if it fails, okay fails, you know, pick yourself back up and start again that trust and transparency with your people. That's the way that's the way we all make this cultural impact. So, you know, kind of the none of this is to be to make sustainable change. We can all make short term change, we can do projects but to make sustainable change, the humanity aspect has to come to life in these digital transformations and that only comes to life with this cultural shift. >>Amy right? You've thought about this a lot, deep expertise in the area, really appreciate your sharing it with our audience and thanks for coming on the cube. >>Dave my pleasure. >>All right, keep it right there. But this is Dave Volonte. You're watching IBM think 2021 the virtual edition from the Cube. >>Yeah. Mhm.

>> Narrator: Live from Washington D.C., it's theCUBE, covering Boomi World '19 brought to you by Boomi. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Boomi World 2019 from D.C. I'm Lisa Martin. John Furrier is my co-host for the next couple of days. And we're very pleased to welcome back to theCUBE the Boomi CEO, Chris McNabb. Chris, welcome back! >> Lisa, it's great to be here. It's always fun. >> The energy that you guys kicked off everything with this morning, the keynote, it was awesome, it was electric. I love the numbers that you started with. Boomi World '18 was about 11 months ago and we were talking, I was watching those videos back the other day, you had about 7500 customers then. You now have over 9000 customers in 80 plus countries, over 1500 endpoints integrated, 580 partners, I could go on and on, 97% renewal rate. (laughs) >> Keep selling! >> It's amazing, though, the momentum that you guys have carried into D.C. in just a short time period. Tell us about that. >> Lisa, it's really been the result of not only hard work by our team, we continue to innovate for our product and bring new things to market. But it's our customers that drive adoption and we use customer references to gain new customers and it's their stories that resonate with the new prospects that come onboard. It's our 580 partners making sure that when our customers and prospects buy into the Boomi platform that they get implemented and they shorten the timeframe and they bring intelligence and smarts and it's our community. It's the 65,000 people that are already there solving problems, that are helping our newer customers get onboarded and get success early. So it's those four legs of the stool. It's the entire ecosystem that continues to go, all of us are going along for the ride. >> Last year we asked you what you were investing in, your team as well. And the theme was pretty consistent across the board. Product first and foremost. 'Cause the product is continuing to grow and enabling platform, some great stuff there go to market, and then the customer success equation, not customer success organization, although you have a lot there, the equation... Where are you guys this year on those three points? >> Yeah, so tremendous investment in the product. You're going to hear tons of announcements. My announcements are the tip of the iceberg. We've got huge announcements in API management and the things that we're doing there. There's event-driven architecture announcements, there's the conversational AI; we're adding voice to integration platform service, with the help of Accenture. So you can now talk to your platform and interact with your enterprise applications. That's just the tip of the iceberg on the product side. We've got data hub things and so on. When we look at the other parts, John, particularly around customer success, we're doing really well there. Our customer success rate, our retention rate is now 95-96%. Our customer satisfaction was around 97%. And it's our customer success organization that helps make sure our services are being implemented, our partners are doing the right thing, success and outcomes are being delivered, and we engage to make sure that happens. If you need a little bit of Boomi help, Boomi help comes. And we partner over the success of that, and I think when you look at the key KPIs around churn and retention, as well as customer SaaS, I think we're doing a really nice job there. >> On the follow-up on that, one of the things we've been observing and reporting on SiliconANGLE and theCUBE is the successful companies are the ones that have, that was a great product, but in the cloud era, data's a big part of it. You guys have unified data platform. We talked about this last year, how you have anonymous data, you mentioned on your keynote that you get insights. So this is again, Coupa software does this, a lot of the successful profitable companies have a nice business model, by leveraging the data. How does that fit into the equation for customer success? I want you to explain the equation specifically. I mean, you guys have great format for customer focus, I get that, but what is the equation now that you have this unique modern value proposition? >> Yeah I think the equation for us is quite simple. So we do leverage all the metadata. Every single process that's ever been run, we know how long it took, did it have an error? We know how people build connections, we have that meta, we leverage that for our customers. When we look at our customers, we have a life cycle that we walk them through. When you're talking about the equation, we have a framework, a life cycle. How do we engage in sales to make sure sales is not overselling it? How do we get them to close so they look at us as a partner? How do we make sure the implementation goes well? Will they view it alone, with a partner, or with us? Get them to success. Get them through a renewal, and then how can we help them land and expand and do more things in their enterprise to continue the winning success that they established initially. >> You talked this morning revealing Boomi's competitive, unfair competitive advantage in customers, one of the things that we talk about, Chris, at every show and you probably talk about this all the time, too, is data. It's the new oil. It's gold. It's the lifeblood of a business. Yes! If an organization, whether it is an incumbent established business that might have brittle technology and disparate systems, if that type of company can't actually see all the data, have the visibility, and ensure that all of the endpoints are sharing from a single source of truth, that data value is capped, right? You guys leveraging that. I think it's over 30 Terabytes of anonymized metadata? >> Chris: It is. >> Is a great example of unlocking the power of the data that you have to make your customers better, to make them more successful and keep them, which you've obviously done. >> Yeah, it's a part of the ecosystem play that I continuously talk about. As customers use our platform, they instill it with their knowledge, experience, and their expertise. What we do, as a pure cloud provider, because I store how they map this field to that field, how long this process took, and all of these kind of things to make up that repository, I can now, as a cloud platform lever that up. And I can increase the productivity for everybody in the ecosystem. So as customers put a little bit in themselves, they get a 10x return or a massive return out, in terms of productivity and leverage that our platform's able to provide, but it takes both of us together to do that. >> Chris, I want to talk about the hard news this morning. You guys announced with Accenture, a big partnership around conversational AI. Accenture was on stage, their brand, their expertise, coming together with you guys, in a joint partnership. Could you explain, for a minute, what that is about? Just take a minute to explain the partnership and the solution specifically. >> Yeah, so when you look at conversational AI, it's the use of natural language, right? To work with technology, and you can't preprogram it, you have to understand the variations of things, you have to understand voice as identity, so when I say my pipeline report, it knows it's me, it's my authorization, it gets my data. Accenture brings the conversational AI experience, technology, and solutions to the table. And we're now linking and partnering that into our integration capabilities and connective capabilities. So as a net result, people can talk to their phone and interact with their workflows, and interact with their datastores to get data, approve workflows, etc, in a very natural way, >> What is Boomi do and what does Accenture do? 'Cause they're involved with you. You guys have a team, you're teamed up. What's the relationship? Take a minute to explain the relationship. Who's doing what? >> So, Accenture brings much of the voice capabilities. So when we mentioned this morning that language isn't a barrier, I'd like to offer up this service in Spanish and French and English, etc. Accenture does all of that work. So they're the natural language processing there, the language independent part of that, and we're all the connectivity part. We are the workflows, we are the integration. Accenture feeds us something, whether it comes, it can come in multiple languages over WhatsApp, chat, voice, it doesn't matter, comes to me, and then we do the natural unlocking of the data. >> That's their converse piece, that converse and Boomi, working together? >> Yeah, so B in the Boomiverse, you mean? >> John: Yeah. >> So, Boomiverse and B, the introduction of our astronaut B, who going to lead you on a mission through our community and be your bot. It's a working bot and we're going to leverage that kind of capability through that as well. >> One of the interesting things about the conversational AI is that we all as consumers have interacted probably pretty recently with a call center for something. And I love how Leticia, who's going to be on from Accenture later today with John and me, was talking about, we've all been there going, "Agent, agent, agent." And a few months ago, while working for theCUBE, I realized, oh actually, as frustrating as it is sometimes, we have the opportunity to help train the models. But I'd love to get your perspective on what Boomi and Accenture are seeing in organizations, executive suites about the perception of conversational AI and the impact. They see the impact possibilities that Accenture and Boomi can bring, and are they ready for that? >> I think there's going to be a bit of an educational process with leaders in the business, but if you look at Leticia's, I think, second slide, where she says, "Seven million dollars being spent "on password resets with humans." When voice is your identity, you don't need that anymore. You don't have to remember passwords. You don't have to reset things. The immense benefit for organizations is huge. 25% reduction in Op-Ecs. That's going to get people's attention. They're going to have to work our way through it, and we're going to work through the process with them. Okay, let's do a small thing, let's try it out, let's get it working, let's scale it, and let's get it to enterprise. >> It speaks to integration opportunity. I mean, voice, video, other mediums, it's an integration game. That's what you guys are doing. And that's the whole benefit of Boomi. I'd love to get your thoughts on your success formula and how you guys are going to ride this wave going forward, 'cause you have a modern infrastructure, modern solution, you get projects off the ground quickly for customers, you get the value quickly. This is a mega trend. People, they don't want projects back at them, they want to get them done quick. You guys are solving that big problem. What's next? Where are you investing? What's your thoughts on the business? What do you do? >> Well in terms of what's next, so we really did go after the entire transformation problem. Integration's not just data to us. It's people. It's devices, it's your processes, right? So we look at it holistically, we've done that. We brought intelligence in so now we're providing insights, data privacy insights that we talked about in the keynotes, conversational AI and that's the start. But we've got to do a better job of dashboards, other insights, what is the return on investment of a Boomi purchase and how much is it helping? To what degree is transform making a bottom line impact in your business? Having the analytics to support that is going to be big. >> Lisa and I were talking on the intro round, you can't hide success anymore. You can't hide the ball. 'Cause your instrument, the outcomes, and the outcomes are either you're getting paid for value, or you're achieving a mission, whether it's the veterans or the American Cancer Institute, usage of an app, you can't hide the ball anymore! It's either success or not. You guys are very customer centric. Hundreds of use cases, best practices. This is your focus. The people part of success has been a missing link in the digital transmission: process, technology, people, culture. You guys are breaking through. Is that because the winds people are getting? Is that the energy? Is that the people? What's the people equation on your end? You've been so successful with, you guys are having success there. >> The Boomi culture, when we talk internally, who are we and what do we value? One of the first things we talk about is, we are customer-first. What that means to us is outcomes matter. It's not about buying our technology. It's not about getting data; it's about an outcome. And we talked a lot about outcomes today. In fact, at this show, throughout all the presentations, there will be roughly 100 different customer outcome stories that are shared globally. So when we talk about breaking through, because we want to partner with them and join them in their goal, and whatever it takes to do that, that starts to resonate. It's taken a while to resonate, but now it really is, and when you feel the energy on the floor, I hope you guys feel the same thing, it's just enormous and it's really starting to grow and we couldn't be happier. >> One of the cool things that I heard yesterday, Chris, I have had the opportunity to talk to a number of your customers in the last week who said, I always say, "Tell me about the differentiators, "the technical differentiators." The cloud native always comes up, the low-code. We talked yesterday about CFOs becoming citizen developers, and I thought, Wow, really? Do they know that? But on the business side, resoundingly, customers are saying cultural alignment. "Boomi understands our business." And so what you guys are enabling on the transformation of people side, as John mentioned, you're delivering that because it was one of the things that customers have said that was one of the deciding factors in going with Boomi, and they'll say, "We evaluated A, B, and C." And this cultural alignment. Yeah, I mean, Boomi has fans and it sounds kind of cliche to say, it's true! >> I appreciate that, and that is really great to hear! I stood up on stage last year and this year, and repeated the phrase, "I don't want to be their software vendor." I don't think of it that way. Nobody on my team thinks about it that way. We're building. I want to be your transformation partner. I want to be a part of, a piece of, how you're moving your business forward. Whatever it takes to do that: workflows, mobile applications, data integration, warehouse problems, insights. We can get engaged in all of that. We can go end to end in your enterprise, to open it up for you, and then provide access for your customers in ways you never dreamed of. And being a part of that is just an awesome thing for us. >> Chris, I want to get your reaction to some comment Michael Dell made, two comments Michael Dell made to me on theCUBE. 2014, I asked him, besides VMWare, the crown jewel of Dell technologies, what are you excited about? He said "Pivitol." He was fixated on Pivitol at that time. Okay, Pivitol goes public. They get bought back into the fold, it's all going on. Last year at this event, I asked him, What are you focused on this year? Now what's getting your focus? He goes, "Boomi." What's your reaction to that? Because you know Michael, when he gets fixated on something, things happen. What's your reaction to that? >> My reaction is "Thank you, Michael, "for the brand awareness." I certainly appreciate that. Certainly when he focuses on 'em, it gets attention. We have, the Boomi business as it gets capitalized by Dell has had 100% executive support everything we've ever asked for as a leadership team, we've gotten and then some. Could not be a better situation for this business, the Boomi business, and then what Michael does for it, and as we push that forward, I believe and he believes that data is the fuel of AI in the future. It's going to be all about data, and Boomi sits right in the middle of that. >> And he likes to look under the hood, too. He's not just a business guy; he's a techie. So he's looking under the hood, he likes what he sees (laughs). Of course! >> When he talks to me about it, he's been pleased with the results to date, I'll say that. >> Excellent. Well, we have this, great, as we wrap things up, a story that is near and dear to, not just my heart, but many hearts. Talk to us about what this is. What Boomi is doing with the American Cancer Society, which I think is just phenomenal. >> Lisa, I really appreciate it. So, this morning, and I'll just kind of hold this up for a moment, but, this morning we had the American Cancer Society as one of our reference customers, how they completed nine projects in 14 months, one of which impacted 30,000 patients achieving 500,000, half a million rides, and integrated together 150 partners to make sure people could get to their life saving treatments and back, and it's a volunteer network. We're happy to be a part of that. So we undertook a cause. We're going to have a pass the baton for the American Cancer Society here at Boomi World. And every time we pass the baton, $2, $1 from us, being matched by Dell Technologies makes it $2, and we're going to pass the baton here, hoping to crush it and get to a $20,000 donation. So if I could pass the baton to each of you-- >> Lisa: Absolutely! >> That's $2, >> That's four. >> John, if you'd keep doing it, I want to ring the bell, I want to crush this for the American Cancer Society. >> That's awesome! >> Pass it to the team. >> Exactly, throw it over there! >> Chris: Pass it around to everybody, let's keep this thing hopping. >> Don't throw it! >> Well Chris, that is-- >> We'll pass it around. >> Such an outstanding story. There are so many, as you said. There's going to be a 100 different customers talked about here over the next probably, started yesterday with Partner Summit today and tomorrow. That's a lot! We are happy to have a whole bunch of them on the program today and hear how many different use cases Boomi is facilitating. You guys have taken I-Pass way beyond connecting cloud to on-prem. It's edge, it's any data, any device, low-code. I know I'm speaking your language. >> I love it! >> But we're hearing that, we're feeling that, we're excited to be able to share that through theCUBE this week. >> Lisa, well listen, thank you for being here at Boomi World, it's always great to have you. It's great to talk to you. >> Lisa: Likewise. >> And I'm looking forward to a great show! >> John: Thank you for coming on. >> Well, thank you. >> Lisa: All right, our pleasure. >> Appreciate it. >> For Chris McNabb, and John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE from Boomi World 2019. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering NetApp Insight 2018, brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage today of NetApp Insight 2018, I am Lisa Martin. Stu Miniman is my co-host for the day, and we're welcoming to theCUBE, for the first time, a couple of guests, one from NetApp, my former colleague, Emily Miller, acting VP of brand content and influencer marketing. And one of this morning's keynote, Gerd Leonhard, futurist, the CEO of The Futures Agency. I loved, Gerd, I loved your keynote this morning, it was very very interesting and informative. >> Thank you. >> And I liked how you said, you don't predict the future, you observe the future. So Emily, thinking about NetApp, its history, NetApp today, and in the future, talk to us a little bit about how this brand has transformed. >> Sure >> Not just digitally, for IT, but transforming, taking the feedback, and the really, kind of direction from your customers. >> Sure, so if I think about, you know, NetApp's been around for 25 years and we've played a great role in the, you know, kind of the storage history. But over the last few years as our customers' needs have changed, you know, really having to have data as your design point, how everything is evolving, changing, hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, we had to listen to that and knowing that our customers are going to places like AI and, you know, deep learning, we have to move there. And so, a couple years ago, we looked at who are we as a company and who are we going to be for the next 25 years? And our purpose now is around how we empower our customers to change the world with data because that is what they are doing. So using a lot of these technologies, and the things that Gerd talked about this morning, it is happening, and so, we've got some great customers we're working with, where we're able to kind of see that brand promise come to life with things they're doing, and we're just excited to be able to continue to work with those companies that are pushing the edge because that helps us be better and be more proactive about the future. >> When you talk with customers, #datadriven is all over, right? We've been hearing that for a while. What is being data driven mean to a customer, because as Gerd talked about in his keynote this morning, there's always that conversation, Stu, we hear it all the time on theCUBE, on ethics. >> Right. >> When you talk about enabling customers to be data driven and developing a data strategy, how do they internalize that and actually work with NetApp to execute? >> Right, so we really see it as putting data at the heart of your business, it is that lifeblood, it has to be centered around that. And then, thinking about data fabric, it's really the strategy and the approach, so how do you envision how data from all over, all parts of your organization are able to be leveraged? You get the access and the insights, and you can utilize it. You don't want it to be stagnant, you've got to be able to use it to make better decisions, to have that information, those insights at your fingertips to do the things that have to be done in real time, all the time. >> So Gerd, we want to bring you into discussion here, there's certain fears, for people in technology, "Oh my gosh, my job's going to be "replaced, that can be automated." You know, I've gone to shows, talk about, oh hey, in humans, you're good at getting things to 95, 96%. You know, I can get perfectly accurate if I let the robots just automate things. You write about humans versus technology, what's your take? You know, singularity's coming, you were saying, so are we all out of a job? >> Well, this is of course, what I call a reductionism, right? It's the idea that you would have a machine who would do just what I do, exactly what I do, for very little money, and then you would have thousands of other machines that do thousands of other things, then. And the fact is that, I think McKinsey's study says only 5% of all jobs that can be automated, can be fully automated. So, even a pilot can be automated, but I wouldn't fly an airplane without a pilot, so we still have a pilot. And data scientists can be automated by an AI, yes, but there'll be many things that I need the data scientist for as a person. So, if you take human skills, what I call the andro-rhythms, you know, the human things. So, passion, ingenuity, design, creativity, negotiation. I think computers may learn that in 100 years, but to really be compassionate, it will have to be alive. And I wouldn't want them to be alive. So, I'm saying that yes, true, I think if you only do routine, like bookkeeping, like low level financial advice, like driving a bus. You have to retrain and relearn, yes. But otherwise, I wouldn't be that negative, I think there's also so many new things happening. I mean, 10 years ago, we didn't have social media managers, right, and now we got what, 30 million? So, I'm not that dark on the future there. >> I'm glad, you actually, you gave a great quote from Albert Einstein talking about that, really, imagination is infinite as opposed to, knowledge is kind of contained. NetApp talks a lot about being data driven, you gave the Jeff Bezos example of, you know, I need to listen to it. But there's heart, and there's kind of history, there's another great line from Jeff Bezos, is, "There is no compression algorithm for experience." So, how do we as humans balance that humanity and the data and the numbers? >> Well, the reality is, we don't live in a binary world. When we look at technology, it's always about yes, no, yes, no, zero, one. That's what machines do, we don't do that. (laughs) Humans are called multinary, which is essentially, to us, a lot more things matter than yes or no. Like, it depends, maybe, it may change, and so on. And so if we just look at that and say it's going to be data or humans, we have to pick one of the two, that will be a rather strange suggestion. I think we need to say that it's sometimes data, sometimes human, but we have to keep the humans in the loop, that's my key phrase. >> And I would say, I feel like that's really our opportunity as humans, is to decide where is the value, where is the layer of value that we add on. You know, again, kind of thinking back to NetApp's history, we're moving from storage to data, we are evolving. We have to add value at a higher level for our customers, and what was something that maybe we did as humans, and for advising, that's automated now, like think of the demo we saw this morning, and now what is that additional layer of value that you add on top? >> Yeah absolutely, as you're both saying, it's not a binary thing, Andy McPheener from Jolmston, from MIT, say, tracing with the machines, that humans plus machines will do way better than either humans or robots alone. >> You know, I think if you are arguing that we would be in a perfect world if the machines could run it perfectly, then I would argue that world would be a machine, right? So, it would be perfect, but it wouldn't be human, so what are we getting, right? It's a bad deal, so I think we need to find a good balance between the two, and also carve out things that are not about data. You know, like dating and love, relationships, you know, that can be about data, like matching, right? But in the end, the relationship isn't about data. (laughs) >> Well, you even said this morning, it's, knowledge is not the same thing as understanding. >> Right. >> And that's kind of where we are at these crossroads. Emily, let's kind of wrap up with you, you got some interesting customer examples, of how NetApp is helping customers become and live that data driven life, and embrace these emerging technologies, like AI. >> Right, so we have a customer we're working with in Serbia, and they are basically kind of digitizing a human to be able to interact from an AI standpoint, in terms of having an interactive conversation. And I've seen some of this before, with interviewing your grandparents, and you can store them, and you can interact, and I think what's really exciting, is that gives you the opportunity to do something you never could do before. I think to your points this morning, it's, how do we make sure we don't lose the richness from those more kind of offline experiences, so that they are complimentary? If we, as we expand and do things that we couldn't think about, that we didn't, we couldn't envision or imagine, and I think that's about being a data visionary. Like the people at the companies like 3Lateral, like we've seen today, on Wuji NextCODE on stage, the data visionaries are those who are saying, how can data transform my, not just my company, but my industry, my category, and how do I really think about it completely differently? >> It's an exciting time. Emily, Gerd, thank you so much, I wish we had more time to chat with you guys, but we appreciate you stopping by theCUBE and sharing your insights. >> Great, thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Insight, pun intended. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, we are with theCUBE, live all day at NetApp Insight 2018, stick around, Stu and I will be right back with our next guest.