[Music] from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston it's the cube covering the IBM thing brought to you by IBM welcome back everybody you're watching the cube and our continuous coverage of IBM think Digital 20/20 events it's we've been wall-to-wall for a couple days now and and we bring in you all the action a bass fall is here here he is the global league for quantum education and open science at IBM quantum gave great to see you thanks for coming on yeah thanks for having me here Dave you're very welcome love the discussion on quantum but I gotta say so I'm reading your bio in your bio I see quantum algorithms experimental quantum computation nanoscale device fabrication cryogenic measurements and quantum software development hardware programming etc so you're obviously qualified to talk about quantum but but how how can somebody learn about quantum do I have to be like a rocket scientist then understand this stuff so Dave this is one of the things that I'm very passionate about it's also my job to make sure that anyone can learn about quantum computing today so primarily what I'm focused on is making sure that you don't need a PhD to program a quantum computer when I was going through my graduate studies trying to learn quantum computing I needed access to a lab so I have to go to graduate school to do this but in 2016 IBM put a quantum computer on the cloud in that dramatically changes the field it allows access to anyone from the world with just an internet connection to program a quantum computer so the question I'm trying to answer on a daily basis now is the question that you asked how do I learn to program a quantum computer well I'm trying to make several resources available for you to do that okay well let's talk about those resources I mean you have quantum you have access to quantum computers I talked to Jamie Thomas the other day she said that you guys it's all available in the IBM cloud I can't even I can't even imagine what the infrastructure behind that looks like but as a user I don't have to see that so how do I get access to this stuff so there are several quantum computers available on the cloud now and every time I think about this it's fascinating to me because I needed access to a lab to access these things but now you don't you can go to quantum computing dot ibm.com and get free access to several quantum computers now the question becomes if I give you this access to the quantum computers how do you learn to program them the software that you use to program them is called kiss kit just like we've made access to the quantum computers open for everyone our software is also open source you can access it by going to Kiska torgue that's QIS ki t org and if you go in particular to Kiska org slash education we've put together a textbook to help you go through everything that you'd learn in a classroom about quantum algorithms and to start programming the real quantum systems yourself so everything's ready for you to program immediately what was the it can you give me the quantity IBM want them - computing URL again yeah that's quantum - computing IBM com once you create an account there you immediately get access to several quantum computers which is an impressive thing to think about the cryogenics that you mentioned earlier the hardware the software all of it is ready for you to take advantage of but I gotta ask you I know it's sort of off topic here but but if I had to look under the covers I'm gonna see some big cryogenic unit with a bunch of cables coming in is that right that's exactly it very cold inside that's right so the way to here's the way to think about it outer space is about 200 times colder than room temperature and the temperature where the chip the quantum chips it's is another 200 times lower than that so we're talking very cold here we're talking only 15 Mille kelvins above absolute zero that's zero point zero one five degrees above absolute zero so it's a very cold system and you'd have several wires that are going down into this coil system to try to communicate with the quantum ship well and what's exciting to me about this whole thing Abe is it is it brings me back to the sort of the early days of computing and the you know huge rooms and now look where we are today and so I would expect that over the next many decades you're going to see sort of similar advanced advances in quantum and being able to actually execute at somewhat higher temperatures and in miniaturization it's very exciting time and we're really obviously at the very very early innings but I want to ask you just in terms of if if I'm a programmer and I'm a Java programmer can I actually come in and start using quantum if you what do I need to know to get started so you need to know two things the first thing is you need to be familiar with any programming language the easiest programming language to pick up today by far is Python so kiss kit is built based on Python so if you're able to quickly catch up with a few things in Python and we have a chapter dedicated to this topic in our textbook that's the first thing the second thing is simply having the ability to learn something new simply being excited about this field once you have those two together you can learn quantum computing very quickly within a few months the question then becomes catching up with the research and reading research papers that can take some time but for us to be able to talk through a quantum program takes only a few a few days of reading let's talk about what some of the folks are doing with quantum we talked again to Jamie Thomas and she gave me some examples not surprisingly you know you saw for instance some some examples in pharmaceutical and to the other obvious industries but then banking came in it's a but what what is it what are people doing with quantum today maybe you could add some color to that primarily most of the working quantum today is focused on understanding how to take problems in industry whether it is to understand how to simulate molecules whether it is to understand how to optimize a financial portfolio taking those problems and mapping them onto a quantum computer so that they can get solved so you'll see various various industries exploring how to take their problems and map onto a quantum computer so one one exciting one that I'm seeing a lot of progress in is chemistry learning how to simulate molecules using these quantum computers as someone with a physics background for me the exciting thing to see here is also how people are using these quantum computers which fundamentally are taking advantage of quantum mechanics to simulate other quantum systems so to understand nature better by using nature itself so this is another exciting progress that we're seeing in the field so exciting both from industry and from educational and science purpose so obviously it's a fascinating field and people would you say with curiosity it can get excited about it but but let's say I actually want you know some some kind of career in part of I mean what well how would people sort of get involved do you see you know on the horizon that this is gonna be something that is actually gonna be a vocation for you know young folks that want to get involved I could not tell you how challenging it is to find people who have the right combination of quantum computing knowledge and classical programming knowledge so in order to be able to take full advantage of the quantum systems today we need people who understand both the hardware and the software to some level and there is an extreme shortage of that kind of talent so the work that I'm focused on is exactly this problem of solving the workforce development problem so we're trying to make sure that people have access to anything that they need in order to be able to program a quantum computer and to learn how to then map their own problems into these quantum computers in the future the question becomes let's say we now understand how to use quantum computers to make financial portfolio optimization every bank in the world is going to want someone to implement this in their systems which immediately creates lots of jobs so this is going to become something that's in demand once it becomes possible on a on a large quantum computer so today is the right time to learn how to work with these quantum systems so that when the time comes that there are industries that are needing quantum skills you're ready to be hired for those positions okay so big skills gap you kind of gave an example in financial services where maybe some of the other things that you hope that that people are going to be able to do over time with these skills I cannot under I cannot over us overstate how important it is to learn how to simulate chemistry problems on these quantum computers that will have impacts anywhere ranging from whether it's drug design whether it's making better efficient solar panels more efficient batteries there are many applications where you'll see impact from these so the there are many industries that can benefit from understanding how to work with quantum computers that's something exciting I'm looking forward to see you know you read in the press that you know we're at least a decade away you know from from quantum being a reality but you're giving some examples where it's sort of here today I feel like it's going to come in layers you know not gonna be one big bang it's gonna come over time but but maybe you could you know frame that for us in terms of how you see this market developing I don't even want to call it a market but just this technology developing into a market what what has to take place and what kind of things can we expect along that journey sure so I think it's very important to keep in mind that quantum computers are fairly young technology so we're improving the technology as we go and there has been dramatic improvement in the technology itself but we're still learning as we go so one of the things that you'll find is that all of the applications work that's being done today is exploring how to take advantage of the quantum computer in some way if I immediately gave you a fully functional perfect quantum computer today you wouldn't even know what to do with it right you need to understand how to map problems on to that quantum computer so in preparation for that time several years away you'll see a lot of people trying to learn how to take advantage of quantum computers today and as they get better and better learning how to take advantage of whatever incremental progress is being made so as much as it seems like quantum computers are several years away many people are learning how to program them today just in preparation for that time when they're ready for use and my understanding is we're gonna get there with you know hybrid models today you're using you know traditional microprocessor technology to sort of read and write data from quantum that's likely going to continue for quite some time maybe maybe indefinitely but but but perhaps not right so Dave the important thing to remember is that a quantum computer works jointly with a classical computer if you ask me the question of how do i optimize my portfolio the numbers that I would need to compute with our classical there's nothing quantum about them these are numbers so there's classical information that you then have to take and map on to the quantum computer and then once the quantum computer is done you have to take the data out of that computer and then turn it back into classical information so you'll always have a quantum computer working jointly with a classical computer the question now is how do you make those two work together so that you can extract some benefit that you couldn't have attained with just the classic what do you see is the big sort of technical challenges that you're paying attention to you paying attention to I mean is it getting more you know qubits is a coherence working at higher temperatures what are the things that you see is as the the scientists are working on to move things forward so one of the things that I can do immediately Dave if you and I agreed right now is we can go to the lab and take a quantum chip and put a thousand cubits on that quantum chip that's fine we can do that immediately the problem that you'll find is that it doesn't matter that you have a thousand cubits if the qubits are not good quality cuteness so the technology should focus on improving the fundamental qualities of the qubits themselves before scaling them up to larger numbers in addition to that as you're scaling to larger and larger numbers new problems come into the picture so making better qubits scaling up seeing how the technology is doing learning new things and then scaling farther up that seems to be the model that's working today so in addition to monitoring the quality of the qubits themselves I'm monitoring within the technology how people are implementing solutions to scaling problems in addition to that another important problem that deserves a lot of attention is the question of how do you make good software that can take problems and map them onto quantum computers in in quantum computing when I say I'm running upon a program really what I'm doing is building a quantum circuit and then running that quantum circuit on the real device well if that circuit has certain operations in it maybe you want to tailor the way you transfer that circuit onto the device in a way that takes full advantage of the device itself but then in order to do that you need to write good software so improvements in the software along with improvements in the quantum technology itself will be how we get to success and at IBM we're focused on finding a metric that wraps all of these things together and it's called quantum volume and we're seeing improvements in the quantum volume of our systems as we go yeah Jamie talked about that you're essentially taking the key metrics and putting them into a you know a single observable metric that obviously you can track over time so I want to ask you about security a lot of people are concerned that the quantum is just going to blow away everything that we know cryptography and all the you know the the passwords and security systems that we we've put in place is that a legitimate concern will quantum you both get us into that problem and take us out of that that problem I wonder if you could talk about that so there are two ways to think about this problem one is just fundamentally if you ask me what does it take to put the the cryptography that has our bank accounts safe over the internet connections that we use it takes roughly about a thousand good cubits okay if I tell you a thousand good cubits that doesn't seem like a lot of work but when you think about it what it really requires is an overhead of about a thousand cubits for each qubit that we have today so the numbers of qubits that you need are in the millions in order to put the the kind of cryptography that we're using today at stake so certainly there's a long way to go that's one aspect of the story the other aspect of the story is that we should never underestimate the progress of technology so even though the time when we can use Shor's algorithm which is the algorithm that can be used to break the cryptographic algorithms like RSA even though that's several years away you still want to be ready for that time and what that means is if you have sensitive information today you need to be making sure that that information itself is protected with quantum resistant cryptographic techniques so that when the time comes you can't use a quantum computer to get back the data from today and break so two perspectives one is we're quite a while away from this kind of danger but at the same time it doesn't mean we should be complacent today we should be taking preparations make sure that our critical information is protected yeah that's so that that makes a lot of sense but when you say we're a ways away or we are we decades away we years away we can you and you quantify that in any reasonable way it's hard to speculate on that number so I'll refrain from giving you a specific timeline just to give you an idea the quantum bits that were in development ten years ago had a coherence time so the amount of time that they can store the quantum information of roughly a hundred times smaller than they are today and ten years ago if you asked people how do we get to a hundred times better qubits nobody would have been able to give you a clear answer you could have guessed some ways but nobody would have been able to tell you we'll get there in ten years but we did so instead of coming up with estimates of timelines that depend on what we know today it's probably a better idea to monitor the technology as it goes and keep adapting we're probably talking this century where we're talking to the century hopefully it is my last mission to enable enough people to learn quantum such that it happens within my life very exciting field a I can't thank you enough for helping us educate the audience and and my and myself personally really I'm I'm so fascinated by this it's something that you know jumper and I and the team have been really focused on and I think it's really time to your point the start digging and start learning you've given us some resources there give us give them give us those two reasons one more time there's there's the IBM site and the the the the the queue kit site use that site what are those again just those to wrap so you can access the quantum computers at quantum - computing ibm.com and once you're there the way to learn how to program these quantum computers is by using kiss kit which you can learn about by going to kiss kit org slash education once here at that education page you can access our textbook which we make open-source it's a textbook that's co-written with professors in the field and is open source so it's continually getting updated you can access that textbook at tisket org slash textbook if you go to our youtube channel you'll find several videos that allow you to also learn very quickly so kiss gets YouTube channel is another great place to look so lots of resources and that's kiss kit with a Q which is why I wrote it that way so alright exact thanks so much it was great to see you stay safe and next time hopefully we'll see you face-to-face and you can draw some some cool pictures to help me understand this even better Dave it was nice talking with you I look forward to learning quantum programming with you yeah Cheers and thank you for watching everybody this is the cubes coverage of the IBM think 2020 digital event experience we'll be right back Brennan for this short break [Music] you

>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 special coverage sponsored by AWS global partner network. >>Welcome everyone to the cube live covering AWS reinvent 2020. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Today. We are joined by Joshua Virgin. He is the general manager at AWS outposts. Thanks so much for coming on the cube. Joshua, >>Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. >>It's great to have you, so tell our viewers a little bit about AWS, AWS outposts. >>Oh sure. It's one of my favorite subjects, obviously. So outposts is a service from AWS that allows you to use the same tools, technology, API APIs, programming interfaces that you do in the cloud, but install this and run it on your own premises or in a co-location facility. So it really extends the reach of AWS to far more locations than you could otherwise use it. >>So what are some of the advancements, uh, this year >>It's, it's been an amazingly busy year, even under unprecedented kind of circumstances where we've tried to turn the crank really hard and deliver value for our customers. We increased the number of countries you could order outposts in up to 51 countries. You can now connect outpost to all 22 AWS regions and our gov cloud regions, everything outside of China. And we delivered 15 new services or incremental features, including a S3 on outposts, which was the top thing that customers asked for, but also our application load balancer, Alasta cash, our relational database service RDS. Uh, you know, there's probably more than I'm missing here, but, um, you know, and we're definitely not slowing down in that regard. 2021 will probably be an even bigger year. >>So tell us a little bit about the, the response from customers since the launch of AWS outpost last year. What are, what are you hearing? >>Yeah, I mean, we're, we're hearing a lot, uh, I think we've been pleasantly surprised by the, the breadth and the depth of the customer use cases. One of the biggest things we heard from people was, you know, the, the outposts are great, but it's a, it's a full rack of compute or many racks of compute in some cases and storage, you know, their locations that people wanted to put it in that were smaller where their space constrained, maybe a restaurant or a factory floor or a small medical facility, uh, you know, a telco like a cell site. And so what we did based on that is something that we actually just announced in Andy's keynote. Uh, just a few days ago here, which is the new small form factor outposts that are one you and two use size, uh, servers. It's about the size of one or two pizza boxes stacked on top of each other. >>So that's even going to make outposts available to even more use cases, uh, you know, early on, uh, we kind of said to ourselves that it's important to kind of give people that consistent experience wherever they might need the compute and the storage and the other services. And so I've been, I've been really pleasantly surprised, as I mentioned earlier, by how many people have talked to us. We have customers like Phillips healthcare. They are, uh, they're bringing their medical imaging solution to outposts and it allows them to kind of modernize the way they deliver services to hospitals and medical research centers around the world. Something that really wouldn't be possible without having AWS everywhere. >>And that is much, much needed today. Um, tell us a little bit about more about this year in particular, you said it yourself at the beginning of our conversation, this is an unprecedented year for so many different reasons. How has the COVID-19 pandemic effected AWS outposts and how your team interacts with customers and, and gets your job done? >>Yeah, we, I think we have some unique challenges in that regard, obviously, as I mentioned earlier, AWS outposts are installed in a co-location facility or on a customer's own premises in a data center, you know, other things like that. So obviously we have to get our technicians out there to roll them in and hook them up to your network and, you know, to get them powered up. So that means that we are complying with, uh, COVID restrictions. And as I mentioned, 51 different countries. So there was even an install earlier this year at a mining location, uh, you know, far outside the U S where we had to get technicians working with, uh, local technicians from the customer following COVID guidelines, wearing protective gear, and actually installing the outpost, uh, you know, using kind of satellite conductivity and phones to phone home, and talk to us during the installation of course, cause it's not hooked up yet. So those are just kind of examples of the, the links to which we'll go to make sure that, of course we're safe, the customers are safe, but that they can kind of continue to modernize their application portfolio and get benefits from the outposts. >>And what are you hearing from clients and customers in terms of how they're thinking about their technology needs now and in the coming year? >>Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. I mean, it, it really varies by market segment. So you have customers like Ericsson and Telefonica. They're going to be using outpost to, uh, kind of run their 5g packet core technology, Abe it's, it's gotta be run at the edge right there, telcos, they need to minimize latency single digit milliseconds, or you might have a customer like Lockheed Martin. And what they've told us is they have projects that are subject to government contracts and regulations. And not only do they have of course compliance regimes, like fed ramp that they need to be aware of, but there's data residency requirements. So whether they're deploying in the United States or, you know, with our allies all around the world, the compute and the storage, they need to run in specific locations. So now outposts are going to be a key, uh, advancement and kind of a key differentiator for them in how they deliver services to their customers and still meet those data residency or compliance requirement. >>Joshua, tell our viewers more about AWS outpost ready? >>Oh, that's a, it's another thing I'm really glad you mentioned. So the outposts ready program, these are solutions from our APN and our Amazon AWS partner network that are, uh, validated and following our best practices on AWS outposts. They're certified to work and, you know, they're generally available to customers. And so it's a program where, you know, ISV and SAS providers can ensure that the technology that they provide that this third-party technology is going to work in the outpost environment. And there's, there's something about outposts that I think makes this, uh, a differentiator and uniquely valuable when I mentioned kind of that consistent hybrid experience. When you think about how outposts are deployed, you know, in a customer's data center, maybe alongside other technology they're already using. And so customers say, look, these AWS services are great, but I already use a variety of third party technology maybe from Veritas or trend micro Palo Alto networks Convolt size sense, PagerDuty, pure storage NetApp, or the, you know, the list is actually pretty extensive of what people are already using. >>And so they've said, you know, I do plan on using AWS services, but I also don't want to give up, uh, you know, what my team is already familiar with. So can you make sure that's going to work for me, whether I'm using it in the region or on the AWS outposts. And so the, the, the interest in kind of demand for this, both from customers and the enthusiasm from the partners has been off the charts. We started the program in just September, which is not that long ago, and we had 32 partners. And, uh, as of today we have an additional, uh, additional 25 partners, right? It's 57 partners, total 64 certified solutions. So that's a lot of momentum and just kind of a, a short amount of time. And I'm really happy that we can deliver that to the customer. >>So it does, it's already showing tremendous momentum. How do you think about it in terms of the primary benefits that it gives to customers and how it helps customers and partners, >>You know, in order to qualify, the solution has to be tested and validated upon, uh, against a bunch of, uh, criteria that we have very specific technical criteria, security requirements, operational, and, you know, they're, they're supported for customers with clear deployment guidelines. So, you know, the customers can kind of think of this as a guarantee that we're not just saying maybe this could work, but, but this will work. If you're already using it, it's going to continue to work in a way that's familiar to you. And again, that's important that consistent hybrid experience, whether you're using a solution from a third party or from AWS, whether you're using it in the region or on a local zone or in a wavelength zone, and some of our other kind of innovative infrastructure deployments or using it on an outpost, no matter where you're using it, it has to work the same way. >>And so this is something that customers have said, I want to be able to get up and running quickly. We had a customer riot games, uh, th they're the maker of league of legends, but also when they were launching their new game, Valerie hunt, uh, in, in June of 2020, they deployed outposts in four different locations to kind of ensure a level playing field in terms of latency and what they told us, uh, you know, very much like the service ready program is they were able to get up and running in just a matter of days once the outpost was deployed. And it's because we gave them those same API APIs, that same tooling. So I think that's really important for people and, you know, I hope we can continue to deliver on that promise. >>So to close this out here, I want you to look into your crystal ball and think ahead, 12 and 24 months, when you know, fingers crossed, things are back to somewhat more normal. Uh, what's in store for AWS outposts. >>Yeah. I mean, we're going to deliver on what we announced here at reinvent, which has the new small form factor outposts. And I think what we're going to continue to do is listen to customers. We develop outposts from the very beginning because customer said, could, could you deploy outposts in our, in our data center or, sorry, can you deploy AWS? And our data center didn't have a name back then. And so that's really the hallmark of AWS. You know, somewhere around 90% of our roadmaps are based on what customers tell us they want. And the other 10% is when we kind of look around the corner and hopefully delight people with something they didn't even know they needed. And I really hope for my team and that that's what 2021 and 2022 brings is more countries, more services, more value, more compliance, certifications, you know, all the things that people tell us they want. We're going to keep turning the crank as hard as we can. And delivering that as quickly as possible >>With the trademark Amazon customer delight. Yes, absolutely. Excellent. Well, Joshua, Virgin, thank you so much for coming on the cube. It was a pleasure having you. >>It was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you very much. >>I'm Rebecca Knight for more of the cubes coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 stay tuned.

>> Announcer: Live from New York City, it's the Cube. Covering Lenovo Transform 2017. Brought to you by Lenovo. >> We are wrapping up a day of coverage, the Cube's coverage, of Lenovo Transform. I'm your host, Rebecca Kinight, along with Stu Miniman. We have been here, we've interviewed all the great guests, heard a lot of great content, we were there at the keynote. Stu, what have we learned? Yeah, so Rebecca, they talk a lot about, think differently, and we're transforming, and we know that there's so much change happening in the industry. On the one hand, I step back and I say, okay, it's a new generation of Intel Chipset. That's great. Said great a few times already. They've got some people that have been with the company a long time. YY, the CEO's been there for many years, steady at the helm. But there's a lot of new leaders in the group. Kirk Skaugen, who we've now interviewed a couple times, Kim Stevenson, who we've known, a great Cube alum, talked about why she joined a company like Lenovo. Said, they're an underdog, and she feels that they have a great position without that legacy baggage. You know, legacy is one of those terms that gets thrown around. One of our guests today said, you know, oh, in five years from now, we'll be calling software defined legacy because, I was at a conference, they said legacy is what you installed yesterday. (laughs) >> Good point, yeah. >> So, you know, that being said, Lenovo understands, you know, fanatical devotion to that, you know, customer-centricity, is the term they put out there a few times. They want to be reliable, they want to be trusted, and they've got metrics and stats to prove that they are meeting what they're doing. They're not just, you know. John Farrier texted me, he said, "There's meat on the bone at this event, Stu." Absolutely. So, interesting to look at, kind of where they are, where they're going forward. The server industry as a whole is a bit challenged. >> Mm-hmm. >> Storage has been going through radical transformation. Networking is driving more to software defined. And all of that means that there's opportunity for new players to rise through the ranks. And Lenovo feels that they're got the pieces to put together both with themselves, and with their channel and technology partners to be able to drive forward. >> So, one of the things that we're hearing a lot about is that they are number one in customer satisfaction. Because they are so reliable, and because they have great service. In terms of what they were hearing from their customers, we heard this a lot, is that the customers want simple, they are overwhelmed sometimes by too much choice. They want nothing too complicated. And they want things future-proofed. I mean, is that possible? >> Yeah, it's really tough. I did an article a few years ago looking at Amazon. And people would say, oh the hyperscale companies, they use commodity off the shelf hardware. I mean, Intel chips everywhere, what's the difference? Well, I wrote, Amazon actually hyper-optimizes. They have to build for one data center; it's their own. So if they built an application, it's 10,000 or 50,000 servers that they can build for that exact environment. Now, Lenovo leads with data centers around the globe. So, where can they simplify and standardize, and where do they need to fit around the world? So, it's great that they can have a common form factor for a power supply, but you know, we've got different power usage in various places around the world. But they do need to be, customers want help to be a little bit more opinionated, and to simplify what they're doing. I talked to a CIO a couple of years ago, and he said, we were really good at, you know, give us a big chunk of money and 18 months and we could build a temple to our application. Today I need to be faster. I need to be able to build, be more modular, and a lot of that means that I need to have architectures that are more software driven. I still need redundancy, and availability in the hardware, but I'm not going to build, you know, that monolithic infrastructure for a specific application. I just need something that's more flexible. And Lenovo understands that, and they've taken the assets that they had internally, added the pieces that they've gotten from IBM, and are driving these pieces forward, and with a lot of partners, as we've said. Interesting stuff coming from Microsoft. Azure Stack was one of my favorite interviews, talking about that mixture of I need standardization but, I also need some flexibility >> Right. >> in what I'm doing. >> Do you think that the product launches that we heard a lot about today, at the keynote, and also in our interviews today. Do you think that they will, how much do they move the needle forward is what I want to ask? >> Yeah, great question because Kim Stevenson told us, I mean, the last year, if you look revenue and units, Lenovo didn't do great. So, they've got the pieces together, the new generation. They've talked to their customer base. I think they understand what they're going to do when they hyperscale, what they're going to do in the enterprise market, and what they're doing partnering on converged, hyper converged, offering to put those together. Some of these things are really easy for us to track. We come back a year from now and we'll say, okay, the quarterly trackers done by someone like Piers in the analyst industry, you know, the numbers don't lie. You know, customers will vote with their wallets, and we will be able to say whether or not they move the needle. It's great to say, number one in customer support, but if, you know, your competition is growing, and you're shrinking, there's only so far that'll go. >> Well, that's just what I was going to ask you. I mean, is it enough? And what do you predict? I mean, can you look into your crystal ball a little bit, and say, where you think we will be one year, five years from now. Will Lenovo be the underdog? >> Yeah, so Lenovo's in a really interesting place because they do have that global footprint. They, doing, when we talk to Kirk, it's where are they in the hyperscale? It's companies like Baidu and Tencent?. Massive, massive growth. They can ride that wave. When the sky like architecture is available, you know, pretty soon from Intel, they know that they're going to get an influx of business to be able to drive that. They're also getting into some of the west coast hyperscales as they've said. The enterprise is a little bit slower to uptick on that adoption, so, you know, I'm sure Lenovo will be able to give us by segment, how they're doing, and how they're growing. They should be reaching the point that we should see the ship be turning around. We saw this story when Lenovo had purchased the PC business from IBM over a decade ago. And, you know, they sunk for a while before they eventually started to rise, and now they're number one in the world. So, they're trying to repeat history, which is challenging to do, even if they know the playbook. Lenovo, if you look at the margins that they run on, they talk about how they can live on slim margins, they understand that consumer side of the business, they've got a lot of good pieces. And, competing against the ones ahead of them in market share, primarily US based companies, and they're fighting it out. You were at Dell in Sea World. Dell and HP, they are fighting it out, it's going to be a death match. You're going to see them just trying to beat the heck out of each other. Reminds me of, can Lenovo be the Abe Lincoln on the side, saying that, you know, I might not have been the first choice, but at the end I could end up a winner because everybody else kind of beats themselves apart. >> And then all of its partners is a team of rivals. We can do this. We can... >> There you go. We started this morning talking Hamilton, and now we're going in >> We're learning (mumbles) >> New York City used to be our capital here, so, we're bringing it full circle. >> Exactly. So, let's talk also about what we've been hearing from Lenovo employees and executives about the culture here, and we hear time and time again, how it's very flat, and how decisions are made, it's collaborative, there's a lot of teamwork, there's a lot of listening that goes on, not only to colleagues but also to customers. Do you buy it? I mean, what do you think? >> Yeah, so right. So one of the things, you know, I've spent a lot of time on the converged and hyper converged infrastructure solutions. And, one of the things you can spot really easily is if the server and the storage teams aren't working together. That CI solution didn't do well. >> It shows. >> Number of companies that didn't do there. Lenovo, primarily they have some IP, but a lot of what they're driving is really through partnerships. So, at the center of it, it's the server team. Storage is coming to look more and more like, you know, x86 servers, and they're running on top of that. Networking is tied closer to the server. So, they actually don't have, you know, this big structure that they have to overcome, unlike some of their competitors. They have, you know, a sizable team, with a good position in the market share. So, I do buy a lot of it. I've been in analyst meetings with Lenovo for the last couple of years. Their messages are all in sync. It's not, oh wait, I heard one group, and I heard this group, and you know, which way is the future? So, they are making some progress. Of course, I'm really interested to see who they might pick up from an M and A standpoint. There's been rumors for the last couple of years as to some moves they'd make. Their competition has, you know, not been sitting still. We've seen, you know, Dell obviously made a lot of big acquisitions, including the really big EMC piece. HP has bought another number of companies. Cisco actually, their server business, which is the UCS, really seems to have plateaued out. So, they had been the driver of change in the storage, in the server industry for the last, gosh, you know, over five years. So, there's that opportunity for the next horse to try to take the lead. Once again, Lenovo feels they're there. I think they have, you know, they've got the resources, they have a reason to be on the track, and to drive that forward. Whether or not they can execute on, remains to be seen. And, you know, they've got, they're looked at their channel, they've looked at their sales team, and they know what they need to do now they can go do it. >> And they've made the changes. Exactly. >> Yeah, so cultural wise, I mean something you study real closely, you had a lot of businesses. Rebecca, what did you hear today? What did you like? What did you want to hear more about? >> Well, I was really fascinated by what Kim Stevenson was saying, talking about the greater numbers of women in senior leadership roles. And also, the greater numbers of people of color. And how important that is in terms of how Lenovo goes about making its decisions, thinking about the customer, empathizing with the customer, and really understanding where to go from there. And then also, then how it comes back in terms of making decisions to go to market with which products. So, that was really fascinating and I think that she's right. I mean, particularly at a time where all you see are the headlines about this machismo culture that is so pervasive in Silicon Valley and in the technology industry. And so to see, you know, YY on one hand, and Travis Kalanick on another, and you just can see these very different models and, so, I'm hoping Lenovo is the one that really prevails in the end here because this is, I think, the future, the future of work, the future of the workforce. And so, I would like to see this model of leadership and of teamwork prevail. >> Yeah, it's a different type of event here. It's nice. It's very intimate. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> You know, Lenovo obviously knows how to do some cool things. The layout here, it's a beautiful facility here >> It is. Yes. >> In New York City. The keynote had some, you know, funny yet, you know, good videos. >> Yeah. That was (mumbles). >> You know, sometimes they fall a little flat, when you go to some of those keynotes. >> Yeah. >> But, you know, Lenovo needs to continue to build their brand, outside of the consumer space. >> Right, right. >> And be known more in the enterprise, and you know, they have a chance to ride some of those waves. >> Yeah, yeah. Well this has been a great show. It's always so much fun to co-host with you on The Cube. I love it. >> All right. >> It's really fun. Great crew. >> Rebecca, thank you so much, and, yeah, actually Kirk Skaugen's going to be back on The Cube next week. I will be with Dave Vellante at the Nutanix .NEXT event in Washington, DC. We have done so many events with the Cube. Of course, as it says on the sign behind us, theCUBE.net, where all the videos are. I'm sure will be record-breaking for us yet again, as to how many shows, how many interviews we do. >> Exciting stuff. >> Rebecca, it's a pleasure to be with you again, and thanks so much for joining with me, you know, the quick train ride down from Boston. >> Yes, exactly. >> Yeah. >> Well, thank you so much, Stu. That wraps it up for us at the Cube. This has been the Lenovo Transform Conference. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. Thank you so much for tuning in. (funky music)