>>LA from Las Vegas. It's the cube covering AWS reinvent 2019 brought to you by Amazon web services and along with its ecosystem partners. >>Welcome back to the queue from Las Vegas. We are live at AWS reinvent 19 Lisa Martin with John furrier. We've been having lots of great conversations. John, we're about to have another one cause we always love to talk about customer proof in the putting. Please welcome a couple of guests. We have Rafael, director of analytics and data management from triple a life. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. Our pleasure. And from Burkle anchor Jane, the SVP of cloud platforms. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here. So here we are in this, I can't see of people around us as, as growing exponential a by the hour here, but awkward. Let's start with you give her audience an understanding of Merkel, who you are and what you do. >>Yeah, absolutely. So Marco is a global performance marketing agency. We are part of a dental agent network and a, it's almost about 9,000 to 10,000 people worldwide. It's a global agency. What differentiates Merkel from rest of the other marketing agencies is our deep roots and data driven approach. We embrace technology. It's embedded in all our, all our solutions that we take to market. Um, and that's what we pride ourselves with. So, um, that's basically a high level pitch about Merkel. What differentiates us, my role, uh, I lead the cloud transformation for Merkel. Um, uh, basically think of my team as the think tanks who bring in the new technology, come up with a new way of rolling out solutions product I solutions, uh, disruptive solutions, which helps our clients and big fortune brands such as triple life insurance, uh, to transform their marketing ecosystem. >>So let's go ahead and dig. A lot of folks probably know AAA life, but, but Raphael, give us a little bit of an overview. This is a 50 year old organization. >>So we celebrate our 50th 50 year anniversary this year. Actually, we're founded in 1969. So everybody life insurance, we endeavor to be the provider of choice for a AAA member. Tell them to protect what matters most to them. And we offer a diverse set of insurance products across just about every channel. Um, and um, we engage with Merkel, uh, earlier, the, um, in 2018 actually to, to, uh, to build a nice solution that allows us to even better serve the needs of the members. Uh, my role, I am the, I lead our analytics and data management work. So helping us collect data and manage better and better leverage it to support the needs of members. >>So a trip, I can't even imagine the volumes of data that you're dealing with, but it's also, this is people's data, right? This is about insurance, life insurance, the volume of it. How have you, what were some of the things that you said? All right guys, we need to change how we're managing the data because we know there's probably a lot more business value, maybe new services that we can get our on it or eyes >>on it. >>So, so that was, that was it. So as an organization, uh, I want to underscore what you said. We make no compromises when it comes to the safety of our, of our members data. And we take every step possible to ensure that it is managed in a responsible and safe way. But we knew that on, on the platform that we had prior to this, we weren't, we weren't as italics. We wanted to be. We would find that threaten processes would take spans of weeks in order to operate or to run. And that just didn't allow us to provide the member experience that we wanted. So we built this new solution and this solution updates every day, right? There's no longer multi-week cycle times and tumbler processes happen in real time, which allows us to go to market with more accurate and more responsive programs to our members. >>Can you guys talk about the Amazon and AWS solution? How you guys using Amazon's at red shift? Can he says, you guys losing multiple databases, give us a peek into the Amazon services that you guys are taking advantage of that anchor. >>Yeah, please. Um, so basically when we were approached by AAA life to kind of come in and you know, present ourselves our credentials, one thing that differentiated there in that solution page was uh, bringing Amazon to the forefront because cloud, you know, one of the issue that Ravel and his team were facing were scalability aspect. You know, the performance was, was not up to the par, I believe you guys were um, on a two week cycle. That data was a definition every two weeks. And how can we turn that around and know can only be possible to, in our disruptive technologies that Amazon brings to the forefront. So what we built was basically it's a complete Amazon based cloud native architecture. Uh, we leveraged AWS with our chip as the data warehouse platform to integrate basically billions and billions of rows from a hundred plus sources that we are bringing in on a daily basis. >>In fact, actually some of the sources are the fresh on a real time basis. We are catching real time interactions of users on the website and then letting Kimberly the life make real time decisions on how we actually personalize their experience. So AWS, Redshift, you know, definitely the center's centerpiece. Then we are also leveraging a cloud native ELT technology extract load and transform technology called. It's a third party tool, but again, a very cloud native technology. So the whole solution leverage is Python to some extent. And then our veil can talk about AI and machine learning that how they are leveraging AWS ecosystem there. >>Yeah. So that was um, so, uh, I anchor said it right. One thing that differentiated Merkel was that cloud first approach, right? Uh, we looked at it what a, all of the analysts were saying. We went to all the key vendors in this space. We saw the, we saw the architecture is, and when Merkel walked in and presented that, um, that AWS architecture, it was great for me because if nausea immediately made sense, there was no wizardry around, I hope this database scales. I was confident that Redshift and Lambda and dynamo would this go to our use cases. So it became a lot more about are we solving the right business problem and less about do we have the right technologies. So in addition to what Ankur mentioned, we're leveraging our sort of living RNR studio, um, in AWS as well as top low frat for our machine learning models and for business intelligence. >>And more recently we've started transition from R to a Python as a practitioner on the keynote today. Slew a new thing, Sage maker studio, an IDE for machine learning framework. I mean this is like a common set. Like finally, I couldn't have been more excited right? That, that was my Superbowl moment. Um, I was, I was as I was, we were actually at dinner yesterday and I was mentioning Tonker, this is my wishlist, right? I want AWS to make a greater investment in that end user data scientists experience in auto ML and they knocked it out of the park. Everything they announced today, I was just, I was texting frat. Wow, this is amazing. I can't wait to go home. There's a lot of nuances to, and a lot of these announcements, auto ML for instance. Yeah. Really big deal the way they did it. >>And again, the ID who would've thought, I mean this is duh, why didn't we think about this sooner? Yeah. With auto ML that that focus on transparency. Right. And then I think about a year ago we went to market and we ended up not choosing any solutions because they hadn't solved for once you've got a model built, how do you effectively migrated from let's say an analyst who might not have the, the ML expertise to a data science team and the fact that AWS understood out of the gate that you need that transparent all for it. I'm really excited for that. What do you think the impacts are going to be more uptake on the data science side? What do you think the impact of this and the, so I think for, I think we're going to see, um, that a lot of our use cases are going to part a lot less effort to spin up. >>So we're going to see much more, much faster pilots. We're going to have a much clearer sense of is this worth it? Is this something we should continue to invest in and to me we should drive and I expect that a lot, much larger percentage of my team, the analysts are going to be involved in data and data science and machine learning. So I'm really excited about that. And also the ability to inquire, to integrate best practices into what we're doing out of the gate. Right? So software engineers figured out profiling, they figured out the bugging and these are things that machine learners are picking up. Now the fact that you're front and center is really excited. Superbowl moment. You can be like the new England Patriots, 17 straight AFC championship games. Boston. Gosh, I could resist. Uh, they're all Seattle. They're all Seattle here and Amazon. I don't even bring Seattle Patriots up here and Amazon, >>we are the ESPN of tech news that we have to get in as far as conversation. But I want to kind of talk a little bit, Raphael about the transformation because presumably in, in every industry, especially in insurance, there are so many born in the cloud companies that are a lot, they're a lot more agile and they are chasing what AAA life and your competitors and your peers are doing. What your S establishing with the help of anchor and Merkel, how does this allow you to actually take the data that you had, expand it, but also extract insights from maybe competitive advantages that you couldn't think about before? >>Yeah, so I think, uh, so as an organization, even though we're 50 years old, one of the things that drew me to the company and it's really exciting is it's unrelated to thrusting on its laurels, right? I think there's tremendous hunger and appetite within our executive group to better serve our members and to serve more members. And what this technology is allowed is the technology is not a limiting factor. It's an enabling factors. We're able to produce more models, more performant models, process more of IO data, build more features. Um, we've managed to do away with a lot of the, you know, if you take it and you look at it this way and squeeze it and maybe it'll work and systematize more aspects of our reporting and our campaign development and our model development and the observability, the visibility of just the ability to be agile and have our data be a partner to what we're trying to accomplish. That's been really great. >>You talked about the significant reduction in cycle times. If we go back up to the executive suite from a business differentiation perspective, is the senior leadership at AAA understanding what this cloud infrastructure is going to enable their business to achieve? >>Absolutely. So, so our successes here I think have been instrumental in encouraging our organization to continue to invest in cloud. And uh, we're an active, we're actively considering and discussing additional cloud initiatives, especially around the areas of machine learning and AI. >>And the auger question for you in terms of, of your expertise, in your experience as we look at how cloud is changing, John, you know, educate us on cloud cloud, Tuto, AI machine learning. What are, as, as these, as businesses, as industries have the opportunity to for next gen cloud, what are some of the next industries that you think are really prime to be completely transformed? >>Um, I'm in that are so many different business models. If you look around, one thing I would like to actually touch upon what we are seeing from Merkel standpoint is the digital transformation and how customers in today's world they are, you know, how brands are engaging with their customers and how customers are engaging with the brands. Especially that expectations customer is at the center stage here they are the ones who are driving the whole customer engagement journey, right? How all I am browsing a catalog of a particular brand on my cell phone and then I actually purchased right then and there and if I have an issue I can call them or I can go to social media and log a complaint. So that's whole multi channel, you know, aspect of this marketing ecosystem these days. I think cloud is the platform which is enabling that, right? >>This cannot happen without cloud. I'm going to look at, Raphael was just describing, you know, real time interaction, real time understanding the behavior of the customer in real time and engaging with them based on their need at that point of time. If you have technologies like Sage maker, if you have technologies like AWS Redship you have technologies like glue, Kinesis, which lets you bring in data from all these disparate sources and give you the ability to derive some insights from that data in that particular moment and then interact with the customer right then and there. That's exactly what we are talking about. And this can only happen through cloud so, so that's my 2 cents are where they are, what we from Merkel standpoint, we are looking into the market. That's what we are helping our brands through to >>client. I completely agree. I think that the change from capital and operation, right to no longer house to know these are all the sources and all the use cases and everything that needs to happen before you start the project and the ability to say, Hey, let's get going. Let's deliver value in the way that we've had and continue to have conversations and deliver new features, new stores, a new functionality, and at the same time, having AWS as a partner who's, who's building an incremental value. I think just last week I was really excited with the changes they've made to integrate Sage maker with their databases so you can score from the directly from the database. So it feels like all these things were coming together to allow us as a company to better off on push our aims and exciting time. >>It is exciting. Well guys, I wish we had more time, but we are out of time. Thank you Raphael and anchor for sharing with Merkel and AAA. Pleasure. All right. Take care. Or John furrier. I am Lisa Martin and you're watching the cube from Vegas re-invent 19 we'll be right back.

>> Massachusetts, it's theCUBE! Covering WTG Transform 2019. Brought to you by Winslow Technology Group. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman, and we're here at WTG Transform 2019, across the Mass Pike from Fenway Park where we're hoping the rain's going to stop in time for the game tonight where we have 189 users here with Winslow Technology, digging in a lot of technology, networking with their peers, and I'm thrilled to have on another one of the ED users on the program. Plamen Dimitrov is director of Information Technology at Kiawah Island Golf Resorts coming to us from South Carolina. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having me. >> All right, as I was actually telling you, I'm familiar with Kiawah, my father is retired down to John's Island right off of Charlestown, South Carolina. You have a beautiful golf course there, there've been professional events there, we actually have one of our Cubeos, does some PGA coverage, John Walls, so he and I have talked about Kiawah a few times, but for those of our audience that aren't as familiar, haven't been able to enjoy it, tell us a little bit about Kiawah. >> Kiawah is a beautiful island, over about 10 miles of oceanfront, side, where the Kiawah Golf Resort is spread out. We have different accommodations with a lot of different activities for all ages, starting with the Sanctuary Hotel, which is a Five Star by Forbes and a Five Diamond by AAA. Or you can choose any of our villas from one to eight bedroom villas. We have five beautiful golf courses, which one of them is ocean course, previously hosted Ryder Cup in 1991, and PGA in 2012, and we are also proud to be a host of the PGA 2021, very exciting. Apart of that, we are announced to be Tennis Resort #1 in the world by tennisresortonline.com. We have over 22 tennis course, different variations from car course to clay. On top of that, we have a lot of pools, swimming pools, water parks, a lot of recreation, kayaking. It can be a beautiful journey for any visitors. >> Yeah, so, Plamen I know some of the IT people listening to this are going to be like, "Boy, he's got a tough job there!" Sounds gorgeous, right on the ocean, so many things there, bring us a little bit inside the IT, your world, what that entails, and, boy, there's got to be some different challenges and opportunities that you face, versus the kind of traditional business IT. >> As every island, we have all of our friends, like salty water and all things like that. And besides that, I've mentioned that the company's spread out over 10 miles, we have a total of 23 locations, and all they share the same systems and applications. Our current challenges, from an IT standpoint, are things that not all of the vendors that can keep up with the current technology and the all new and moderns, so we have some, what we call, old school applications, they can't keep up, and then you have the new applications that can be hosted on the Cloud, for instance. In the same time, those applications need to somewhat work with each other and have some interfaces, so this is where we face the, these days a challenge, a little bit, and where our partnership with Winslow, were able to help us determine which is the best route for us. And we determined that having a data center on island, and they have another one off the island, is the best for us to go. They helped us go through the planning of what's the right set up to be used, and I think we're in the right direction. >> Okay, great, so you have two data centers and you're also using Cloud services, if I heard right? >> Correct. >> Okay. There's been a big discussion here, is like, all right, what is the Cloud's strategy and it is an ever changing world and there is no one right answer, so, when you look at yourselves, what is your Cloud strategy today and what makes you help determine where you'll be moving in the future? >> In one of the sessions, they mentioned it's all about checks and balance, and it's to be able to measure how to apply your cash in a way that it makes sense, and one day, maybe, for some applications makes sense to be on premise, another day makes sense to bring it on the Cloud. And I can give you an example, recently what we did was, we were looking into switching to Office 365, pretty much everybody knows about it, and there's a good study that, after you go over a certain threshold, it's much easier to, and much more cost effective, to have something on premise versus going to a Cloud version. Now, again, it depends on the size of the company, it depends on the... Your future projects and goals, for some people it may be different than us. But I think that the future more and more, things will be what's called colocating the Cloud, which is mainly by other providers, and we're going to have two called a key that you can get to those applications from anywhere. >> Plam, bring us inside a little bit that the data centers, you said you have two of them, what's your infrastructure stack look like today? >> We've been looking at the various solutions, hyper-converged, and hybrids, and with the help of Winslow, we determined that sticking to the 3-2-1 traditional solution is the way we go. We use their Compellent products, all flash erase, very flexible and very reliable, very nice speed it provides, performance-wise they're a great product. Then, after that story solution, you have two data switches and then a number of servers. We use, on top of that, the VMware as our hypervisor, along with their VDI environment called Horizon for some remote clients that they don't need much, but that's basically our setup. >> Great, and how long have you been using the Compellent solutions? >> The Compellent solutions, we've been using them for a year and a half, since I joined the company, but my relationship with Winslow goes far back, since 2013 where I used to work for another company here in Nantucket. And the very first person I worked with was John Cliffords from Winslow. Very great guy, and he introduced us to the Dell world. This is when we bought the first EqualLogic and afterwards, I went to Belmont, where we also bought (mumbles), and we just keep going along. >> All right, great, Plamen, last question I have for you, what brings you to an event like this, what were you hoping to get out of it, and how's it been going for you so far? >> Well, what brings me to an event like this, most of the time is on one side to see what Dell has to offer, and some people attend, they'll conference, but I think a place like this, where you have smaller scale conference, it's much more beneficial for me. A, from a learning experience and B, from creating connections, making connections with other users, which this is the best because sales rep can say, "Yeah, this is what you need." But then, from a user perspective, it's priceless to absorb experience. >> All right, well, Plamen Dimitrov, I really appreciate you sharing your journey, and everything that Kiawah Golf Resorts is doing, thank you so much. >> Thank you very much. >> All right, we'll be back with more coverage here from WTG Transform 2019, I'm Stu Miniman, thanks for watching theCUBE. (funky electro music)

from our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley Palo Alto California this is a cute conversation welcome everybody to this cube conversation my name is Dave Volante and we're here in our Palo Alto studios Medusa doc R is here he's an investor and entrepreneur and a friend we're do great to see you again thanks so much for coming in thank you it's a head too long it is you and I sat down and had a conversation on the cube so it's been well yeah yeah well you've been on the cube a bunch and you've a I've seen some great conversations that you had with with with Peter and John so thanks for making the time and coming back in thank you so I want to start with when I go around and talk to executives every CEO is trying to get digital right you know whatever that means you know they know it's important and they're trying to figure it out they know it relates to data they know they have to leverage data they know this buzzword of digital transformation what are you seeing when you talk to executives and companies how real is this digital transformation is it a fad or is it a substantive good question to look from my view point of view digital transformation is the word people use but at the end of the day CIOs have to disrupt their businesses every CEO has to figure out am i cutting the cost I'm a helping companies grow in revenue from a look at from a board perspective and what people are looking at the investor perspective most CEOs are CEOs are looking at somehow looking running their operations on a day-to-day basis to that point I think most CEOs are expecting see I was to do the new innovative things at you probably hearing that people are adding CDO as a title yeah so it's up to see I were to see will it be the innovate to CIO it's like you have two kids like in your case your four kids you have two how do you make sure that all four kids are given the equal responsibility so Ciara has to decide look I have budget X X by two goes to my existing business X by two goes to the new business that decision making is not happening with the see I was today and that's what the distal transformation has to be is going on in a what I call not in a disruptive manner but the CEOs who have figure out how to disrupt it I really taking the next stage the next thing that people are interested there is where do I start right you have all should I start with my CRM supply chain should I start with my IT you got to figure out what all the but start someplace you pick one the area but that has to be disruptive in the sense we are living in the age of where I call it autonomous everything right there's a data there is cloud and there's AI our mission like what are you these three are such a large disruption in our industry see us how to figure out and say what can I do in terms of cost saving in terms of revenue growth but that can't be incremental it has to be revolutionary so I often say we've decades we've marched to the cadence of Moore's law in this industry that's where innovation came from no longer it's as you said it's data now for the last 10 years and you were involved in this we were collecting all this data we lowered the cost of collecting data and and and in running data warehouses with Hadoop but now data's plentiful insights aren't so you have data you have to apply machine intelligence to that data and then cloud gives you scale so that's like the new innovation cocktail so you agree that digital I agree digital transformation is real and the other dynamic mudo is you see companies are because it's data are able to traverse industries used to be you're in an industry if you're in financial services that's it if you're in healthcare that's it now you see Amazon's and content apples into financial services so people are afraid of getting disrupted you've got this new innovation cocktail so your point was really get started so you've got a shift resources you don't have unlimited budget right so how do people do that how are they taking cost out of the business and how are they reapportioning that cost for innovation really good so I'll give you two examples from Megan again thinking of where I see it one is for CIOs has something called IT operations IT operation is a very big piece that people need to figure out how to get the cost out of it the IT operations cannot be developed we've been running IT for last 30 years I mean what are the word they used I know Gartner uses the word called AAA Hobbs I don't care what the word is but the key is you have to run your 18 autonomous manner we are living in the age of your trading is autonomous your my your four on game by four on K is being traded through hedge funds your add technologies autonomous with Facebook Google and Amazon with all data when I saw with with Casper and Splunk we made cybersecurity autonomous to whatever extent threat detection but when it came to IT operations and IT customer support today manual if I may see over right now I'll invest on customer service and support to start as a point of what can I do to make my service agents better or what can I do to make the end users or the users experience better without going to a human can I eliminate the human in the equation here the mileage may vary it's like the driverless consequence you have level 1 to level 5 they may like to have autopilot some people may have a fully autonomous car depending on the organization you got to have a right amount of autonomous City in your organization both for IT operations and IT Service Management that hasn't happened and that will be happen in the next 4 5 years so let's talk about that you were at ServiceNow for a period of time they've obviously disrupted the old-line helpdesk and you know they really did a job on BMC and hewlett-packard etc are they in a position to take that next step in when you go to service now analogy here folks talk about AI and infusing AI obviously there's a lot of data being collected is that the right model I mean if they've automated forms but you think you're talking about something more I help us understand that sure looks abused know is in a great position they'll continue to do well it's a great company right I think what's going to happen next is how can companies like ServiceNow take her to the next stage right either become a partner with ServiceNow or service now itself we'll do it a little bit new companies will be for me one angle is forces enterprises is this game going to be for enterprises same playbook as a playbook for the cloud so imagine an apps that are born on the cloud their IT operations data their ticketing data where will that go to that means we think through enterprise data which is enterprise apps and so as they need to figure out so if I am a company today if I'm daring I need to decide what will I do for my enterprise applications and services what do I do it for my cloud Orion services so that is addition you have to make it at the top once it goes down the next level then able to decide is it for IT support customer support or IT operations what can I do in terms of augmenting there if I do is just to make my agents better you can take the cost out of the equation the cost should be is can I automate to the point I can eliminate 50% of my DevOps 50% of my SR ease my role of the come is in the next four five years this 70 80 % of devops I tell you when I study jobs will be gone that should be automated it should be a driverless IT autonomous IT people should have him that's not even a moonshot goal we all in America let's make great our great again this is our time it's IT if we don't do it some other country will do it Chile is going to eat us for lunch so he basically putting forth the scenario a DevOps was essentially a stepping stone and you see that largely going away it has to be it has been automated I'm not going to hide hundreds of tunas I called Manuel tuners right yes I'll need some DevOps people I need some IT admin things that system cannot do it algorithmically should go to humans at some point but there are enough things like if you want to install something in your laptop why should I talk to somebody else if I want to upgrade to Microsoft Office if I want to buy a CRM license if I want to get a zoom provisioning why do I need to talk to a human being in this equation can I oughta mater complete autonomous can I get to a level five autonomous in IT right that's what I'm looking towards robotic process automation play a role here can our PA we've done some some events with automation anywhere new iPad you're seeing huge valuations uipath as supposedly as another six billion dollar evaluation I mean you know amazing unicorn plus plus plus can those technologies be applied to solve this problem yes or no I think it depends on what the HRP are under star doing IP is a great topic right not be resolved very successful what I'm talking about is our IT operations and IT support and customer support automation can our PA guys take their technology their substrate a platter sure they can try it but these are all have to be grown organically doing this in nit going for customer service and support doing it for the cloud has its own its own skin its own platform like you and me were talking earlier if I'm doing this thing on Amazon why wait and launch a VM I won't even do it like if a new ticket comes in I should be doing through kinases I should be doing through my lambda functions I shouldn't be my cost of goods with so much that I want it should not cost me anything until the point Dave generates a ticket to me first all why should Dave generate a ticket right look at the very much extreme model of the test laws just like our today tells me when should I service my car why should you do the same thing like I should be coming and telling your SharePoint is going to go down they have today your Kube application you cannot do an interview with me too unless you fix it that is what the world wants to go so back to service management for minutes so in the old days our service manager was too cumbersome we really didn't have a single CMDB it just really didn't work that well it didn't change anything a lot of tickets that's what it did service now obviously solved that that that problem but what I'm inferring from what you're saying is it's still too expensive the entire infrastructure it needs to be more streamlined and automation is the answer absolutely so I think if you take it'll add layers and layers the first is in the support starting women from CMDB most organizers say my CMD that I still all are stale that's never accurate how can I get a dynamic view of Dave's ink right I should know when and that has to be done at the level of services and apps and at kubernetes level 2 container level once I have a blueprint of what my organization is then I need to know how do I handle the tickets against it then I can I do a health monitoring for all my CIS right I should be telling the outage put it at the another what business carries is my business running correctly you do have a downtime what is going to happen even though if I am false positives few times people are expecting saying that tell me proactively what services will impact and who will be impacted so I can take a corrective action and that will happen starting from CMDB automation I actually call it cloud CMDB our dynamic CMDB in the world of cloud and dynamic let's make a good cmdbs dynamic and accurate then take it to the ultimate outage prediction right if I can give your business up time and outage prediction that would be Nirvana are you telling me that IT cannot solve it you and me are saying in Palo Alto a driverless cars are going around we are going to see it in our lifetime IT can be so complex that the car can be autonomous but IT cannot be I don't buy them well I mean you hear about all the systems are down or my systems are slow today that's that's a form of outage that costs Fortune 2000 companies and money I mean it's you know 50 60 thousand dollars a minute in this in some cases so the and I think sometimes people aren't aware as to how much how much revenue is lost to downtime or lost productivity so there's huge huge gains to be made there and it seems that the cloud is the platform on which you're going to you're gonna build these these these natural choice it has to be yeah and it has we want a cloud to you can't say we are in the eight if you are a noose new cloud you're building it I tell people bill it is a multi cloud your same code should work on GCP Amazon and Azure right and on VMware if you want to be a private cloud but should be same the same codebase should be able to compile and run on all multiple processor kubernetes micro services that's really the enabler there right right at once run it anywhere interesting conversation multi-cloud you're hearing a lot of discussion you know certainly in DC the Jedi case Oracle is contesting that when you read the rulings from the General Accounting Office that basically the the DoD determined that multi-cloud is is less secure more expensive more complex now that's the DoD everybody's gonna have multi cloud because multi-cloud is multi vendor sure but it's interesting you don't hear Amazon talking about multi cloud other than you don't want to do it because it's too expensive but everybody else is talking about multi cloud is kubernetes somewhat of a threat to that Amazon posture I don't think I think if you look at Amazon is saying they call it hybrid cloud the word may be different multi cloud or hybrid cloud yeah say they've already partnered like the best public cloud partner with the best pressure of your house is awesome announcement right so vehement software ever talk to Pat gal singer and his team and look they got VMware working with AWS vice-versa so that's it great I mean maybe even call it a two ecosystem but they got that whole thing working there yeah anything with agile is going to do with their public cloud on Azure with as you understand I'll just tack on prom yeah right everybody has 70 mgcp will figure out so then after a while if you and me as a customer I should be able to move things many times it happen is I'm not going to move things dynamically for a nibble but if I want I don't want to vendor lock it I want a code such that if tomorrow something happens I should be able to have an option to move my code base to a different cloud and that's what multi-cloud will happen as a requirement as you build it how much you exercise are not people will design software going for a formal techno so a whole new vector of conversation I would love to get your opinion on that multi-cloud opportunity obviously Cisco's going after VMware's in the strong position there certainly Microsoft is is vying for that you have a ton of startups looking at this IBM with the Red Hat acquisition now is in a in a pretty strong position you know given its open source chops how do you see that whole multi-cloud you know vendor landscape shaking out I think I got really good I have a TD for this at the end when the dust settles you won't have 100 aircraft carriers you will have only four or five yeah so it's like what happened in 90s compact went away Dec went away so same thing is going to happen here there will be four or five vendors will survive there will be Amazon's as yours maybe GCPs VMware's maybe it's Cisco and IBM talks about a I mean there's like maybe alley cloud in China you won't have hundreds of cloud so the number is already decreasing it will let be 10 will it be 5 will it before that still you will see the tall rise but it's already been the whole council isn't happening so if I'm a customer if I'm a vendor if I'm a startup or a public company I'm going to build it only for a few these multi cloud vendors I'm not going to across hundred yeah because the marginal economics of those those hyper clouds we've been saying this for years if there's just so much more compelling and at the end of the day if the economics are 10x less expensive and more attractive that they're gonna win you know and and I think even though you have thousands and thousands of service providers who call themselves cloud we're talking about a different kind of cloud it's got one of those you know it when you see it types of things and I'm going to add something so if you take this back to your earlier question about where the disruption is happening we talked about all the customer service support an IT service management industry but imagine if an app is born on the cloud call it cloud native applications you have millions of new apps that are there on this cloud platforms what is that going to do where is the data going there they want another customer service and support applicant on their platform it currently it's like I'm in your house I'm drinking your wine but when it comes to managing my customers of an operation I will take your log data your even data or take indeed and put in somebody else's house even though John is your partner when you put it there it doesn't make sense it should run it inside yours so all these vendors would want a native application that is running on their platform solving their customer data which hasn't happened yet well this is interesting so obviously Oracle has its own cloud but you're seeing well see work day Salesforce service now all these SAS companies just used to build their own clouds they're building their own data centers Chuck Chuck Philips oven forces I don't friends don't let friends build data centers so maybe he's prescient maybe the trend is that these apps are going to largely predominantly run in the public cloud the Oracle IBM notwithstanding they've got the resources to maybe you know tough it out is that the scenario that you see I have take the consumer companies whether you take V work Airbnb uber all these guys you are already seeing them on to some opinion maybe they have their own datacenter but there are vastly learning and public clouds right and you have already seen that's even the big SAS vendors whether it's Adobe yeah it'll be solid partner with Microsoft Azure workday is partnering with Amazon you saw em Salesforce partnering with Google cloud and AW so you're only seeing these vendors the large SAS when there's already saying in order for me for economics wise it doesn't make sense whether it's for my marketing cloud my service cloud my ecommerce cloud I want this to run on this cloud platform to get scale cost of economics and also I need my services that are built there with a new substrate like we talked about that's lambda functions to kinases I'm not going to do it on my platform but and that trend is going on it's just accelerating so how are you spending your time these days you've had a very successful entrepreneur investor you've been CEO of multiple companies what do you do in these days I'm look I'm very happy with what I'm doing right now so I spend a lot of time with this company called I set up that's right I'm even we talked about it it's a startup company in Palo Alto their vision is to apply like what we got AI ops applying AI for digital transformation for AI customer service I trps oh I like the region look I want to spend time with companies which are taking a big bet right it's like in our IT industry nobody talks about moonshot goals let's take a bigger bet let's take a much vision of for five year ten years what can we disrupt right and I look at those companies I invest with those companies and spending time with them I'm learning a lot in the process I'm contributing back to the those companies well you know sitter I was on Twitter yesterday with with a little group we're having an interesting discussion about you know how things are changing the dynamics of where innovation comes over so we started this conversation with that sort of new innovation cocktail and there just seems to be a whole new fabric of services not only it's not just remote cloud services anymore it's these embedded services that are can think they can act they can sense and it's ubiquitous now even the edge autonomous vehicles we're entering a whole new era it's very exciting right and again one thing that we didn't talk to see Mike and son and my it again it's society has to have regulations and will come if you look at the what's happened in this whole call center customer service industry if autonomous city will happen of any level from level even if I automate 30 percent of your customer service and you don't touch a human being when you are at home for your Comcast to your nest imagine all those services inside your home from field service to if they get automated what's going to happen first of all if Sally's gonna improve your costs are going to reduce if I'm a business I can take that money and invest somewhere else but more importantly those most of those things it's it's a big disruption happening in the outsourced industry right these are your jobs in China India Philippines Vietnam my concern is dart saying that there will be a certain is going to happen people are not paying attention to that and this this strain has already left the station yeah it's going to come to a platform again some next platform but next for five years you'll see a tremendous disruption in this area of digital transformation well I remember a couple decades ago there was a lot of talk about well you people spending a lot of money on IT but that you don't see it in the productivity numbers and all of a sudden because of the PC revolution the productivity went through the roof you're hearing similar sort of discussions now we feel like productivity is about to explode because of what you're saying here absolutely and again the per back to the RP has already shown the value our peers no longer in each category it's what we talked about success renders from you iPad automation anywhere blue prism that just on the back end of the supply chain and RPF cell taking the two front office applying that to customer service facing to your crm facing that your IT hasn't happened yet can I automatically can I ought Americans right from an employee experience to customer experience that productivity if you employ it you'll get more customers doing that yeah it scares people but but it's the future so you better embrace it and lean in voodoo thanks so much oh let's go always measure to see you alright thanks for watching everybody this is David day from our studios in Palo Alto and we'll see you next time thank you [Music]

>> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Mountain View, California, at a really cool start-up, Phantom Auto. They're coming at this autonomous vehicle thing from a very different direction. They're not a car company, it's not BMW and Audi and Nissan and all the other people you hear about. It's a pure software play, but it really has a huge impact on the autonomous vehicle industry. We're excited with the guy who's putting all these development, business development deals together. He's Jordan Sanders, director of business development and operations. Jordan, great to see you. >> Yeah, thanks for having me. >> So, again, when I first heard about you guys I thought, "Okay, do I order "this to drive my grandfather to the store," because he shouldn't be driving even though he has his driver's license, but no, that's not it at all. You guys have a very specific target market and it's really more a biz dev than a direct-to-consumer market. >> Yeah, exactly, so we are a B2B business and our target customers are those who are closest to getting their autonomous vehicles on the road. And so, that's frankly where we're seeing the most traction for now, at this point, from customers. As you get closer to true deployment of level four robo-taxis you realize a need for remote assistance, and we think we have the best solution on the market. >> Jeff: Right. >> To actually remotely drive the car and have a human in the loop to promote safety and service. >> So, as you look at your kind of tam, your ecosystem that you're going to market with, obviously we all know Waymo. We see the cars driving around all the time, the Nest is right up the street, but how's that landscape evolving? You know, we obviously hear about Uber, we hear about Lyft, you hear little bits and pieces about BMW and different car companies. As you sit back from where you're sitting, how do you kind of segment the market, how do you figure out where you're going to go next? >> Yeah, it's an interesting question. I mean, right now, you know, there's obviously a lot of excitement around this market and where it will be in five years. Right now the number of actual autonomous vehicles deployed is relatively low, and so that is frankly what our business is tied to. Again, it's enabling every vehicle on the road to actually operate safely, and so in terms of total addressable market, how we see it evolving, right now it's a relatively small number of cars and a relatively small number of players, but we see huge opportunity and huge growth in the sector over the next five years and 10 years. >> Right, and obviously a big integration challenge for you guys because each platform that you partner with is, you know, we hear all the time, some of them are using some shared infrastructure, some of them are trying to use their own, some are RADAR, some are LIDAR, some are camera, some are combination, so from a business development point of view you guys have to integrate with all those different platforms. >> That's correct, and so that's from the very beginning, we're building our end-to-end service to be very flexible and the software piece especially can integrate with any vehicle, with any vehicle manufacturer, because frankly we want to be open to the market and we don't want to just cover, you know, one customer's vehicles. We are sort of a third party who can provide a safety solution for a number of AV operators. >> Right, now the other interesting thing that people probably don't think about is, you know, we hear all about the technology in the cars and the machines, right, and IOT and it's all about machines, but in bringing a human operator into the equation it's not just to operate the vehicle, it's actually a person and all that that means. I wonder if you can kind of explain how that impacts people's autonomous car vehicle when there's actually a person involved. >> Yeah, definitely, so I think, you know, I think about this from a personal standpoint, so part of me is very excited for autonomous vehicles and I've ridden in several autonomous vehicles, feel very comfortable in them very quickly, but I also live in Silicon Valley and not everyone does just get to zip around in autonomous vehicles and is working in this industry, and so we do view there's going to be a, you know, a big consumer adoption kind of hurdle to overcome, and a piece of that is having the passengers in the car comfortable and feeling that, you know, someone has their back, right? >> Jeff: Right. >> So that's a key part of what we believe that we deliver is a human touch to self-driving cars, which we think is very important just at a psychological level, knowing that you have somebody who is monitoring your ride and is ready to intervene and protect you, you know, in the event that something goes wrong with the ride. And the other thing is by having a human in the loop it also enables all sorts of interesting ways of providing better service, and that's going to be a very, a key piece of whenever everyone inside the car is a passenger, there are no longer drivers, we're passengers. There are going to be lots of opportunities for enhancing passenger experience, and we think part of that can be, you know, providing a human service, an actual human on the other end making you feel comfortable and also connecting you with almost like a concierge. >> Right, and like OnStar has been around forever, right, that's probably the first kind of two way- >> You said that, not me, yeah. >> Two way communication, right, into the vehicle, which at first was I think mainly a safety feature. You crash and it sends out a 911 and then I think they kind of evolved it into a little bit of a concierge service. >> Exactly, so again, there's certainly that piece that we think is going to be really important for consumer adoption. I mean, I think AAA did a survey recently that showed 75% of consumers are afraid of trusting a machine, an autonomous vehicle. Now, we're very confident that the AV tech, once you get inside an autonomous vehicle that you very quickly realize, "Wow, this is a great driver," and we're very bullish on, you know, autonomous vehicle technology and believe that it's very reliable. But again, in those edge case scenarios, having a human who's going to intervene on your behalf and be able to actually operate the vehicle will be really important. >> Right, so somebody's watching this and going, "Ha-ha-ha," you know, "I'm a hacker, I'm going to hack into the stream," and it's not going to be Ben, the nice, smooth driver taking over the car but some person that maybe we don't want taking over the car. So, in terms of security and network infrastructure, how much are you leveraging your partners' infrastructure, how much are you leveraging your own, where does kind of security fit in this whole puzzle? >> Yeah, it's a great question and certainly one that, you know, we're hearing from a lot of customers. So, we are working with a variety of cybersecurity firms for making sure that our solution is extremely secure across multiple vectors, so whether it's just on the software piece or really our end-to-end solution, from the hardware that we can offer in the car, to the software, to the actual control center, the operation center where the driver's driving you, making sure that we have end-to-end security to avoid any situation like that. >> Right, so Jordan, for the people that aren't in Silicon Valley, what should they know about autonomous vehicles, how close are we, how much is it just, you know, stuff in the newspaper and you know, kind of nirvana still or just, you know, specialize Waymo vehicles that we see all the time in this neighborhood. How close is this to Main Street, how close is this to being that vehicle that picks me up when I get off the Caltrain to San Francisco and I need to go to a meeting over the Embarcadero? >> Yeah, so I think what people should know about this technology is that it is incredible technology that will be life-saving and that needs to get on the road, but that needs to happen in a safe manner and at a time where you can have full confidence in the operation and all settings, right. The technology is incredible, and so what Phantom Auto is here to do is to get these life-saving vehicles on the road quicker, and so what I would say to the average person who's a little uncertain of this technology is that it is incredible and you're going to enjoy the experience and it will be life-saving, and again, I think Phantom Auto is working to actually bring that experience to consumers by getting these robo-taxi services deployed. >> Jeff: Right. >> Pull out the safety driver and have a remote safety driver, a Phantom Auto remote operator ready to take over control of the vehicle in the event that you need assistance. >> And in terms of where you guys are as a company, right, you're a relatively small company, got this cool Lincoln here, where are you in terms of your company? Do you have POCs in place, do you have customers in place, kind of where is it in terms of the deployment of the technology within your ecosystem? >> Yeah, well we realize that we're bringing a very critical solution to these operators, so again, if you're an autonomous vehicle developer and operator and really thinking seriously about deployment you realize that you need a solution like ours, and so on the business standpoint we have several deals already closed, some pilots planned over the next few months, so you'll be seeing a lot more, I think, of us very soon out in the market. >> All right, now you're going to see more of us on the street. So, Jordan, let's stop talking and let's go take a ride in the car. >> Let's get in the car. >> All right, he's Jordan, I'm Jeff. We're getting in the car, thanks for watching. (techy music playing)