>> Hey, welcome everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, We are in downtown San Francisco Moscone West at the Professional Businesswomen of California's conference. It's the 28th year they've been doing this conference, over 6,000 women, pretty wide range, about 5%, of guys made the trip, and we are excited, it's about diversity and inclusion, and we wanted to come check it out and bring you some of the thought leaders. So, we're really excited to have our first guest, he's Greg Jones, he's a Chief Diversity Officer for United Airlines. Welcome, Greg. >> Good to be here, Jeff. >> Absolutely, so you've been doing this diversity thing for a while, took a look at your LinkedIn, you know, you've been in healthcare, excuse me, insurance, and financial services, now with United. Are we making progress on this front? >> We are making some progress, but given the time that I think we have been doing this in the country, I would say it's not enough yet. >> Jeff: Right. And so, there is still a ways to go, it's a journey. We take two steps forward, sometimes a step back, sometimes a half a step back. But we're moving forward. >> Right, and certainly a lot of positive momentum here, and we cover the Grace Hopper show, and, you know, a lot of the women in tech stuff, but again, you're not only looking at sex or race, but things like veterans with disabilities, I saw >> Absolutely >> you're doing some efforts, >> Absolutely >> so really a broad breaststroke. >> Yeah, it is, and when you think about it, it makes sense, because, especially in the corporate space, we're talking about, how do you actually get the most out of all the people that you have working for you at every level, and if people are afraid to fully commit themselves to work, your productivity is just not what it could be or what it should be. >> Jeff: Right. >> You know, I have a theory, I'm sorry, Jeff, >> Jeff: No. >> that corporate America is probably operating at about 60% capacity, because people can't fully pull the trigger on their skills and talents. So, what inclusion is all about is getting the most out of all of the folks that you have by creating an environment in which they're comfortable in. >> We hear that time and time again, and there's a lot of studies about, you know, diversity of opinion leads to better outcomes, >> Greg: That's true >> This is not the right thing to do, I mean it is the right thing to do, but it's also a great business decision. >> Greg: Right. Do business leaders get that? Do they see that by having a different set of opinions, and all of us bring our own biases, to decision making and processes, that the outcomes are actually better? >> I think it's starting to happen more and more, I think, if you think about the history of this work, diversity and inclusion, since the sixties or whatever, it's migrated from affirmative action and all that that meant and the emotion that that provoked, to, wait a minute, the country is changing, the world has gotten smaller, this is starting to really make sense from a business perspective. So we migrated from almost completely the right thing to do, to wow, wait a minute, this is a business play. >> Right. So what are the things you see that are really concrete for people that, you know, or companies, they want to get involved they want to do a better job, what are some of the low hanging fruit that you suggest since you've been on this journey? >> Greg: Well, I think about, organizations like this, and conferences like this, are very important, and I would say it's a very important tool that companies can use to actually begin to develop the mindset that they need to start to shift gears. Also, organizations should begin to think about their systems. It turns out that there are biases in certain systems in terms of performance ratings, how people are promoted, how people are rewarded, and you know there is a look of leadership, unfortunately, that is based on history. >> Jeff: Right. >> So I think companies can start to really examine their processes, their views of their leadership model, their ways that they promote people, because it turns out that great talent and leadership comes in all kinds of packages. >> Right, and it's tough to fight, I mean, one of the keynote speakers this morning talked about, they've actually published their unbiased, or their unconscious bias class online for anyone to take. I can't remember if it was Schwab or Intel, which is pretty interesting, because we all have bias. >> Greg: We do. >> It's not about not having bias, it's about being aware of your bias and really trying to overcompensate for when you know it's doing things that you know you're not necessarily keeping track of. >> And it turns out that it's one of these things, and I talk about this a lot, it turns out that if you step out into this world, in places in which you're not comfortable, leading people and engaging with people, that you may initially not be comfortable with, what happens over time is you wind up developing a skill set, you know, whether it's leading women, whether it's leading people of color, or whether it's engaging with people with disabilities, once you do it and you find out it doesn't kill you, >> Jeff: Right, right. >> It turns out that by defintion, it makes you a better leader. So we have these biases, >> Right >> We do, were human. >> Jeff: Right. >> But it turns out, when you explore beyond your comfort zone, to use a cliche, you grow as a person, you grow as a leader. >> That's such a great point right, because birds of a feather is always the easiest path. >> It's easy! >> So easy. >> Yes. >> And it's just familiar, whether that familiar, that's cause that's the person that did it for you yesterday, or they're the same race, background, color, they look the same, but it's so easy to go birds of a father, but to your point I think that's a great point that doesn't come up enough, it's when you challenge yourself with something new, it let's you get back on a little steep learning curve, but that's when you grow and you know you feel so much better when you do get a little growth in your personal development. >> Absolutely, and it turns out that that in and of itself is a skill. Once you do it a few times and you find out that you're capable of doing it, you're looking for that next thing that is sort of outside the lines that you used to be comfortable with, and you grow. >> Jeff: That's great. So, I wonder, you got to have an analogy for Jazz. I know you're a Jazz fan, doin' a little homework before you came on. The great musical that just won all the Academy Awards talked about kind of the Jazz groove, and there's a little bit of conflict and harmony but at the end of the day, they make beautiful music together. Do you see some of that kind of analogy in what you're trying to accomplish? >> I actually do. I think that once you begin to master your instrument, I talk about job descriptions and systems as sort of the sheet music. You know, the basic tune that you have. But once you really master your instrument you can take it in all kinds of places, I mean, "Mary Had a Little Lamb" played by Louis Armstrong, is very different than the basic music, right? I would say that as we think about ourselves as leaders, there are the basic things we have, our technical education, our personalities, but once you really master that and you lose your fear of stepping out there, you can improvise all day long with all kinds of people in all kinds of ways and all kinds of systems. I believe that to be true. >> Well, and you're doing it every day. >> That's right! >> Alright Greg, well I was going to say do you have the last word, but I don't know that we could do much better than the Jazz analogy so I think we'll leave it right there. >> There ya go, let's stop right there. >> Alright. Well thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day, and I look forward to continued success in your journey. >> Thank you so much, Jeff, very nice to meet you. >> Pleasure >> Absolutely. >> Alright, he's Greg Jones, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE, we'll be back after this short break, thanks for watchin'. (tech music)

>> Narrator: Live from the Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE. (bright music) Covering Google Cloud Next 17. >> Hi, and welcome to the second day of live coverage here of theCUBE covering Google Next 2017. We're at the heart of Silicon Valley here at our 4,500 square foot new studio in Palo Alto. We've got a team of reporters and analysts up in San Francisco checking out everything that's happening in Google. I was up there for the day two keynote, and happy to have with me is the first guest of the day, friend of theCUBE, Marc Farley, Vulcancast, guy that knows clouds, worked for one the big three in the past and going to help me break down some of what's going on in the marketplace. Mark, it's great to see you. >> Oh, it's really nice to be here, Stu, thanks for asking me on. >> Always happy to have you-- >> And what a lot of fun stuff to get into. >> Oh my god, yeah, this is what we love. We talked about, I wonder, Amazon Reinvent is like the Superbowl of the industry there. What's Google there if, you know-- >> Well, Google pulls a lot of resources for this. And they can put on a very impressive show. So if this is, if Invent is the Superbowl, then maybe this, maybe Next is the college championship game. I hate to call it college, but it's got that kind of draw, it's a big deal. >> Is is that, I don't want to say, arena football, it's the up and coming-- >> Oh, it's a lot better than that. Google really does some spectacular things at events. >> They're Google, come on, we all use Google, we all know Google, 10,000 people showed up, there's a lot of excitement. So what's your take of the show so far in Google's positioning in cloud? >> It's nothing like the introduction of Glass. And of course, Google Glass is a thing of the past, but I don't know if you remember when they introduced that, when they had the sky diver. Sky divers diving out of an airplane and then climbing up the outside of the building and all that, it was really spectacular. Nobody can ever reach that mark again, probably not even the Academy Awards. But you asked the second part of the question, what's Google position with cloud, I think that's going to be the big question moving forward. They are obviously committed to doing it, and they're bringing unique capabilities into cloud that you don't see from either Amazon or Microsoft. >> Yeah. I mean, coming into it, there's certain things that we've been hearing forever about Google, and especially when you talk about Google in the enterprise. Are they serious, is this just beta, are they going to put the money in? I thought Eric Schmidt did a real good job yesterday in the close day keynote, he's like, "Look, I've been telling Google to push hard "in the enterprise for 17 years. "Look, I signed a check for 30 billion dollars." >> 30 billion! >> Yeah, and I talked to some people, they're a little skeptical, and they're like, "Oh, you know, that's not like it all went to build "the cloud, some of it's for their infrastructure, "there's acquisitions, there's all these other things." But I think it was infrastructure related. Look, there shouldn't be a question that they're serious. And Diane Greene said, in a Q&A she had with the press, that thing about, we're going to tinker with something and then kill it, I want to smash that perception because there's certain things you can do in the consumer side that you cannot get away with on the enterprise side, and she knows that, they're putting a lot of effort to transform their support, transform the pricing, dig in with partners and channels. And some of it is, you know, they've gotten the strategy together, they've gotten the pieces together, we're moving things from beta to GA, and they're making good progress. I think they have addressed some of the misperceptions, that being said, everybody usually, it's like, "I've been hearing this for five years, "it's probably going to take me a couple of years "to really believe it." >> Yeah, but you know, the things is, for people that know Diane Greene and have watched VMware over the years, and then her being there at Google is a real commitment. And she's talking about commitment when she talks about that business. It's full pedal to the metal, this is a very serious, the things that's interesting about it, it's a lot more than infrastructure as a service. >> Yeah. >> The kinds of APIs and apps and everything that they're bringing, this is a lot more than just infrastructure, this is Google developed, Google, if you will, proprietary technology now that they're turning to the external world to use. And there's some really sophisticated stuff in there. >> Yes, so before we get into some of the competitive landscape, some of the things you were pretty impressed with, I think everybody was, the keynote this morning definitely went out much better, day one keynote, a little rocky. Didn't hear, the biggest applauses were around some of the International Women's Day, which is great that they do that, but it's nice when they're like, "Oh, here's some cool new tech," or they're like, oh, wow, this demo that they're doing, some really cool things and products that people want to get their hands on. So what jumped out at you at the keynote this morning? >> I'm trying to remember what it's called. The stuff from around personal identifiable information. >> Yeah, so that's what they call DLP or it's the Data Loss Prevention API. Thank goodness for my Evernote here, which I believe runs on Google cloud, keeping up to date, so I'm-- >> Data loss prevention shouldn't be so hard to remember. >> And by the way, you said proprietary stuff. One thing about Google is, that Data Loss Prevention, it's an API, they want to make it easy to get in, a lot of what they do is open source. They feel that that's one of their differentiations, is to be, we always used to say on the infrastructure side, it's like everybody's pumping their chest. Who's more open than everybody else? Google. Lots of cool stuff, everything from the TensorFlow and Kubernetes that's coming out, where some of us are like, "Okay, how will they actually make money on some of this, "will it be services?" But yeah, Data Loss Prevention API, which was a really cool demo. It's like, okay, here's a credit card, the video kind of takes it and it redacts the number. It can redact social security numbers, it's got that kind of machine learning AI with the video and all those things built in to try to help security encrypt and protect what you're doing. >> It's mind boggling. You think about, they do the facial recognition, but they're doing content recognition also. And you could have a string of numbers there that might not be a phone number, it might not be a social security number, and the question is, what DLP flagged that to, who knows, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that they can actually do this. And as a storage person, you're getting involved, and compliance and risk and mitigation, all these kinds of things over the years. And it's hard for software to go in and scan a lot of data to just look for text. Not images of numbers on a photograph, but just text in a document, whether it's a Word file or something. And you say, "Oh, it's not so hard," but when you try to do that at scale, it's really hard at scale. And that's the thing that I really wonder about DLP, are they going to be able to do this at large scale? And you have to think that that is part of the consideration for them, because they are large scale. And if they can do that, Stu, that is going to be wildly impressive. >> Marc, everything that Google does tends to be built for scale, so you would think they could do that. And I'd think about all the breaches, it was usually, "Oh, oops, we didn't realize we had this information, "didn't know where it was," or things like that. So if Google can help address that, they're looking at some of those core security issues they talked about, they've got a second form factor authentication with a little USB tab that can go into your computer, end to end encryption if you've got Android and Chrome devices, so a lot of good sounding things on encryption and security. >> One of the other things they announced, I don't know if this was part of the same thinking, but they talk about 64 core servers, and they talk about, or VMs, I should say, 64 core VMs, and they're talking about getting the latest and greatest from Intel. What is it, Skylink, Sky-- >> Stu: Skylake. >> Skylake, yeah, thanks. >> They had Raejeanne actually up on stage, Raejeanne Skillern, Cube alumn, know her well, was happy to see her up on stage showing off what they're doing. Not only just the chipset, but Intel's digging in, doing development on Kubernetes, doing development on TensorFlow to help with really performance. And we've seen Intel do this, they did this with virtualization with the extensions that they did, they're doing it with containers. Intel gets involved in these software pieces and makes sure that the chipset's going to be optimized, and great to see them working with Google on it. >> My guess is they're going to be using a lot of cycles for these security things also. The security is really hard, it's front and center in our lives these days, and just everything. I think Google's making a really interesting play, they take their own internal technology, this security technology that they've been using, and they know it's compute heavy. The whole thing about DLP, it's extremely compute heavy to do this stuff. Okay, let's get the biggest, fastest technology we can to make it work, and then maybe it can all seem seamless. I'm really impressed with how they've figured out to take the assets that they have in different places, like from YouTube. These other things that you would think, is YouTube really an enterprise app? No, but there's technology in YouTube that you can use for enterprise cloud services. Very smart, I give them a lot of credit for looking broadly throughout their organization which, in a lot of respects, traditionally has been a consumer oriented experience, and they're taking some of these technologies now and making it available to enterprise. It's really, really hard. >> Absolutely. They did a bunch of enhancements on the G Suite product line. It felt at times a little bit, it's like, okay, wait, I've got the cloud and I've got the applications. There are places that they come together, places that data and security flow between them, but it still feels like a couple of different parts, and how they put together the portfolio, but building a whole solution for the enterprise. We see similar things from Microsoft, not as much from Amazon. I'm curious what your take is as to how Google stacks up against Microsoft who, disclaimer, you did work for one time on the infrastructure side. >> Yeah, that's a whole interesting thing. Google really wants to try to figure out how to get enterprises that run on Microsoft technology moving to Google cloud, and I think it's going to be very tough for them. Satya Nadella and Microsoft are very serious about making a seamless experience for end users and administrators and everybody along managing the systems and using their systems. Okay, can Google replicate that? Maybe on the user side they can, but certainly not on the administration side. And there are hooks between the land-based technology and the cloud-based technology that Microsoft's been working on for years. Question is, can Google come close to replicating those kinds of things, and on Microsoft's side, do customers get enough value, is there enough magic there to make that automation of a hybrid IT experience valuable to their customers. I just have to think though that there's no way Google's going to be able to beat Microsoft at hybrid IT for Microsoft apps. I just don't believe it. >> Yeah, it's interesting. I think one of the not so secret weapons that Google has there is what they're doing with Kubernetes. They've gotten Kubernetes in all the public clouds, it's getting into a lot of on premises environment. Everything from we were at the KubeCon conference in Seattle a couple of months ago. I hear DockerCon and OpenStacks Summit are going to have strong Kubernetes discussions there, and it's growing, it's got a lot of buzz, and that kind of portability and mobility of workload has been something that, especially as guys that have storage background, we have a little bit of skepticism because physics and the size of data and that whole data gravity thing. But that being said, if I can write applications and have ways to be able to do similar things across multiple environments, that gives Google a way to spread their wings beyond what they can do in their Google cloud. So I'm curious what you think about containers, Kubernetes, serverless type activity that they're doing. >> I think within the Google cloud, they'll be able to leverage that technology pretty effectively. I don't think it's going to be very effective, though, in enterprise data centers. I think the OpenStack stuff's been a really hard road, and it's a long time coming, I don't know if they'll ever get there. So then you've got a company like Microsoft that is working really hard on the same thing. It's not clear to me what Microsoft's orchestrate is going to be, but they're going to have one. >> Are you bullish on Asure Stack that's coming out later this year? >> No, not really. >> Okay. >> I think Asure Stack's a step in the right direction, and Microsoft absolutely has to have it, not so much for Google, but for AWS, to compete with AWS. I think it's a good idea, but it's such a constrained system at this point. It's going to take a while to see what it is. You're going to have HPE and Lenovo and Cisco, all have, and Dell, all having the same basic thing. And so you ask yourself, what is the motivation for any of these companies to really knock it out of the park when Microsoft is nailing everybody's feet to the floor on what the options are to offer this? And I understand Microsoft wanting to play it safe and saying, "We want to be able to support this thing, "make sure that, when customers install it, "they don't have problems with it." And Microsoft always wants to foist the support burden onto somebody else anyway, we've all been working for Microsoft our whole lives. >> It was the old Dilbert cartoon, as soon as you open that software, you're all of a sudden Microsoft's pool boy. >> (laughs) I love that, yeah. Asure Stack's going to be pretty constrained, and they keep pushing it further out. So what's the reality of this? And Asure Pack right now is a zombie, everybody's waiting for Asure Stack, but Asure Stack keeps moving out and Asure Stack's going to be small and constrained. This stuff is hard. There's a reason why it's taking everybody a long time to get it out, there's a reason why OpenStack hasn't had the adoption that people first expected, there's going to be a reason why I think Asure Stack does not have the adoption that Microsoft hoped for either. It's going to be an interesting thing to watch over what will play out over the next five or six years. >> Yeah, but for myself, I've seen this story play out a few times on the infrastructure side. I remember the original precursor, the Vblock with Acadia and the go-to-market. VMware, when they did the VSAN stuff, the generation one of Evo really went nowhere, and they had to go, a lot of times it takes 18 to 24 months to sort out some of those basic pricing, packaging, partnering, positioning type things, and even though Asure Stack's been coming for a while, I want to say TP3 is like here, and we're talking about it, and it's going to GA this summer, but it's once we really start getting this customer environment, people start selling it, that we're going to find out what it is and what it isn't. >> It's interesting. You know how important that technology is to Microsoft. It's, in many respects, Satya's baby. And it's so important to them, and at the same time, it's not there, it's not coming, it's going to be constrained. >> So Marc, unfortunately, you and I could talk all day about stuff like this, and we've had many times, at conferences, that we spend a long time. I want to give you just the final word. Wrap up the intro for today on what's happening at Google Next and what's interesting you in the industry. >> Well, I think the big thing here is that Google is showing that they put their foot down and they're not letting up. They're serious about this business, they made this commitment. And we sort of talk and we give lip service, a little bit, to the big three, we got Asure, we got Amazon, and then there's Google. I think every year it's Google does more, and they're proving themselves as a more capable cloud service provider. They're showing the integration with HANA is really interesting, SAP, I should say, not HANA but SAP. They're going after big applications, they've got big customers. Every year that they do this, it's more of an arrival. And I think, in two years time, that idea of the big three is actually going to be big three. It's not going to be two plus one. And that is going to accelerate more of the movement into cloud faster than ever, because the options that Google is offering are different than the others, these are all different clouds with different strengths. Of the three of them, Google, I have to say, has the most, if you will, computer science behind it. It's not that Microsoft doesn't have it, but Google is going to have a lot more capability and machine learning than I think what you're going to see out of Amazon ever. They are just going to take off and run with that, and Microsoft is going to have to figure out how they're going to try to catch up or how they're going to parley what they have in machine learning. It's not that they haven't made an investment in it, but it's not like Google has made investment in it. Google's been making investment in it over the years to support their consumer applications on Google. And now that stuff is coming, like I said before, the stuff is coming into the enterprise. I think there is a shift now, and we sort of wonder, is machine learning going to happen, when it's going to happen? It's going to happen, and it's going to come from Google. >> All right, well, great way to end the opening segment here. Thank you so much, Marc Farley, for joining us. We've got a full day of coverage here from our 4,500 square foot studio in the heart of Silicon Valley. You're watching theCUBE. (bright music)