>>Good afternoon. Welcome back to the cube. Lisa Martin here with Dave Nicholson. We are live in San Francisco at Moscone west for VMware Explorer, 2022. We're excited to welcome a new cube guest to the program. Steve Bravo joins us the SVP of edge technology at Luman. Great to have you on the program. Thank >>You very much for having me. Appreciate it. Welcome. >>Talk to us a little bit about, we've had several conversations with Luman folks over the last day and a half, but talk to us a little bit about it from your perspective, the VMware relationship with Luman. Okay. >>So it's actually, you know, we have been partners for the last 20 years. Okay. When, when VMware was really cutting its teeth in the, the virtualized space Luman, and one of its, you know, companies that acquired through time was really a, a cutting edge user of VMware technologies. And as, as time has evolved and VMware's technologies have evolved, we have grown with VMware. So much of the software they write is embedded not only within our network, but on our edge platforms and extended out to the, the, the hyperscalers as well as in the client pre. So it's an ever growing partnership and, and one that we're continually innovating and creating better outcomes for, for really the, the enterprise space. >>Talk about those enterprise customers and some of the outcomes that you are helping to deliver. What's the joint value prop that Luman and BM bring to the enterprise. >>So really stronger together, right? If you think about the strengths that Luman has, it's really our, our, our network. We call that our central nervous system, our, our, our platform. Okay. So all of our edge technologies and compute capabilities that we're able to deploy in our edge centers, data centers globally, as well as out to prem, we lay the software technologies that VMware creates not only from a hyper virtualized sense, but also through sassy through security and also out to workspace one. So it's their entire suite, we're able to support it. So with those, we create amazing technology solutions to serve the enterprise, whether it's healthcare, whether it's manufacturing, retail space, the customers are plenty in the use cases are endless. >>You talked about your history and, and at the foundation of what you do this sort of idea of a central nervous system. Yeah. The network, if we wanted to completely geek out, we could just talk about that. Yeah. For an hour. Sure. We could, but we're not going to, we were talking just, you know, before we came live, came on, live about lumens philosophy and how you're taking that foundation, that network, that central nervous system, and you have a philosophy about what you want to achieve with it. And the other things you layer on top of it. Yeah. Tell, tell us about that. Cause I thought was >>Interesting it's so it it's really all about furthering human progress with technology. Okay. We're very lucky that we have the global network that we do, but the workloads, right? The applications that make really life kind of, you know, go round in today's world lives in, in forms and factors of compute that hang off of the network. We're very lucky that we can bring that all together. So over the years, you know, every enterprise has a different need, right? They're trying to solve a problem. We want to help them solve that problem. Right. We bring our technology, our capabilities, our experience, and, and experts to really cater to and, and be that partner that can, that can build the entire stack for them to allow them to be very, very efficient in their place of competition. So >>I wanna hear, I wanna hear a concrete example of that in action. Sure. But, but I think it's interesting, not just from a, what is happening on the outside perspective, but it's also very interesting culturally yes. From a, an organizational perspective when you wake up in the morning and you have that mindset, that that's what your mission is. Sure. That's a lot different than waking up in the morning, thinking I'm going to deploy 50 terabytes of storage. Absolutely. I'm going to install nine ports and yellow cables and blue cables in my switch. That's right. Thinking you're toiling and obscurity. So everybody, everybody illumined then is waking up with this mission in mind. Yes. Which makes the day a lot easier to get through when you're, when you're having to work hard. But give me, give a, gimme a concrete example of that in, in motion. >>Sure. So it's actually, it's, it's about those outcomes and those use cases, right. I, I explain to my kids, sometimes they're like, dad tell me, you know, like tell me what you do. And if you start talking about the cables and the compute, they, their eyes gloss over. But if I say to him, you know, remember when you were sick and it was during COVID and you couldn't go to the doctor. Right. And we were able to pop open the computer and we were able to see a doctor on the screen and they had to stick your tongue out and do all the things you got care. And we were able to deliver that based on our platform, based on our network, we helped healthcare providers, you know, go remote to see patients as COVID was happening and people were going to the hospital. So that's just a real world scenario that we did for a very large network when people were dealing with it, they needed to really expand horizontally horizontally to allow care providers, to operate in different areas. And we were able to hit it outta the park. >>That's a great explanation. Did, did your kids go, wow, dad, that's >>Awesome. Absolutely. Absolutely. But then they're like, anything else, like, is there anything else cool. And talk about sporting stadiums, lighting up, you know, a different venue where they go and they're able to from their, you know, phone order, a soda or a pretzel and, and with the different sensors from an I two, >>Now you're talking >>Yeah. Perspective like dad, you guys did this. Yes. You know, it it's, so it resonates. And those, those use cases, if you think about the building blocks, right. Whether it's the medical scenario or, or a, a smart stadium, the building blocks are very similar. Right. And we're lucky enough that you put those building blocks together in a, in a, in a prescriptive way for a specific outcome. You're able to play with strikes and you're able to get better scale and you're able to move fast because the technology industry we're in is it's. I mean, it's, it's moving at light speeds >>As the edge become grows and grows and expands and becomes more and more amorphous, how have your customer conversations changed as there's more demand for every company to become a data company, to be a security company. Right. How have they kind of elevated up the stack to the C-suite >>We've really had to just pivot to talking about that, that outcome, that, that entity, that, that enterprise is really trying to achieve. You know, if you think about, you know, the, the two examples, another one, it could be very, you know, cost driven. It could be that we need to get to market in a much more rapid fashion at a global level. How can we stamp things out quickly? So you take those outcomes, show them how the technology's going to enable it, and then you can really open the door for the return. Right. Did you get the cost savings? Yes. Did you, did you achieve that time to market for, it could be seasonality, right. Right. People don't have to pay for the full boat anymore. If, if let's say there are an online marketplace and it it's huge around the seasons, right. Around the holiday season, there's gonna be big peaks that they have there. Right. We like to be able to have them burst and, and ebb and flow. So it's all about that outcome. And getting to that, the technology pieces, you just put 'em together to accommodate. >>What, what does your go-to market strategy look like? How do you engage with customers? You know, there are, there are finite number of seats, strategic seats at a customer table. Yeah. Are you typically going in arm and arm with partners and alliances? What does that ecosystem look like? Or do you, do you have a direct sales force that engages customers? Yep. Tell, tell me about the, how the whole thing >>Works. So we have a direct sales force. Okay. And we like to play to our strengths. So we have a great Alliance partners as well. So that arm and arm absolutely happens where we are heavily connected already at C-suites. They're able to walk in and make those types of relationships and outcomes a reality. But we find that we are, we're better with partners playing to their strengths with us. Right. If we come in and show up and we have that complete stack, the software experts as well, our assets, our platform, our network, it's really a one, two punch wrap with our service capabilities at a global level that it's unbeatable. So we show up to the very best of our abilities with our alliances. And then with those more steep relationships where we've been there, where we have the relationships, there's more of a trust factor, but it's all about building trust. And we gotta, we gotta show up appropriately to do that. >>So if it's unbeatable, why do customers choose? Luin what, what's the value prop that you talk to customers about? >>So if you think about a, a COO or CIO or CTO and all of the different things, you need to purchase to make outcomes a reality, whether it's network, whether it's compute, whether it's storage, whether it's software, right? Whether it's people, it becomes very easy. If you have a partner that can do all of that for you and it's their assets, right? So we have those assets. We have those, you know, you know, our, our employees are absolutely our greatest asset. My, in my opinion, at a global level. And then we partner with the biggest software manufacturers, like, like an AWS or a, like a VMware. And we, we loaded into our, our fabric. And now we have literally the entire stack right there. It's a single hand to shake rather than I needed to go to a network provider to go to compute provider storage, security. Like you get that holistic solution approach makes it far easier. And that's a, it's a huge differentiator. And >>You, you, you said AWS. Yeah. You work with all you work with all, all the >>Har hyperscalers. Like if you think about the cloud, the, I'll say the, the big three, right? AWS, Google, and Microsoft, everything is using the cloud and the fact that we can connect to it in dynamic ways and extend that experience all the way out to our edge and on-prem and deliver the same experience again, massive differentiator. >>So from your customer's point of view, you can be agnostic. Yes. So you, you can say, well, Azure for this AWS, for that maybe run VMware in both >>100, >>Both context. Interesting stat that was brought up to Lisa and I yesterday through the VCP P program. Yep. The, the VMware cloud provider program, if you aggregate all of that cloud stuff, that's going on, that becomes the third or fourth largest cloud on earth. Yeah. So a lot of the messaging, a lot of the stuff they're talking about now has to do with that. So you, so for example, you could be involved in deploying that software defined data center stack in a variety of hyperscale class. Yes. Where appropriate for people? >>Yeah. 100%. And whether it's in the hyperscalers or in their own data center, in one of our platforms, the, the, the, the biggest differentiators, it's gonna be the same. Right? You have that partner that can do it for you no matter where the venue is. So that's really the, the coming of hybrid cloud, very agnostic. But I always say, it's the best venue. Right? You have different applications are gonna need different things, build it to suit. And when you do that, okay. And it's, and you're not pushing one way, you're taking the, the requirements you build trust. And when you build trust, you build long lasting relationships with your clients, and that's, that's what it's about. And you then make more great outcomes, a reality, >>Right. That trust is absolutely critical. It's currency really is. Yes. Talk about, you have a, a joint innovation lab with VMware. Talk a little bit about that. What is it all about? How long have you guys been doing it? What exciting things are coming from it? So >>We, we, we launched at about 18 months ago. Some, some, some amazing thinkers, you know, on our team and their team came together and it's really to, to keep pace with the market. Okay. So platforms and software evolve at a, at a, at a certain pace, right. And it's always speeding up, but creating use cases within that lab to solve a common core set of problems for maybe a specific vertical is really what it's intended to do. So when the software's ready to kind of an incubation engine that we're testing these use cases, so we can then go deploy and begin solving immediately when market ready. So it, it, it puts us ahead of the game. It gives us those at bats. So we're very comfortable deploying. And, and I would say, you know, created that muscle memory before you're going live in a, in a client environment. >>And then you can show, see, you know, and seen is believing. So there are multiple just, I'll say different, you know, IOT use cases that we're doing right now, 5g wireless, you know, untethered headsets, things of that nature. You think about some of the VI and, and AI capabilities that are emerging, whether it's digital twin, whether it's literally T sensors with packages, tracking those types of things, the use cases are endless. But the, the cool thing about it is you're testing those building blocks that I kind of keep referring to. And you're expanding the portfolio of use cases that you can solve with them. And when you start to see patterns, you now have use cases that can solve many similar needs and outcomes. So it's a, it's a huge differentiator. We're lucky to have the, the teams, the, the collective teams together, making those outcomes a reality, some of the best technologies I've ever seen. >>So the joint innovation lab formed about 18 months ago during the pandemic. What was the compelling event or was, was that part of it, or was it customer demand that, that caused you guys to go, you know what, let's come together and actually build a joint lab. >>We saw how fast things were moving. We wanted to say, okay, as something's getting ready to roll out, let's start touching it before, before it's market ready. So when it does, we can hit market and begin generating those outcomes immediately. And it, it, it took a little doing, but it came to place very quickly, like mines, right. Thinking the right way, you get a good outcome. >>So if you think about the way that a lot of consolidation has happened, yeah. Over, over recent years, you have large cloud vendors, including VMware. If you, if you accept that definition of their partner program, spanning their software to find data center stack across clouds. And then on the other side of the chasm, you have the organizations that help people take the technology and move it into the realm of outcomes. Yes. Doing actual things with the shiny toys, right. It's one thing to develop the shiny toys. It's another thing to get value out of them. Right. You guys are in that middle space, that critical space. So are the largest global systems integrators in the world. Sure. So how do you, how do you work with, or are you strictly competitive with yeah. The, you know, the, the alphabet soup of, of, yeah. Of global systems integrators, where do you fit into that space? >>So, so again, go back to those, the assets and the capabilities that we have, right? The power users of software, we have a manage and professional services organization, and it's all about, I'll say day zero day one, think of that consultative professional services approach to literally discover, define design, analyze what that outcome is, and then build and deploy. Okay. So migration, you know, transition of workloads, all tee it up for the day, two type capabilities where we are different, those assets that we're building on are hours. Okay. You know, the Accentures, the Deloittes, they're amazing, right. They're also sourcing network, they're sourcing compute, they're sourcing edge. They're sourcing things from other third providers. We are the power users of our capabilities that makes us the best at it. So that integration, we have the, the, the ways to put the, the instructions to put those Legos together better than anybody else. >>Well, so does that mean that you are best targeting at a certain market segment? Where possibly, would you seed some market to the largest of, of global systems integrators at some point? Sure. >>So, so there are certain things that they are amazing at, right. Think about some of the, the, the biggest M applications and things like that. We're power users and power deployers of SAP. That's really, the niche is high up that will go into the app stack, right? Doing the dynamics, doing different types of Oracle suites and things of that nature, let them go there. Right. But enabling applications to live on our platforms and across our networks, we play to our strengths there, leveraging software technologies like VMware, right. And the hyperscalers that's really where I don't wanna say it's their hard boundaries, but again, it's boundaries where we have strength. We will always wanna play to our strengths and be honest, right. If you're honest about your capabilities, you will win the business that you were, that you were great at. And that's what we did. >>Yeah. I, I think there's huge opportunity in that space, frankly. I think not too long ago when asked, I think a lot of people would say, Hmm, it's all gonna be consolidation. There's gonna be five standing over here, five standing over there and they're gonna work together and everyone else is gonna have to go work for those people. What we've seen is organizations like lumen yeah. Taking their historical capabilities and finding that space. Sure. It's really, really interesting to see that >>There's one thing that I'll add too. And the, you know, the, the, the way of the world is automation and orchestration. Okay. When you own the platforms, when you own the technologies that you're able to work with, you're able to evolve those capabilities and it, it, it stays your intellectual property, right. That intellectual property gives you amazing scale too. So that's one of the things that we've been lucky enough to do is we're continually working and involving that suite of orchestration and automation, that layers on top of our platform, right. Our platform for amazing things is it's that automation, orchestration is very key to making it go round. >>Speaking of amazing things, what are some of the things on the horizon for Lumin and VMware? What can customers look forward to in the coming months? >>So yesterday we actually just launched our sassy offering. So that's amazing and great job to the product teams for >>That. I, I, I, I gave one of your colleagues grief yesterday. He didn't appreciate it. I'm sure, but it's considered a party foul to let's, let's remind people what sassy stands for. >>So, so secure a access service edge, basically, all right. Software to find networking. Plus security it's really becomes a dynamic network, right. One that can live, breathe and grow and, and VMware has amazing technology yeah. That we are leveraging that's really the under or the, the overlay network for, for our network. And then we're also even scaling that out too, to, to, to include carbon black security offerings. Okay. As well as workspace one. So those are additional evolutions, some of the, the, the further enhancements with Tansu and Kubernetes. Right, right. In the portfolio as well. So as that capability expands. So, so does, so does the efforts that we have with it. >>Fantastic. Awesome. >>Steve, thank you so much for joining David. Me, I program appreciate talking about lumen. What's going on there, how you're working better together with VMware and the, and the outcomes that you're delivering for customers. We appreciate your time. Thank >>You very much greatly. Appreciate >>It. Our pleasure. Thank you for our guest and Dave Nicholson. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cube day two coverage of VMware Explorer, 2022, Dave. And I will be right back with our next guest. So don't change the channel.

(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to the Seaport in Boston. This is day two of theCUBES's coverage of Red Hat Summit 2022 different format this year for Red Hat Summit. You know we are used to the eight to 9,000 people big conferences, but this is definitely and a lot of developers this is definitely a smaller, more intimate, more abbreviated keynotes which I love that new style they've really catering to the virtual audience as well as the physical audience, a lot of good stuff going on last night in the Seaport, which a lot of fun Stephanie Chiras is here is the Senior Vice President of Partner Ecosystem Success at Red Hat. >> Yeah. >> On the move again, Stephanie love to see you. >> yeah. Thank you. It's great to be here with you and now in a little different bit of a role. >> Yeah, I'm happy that we're actually in Boston and we can meet face to face. >> Yes. >> We don't have to get in a plane, but you know we'll be on a lot of planes in the next few months. >> Yeah. >> But look, a new role for you in ecosystems. You are interviewing all the partners, which is very cool. So you get a big observation space as my friend Jeff Jonas would like to say. And so, but I'd like to observe the partner ecosystem in this new era is different. >> It's very different. >> I mean just press release is going back it's really deep engineering and really interesting flywheel approaches. How is the cloud and the hybrid cloud ecosystem and partner ecosystem different today? >> I think there's a couple of things, I think first of all cloud accelerating all the innovation, the whole cloud motion pulls in a cloud partner in addition to many of the other partners that you need to deploy a solution. So this makes almost every deployment a multi-partner deployment. So that creates the need not just for one on one partnerships between companies and vendors but really for a multi-partner experience. Right, how does an ISV work with a distributor work with a cloud vendor? How do you pull all of that together and I think at Red Hat, our view of being a platform company, we want to be able to span that and bring all of those folks together. So I see this transition going from a world of partnerships into a world of a networked ecosystem. And the real benefit is when you can pull together one ecosystem with another ecosystem, build that up and it really becomes an ecosystem of ecosystems. >> Well and I'm a fan, you're a multi tool star, so it may kind of makes you dangerous because you can talk tech in your technical roles. You've been a GM so you understand the business and that's really what it takes in the part of ecosystem. It can't be just technology and just engineering integration, it's got to be a business model associated with that. Talk about those two dimensions. >> And I think what we're seeing in the ecosystem is there are partners that you build with there are partners you service with, there are partners you sell with some do all three, some do two out of three. How do you work those relationships at the end of the day every partner in the ecosystem wants to bring their value to the customer. And their real goal is how do you merge those values together and I think as you know, right, I come from the technology and the product space. I love moving into this space where you look for those value and that synergy of value to bring better technology, a better procurement experience is often really important and simplicity of deployment to customers, but partners span everything we do. We develop with them, we build with them, we deploy with them, we service with them and all has to come together. >> So how do you make this simple for customers? I mean you're describing an increasingly complex environment. How do you simplify this? >> So a couple of things one, spot onto your point Paul, I think customer expectations now are more aggressive than they've ever been that the ecosystem has done pre-work before they show up. The customer doesn't want to be the one who's pulling together this from one vendor, this from another vendor and stitching it together themselves. So there's a number of things I think we've stepped in to try and do digital engagement for certification and deployment, the creation of operators on OpenShift is one way that technology from partners can be done and enabled more easily and quickly with Red Hat platforms. I think in addition, you've seen. >> Can you go a little deeper on that? >> Sure. >> Explain that a little bit more what does that mean? Yeah, First off, we have a digital experience where partners can come in, they can certify and test their applications to run it on Red Hat platforms themselves. So it's a bit of a come one, come all. We also have an engineering team and a developer team to work side by side with them to build those into solutions. We've done things again to supplement that with capabilities of what we call validated patterns things we've done in the market with customers, with partners, we pull together a validated pattern, we put it onto GitHub so anyone can get access to it. It becomes kind of a recipe for deployment that's available for partners to come in and augment on top of that or customers can come in and pull it up GitHub and build off of it. So I feel like there's different layers in the sort of build model that we work with partners and you want to be able to on-ramp any partner wherever they want to influence their value. It could be at the base certification level, it could be even with RHEL 9 was a good one, right. RHEL 9 was the first version of RHEL that we deployed based upon the CentOS Stream model. CentOS Stream is an upstream version of RHEL very tightly tied into the development model but it allowed partners to engage with that code prior to deployment everything from hardware partners to ISV partners, it becomes a much more open way for them to collaborate with us, so there's so much we can do. >> What's the pitch to partners. I mean I know hybrid cloud is fundamental to your value proposition. I mean most people want hybrid cloud even though the cloud guys might not admit it, right, but so what's the pitch, how do you approach partners there's got to be a common theme there pitch me. >> I think one of the things when it comes to the Red Hat ecosystem is the ecosystem itself has to bring value. Yes, we at Red Hat want to bring value, we want to come in and make it easy and simple for you to access our technology when want to make it easy and simple to engage side by side in front of a customer. But at the end of the day the value of the Red Hat ecosystem is not only Red Hat, it's our partnerships with others. It's our partnerships with the hyperscalers, it's our partnerships with ISVs, it's our work in open source communities. So it's not about Red Hat being this sort of epicenter of the ecosystem. The value comes from the collective ecosystem as it stands, and I think we've made a number of changes here at the beginning of the year in order to create a end to end team within Red Hat that does everything from the build to the sell with all the way from end to end. And I think that's bringing a new layer of simplicity for our engagement with their partners, and it's allowing us to stitch together and introduce partners to partners. >> But you are a dot connector in a sense. >> Absolutely. >> And you can't do it all, I mean nobody can. >> Yeah. But especially Red Hat your strategy is not to do it all by design, so where's the big white spaces where you feel as though your strengths need to be complimented by the partners? >> Oh, I think you caught it spot on. We don't think we can do it all, we're a platform company, we know the value of hybrid cloud is all about bringing a flexibility of an ecosystem together. I think the places where we're really doubling down on is simplicity. So the Ansible announcement that we did right with Ansible automation platform on Azure. With that announcement, it brings in certified collections of ecosystem partners on that deployment. We do the work with Azure in order to do that deployment of Ansible automation platform, and then it comes with a set of certified collections that have been done with other partners. And I think those are the pieces where we can really double down on bringing simplicity. Right, so if I look at areas of focus, that's a great space, and I think it is all about connecting the dots, right, it's about connecting our work with Azure with our work with other ISV partners to pull that together and show up to a customer with something that's fast time to value. >> With so many partners to manage, how do you make sure you're not playing favorites. I guess how do you treat all partners equally or do you even try? >> We absolutely try. I think any partnership is a relationship, right, so it is what Red Hat brings to the table, it's also what the partner brings to the table. Our goal is to understand what the value is the partner wants to deliver to the customer. We focus on that and bringing that to the forefront of what we deploy. We absolutely in a hybrid world it's about choice and flexibility. Certainly there are partners and we made some announcements of course, this week, right yesterday and today with some we're continued to deepen our partnerships with those folks who are doubling down with us where their strategy is very well aligned with us. But our goal is to bring a broad ecosystem that offers customers choice. That's what hybrid cloud's all about. >> I remember years ago, your colleague Bob Pitino, I went down and met him in his office and he schooled me, he was awesome and we did a white board on alternative processors. >> Yeah. >> You guys were doing combat duty in the power division at the time. But basically he helped me understand the trend that is absolutely come true which is alternative processors. It's not just about the CPU anymore, it's about all the CPU and GPU and NPU and accelerators and all these other connected parts. You guys obviously are in the middle of that, you've got relationships with ARM, NVIDIA, Intel, we saw on stage today. Explain the importance and the trends that you see of these alternative processors and accelerators and what that means for customers in terms of the applications that they're now going to be able to tap. >> Yeah, so you know I love this topic when it comes. So one of the spaces is edge, right, we talked about edge today. Edge to me is the epitome of kind of a white space and an opportunity where ecosystem is essential. Edge is pulling together unique hardware capabilities from an accelerator all the way out to new network capabilities and then to AI applications. I mean the number of ISVs building AI applications is just expanding. So it's really that top to bottom ecosystem story, and our work with the telco comes in, our work with the ARM partners, the NVIDIA of the world, the accelerators of the world comes in edge. And then you pull it up to the applications as well. And then to touch in, we're seeing edge be deployed a lot in industries and industry verticals, right. A lot of edge deployments are tailored for a retail market or for a financial services sector. Again, for us, we rely very much on the ecosystem to go into industry verticals where platform companies. So our goal is to find those key partners in those industry verticals who speak the speak, talk the language, and we partner with them in order to support them and so this whole edge space pulls all of that together I think even out to the go to market with industry alignment. >> It's interesting to partner, so we're talking about Silicon, we could talk about that all day long. >> Yes. >> And then it spans and that we had Accenture on we had Raj yesterday. And it was interesting 'cause you think Accenture's like deep vertical industry expertise which it is but Raj's role is really cross industry, and then to tap into that industry expertise you guys had an announcement yesterday with those guys and obviously the GSIs are a key player. >> Absolutely. >> We saw a bunch of 'em last night out and about. >> Yeah. >> So talk about the importance of those relationships. >> I think we are in the announcement with Accenture is a great one, right. We're really doubling down because customers are looking to them, they're looking to the Accentures of the world to help them move into this hybrid world. It's not simple, it's not simple to deploy and get that value of the flexibility. So Accenture has built a number of tools in order to help customers on that journey which we talked about yesterday it really is a continuum of how customers adopt for their cloud space. And so us partnering with them offers a platform underneath, give them technology capabilities and Accenture is able to help customers and guide them along that journey and add a new layer of simplicity. So I think the GSI are critical in this space. >> Yeah. >> You talked about the number of companies developing AI, new AI tools right now. And it seems like there's just the pace of innovation is amazing, the number of startups is unprecedented. How do you decide who makes it into your partner system? What bars do they have to jump over to become a Red Hat partner? >> I think our whole partner structure is layered out quite honestly a bit in tiering, depending upon how much the partner is moving forward with Red Hat, how strategically we aligned our et cetera. But there is definitely a tier that is a come one come all, get your technology to work with Red Hat. We do that digitally now in the world of digital it's much easier to do that to give accessibility but there is definitely a tier that is a come one come all and participate. And then above that, it comes into tierings. How deeply do we go to do joint building to do co-creation and how do we sort of partner even on things like we have ARO and ROSA as you know which is OpenShift built with AWS with Azure those provide very deep technical engagements to bring that level of simplicity, but I would say it spans all the layers, right. We do have a dedicated engineering team to work with the ecosystem partners. We have a dedicated digital team to reach out and proactively right, invite folks to participate and encourage them through the thing and through the whole path. And we've done some things on enablement, we just made early March, we made enablement free for all our partners in order to learn more and get more skilled in Red Hat. Skills and skill creation is just critical for partners, and we want to start there right. >> So we started this conversation with how cloud ecosystems are different. And I think AWS as the mother of all ecosystems, so does Microsoft too but they've had it for a while. And I got felt like last decade partners were kind of afraid, all right, we're going to partner with a cloud vendor, but they're going to eat our lunch. I noticed last year at Reinvent that whole dynamic is changing and I think the industry's realizing this is not a zero sum game. That there's just so much opportunity especially when you start thinking about the edge. So you guys use the term hybrid, right, and John and I wrote a piece prior to Reinvent last year, we said there's something new brewing, we've got on-prem connecting to the clouds, it's going across clouds. People call that multi-cloud, but multi-cloud has been like multi-vendor. It really hasn't been a sort of strategy or a technical layer. And now you're talking the edge and we see the hyperscaler spending a hundred billion dollars a year on infrastructure. And now we see companies like yours and your ecosystem building on top of that. They're not afraid of it anymore, they're actually looking at it as a gift and so we coined this term called Supercloud which is a abstraction layer, and it rises above highs all the complexity of the underlying primitives and APIs and people kind of wince at the term Ashesh called it Metacloud which I like it's kind of fun. But do you feel like that's happening in the ecosystem? Is that a real trend or is that just my imagination? >> I think it's definitely a real trend and it's coming from customers, right, that's what customers want. So customers want the ability to choose are they going to self-manage their applications within a public cloud. There's much more than just technology in the public cloud too right. There's a procurement experience that they provide a simplicity of our relationship. They may choose one of the hyperscalers. They pick a procurement experience, they deepen that relationship, they leverage the services. And I think now what you're seeing is customers are demanding it. They want to be a part of that, they want to run on multiple clouds. And now we're looking at cloud services you've seen our strategy double down on cloud services. I think that kind of comes back together to a customer wants simplicity. They expect the ecosystem to work together behind the scenes. That's what capabilities like ARO are or OpenShift on Azure and OpenShift on AWS. That's what we can provide. We have an SRV team, we jointly support it with those partners behind the scenes but as you said, it's no longer that fear, right. We've rolled up our sleeves together specifically because we wanted to show up to the customer as one. >> Yeah, and by the way, it's not just traditional technology vendors, it's insurance companies, it's banks, it's manufacturers who are building out these so-called super clouds. And to have a super cloud, you got to have a super PaaS and OpenShift is the supers of all PaaS So Stephanie cheers, thanks so much for coming back to theCUBE, >> Oh it's my pleasure. it great to see you again. >> Thank you for the time. >> All right, and thank you for watching keep it right there this is day two of Red Hat Summit 2022 from the Seaport in Boston. You're watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>> Welcome back to Los Angeles. The cube is live. It feels so good to say that. I'm going to say that again. The cube is alive in Los Angeles. We are a coop con cloud native con 21. Lisa Martin with Dave Nicholson. We're talking to storm forge next. Cool name, right? We're going to get to the bottom of that. Please welcome Matt Provo, the founder and CEO of storm forge and Tom Ellery, the SVP of revenue storm forge, guys, welcome to the program. Thanks for having us. So storm forge, you have to say it like that. Like I feel like do you guys wear Storm trooper outfits on Halloween. >> Sometimes Storm trooper? The colors are black. You know, we hit anvils from time to time. >> I thought I, I thought they, that I saw >> Or may not be a heavy metal band that might be infringing on our name. It's all good. That's where we come from. >> I see. So you, so you started the company in 2015. Talk to me about the Genesis of the company. What were some of the gaps in the market that you saw that said we got to come in here and solve this? >> Yeah, so I was fortunate to always know. I think when you start a company, sometimes you, you know exactly the set of problems that you want to go after and potentially why you might be uniquely set up to solve it. What we knew at the beginning was we had a number of really talented data scientists. I was frustrated by the buzzwords around AI and machine learning when under the hood, this really a lot of vaporware. And so at the outset, really the, the point was build something real at the core, connect that to a set of problems that could drive value. And when we looked at really the beginnings of Kubernetes and containerization five, six years ago at its Genesis, we saw just a bunch of opportunity for machine learning, to play the right kind of role if we could build it correctly. And so at the outset it was what's going on. Why are people are people moving content workloads over to containers in the first place? And, you know, because of the flexibility and the portability around Kubernetes, we then ran into quickly its complexity. And within that complexity was really the foundation to set up the company and the solution for prob a set of problems uniquely and most beneficially solved by using machine learning. And so when we sort of brought that together and designed out some ideas, we, we did what any, any founder with a product background would do. We went and talked to a bunch of potential users and kind of tried to validate the problems themselves and, and got a really positive response. So. >> So Tom, from a business perspective, what, what attracted you to this? >> Well, initially I wasn't attracted just, I'll say that just from a startup standpoint. So I've been in the industry for 30 years, I've done six or seven pre IPO companies. I was exiting a private company. I did not want to go do another startup company, but being in the largest enterprise companies for the last 20 years, you see Kubernetes like wildfire in these places. And you knew there was huge amount of complexity and sophistication when they deployed it. So I started talking to Matt early on. He explained what they were doing and how unique the offer was around machine learning. I already knew the problems that customers had at scale with Kubernetes. So it was for me, I said, all right, I'm going to take one more run at this with Matt. I think we're, we're in a great position to differentiate ourselves. So that was really the launch pad for me, was really the technology and the market space. Those, those two things in combination are very exciting for us as a business. >> And, you know, a couple of bottles of amazing wine and a number of dinners that. >> Helps as well. >> That definitely helped twist his arm? >> Now tell us, just really kind of get into the technology. What does it do? How does it help facilitate the Kubernetes environment? >> Yeah, absolutely. So when organizations start moving workloads over to Kubernetes and get their applications up and running, there's a number of amazing organizations, whether it's through cloud providers or otherwise that that sort of solved that day one problem, those challenges. And as I was mentioning, you know, they moved because of flexibility and so developers love it and it starts to create a great experience, but there's these set of expectations. >> Where, where typically are these moving from? What you, what, what are the, what are the top three environments these are, that these are moving out of? >> Yeah. I mean, of course, non containerized environments, more generally. They could be coming from, you know, bare metal environment and it could be coming from kind of a VM driven environment. >> Okay. >> So when you look back at kind of the, the growth and Genesis and of VMs, you see a lot of parallels to what we're seeing now with, with containerization. And so as you move, it's, it's exciting. And then you get smacked in the face with the complexity, for all of the knobs that are able to be turned within a Kubernetes environment. It gives developers a lot of flexibility. These knobs, as you turn them, you have no visibility into how into the impact on the application itself. And so often organizations are become, you know, becoming more agile shipping, you know, shipping code more quickly, but then all of a sudden the, the cloud bill comes and they've, over-provisioned by 80, 90%, the, they didn't need nearly as many resources. And so what we do is we help understand the unique goals and requirements for each of the applications that are running in Kubernetes. And we have machine learning capabilities that can predict very accurately what organizations will need from a resource standpoint, in order to meet their goals, not just from a cost standpoint, but also from a performance standpoint. And so we allow organizations to typically save usually between 40 and 60% off their cloud bill and usually increased performance between 30 and 50%. Historically developers had to choose between cost and performance and their worldview on the application environment was very limited to a small set of what we would call parameters or metrics that they could choose from. And machine learning allows that world to just be blown open and not many humans are, are sophisticated in the way we think about multidimensional math to be able to make those kinds of predictions. You're talking about billions and billions of combinations, not just in a static environment, but an ongoing basis. So our technology sits in the middle of all that chaos and, and allows it to allows organizations just to re reap a whole lot of benefits that they otherwise may not ever find. >> Those numbers that you mentioned were, were big from a cost savings perspective than a performance increased perspective, which is so critical these days is in the last 18 months, we've seen so much change. We've seen massive pivots from companies in every industry to survive first of all, and then to be able to thrive and be able to iterate quickly enough to develop new products and services and get them to market to be competitive. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Sorry. I mean, the thing that's interesting, there was an article by Andreessen Horowitz. I don't know if you've taken to the cloud paradox. So we actually, if you start looking at that great example would be some of these cloud companies that are growing like astronomical rates, snowflakes, like phenomenal what they're doing, but go look at their cogs and what it's doing. Also, it's growing almost proportionately as the revenues growing. So you need to be able to solve that problem in a way that is sophisticated enough with machine learning algorithms, that people don't have to be in the loop to do it. And that the math can prove out the solution as you go out and scale your environments. And a lot of companies now are all transitioning over SAS based platforms, and they're going to start running into these problems that they go as they go to scale. And those are the areas that we're really focused and concentrating on as an organization. >> As the leader of sales, talk to me about the voice of the customer. What are some- you've been there six months or so we heard, we heard about the wine and the dinners is obvious. >> We haven't done a lot of that over the last 18 months. >> You'll have to make for lost time then >> As soon as he closes more business. >> Oh, oh there we go, we got that on camera! >> There's, there's been three, a market spaces that we've had some really good success in that. So we talked about a SAS marketplace. So there's a company that does Drupal and Matt knows very well up in Boston, Aquia. And they have every customer is a unique snowflake customer. So they need to optimize each of their customers in order to ensure the cost as well as performance for that customer on their site works appropriately. So that's one example of a SAS based company that where we can go in and help them optimize without humans doing the optimization and the math and the machine learning from storm forge doing that. So that's an area, the other area that we've seen some really good traction Cantonese with GSI. So part of our go to market model is with GSI. So if you think about what a GSI does, a lot of times customers are struggling either initially deploying Kubernetes or putting it in for 12, 18 months and realizing we're starting to scale, we got all kinds of performance issues. How do I solve it? A lot of these people go to the Accentures, the cognizance and other ones, and start flying their ninjas into kind of solve the problem. So we're getting a lot of traction with them because they're using our tool as a way to help solve the customer's problems. And they're in the largest enterprise customers as possible. >> So if I'm hearing what you're saying correctly, you're saying that when I deploy server less applications, I may in fact, get a bill for servers that are being used? Is it, is that what you're telling us? >> They're there in fact may be a bill for what was coined as server less. That is very difficult to understand, by the way, >> That's crazy talk, Matt. >> And connect back. >> Yeah. But absolutely we deal with that all the time. It's a, it's a painful process from time to time. >> Have you, have you, have you seen the statistics that's going on with how people, I mean, there was huge inertia from every CIO that you had have a cloud strategy in place. Everyone ran out and had a cloud strategy in place. And then they started deploying on Kubernetes. Now they're realizing, oh wow, we can run it, but it's costing us more than it ever costs us on prem and the operational complexity associated with that. So there's not enough people in the industry to help solve that problem, especially at the grass roots, that's where you need sophisticated solutions like storm forge and machine learning to help solve this at scale problem in a way that humans could never solve. >> And I would, I would just add to that, that the, the same humans managing the Kubernetes application environments today are likely the same humans that we're managing it in a, in a BM world. So there's a huge skills gap. I love what Castin announced at KU KU con this year around their learning environment where it's free. Come learn Kubernetes and this, and we need more of that. There's an enormous skills gap and, and the problems are complex enough in and of themselves. But when we have, when you add that to the skills gap, it it's, it presents a lot of challenges for organizations. >> What are some the ways in which you think that gap can start to be made smaller. >> Yeah. I mean, I think as more workloads get moved over, over, you know, over time, you see, you see more and more people becoming comfortable in an environment where scale is a part of what they have to manage and take care of. I love what the Linux foundation and the CNCF are doing around Kubernetes certifications, you know, more and more training. I think you're going to see training, you know, availability for more and more developers and practitioners be adopted more widely. You know, and I think that, you know, as the tool chain itself hardens within a CCD world in a containerized world, as that hardens, you're going to, you're going to start seeing more and more individuals who are comfortable across all these different tools. If you look at the CNCF landscape, I mean, today compared to four or five years ago, it's growing like crazy. And so, but, but there's also consolidation taking place within the tools. And people have an opportunity to, to learn and gain expertise within us. Which is very marketable by the way, >> Absolutely >> My employees often show me their LinkedIn profiles and remind me of how , how much they're getting recruited, but they've been loyal. So it's been a fantastic. >> Are there are so many parallels when you look at a VM in virtualization and what's happening with covers, obviously all the abstractions and stuff, but there was this whole concept of VM sprawl, you know, maybe 10 years in, if you think about the Kubernetes environment, that is exponentially bigger problem because of how many they're spitting up versus how, how many you spun up in VM. So those things ultimately need to be solved. It's not just going to be solved with people. It needs to be solved with sophisticated software. That's the only way you're going to solve a problem at scale like that. No matter how many people you have in the industry, it's just never going to solve the problem. >> So when you're in customer conversations, Tom, what are you say are like the top three differentiators that really set storm forage apart? >> Well, so the first one is we're very focused on Kubernetes only. So that's all we do is just Kubernetes environment. So we understand not just the applications that run in Kubernetes, but we understand the underlying architectures and techniques, which we think is really important. From a solution standpoint, >> So you're specialists? >> We are absolutely specialists. The other areas obviously are machine learning and the sophistication of our machine learning. And Matt said this really well, early on, I mean, the buzzwords are all out there. You can read them all up, all over the place for the last five to seven year AI and ML. And a lot of them are very hollow, but our whole foundation was based on machine learning and PhDs from Harvard. That's where we came out of from a technology background. So we were solving more, we weren't just solving the Kubernetes problems. We were solving machine learning problems. And so that's another really big area of differential for us. And I think the ability to actually scale and not just deal with small problems, but very large problems, because our focus is the fortune 2000 companies. And most of them have been deploying like financial services and stuff, Kubernetes for three, four or five years. And so they have had scale challenges that they're trying to solve. >> Yeah. It's Lisa and I talk about this concept of machine learning and looking under the covers and trying to find out is the machine really learning? Is it really learning or is it people are telling the machine, you need to do this. If you see that Where's the machine actually making those correlations and doing something intelligently. So can you give us an example of something that is actually happening that's intelligent? >> Well, so the, the, if this, then that problem is actually a huge source of my original frustration for starting the company, because you, you, you tag AI as a buzzword onto a lot of stuff. And we see that growing like crazy. And so I literally at the beginning said, if we can't actually build something real, that solves problems, like we're going to hang it up. And, you know, as Tom said, we came out of Harvard and, you know, there was a challenge initially of, are we just going to build like a really amazing algorithm? That's so heavy, it can never be productized or commercialized and it really should have just stayed in academia. And, you know, I the I, I will say a couple of things. One is I do not believe that that black box AI is a thing. We believe in what we would call human, augmented AI. So we want to empower practitioners and developers into the process instead of automate them out. We just want to give them the information and we want to save time for them and make their lives easier. But there's a kill switch on the technology. They can intervene at any point in time. They can direct the technology as they see fit. And what's really, really interesting is because their worldview of this application environment gets opened up by all the predictions and all of the learning that actually is taking place and, you know, give it because that worldview is open, they then get into a kind of a tinkering or experimental mindset with the technology. And they start thinking about all these other scenarios that they never were able to explore previously with the application. And, and so the machine learning itself is on an ongoing basis. Understanding changes in traffic, understanding and changes, changes in workloads for the application or demand. If you thought about like surge pricing for Uber, you know, because of a, a big game that took place. And you know, that, that change in peaks and valleys in demand, our, our technology not only understands those reactively, but it starts to build models and predict proactively in advance of the events that are going to take place on, on what ne- what kind of resources need to be allocated. And why that's the other piece around it is often solutions are giving you a little bit of a what, but they certainly are not giving you any explanation of the why. So the holy grail really like in our world is kind of truly explainable AI, which we're not there yet. Nobody's there yet. But human augmented AI with, with actual intelligence that's taking place that also is relevant to business outcomes is, is pretty exciting. So that's why where try to operate. >> Very exciting guys. Thanks for joining us, talking to us about storm forage, to feel like we need some store in forge. T-shirts what do you think? >> (unintelligible) >> See, I'm not even asking for the bottle of wine. I liked that idea. I thank Matt and Tom, thank you so much for joining us exciting company. Congratulations on your success. And we look forward to seeing what great things are to come from storm forage. >> Thanks so much for the time. >> Our pleasure. For Dave Nicholson. I'm Lisa Martin. We are alive in Los Angeles, the cube covering Kube con and cloud native con 21 stick around. Dave and I will be right back with our next guest.

>> From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from theCUBE in ETR. This is Breaking Analysis with Dave Vellante. >> Every CEO is figuring out the right balance for new hybrid business models. Now, regardless of the chosen approach, which is going to vary, technology executives, they understand they have to accelerate their digital and build resilience as well as optionality into their platforms. Now, this is driving a dramatic shift in IT investments. And at the macro level, we expect total spending to increase at as much as 8% or even more in 2021, compared to last year's contraction. Investments in cybersecurity, cloud collaboration that are enabling hybrid work as well as data, including analytics, AI, and automation are at the top of the spending priorities for CXOs. Hello everyone. And welcome to this week's Wiki Bond Cube insights, powered by ETR. In this Breaking Analysis, we're pleased to welcome back Erik Bradley, who is the chief engagement strategist at our partner, ETR. Now in this segment, we're going to share some of the latest findings from ETR's surveys and provide our commentary on what it means for the markets, for sellers, and for buyers. Erik, great to see you, my friend. Welcome back to Breaking Analysis. >> Thank you for having me, always enjoy it. We've got some fresh data to talk about on this beautiful summer Friday, so I'm ready to go. >> All right. I'm excited too. Okay, last year we saw a contraction in IT spending by at least 5%. And now we're seeing a snapback to, as I said, at least 8% growth relative to last year. You got to go back to 2007 just before the financial crisis to see this type of top line growth. The shift to hybrid work, it's exposed us to new insidious security threats. And we're going to discuss that in a lot more detail. Cloud migration of course picked up dramatically last year, and based on the recent earnings results of the big cloud players, for now we got two quarters of data, that trend continues as organizations are accelerating their digital platform build-outs, and this is bringing a lot of complexity and a greater need for so-called observability solutions, which Erik is going to talk about extensively later on in this segment. Data, we think is entering a new era of de-centralization. We see organizations not only focused on analytics and insights, but actually creating data products. Leading technology organizations like JP Morgan, they're heavily leaning into this trend toward packaging and monetizing data products. And finally, as part of the digital transformation trend, we see no slow down in spending momentum for AI and automation, generally in RPA specifically. Erik, anything you want to add to that top level narrative? >> Yeah, there's a lot to take on the macro takeaways. The first thing I want to state is that that 8, 8.5% number that started off at just 3 to 4% beginning of the year. So as the year has continued, we are just seeing this trend in budgets continue to accelerate, and we don't have any reason to believe that's going to stop. So I think we're going to just keep moving on heading into 2021. And we're going to see a banner year of spend this year and probably next as well. >> All right, now we're going to bring up a chart that shows kind of that progression here of spending momentum. So Erik, I'm going to let you comment on this chart that tracks those projections over time. >> Erik: Yeah. Great. So thank you very much for pulling this up. As you can see in the beginning part of the year, when we asked people, "What do you plan to spend throughout 2021?" They were saying it would be about a 4% increase. Which we were happy with because as you said last year, it was all negative. That continues to accelerate and is only hyper accelerating now as we head into the back half of the year. In addition, after we do this data, I always host a panel of IT end users to kind of get their feedback on what we collected, to a man, every one of them expects continued increase throughout next year. There are some concerns and uncertainty about what we're seeing right now with COVID, but even with that, they're planning their budgets now for 2022 and they're planning for even further increases going forward. >> Dave: Great, thank you. So we circled that 8%. That's really kind of where we thought it was going to land. And so we're happy with that number, but let's take a look at where the action is by technology sector. This chart that we're showing you here, it tracks spending priorities back to last September. When I believe that was the point, Erik, that cyber became the top priority in the survey, ahead of cloud collaboration, analytics, and data, and the other sectors that you see there. Now, Erik, we should explain. These areas, they're the top seven, and they outrank all the other sectors. ETR tracks many, many other sectors, but please weigh in here and share your thoughts on this data. >> Erik: Yeah. Security, security, security. It hasn't changed. It had really hasn't. The hybrid work. The fact that you're behind the firewall one day and then you're outside working from home the next, switching in and out of networks. This is just a field day for bad actors. And we have no choice right now, but to continue to spend, because as you're going to talk about in a minute, hybrid's here to stay. So we have to figure out a way to secure behind the firewall on-prem. We also have to secure our employees and our assets that are not in the office. So it is a main priority. One of the things that point out on this chart, I had a couple of ITN users talk to me about customer experience and automation really need to move from the right part of that chart to the left. So they're seeing more in what you were talking about in RPA and automation, starting to creep up heading into next year. As cloud migration matures, as you know, cybersecurity spending has been ramping up. People are going to see a little bit more on the analytics and a little bit more on the automation side going forward. >> Dave: Great. Now, this next data view- well, first of all, one of the great things about the ETR dataset is that you can ask key questions and get a time series. And I will tell you again, I go back to last March, ETR hit it. They were the first on the work from home trend. And so if you were on that trend, you were able to anticipate it. And a lot of investors I think took advantage of that. Now, but we've shown this before, but there's new data points that we want to introduce. So the data tracks how CIOs and IT buyers have responded to the pandemic since last March. Still 70% of the organizations have employees working remotely, but 39% now have employees fully returning to the office and Erik, the rest of the metrics all point toward positives for IT spending, although accelerating IT deployments there at the right peaked last year, as people realized they had to invest in the future. Your thoughts? >> Erik: Yeah, this is the slide for optimism, without a doubt. Of the entire macro survey we did, this is the most optimistic slide. It's great for overall business. It's great for business travel. This is well beyond just IT. Hiring is up. I've had some people tell me that they possibly can't hire enough people right now. They had to furlough employees, they had to stop projects, and they want to re accelerate those now. But talent is very hard to find. Another point to you about your automation and RPA, another underlying trend for there. The one thing I did want to talk about here is the hybrid workplace, but I believe there's another slide on it. So just to recap on this extremely optimistic, we're seeing a lot of hiring. We're seeing increased spending, and I do believe that that's going to continue. >> Yeah I'm glad you brought that up because a session that you and I did a while ago, we pointed out, it was earlier this year, that the skill shortage is one potential risk to our positive scenario. We'll keep an eye on that, but so I want to show another set of data that we've showed previously, but ETR again, has added some new questions in here. So note here that 60% of employees still work remotely with 33% in a hybrid model currently, and the CIO's expect that to land on about 42% hybrid workforce with around 30% working remotely, which is around, it's been consistent by the way on your surveys, but that's about double the historic norm, Eric. >> Erik: Yeah, and even further to your point Dave, recently I did a panel asking people to give me some feedback on this. And three of those four experts basically said to me, if we had greed run this survey right now, that even more people would be saying remote. That they believe that that number, that's saying they're expecting that number of people to be back in office, is actually too optimistic. They're actually saying that maybe if we had- cause as a survey launched about six, seven weeks ago before this little blip on the radar, before the little COVID hiccup we're seeing now, and they're telling me that they believe if we reran this now that it would be even more remote work, even more hybrid and less returned to the office. So that's just an update I wanted to offer on this slide. >> Dave: Yeah. Thank you for that. I mean, we're still in this kind of day to day, week to week, month to month mode, but I want to do a little double click on this. We're not going to share this data, but there was so much ETR data. We got to be selective. But if you double click on the hybrid models, you'll see that 50% of organizations plan to have time roughly equally split between onsite and remote with again around 30 or 31% mostly remote, with onsite space available if they need it. And Erik, very few don't plan to have some type of hybrid model, at least. >> Yeah, I think it was less than 10% that said it was going to be exclusively onsite. And again, that was a more optimistic scenario six, seven weeks ago than we're seeing right now throughout the country. So I agree with you, hybrid is here to stay. There really is no doubt about it. from everyone I speak to when, you know, I basically make a living talking to IT end users. Hybrid is here to stay. They're planning for it. And that's really the drive behind the spending because you have to support both. You have to give people the option. You have to, from an IT perspective, you also have to support both, right? So if somebody is in office, I need the support staff to be in office. Plus I need them to be able to remote in and fix something from home. So they're spending on both fronts right now. >> Okay. Let's get into some of the vendor performance data. And I want to start with the cloud hyperscalers. It's something that we followed pretty closely. I got some Wiki bond data, that we just had earnings released. So here's data that shows the Q2 revenue shares on the left-hand side in the pie and the growth rates for the big four cloud players on the right hand side. It goes back to Q1 2019. Now the first thing I want to say is these players generated just under $39 billion in the quarter with AWS capturing 50% of that number. I said 39, it was 29 billion, sorry, with AWS capturing 50% of that in the quarter. As you're still tracking around a third in Alibaba and GCP in the, you know, eight or 9% range. But what's most interesting to me, Erik, is that AWS, which generated almost 15 billion in the quarter, was the only player to grow its revenue, both sequentially and year over year. And Erik, I think the street is missing the real story here on Amazon. Amazon announced earnings on Thursday night. The company had a 2% miss on the top line revenues and a meaningful 22% beat on earnings per share. So the retail side of the business missed its revenue targets, so that's why everybody's freaked out. But AWS, the cloud side, saw a 4% revenue beat. So the stock was off more than 70% after hours and into Friday. Now to me, a mix shift toward AWS, that's great news for investors. Now, tepid guidance is a negative, but the shift to a more profitable cloud business is a huge positive. >> Yeah, there's a lot that goes into stock price, right? I remember I was a director of research back in the day. One of my analysts said to me, "Am I crazy for putting a $1,000 target on Amazon?" And I laughed and I said, "No, you're crazy if you don't make it $2,000." (both chuckling) So, you know, at that time it was basically the mix shift towards AWS. You're a thousand percent right. I think the tough year over year comps had something to do with that reaction. That, you know, it's just getting really hard. What's that? The law of large numbers, right? It's really hard to grow at that percentage rate when you're getting this big. But from our data perspective, we're seeing no slowdown in AWS, in cloud, none whatsoever. The only slowdown we're seeing in cloud is GCP. But to, you know, to focus on AWS, extremely strong across the board and not only just in cloud, but in all their data products as well, data and analytics. >> Yeah and I think that the AWS, don't forget folks, that funds Amazon's TAM expansion into so many different places. Okay. As we said at the top, the world of digital and hybrid work, and multi-cloud, it's more complicated than it used to be. And that means if you need to resolve issues, which everybody does, like poor application performance, et cetera, what's happening at the user level, you have to have a better way to sort of see what's going on. And that's what the emergence of the observability space is all about. So Erik, let me set this up and you have a lot of comments here because you've recently had some, and you always have had a lot of round table discussions with CXOs on this topic. So this chart plots net score or spending momentum on the vertical axis, and market share or pervasiveness in the dataset on the horizontal axis. And we inserted a table that shows the data points in detail. Now that red dotted line is just sort of Dave Vellante's subjective mark in the sand for elevated spending levels. And there are three other points here. One is Splunk as well off is two-year peak, as highlighted in the red, but Signal FX, which Splunk acquired, has made a big move northward this last quarter. As has Datadog. So Erik, what can you share with us on this hot, but increasingly crowded space? >> Yeah. I could talk about the space for a long time. As you know, I've gotten some flack over the last year and a half about, you know, kind of pointing out this trend, this negative trend in Splunk. So I do want to be the first one to say that this data set is rebounding. Splunk has been horrific in our data for going back almost two years now, straight downward trend. This is the first time we're seeing any increase, any positivity there. So I do want to be fair and state that because I've been accused of being a little too negative on Splunk in the past. But I would basically say for observability right now, it's a rising tide lifts all boats, if I can use a New England phrase. The data across the board in analytics for these observability players is up, is accelerating. None more so than Datadog. And it's exactly your point, David. The complexity, the increased cloud migration is a perfect setup for Datadog, which is a cloud native. It focuses on microservices. It focuses on cloud observability. Old Splunk was just application monitoring. Don't get me wrong, they're changing, but they were on-prem application monitoring, first and foremost. Datadog came out as cloud native. They, you know, do microservices. This is just a perfect setup for them. And not only is Datadog leading the observability, it's leading the entire analytics sector, all of it. Not just the observability niche. So without a doubt, that is the strongest that we're seeing. It's leading Dynatrace new Relic. The only one that really isn't rebounding is Cisco App Dynamics. That's getting the dreaded legacy word really attached to it. But this space is really on fire, elastic as well, really doing well in this space. New Relic has shown a little bit of improvement as well. And what I heard when I asked my panelists about this, is that because of the maturity of cloud migration, that this observability has to grow. Spending on this has to happen. So they all say the chart looks right. And it's really just about the digital transformation maturity. So that's largely what they think is happening here. And they don't really see it getting, you know, changing anytime soon. >> Yeah, and I would add, and you see that it's getting crowded. You saw a service now acquired LightStep, and they want to get into the game. You mentioned, you know, last deck of the elk stack is, you know, the open source alternative, but then we see a company who's raised a fair amount of money, startup, chaos search, coming in, going after kind of the complexity of the elk stack. You've got honeycomb, which has got a really innovative approach, Jeremy Burton's company observes. So you have venture capital coming in. So we'll see if those guys could be disruptive enough or are they, you know, candidates to get acquired? We'll see how that all- you know that well. The M and A space. You think this space is ripe for M and A? >> I think it's ripe for consolidation, M and A. Something has to shake out. There's no doubt. I do believe that all of these can be standalone. So we shall see what's happened to, you mentioned the Splunk acquisition of Signal FX, just a house cleaning point. That was really nice acceleration by Signal FX, but it was only 20 citations. We'd looked into this a little bit deeper. Our data scientists did. It appears as if the majority of people are just signaling spunk and not FX separately. So moving forward for our data set, we're going to combine those two, so we don't have those anomalies going forward. But that type of acquisition does show what we should expect to see more of in this group going forward. >> Well that's I want to mention. That's one of the challenges that any data company has, and you guys do a great job of it. You're constantly having to reevaluate. There's so much M and A going on in the industry. You've got to pick the right spots in terms of when to consolidate. There's some big, you know, Dell and EMC, for example. You know, you've beautifully worked through that transition. You're seeing, you know, open shift and red hat with IBM. You just got to be flexible. And that's where it's valuable to be able to have a pipeline to guys like Erik, to sort of squint through that. So thank you for that clarification. >> Thank you too, because having a resource like you with industry knowledge really helps us navigate some of those as well for everyone out there. So that's a lot to do with you do Dave, >> Thank you. It's going to be interesting to watch Splunk. Doug Merritt's made some, you know, management changes, not the least of which is bringing in Teresa Carlson to run go to market. So if you know, I'd be interested if they are hitting, bouncing off the bottom and rising up again. They have a great customer base. Okay. Let's look at some of the same dimensions. Go ahead. You got a comment? >> A few of ETR's clients looked at our data and then put a billion dollar investment into it too. So obviously I agree. (Dave laughing) Splunk is looking like it's set for a rebound, and it's definitely something to watch, I agree. >> Not to rat hole in this, but I got to say. When I look back, cause theCUBE gives us kind of early visibility. So companies with momentum and you talk to the customers that all these shows that we go to. I will tell you that three companies stood out last decade. It was Splunk. It was Service Now and Tableau. And you could tell just from just discussions with their customers, the enthusiasm in that customer base. And so that's a real asset, and that helps them build them a moat. So we'll see. All right, let's take a look at the same dimensions now for cyber. This is cybersecurity net score in the vertical, and market share in the horizontal. And I filtered by in greater than a hundred shared in because just gets so crowded. Erik, the only things I would point out here is CrowdStrike and Zscaler continue to shine, CyberArk also showing momentum over that 40% line. Very impressively, Palo Alto networks, which has a big presence in the market. They've bounced back. We predicted that a while back. Your round table suggested people like working with Palo Alto. They're a gold standard. You know, we had reported earlier on that divergence with four to net in terms of valuation and some of the challenges they had in cloud, clearly, you know, back with the momentum. And of course, Microsoft in the upper, right. It's just, they're literally off the charts and obviously a major player here, but your thoughts on cyber? >> Erik: Yeah. Going back to the backdrop. Security, security, security. It has been the number one priority going back to last September. No one sees it changing. It has to happen. The threat vectors are actually expanding and we have no choice but to spend here. So it is not surprising to see. You did name our three favorite names. So as you know, we look at the dataset, we see which ones have the most positive inflections, and we put outlooks on those. And you did mention Zscaler, Okta and CrowdStrike, by far the three standouts that we're seeing. I just recently did a huge panel on Okta talking about their acquisition of Auth Zero. They're pushed into Sale Point space, trying to move just from single sign on and MFA to going to really privileged account management. There is some hurdles there. Really Okta's ability to do this on-prem is something that a little bit of the IT end users are concerned about. But what we're seeing right now, both Okta and Auth Zero are two of the main adopted names in security. They look incredibly well set up. Zscaler as well. With the ZTNA push more towards zero trust, Zscaler came out so hot in their IPO. And everyone was wondering if it was going to trail off just like Snowflake. It's not trailing off. This thing just keeps going up into the right, up into the right. The data supports a lot of tremendous growth for the three names that you just mentioned. >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you brought up Auth Zero. We had reported on that earlier. I just feel like that was a great acquisition. You had Okta doing the belly to belly enterprise, you know, selling. And the one thing that they really lacked was that developer momentum. And that's what Auth Zero brings. Just a smart move by Todd McKinnon and company. And I mean, so this, you know, I want to, I want to pull up another chart show a quick snapshot of some of the players in the survey who show momentum and have you comment on this. We haven't mentioned Snowflake so far, but they remain again with like this gold standard of net score, they've consistently had those high marks with regard to spending velocity. But here's some other data. Erik, how should we interpret this? >> Erik: Yeah, just to harp on Snowflake for a second. Right, I mean the rich get richer. They came out- IPO was so hyped, so it was hard for us as a research company to say, "Oh, you know, well, you know, we agree." But we did. The data is incredible. You can't beat the management team. You can't beat what they're doing. They've got so much cash. I can't wait to see what they do with it. And meanwhile, you would expect something that debuted with that high of a net score, that high of spending velocity to trail off. It would be natural. It's not Dave, it's still accelerating. It's gone even higher. It's at all time highs. And we just don't see it stopping anytime soon. It's a really interesting space right now. Maybe another name to look at on here that I think is pretty interesting, kind of a play on return to business is Kupa. It's a great project expense management tool that got hit really hard. Listen, traveling stopped, business expense stopped, and I did a panel on it. And a lot of our guys basically said, "Yeah, it was the first thing I cut." But we're seeing a huge rebound in spending there in that space. So that's a name that I think might be worth being called out on a positive side. Negative, If you look down to the bottom right of that chart, unfortunately we're seeing some issues in RingCentral and Zoom. Anything that's sort of playing in this next, you know, video conferencing, IP telephony space, they seem to be having really decelerating spending. Also now with Zoom's acquisition of five nine. I'm not really sure how RingCentral's going to compete on that. But yeah, that's one where we debuted for the first time with a negative outlook on that name. And looking and asking to some of the people in our community, a lot of them say externally, you still need IP telepany, but internally you don't. Because the You Cast communication systems are getting so sophisticated, that if I have Teams, if I have Slack, I don't need phones anymore. (chuckling) That you and I can just do a Slack call. We can do a Teams call. And many of them are saying I'm truly ripping out my IP Telepany internally as soon as possible because we just don't need it. So this whole collaboration, productivity space is here to stay. And it's got wide ranging implications to some of these more legacy type of tools. >> You know, one of the other things I'd call out on this chart is Accenture. You and I had a session earlier this year, and we had predicted that that skill shortage was going to lead to an uptick in traditional services. We've certainly seen that. I mean, IBM beat its quarter on the strength of services largely. And seeing Accenture on that is I think confirmation. >> Yeah that was our New Year prediction show, right Dave? When we made top 10 predictions? >> That's right. That was part of our predictions show. Exactly, good memory. >> The data is really showing that continue. People want the projects, they need to do the projects, but hiring is very difficult. So obviously the number one beneficiary there are going to be the Accentures of the world. >> All right. So let's do a quick wrap. I'm going to make a few comments and then have you bring us home, Erik. So we laid out our scenario for the tech spending rebound. We definitely believe last year tracked downward, along with GDP contraction. It was interesting. Gardner doesn't believe, at least factions of Gardner don't believe there's a correlation between GDP and tech spending. But, you know, I personally think there generally is some kind of relatively proportional pattern there. And I think we saw contraction last year. People are concerned about inflation. Of course, that adds some uncertainty. And as well, as you mentioned around the Delta variant. But I feel as though that the boards of directors and CEOs, they've mandated that tech execs have to build out digital platforms for the future. They're data centric. They're highly automated, to your earlier points. They're intelligent with AI infused, and that's going to take investment. I feel like the tech community has said, "Look, we know what to do here. We're dealing with hybrid work. We can't just stop doing what we're doing. Let's move forward." You know, and as you say, we're flying again and so forth. You know, getting hybrid right is a major priority that directly impacts strategies. Technology strategies, particularly around security, cloud, the productivity of remote workers with collaboration. And as we've said many times, we are entering a new era of data that's going to focus on decentralized data, building data products, and Erik let's keep an eye on this observability space. Lot of interest there, and buyers have a number of choices. You know, do they go with a specialist, as we saw recently, we've seen in the past, or did they go with the generalist like Service Now with the acquisition of LightStep? You know, it's going to be interesting. A lot of people are going to get into this space, start bundling into larger platforms. And so as you said, there's probably not enough room for all the players. We're going to see some consolidation there. But anyway, let me give you the final word here. >> Yeah, no, I completely agree with all of it. And I think your earlier points are spot on, that analytics and automation are certainly going to be moving more and more to that left of that chart we had of priorities. I think as we continue that survey heading into 2022, we'll have some fresh data for you again in a few months, that's going to start looking at 2022 priorities and overall spend. And the one other area that I keep hearing about over and over and over again is customer experience. There's a transition from good old CRM to CXM. Right now, everything is digital. It is not going away. So you need an omni-channel support to not only track your customer experience, but improve it. Make sure there's a two way communication. And it's a really interesting space. Salesforce is going to migrate into it. We've got Qualtrics out there. You've got Medallia. You've got FreshWorks, you've got Sprinkler. You got some names out there. And everyone I keep talking to on the IT end user side keeps bringing up customer experience. So let's keep an eye on that as well. >> That's a great point. And again, it brings me back to Service Now. We wrote a piece last week that's sort of, Service Now and Salesforce are on a collision course. We've said that for many, many years. And you've got this platform of platforms. They're just kind of sucking in different functions saying, "Hey, we're friends with everybody." But as you know Erik, software companies, they want to own it all. (both chuckling) All right. Hey Erik, thank you so much. I want to thank you for coming back on. It's always a pleasure to have you on Breaking Analysis. Great to see you. >> Love the partnership. Love the collaboration. Let's go enjoy this summer Friday. >> All right. Let's do. Okay, remember everybody, these episodes, they're all available as podcasts, wherever you listen. All you got to do is search Breaking Analysis Podcast, click subscribe to the series. Check out ETR's website at etr.plus. They've just launched a new website. They've got a whole new pricing model. It's great to see that innovation going on. Now remember we also publish a full report every week on WikiBond.com and SiliconAngle.com. You can always email me, appreciate the back channel comments, the metadata insights. David.Vellante@SiliconAngle.com. DM me on Twitter @DVellante or comment on the LinkedIn posts. This is Dave Vellante for Erik Bradley and theCUBE insights powered by ETR. Have a great week, a good rest of summer, be well. And we'll see you next time. (inspiring music)

(upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back to theCubes coverage of Red Hat Summit 2021 virtual, I'm John Furry hosts of theCube, Cube Virtual. We're remote, we're not in person this year. Like last year, soon, we'll be back in person. We've got a great guest here, Mark Potts, managing director at Accenture for the Red Hat relationship. Mark, great to see you. Thanks for coming on theCube. >> Hey, thanks for having me John. I really appreciate it. >> Yeah, we've been covering pretty extensively throughout this event, as well as you know the many, many years, the impact of cloud computing. Obviously, you guys have a really big strategic relation with IBM and now Red Hat, Red Hat's part of IBM. It's pretty clear that, you know, that Red Hats got this operating system mindset of open source and, you know, innovation. It's extending into cloud, cloud native, and edge, distributed computing. That's kind of in their DNA if you will, distributed computing and system software and open source, kind of the perfect storm. So, really interesting as this enables new services you guys are on the front lines working with the biggest companies in the world as the global businesses is changing. So, I want to get your take on Red Hat and what you guys are doing together, but first give a quick overview of the center role with Red Hat, your role there and what you do. >> Yeah, thanks. Perfect John. So Mark Potts, as you mentioned I'm the managing director responsible for our global business with Red Hat and our partnership with Red Hat. As you probably saw in our announcements last Fall, around the September timeframe, Accenture made a very large, bold announcement about forming a new cloud first business unit within Accenture. And so we're going to invest $3 billion into that business unit. We're going to dedicate 70 over 70,000 people worldwide to that business unit and that cloud first initiative. And as part of that cloud fishing first initiative we've also developed our new hybrid cloud strategy. And we're looking for new partners and existing partners to help us grow in that hybrid cloud strategy, not hybrid cloud business. We see Red Hat as a very important partner in that business. And as you mentioned there, they've also been, you know, in the distributed computing for a long time. We also see them as a partner for clients that are lifting and shifting and migrating to the cloud on RHEL, like SAP and other workloads like that. And I'm excited to talk to you today about OpenShift, and Ansible, and all those great technologies that Red Hat brings to the table for our hybrid cloud approach and strategy. >> That's awesome. Great investment. And I love Paul coming in that you were saying on his keynote, you know, every CIO should be a cloud operator. I mean, running business at scale this is what hybrid cloud is all about. And so with your new hybrid cloud strategy and the formation of the new business group at Accenture what kind of challenges are you guys looking to solve? What are the opportunities that you're seeing for companies? How do you guys solve those challenges? What do you, what are you guys looking at right now? >> Yeah, that's a great question. As you mentioned, the keynote. So, Karthik Laredo actually runs our cloud first business was actually part of that keynote with Larry Slack as well, or Larry Stack, sorry, as well. And so he mentioned in his keynote something called the cloud continuum, right? And so historically Accenture has been working with our partner on cloud native development moving to about 20 to 25% of the existing workloads in the data center, the easy stuff to the cloud, right? But now we realize that there's a need for the hybrid cloud. There's a need to modernize, maybe on premise, there's a need to maybe modernize in the cloud one way or the other. And then we also look at the holistic view of cloud, on-prem, edge. And that's what Karthik is talking about when he's talking about the, the cloud continuum. And that's a very important part of our strategy within Accenture, and OpenShift really helps us meet those needs. So if a client is a little bit nervous about taking some of those complex workloads but they want a modernize and they want to use the latest and greatest cloud native technologies but they want to do it on-prem and move to the cloud a little bit later they can do that with OpenShift, right? And Red Hat. That's a great platform for that. Maybe it's a client that wants to lift and shift and get to the cloud as soon as possible, close their data centers save that cost of money and then modernize later, but they don't want to necessarily be locked and want to be locked into one cloud provider. Again, OpenShift is great for that. Take those legacy workloads that you move to the public cloud, modernize them on Red Hat OpenShift maybe it's Rosa on AWS, maybe it's aro on Azure. And then when you're ready to you can move those to any other public cloud, if you'd like to, when, when you're ready to, right. And that whole control plan as we call it, being able to see across public cloud, on-prem, the edge is really important for our story and our strategy, and Red Hat OpenShift, and Red Hat Satellite. And those technologies bring a lot to the table for us to meet those needs of our clients and our customers. >> That's great insight there, Mark. I really appreciate that. And one of the things brought up when he was saying that I was thinking to myself, okay, the cloud conversation has many evolutions and, you know, go back five years. It was all moved to the cloud. Everyone was moving to the cloud. That was the big discussion point. Now it's, you know, enterprise ready the cloud get that next level of scale. And as you know, in the enterprise everything we do all everything complicated is a lot of legacy and is existing stuff. So this, you know, this, this is the next enterprise at scale is the conversation that includes hybrid multi-cloud or running on that, on the horizon. So with that, can you expand on what you mean by this cloud continuum that you refer to, that essentially refers to and what is needed to make it a reality for customers? >> Yeah, I mean, what's really needed is the latest greatest in hybrid cloud technology like OpenShift and what Red Hat brings to the table, right. It's also new skills and new capabilities, and, and policy management and those types of things that are important for our company to decide when they're ready to move those workloads to the cloud, right. They need the ability to see across their entire infrastructure. Like I mentioned earlier, whether that be a public cloud provider, whether that in their existing data center, in a colo, or on the, in the edge, like in a retail store or something like that, they need, we need the ability to see across those, that seeing all that infrastructure is a single control plane. So we can manage and know where things are to feel confident about security and everything with our clients. The other big thing that we need is skills. Skills to, you know, build the migration, the modernization, and more importantly, the interaction and integration into legacy workloads like the mainframe, for example, Accentures got a lot of use cases, leveraging Red Hat OpenShift for our cloud coupling solution, where we interact and build new applications that connect to the mainframe sitting right next to the mainframe but their new digital mobile applications, web applications that can be quickly modified and deployed in, into production at a rapid pace. Right, and so when we look at everything that's needed, it's skills, it's technology partners like Red Hat, and then it's, it's really building assets and offerings to help make that journey for our clients better, and, and secure. >> We just found out here at the event that you guys at Accenture had been recognized as Red Hats, global systems integrated partner of the year for North America, congratulations on that. What do you see as some of the key reasons for the recognition? Was there anything that they called out in particular? Obviously you guys have a great track record well-known brand you've known for, you know, creating a lot of value for companies as they do digital transformation. What's the, what's the recognition for this year? >> Yeah, we're super excited about this, right. I mean, this is, we've been partners with Red Hat for a long time. I think we were one of the first system integrators, if not the first system integrators to partner with Red Hat many years ago. Right, so, to get this award, and get it for the first time, is super exciting for us. Right, and so we're very grateful for that recognition and opportunity. You know, I think what really, what really, what got us the recognition for this award was really the effort we put into our partnership over the last 12 to 24 months, right. We had had a really big business in Europe with GDPR and, and the risk averse of going to the public cloud in Europe. OpenShift and Red Hat really had taken off. In North America our business was lagging behind Europe and we significantly invested with Red Hat and new offerings and new clients and new people, right. New talent to build a better business and partnership in North America. You know, I think a lot of the things that we got recognized with were what I mentioned earlier some of our cloud coupling solutions for an insurance client in North America where we're building cloud native applications on Red Hat OpenShift sitting next to the mainframe we're building new cloud, cloud native applications for our transportation company in, in the South region of the US right? So it's really that business transformation work that we're doing working with the legacy, but building new core applications for our customers that are truly portable, nimble and agile, and they can use to get speeds to the market and get to the cloud. >> Cloud first organization you guys are investing billions of dollars, 3 billion. That was referenced. I saw an article. I think we covered it as well on (mumbles). Congratulations, cloud first also implies that cloud native is going to be there. Mark, in all your years in the industry talk about from your personal perspective and even from Accentures, the, the shift that's happening because it's almost mind blowing what's going on in the sense of so fast this is accelerated, even the pandemic exactly accelerate even further. The opportunities that were, that are available now that weren't there before and what it's done to the project timelines and what it's done as a forcing function. Could you share your view on the reality of the current situation and opportunities for companies to take advantage of that wave? >> Yeah, and, and I think Accentures done a great job talking about this recently, even from our C-suite down, right. And Karthik we'll mention, has mentioned this as well in his keynote. I mean, we are seeing an acceleration to get to the cloud that was completely unplanned for us. I think the, the numbers I heard was we thought most clients are going to get to the cloud in eight to 10 years and be fully in the cloud in eight to 10 years. But that's accelerated with COVID and the pandemic, right. We're looking at four to five years we think most of our clients will be in a majority of their, their infrastructure and everything, a new, a new applications and legacy applications will be in the cloud. Right, so the, the, the change and the impact of the pandemic had, had a significant impact on our customers and their need to, to, to get to the cloud. We've even seen those that were leaders in the cloud journey accelerate even more, right. And, and they're being rewarded for that acceleration. Right, a lot of our customers that were first to cloud are seeing the benefits and seeing the, the, the ability to scale and for the pandemic, like, like a lot of our customers in the, in the US in particular. And I think OpenShift is going to help them, help us with that, right, And, and Red Hat in particular. And let's not be lost on the fact that Realms is a great product out there as well. We have many of our clients that are running SAP on Realm and that lift and shift and moving SAP to Azure or AWS or Google or something like that is, is a viable solution for our, to help accelerate our customers as they expand, right. We've seen internationally a lot of our customers that have been really focused just in their local region are now expanding their business outwards, and now they need to get to the clouds to be able to expand those businesses. >> You know it's interesting Mark, just as we're talking, just, you know thinking about my experience over the years in the computer industry everything had to display something else, disrupt something, you know, the mainframes were disrupted by client server. Now we're living in an era where with the containers and microservices and service meshes and cloud native technologies you can embrace existing legacy and abstract away some of the complexity on the integration side, right? So you don't have to kill the old to bring in the new. And I think this phenomenon has opened up a new class of services and, you know the people I talk to and interview the leaders in the industry all have the same kind of view. And the ones that stand out are the ones that recognize that the operating system of business will be software. And that software hasn't yet been built in clouds. The beginning, it's not just one cloud. So I think what's interesting about Red Hat is that their operating system people you almost to see, you know, Arvin kind of snapping the lines and kind of cornering the market on the operating system for business and applications then are a thousand flowers that bloom from that. So, very interesting take here again. That's my opinion. I don't think they've said that formally but if you look at it, that's kind of what's going on. What's your reaction to that? >> I think you're a hundred percent, right. I mean, it, you know, I, I also carry a little bit of the responsibility on the IBM side. And you mentioned mainframe and I've mentioned mainframe a handful of times, right? There's a lot of customers that have this legacy estate like the mainframe in particular but they need to be nimble. Right, they need to be agile and mainframe is a challenge sometimes around that. Right, and so to your point creating those applications that participate with the mainframe allowed the mainframe to participate better with these cloud native applications and these new digital transformation applications is a very key component to it. And so I, a hundred percent agree with with everything you said. And I think, I think we're going to see more around this operating system type software. And I, you almost, to an extent, you you kind of view Red Hat OpenShift as kind of that new operating system, right? And you look at some of the announcements that Red Hat has made around Palentier, right, and adding Palentier and ISV to their marketplace to allow customers that are bought OpenShift or make it easy for clients to buy Red Hat OpenShift, and then bring in these ISVs that have been certified, they're secure, they're easy to consume and buy it through Red Hats marketplaces is very exciting and very interesting, and very easy to do, right. Once you get that Red Hat OpenShift layer in there, that operating system and now you're bringing in products all over the place, right. And, and all the new stuff. And I think we're going to see a lot more of those announcements during summit as well. >> Yeah, I think it was a 20 year run here. It's trillions of dollars as it's been forecasted. Mark, great to have you on. Super valuable resource. Great insight! While we got you here let's get a quick free consulting a minute here for the customers watching. What's your advice. I need some help here. I'm going to go to the cloud. I want a good, I want enough headroom so I can grow into I want to foreclose any opportunities. I want to move to the cloud. I want to have a hybrid distributed computing architecture. I want to program my business. I want infrastructure as code. I want dev sec ops. What's my playbook? What should I do? >> So Accenture's got a real smart approach and strategy around us. We leveraged an, an assessment approach really to look at what's in your what's in your data center today and what, what you have from an infrastructure and application standpoint, there should be-- We have a seminar where it's can completely rewrite an application, and we would apply those six hours or seven hours to that assessment to help you figure out the disposition of your applications and your infrastructure to figure out what is the right cloud. What's the right journey. I mean, we talked about, you know the mainframe and mainframe being an anchor in a lot of our client's data centers, right. How do we move those applications that have data gravity challenges to those legacy applications, to the cloud. How do we consider that? So the right way to do it is take a holistic approach. Do the assessment, do the disposition of your applications. And then let's let Accenture put together a full plan of how we would migrate you incidents into the public cloud. >> Mark FOS, managing director of Accenture. Congratulations on your North America award, partner of the year. And also awesome to hear. And we've been covering again cloud first. Totally believe it, great investment. That's going to pay back huge dividends for you guys and you know, having the hybrid, which is pretty much determined as a fact now in the industry. Congratulations, thanks for coming on. >> Perfect, thanks, and thanks for having me, and thank you Red Hat for the award. Really appreciate it. And look forward to talking to you soon. >> All right, this is theCubes coverage of Red Hat summit, 2021, virtual. This is the Cube virtual, I'm John Furry, your host. Thanks for watching.

>>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome to cube three 60 fives coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Today we are joined by a cube alum, Karthik, Lorraine. He is Accenture senior managing director and lead Accenture cloud. First, welcome back to the show Karthik. >>Thank you. Thanks for having me here. >>Always a pleasure. So I want to talk to you. You are an industry veteran, you've been in Silicon Valley for decades. Um, I want to hear from your perspective what the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been, what are you hearing from clients? What are they struggling with? What are their challenges that they're facing day to day? >>I think, um, COVID-19 is being a eye-opener from, you know, various facets, you know, um, first and foremost, it's a, it's a hell, um, situation that everybody's facing, which is not just, uh, highest economic bearings to it. It has enterprise, um, an organization with bedding to it. And most importantly, it's very personal to people, um, because they themselves and their friends, family near and dear ones are going through this challenge, uh, from various different dimension. But putting that aside, when you come to it from an organization enterprise standpoint, it has changed everything well, the behavior of organizations coming together, working in their campuses, working with each other as friends, family, and, uh, um, near and dear colleagues, all of them are operating differently. So that's what big change to get things done in a completely different way, from how they used to get things done. >>Number two, a lot of things that were planned for normal scenarios, like their global supply chain, how they interact with their client customers, how they go innovate with their partners on how that employees contribute to the success of an organization at all changed. And there are no data models that give them a hint of something like this for them to be prepared for this. So we are seeing organizations, um, that have adapted to this reasonably okay, and are, you know, launching to innovate faster in this. And there are organizations that have started with struggling, but are continuing to struggle. And the gap between the leaders and legs are widening. So this is creating opportunities in a different way for the leaders, um, with a lot of pivot their business, but it's also creating significant challenge for the lag guides, uh, as we defined in our future systems research that we did a year ago, uh, and those organizations are struggling further. So the gap is actually widening. >>So you just talked about the widening gap. I've talked about the tremendous uncertainty that so many companies, even the ones who have adapted reasonably well, uh, in this, in this time, talk a little bit about Accenture cloud first and why, why now? >>I think it's a great question. Um, we believe that for many of our clients COVID-19 has turned, uh, cloud from an experimentation aspiration to an origin mandate. What I mean by that is everybody has been doing something on the other end cloud. There's no company that says we don't believe in cloud are, we don't want to do cloud. It was how much they did in cloud. And they were experimenting. They were doing the new things in cloud, but they were operating a lot of their core business outside the cloud or not in the cloud. Those organizations have struggled to operate in this new normal, in a remote fashion, as well as, uh, their ability to pivot to all the changes the pandemic has brought to them. But on the other hand, the organizations that had a solid foundation in cloud were able to collect faster and not actually gone into the stage of innovating faster and driving a new behavior in the market, new behavior within their organization. >>So we are seeing that spend to make is actually fast-forwarded something that we always believed was going to happen. This, uh, uh, moving to cloud over the next decade is fast forward it to happen in the next three to five years. And it's created this moment where it's a once in an era, really replatforming of businesses in the cloud that we are going to see. And we see this moment as a cloud first moment where organizations will use cloud as the, the, the canvas and the foundation with which they're going to reimagine their business after they were born in the cloud. Uh, and this requires a whole new strategy. Uh, and as Accenture, we are getting a lot in cloud, but we thought that this is the moment where we bring all of that, gave him a piece together because we need a strategy for addressing, moving to cloud are embracing cloud in a holistic fashion. And that's what Accenture cloud first brings together a holistic strategy, a team that's 70,000 plus people that's coming together with rich cloud skills, but investing to tie in all the various capabilities of cloud to Delaware, that holistic strategy to our clients. So I want you to >>Delve into a little bit more about what this strategy actually entails. I mean, it's clearly about embracing change and being willing to experiment and having capabilities to innovate. Can you tell us a little bit more about what this strategy entails? >>Yeah. The reason why we say that as a need for strategy is like I said, cloud is not new. There's almost every customer client is doing something with the cloud, but all of them have taken different approaches to cloud and different boundaries to cloud. Some organizations say, I just need to consolidate my multiple data centers to a small data center footprint and move the nest to cloud. Certain other organizations say that well, I'm going to move certain workloads to cloud. Certain other organizations said, well, I'm going to build this Greenfield application or workload in cloud. Certain other said, um, I'm going to use the power of AI ML in the cloud to analyze my data and drive insights. But a cloud first strategy is all of this tied with the corporate strategy of the organization with an industry specific cloud journey to say, if in this current industry, if I were to be reborn in the cloud, would I do it in the exact same passion that I did in the past, which means that the products and services that they offer need to be the matching, how they interact with that customers and partners need to be revisited, how they bird and operate their IP systems need to be the, imagine how they unearthed the data from all of the systems under which they attract need to be liberated so that you could drive insights of cloud. >>First strategy hands is a corporate wide strategy, and it's a C-suite responsibility. It doesn't take the ownership away from the CIO or CIO, but the CIO is, and CDI was felt that it was just their problem and they were to solve it. And everyone as being a customer, now, the center of gravity is elevated to it becoming a C-suite agenda on everybody's agenda, where probably the CDI is the instrument to execute that that's a holistic cloud-first strategy >>And it, and it's a strategy, but the way you're describing it, it sounds like it's also a mindset and an approach, as you were saying, this idea of being reborn in the cloud. So now how do I think about things? How do I communicate? How do I collaborate? How do I get done? What I need to get done. Talk a little bit about how this has changed, the way you support your clients and how Accenture cloud first is changing your approach to cloud services. >>Wonderful. Um, you know, I did not color one very important aspect in my previous question, but that's exactly what you just asked me now, which is to do all of this. I talked about all of the variables, uh, an organization or an enterprise is going to go through, but the good part is they have one constant. And what is that? That is their employees, uh, because you do, the employees are able to embrace this change. If they are able to, uh, change them, says, pivot them says retool and train themselves to be able to operate in this new cloud. First one, the ability to reimagine every function of the business would be happening at speed. And cloud first approach is to do all of this at speed, because innovation is deadly proposed there, do the rate of probability on experimentation. You need to experiment a lot for any kind of experimentation. >>There's a probability of success. Organizations need to have an ability and a mechanism for them to be able to innovate faster for which they need to experiment a lot, the more the experiment and the lower cost at which they experiment is going to help them experiment a lot. And they experiment demic speed, fail fast, succeed more. And hence, they're going to be able to operate this at speed. So the cloud-first mindset is all about speed. I'm helping the clients fast track that innovation journey, and this is going to happen. Like I said, across the enterprise and every function across every department, I'm the agent of this change is going to be the employees or weapon, race, this change through new skills and new grueling and new mindset that they need to adapt to. >>So Karthik what you're describing it, it sounds so exciting. And yet for a pandemic wary workforce, that's been working remotely that may be dealing with uncertainty if for their kid's school and for so many other aspects of their life, it sounds hard. So how are you helping your clients, employees get onboard with this? And because the change management is, is often the hardest part. >>Yeah, I think it's, again, a great question. A bottle has only so much capacity. Something got to come off for something else to go in. That's what you're saying is absolutely right. And that is again, the power of cloud. The reason why cloud is such a fundamental breakthrough technology and capability for us to succeed in this era, because it helps in various forms. What we talked so far is the power of innovation that can create, but cloud can also simplify the life of the employees in an enterprise. There are several activities and tasks that people do in managing that complex infrastructure, complex ID landscape. They used to do certain jobs and activities in a very difficult underground about with cloud has simplified. And democratised a lot of these activities. So that things which had to be done in the past, like managing the complexity of the infrastructure, keeping them up all the time, managing the, um, the obsolescence of the capabilities and technologies and infrastructure, all of that could be offloaded to the cloud. >>So that the time that is available for all of these employees can be used to further innovate. Every organization is going to spend almost the same amount of money, but rather than spending activities, by looking at the rear view mirror on keeping the lights on, they're going to spend more money, more time, more energy, and spend their skills on things that are going to add value to their organization. Because you, every innovation that an enterprise can give to their end customer need not come from that enterprise. The word of platform economy is about democratising innovation. And the power of cloud is to get all of these capabilities from outside the four walls of the enterprise, >>It will add value to the organization, but I would imagine also add value to that employee's life because that employee, the employee will be more engaged in his or her job and therefore bring more excitement and energy into her, his or her day-to-day activities too. >>Absolutely. Absolutely. And this is, this is a normal evolution we would have seen everybody would have seen in their lives, that they keep moving up the value chain of what activities that, uh, gets performed buying by those individuals. And this is, um, you know, no more true than how the United States, uh, as an economy has operated where, um, this is the power of a powerhouse of innovation, where the work that's done inside the country keeps moving up to value chain. And, um, us leverage is the global economy for a lot of things that is required to power the United States and that global economic, uh, phenomenon is very proof for an enterprise as well. There are things that an enterprise needs to do them soon. There are things an employee needs to do themselves. Um, but there are things that they could leverage from the external innovation and the power of innovation that is coming from technologies like cloud. >>So at Accenture, you have long, long, deep Stan, sorry, you have deep and long-standing relationships with many cloud service providers, including AWS. How does the Accenture cloud first strategy, how does it affect your relationships with those providers? >>Yeah, we have great relationships with cloud providers like AWS. And in fact, in the cloud world, it was one of the first, um, capability that we started about years ago, uh, when we started developing these capabilities. But five years ago, we hit a very important milestone where the two organizations came together and said that we are forging a pharma partnership with joint investments to build this partnership. And we named that as a Accenture, AWS business group ABG, uh, where we co-invest and brought skills together and develop solutions. And we will continue to do that. And through that investment, we've also made several acquisitions that you would have seen in the recent times, like, uh, an invoice and gecko that we made acquisitions in in Europe. But now we're taking this to the next level. What we are saying is two cloud first and the $3 billion investment that we are bringing in, uh, through cloud-first. >>We are going to make specific investment to create unique joint solution and landing zones foundation, um, cloud packs with which clients can accelerate their innovation or their journey to cloud first. And one great example is what we are doing with Takeda, uh, billable, pharmaceutical giant, um, between we've signed a five-year partnership. And it was out in the media just a month ago or so, where we are, the two organizations are coming together. We have created a partnership as a power of three partnership, where the three organizations are jointly hoarding hats and taking responsibility for the innovation and the leadership position that Takeda wants to get to with this. We are going to simplify their operating model and organization by providing and flexibility. We're going to provide a lot more insights. Tequila has a 230 year old organization. Imagine the amount of trapped data and intelligence that is there. >>How about bringing all of that together with the power of AWS and Accenture and Takeda to drive more customer insights, um, come up with breakthrough R and D uh, accelerate clinical trials and improve the patient experience using AI ML and edge technologies. So all of these things that we will do through this partnership with joined investment from Accenture cloud first, as well as partner like AWS, so that Takeda can realize their gain. And, uh, their senior actually made a statement that five years from now, every ticket an employee will have an AI assistant. That's going to make that beginner employee move up the value chain on how they contribute and add value to the future of tequila with the AI assistant, making them even more equipped and smarter than what they could be otherwise. >>So, one last question to close this out here. What is your future vision for, for Accenture cloud first? What are we going to be talking about at next year's Accenture executive summit? Yeah, the future >>Is going to be, um, evolving, but the part that is exciting to me, and this is, uh, uh, a fundamental belief that we are entering a new era of industrial revolution from industry first, second, and third industry. The third happened probably 20 years ago with the advent of Silicon and computers and all of that stuff that happened here in the Silicon Valley. I think the fourth industrial revolution is going to be in the cross section of, uh, physical, digital and biological boundaries. And there's a great article, um, in one economic forum that people, uh, your audience can Google and read about it. Uh, but the reason why this is very, very important is we are seeing a disturbing phenomenon that over the last 10 years are seeing a Blackwing of the, um, labor productivity and innovation, which has dropped to about 2.1%. When you see that kind of phenomenon over that longer period of time, there has to be breakthrough innovation that needs to happen to come out of this barrier and get to the next, you know, base camp, as I would call it to further this productivity, um, lack that we are seeing, and that is going to happen in the intersection of the physical, digital and biological boundaries. >>And I think cloud is going to be the connective tissue between all of these three, to be able to provide that where it's the edge, especially is good to come closer to the human lives. It's going to come from cloud. Yeah. Pick totally in your mind, you can think about cloud as central, either in a private cloud, in a data center or in a public cloud, you know, everywhere. But when you think about edge, it's going to be far reaching and coming close to where we live and maybe work and very, um, get entertained and so on and so forth. And there's good to be, uh, intervention in a positive way in the field of medicine, in the field of entertainment, in the field of, um, manufacturing in the field of, um, you know, mobility. When I say mobility, human mobility, people, transportation, and so on and so forth with all of this stuff, cloud is going to be the connective tissue and the vision of cloud first is going to be, uh, you know, blowing through this big change that is going to happen. And the evolution that is going to happen where, you know, the human grace of mankind, um, our person kind of being very gender neutral in today's world. Um, go first needs to be that beacon of, uh, creating the next generation vision for enterprises to take advantage of that kind of an exciting future. And that's why it, Accenture, are we saying that there'll be change as our, as our purpose? >>I genuinely believe that cloud first is going to be the forefront of that change agenda, both for Accenture as well as for the rest of the work. >>Excellent. Let there be changed. Indeed. Thank you so much for joining us Karthik. A pleasure I'm Rebecca Knight stay tuned for more of Q3 60 fives coverage of the Accenture executive summit >>From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome everyone to the cube virtual and our coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent 2020. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Today, we are talking about the power of three. And what happens when you bring together the scientific, how of a global bias biopharmaceutical powerhouse in Takeda, a leading cloud services provider in AWS, and Accenture's ability to innovate, execute, and deliver innovation. Joining me to talk about these things. We have Aaron, sorry. Arjan Beatty. He is the senior managing director and chairman of Accenture's diamonds leadership council. Welcome Arjun. Thank you, Karl hick. He is the chief digital and information officer at Takeda. >>What is your bigger, thank you, Rebecca >>And Brian Beau Han global director and head of the Accenture AWS business group at Amazon web services. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you. So, as I said, we're talking today about this relationship between, uh, your three organizations. Carl, I want to talk with you. I know you're at the beginning of your cloud journey. What was the compelling reason? Why w why, why move to the cloud and why now? >>Yeah, no, thank you for the question. So, you know, as a biopharmaceutical leader, we're committed to bringing better health and a brighter future to our patients. We're doing that by translating science into some really innovative and life transporting therapies, but throughout, you know, we believe that there's a responsible use of technology, of data and of innovation. And those three ingredients are really key to helping us deliver on that promise. And so, you know, while I think a I'll call it, this cloud journey is already always been a part of our strategy. Um, and we've made some pretty steady progress over the last years with a number of I'll call it diverse approaches to the digital and AI. We just weren't seeing the impact at scale that we wanted to see. Um, and I think that, you know, there's a, there's a need ultimately to, you know, accelerate and broaden that shift. >>And, you know, we were commenting on this earlier, but there's, you know, it's been highlighted by a number of factors. One of those has been certainly a number of the acquisitions we've made Shire, uh, being the most pressing example, uh, but also the global pandemic, both of those highlight the need for us to move faster, um, at the speed of cloud, ultimately. Uh, and so we started thinking outside of the box because it was taking us too long and we decided to leverage the strategic partner model. Uh, and it's giving us a chance to think about our challenges very differently. We call this the power of three, uh, and ultimately our focus is singularly on our patients. I mean, they're waiting for us. We need to get there faster. It can take years. And so I think that there is a focus on innovation at a rapid speed, so we can move ultimately from treating conditions to keeping people healthy. >>So as you are embarking on this journey, what are some of the insights you want to share about, about what you're seeing so far? >>Yeah, no, it's a great question. So, I mean, look, maybe right before I highlight some of the key insights, uh, I would say that, you know, with cloud now as the, as a launchpad for innovation, you know, our vision all along has been that in less than 10 years, we want every single to kid, uh, the associate or employee to be empowered by an AI assistant. And I think that, you know, that's going to help us make faster, better decisions. That'll help us, uh, fundamentally deliver transformative therapies and better experiences to, to that ecosystem, to our patients, to physicians, to payers, et cetera, much faster than we previously thought possible. Um, and I think that technologies like cloud and edge computing together with a very powerful I'll call it data fabric is going to help us to create this, this real-time, uh, I'll call it the digital ecosystem. >>The data has to flow ultimately seamlessly between our patients and providers or partners or researchers, et cetera. Uh, and so we've been thinking about this, uh, I'll call it weekly, call up sort of this pyramid, um, that helps us describe our vision. Uh, and a lot of it has to do with ultimately modernizing the foundation, modernizing and rearchitecting, the platforms that drive the company, uh, heightening our focus on data, which means that there's an accelerated shift towards, uh, enterprise data platforms and digital products. And then ultimately, uh, uh, uh, you know, really an engine for innovation sitting at the very top. Um, and so I think with that, you know, there's a few different, I'll call it insights that, you know, are quickly kind of come zooming into focus. I would say one is this need to collaborate very differently. Um, you know, not only internally, but you know, how do we define ultimately, and build a connected digital ecosystem with the right partners and technologies externally? >>I think the second component that maybe people don't think as much about, but, you know, I find critically important is for us to find ways of really transforming our culture. We have to unlock talent and shift the culture certainly as a large biopharmaceutical very differently. And then lastly, you've touched on it already, which is, you know, innovation at the speed of cloud. How do we re-imagine that? You know, how do ideas go from getting tested in months to kind of getting tested in days? You know, how do we collaborate very differently? Uh, and so I think those are three, uh, perhaps of the larger I'll call it, uh, insights that, you know, the three of us are spending a lot of time thinking about right now. >>So Arjun, I want to bring you into this conversation a little bit. Let's, let's delve into those a bit. Talk first about the collaboration, uh, that Carl was referencing there. How, how have you seen that? It is enabling, uh, colleagues and teams to communicate differently and interact in new and different ways? Uh, both internally and externally, as Carl said, >>No, thank you for that. And, um, I've got to give call a lot of credit because as we started to think about this journey, it was clear. It was a bold ambition was, uh, something that, you know, we had all to do differently. And so the concept of the power of three that Carl has constructed has become a label for us as a way to think about what are we going to do to collectively drive this journey forward. And to me, the unique ways of collaboration means three things. The first one is that, um, what is expected is that the three parties are going to come together and it's more than just the sum of our resources. And by that, I mean that we have to bring all of ourselves, all of our collective capabilities, as an example, Amazon has amazing supply chain capabilities. They're one of the best at supply chain. >>So in addition to resources, when we have supply chain innovations, uh, that's something that they're bringing in addition to just, uh, talent and assets, similarly for Accenture, right? We do a lot, uh, in the talent space. So how do we bring our thinking as to how we apply best practices for talent to this partnership? So, um, as we think about this, so that's, that's the first one, the second one is about shared success very early on in this partnership, we started to build some foundations and actually develop seven principles that all of us would look at as the basis for this success shared success model. And we continue to hold that sort of in the forefront, as we think about this collaboration. And maybe the third thing I would say is this one team mindset. So whether it's the three of our CEOs that get together every couple of months to think about, uh, this partnership, or it is the governance model that Carl has put together, which has all three parties in the governance and every level of leadership, we always think about this as a collective group so that we can keep that front and center. >>And what I think ultimately has enabled us to do is it's allowed us to move at speed, be more flexible. And ultimately all we're looking at the target the same way, the North side, the same way, >>Brian, about you, what have you observed and what are you thinking about in terms of how this is helping teams collaborate differently? Yeah, >>Absolutely. And RJ made some, some great points there. And I think if you really think about what he's talking about, it's that, that diversity of talent, diversity of skill and viewpoint and even culture, right? And so we see that in the power of three. And then I think if we drill down into what we see at Takeda and frankly Takeda was, was really, I think, pretty visionary and on their way here, right. And taking this kind of cross-functional approach and applying it to how they operate day to day. So moving from a more functional view of the world to more of a product oriented view of the world, right? So when you think about we're going to be organized around a product or a service or a capability that we're going to provide to our customers or our patients or donors in this case, it implies a different structure all to altogether and a different way of thinking, right? >>Because now you've got technical people and business experts and marketing experts all working together in this is sort of cross collaboration. And what's great about that is it's really the only way to succeed with cloud, right? Because the old ways of thinking where you've got application people and infrastructure, people in business, people is suboptimal, right? Because we can all access this tool as these capabilities and the best way to do that. Isn't across kind of a cross collaborative way. And so this is product oriented mindset. It's a keto was already on. I think it's allowed us to move faster. >>Carl, I want to go back to this idea of unlocking talent and culture. And this is something that both Brian and Arjun have talked about too. People are an essential part of their, at the heart of your organization. How will their experience of work change and how are you helping re-imagine and reinforce a strong organizational culture, particularly at this time when so many people are working remotely. >>Yeah. It's a great question. And it's something that, you know, I think we all have to think a lot about, I mean, I think, um, you know, driving this, this color, this, this digital and data kind of capability building, uh, it takes a lot of, a lot of thinking. So, I mean, there's a few different elements in terms of how we're tackling this one is we're recognizing, and it's not just for the technology organization or for those actors that, that we're innovating with, but it's really across all of the Qaeda where we're working through ways of raising what I'll call the overall digital leaders literacy of the organization, you know, what are the, you know, what are the skills that are needed almost at a baseline level, even for a global bio-pharmaceutical company and how do we deploy, I'll call it those learning resources very broadly. >>And then secondly, I think that, you know, we're, we're very clear that there's a number of areas where there are very specialized skills that are needed. Uh, my organization is one of those. And so, you know, we're fostering ways in which, you know, we're very kind of quickly kind of creating, uh, avenues excitement for, for associates in that space. So one example specifically, as we use, you know, during these, uh, very much sort of remote, uh, sort of days, we, we use what we call global it meet days, and we set a day aside every single month and this last Friday, um, you know, we, we create during that time, it's time for personal development. Um, and we provide active seminars and training on things like, you know, robotic process automation, data analytics cloud, uh, in this last month we've been doing this for months and months now, but in his last month, more than 50% of my organization participated, and there's this huge positive shift, both in terms of access and excitement about really harnessing those new skills and being able to apply them. >>Uh, and so I think that that's, you know, one, one element that can be considered. And then thirdly, um, of course every organization has to work on how do you prioritize talent, acquisition and management and competencies that you can't rescale? I mean, there are just some new capabilities that we don't have. And so there's a large focus that I have with our executive team and our CEO and thinking through those critical roles that we need to activate in order to kind of, to, to build on this, uh, this business led cloud transformation. And lastly, probably the hardest one, but the one that I'm most jazzed about is really this focus on changing the mindsets and behaviors. Um, and I think there, you know, this is where the power of three is, is really, uh, kind of coming together nicely. I mean, we're working on things like, you know, how do we create this patient obsessed curiosity, um, and really kind of unlock innovation with a real, kind of a growth mindset. >>Uh, and the level of curiosity that's needed, not to just continue to do the same things, but to really challenge the status quo. So that's one big area of focus we're having the agility to act just faster. I mean, to worry less, I guess I would say about kind of the standard chain of command, but how do you make more speedy, more courageous decisions? And this is places where we can emulate the way that a partner like AWS works, or how do we collaborate across the number of boundaries, you know, and I think, uh, Arjun spoke eloquently to a number of partnerships that we can build. So we can break down some of these barriers and use these networks, um, whether it's within our own internal ecosystem or externally to help, to create value faster. So a lot of energy around ways of working and we'll have to check back in, but I mean, we're early in on this mindset and behavioral shift, um, but a lot of good early momentum. >>Carl you've given me a good segue to talk to Brian about innovation, because you said a lot of the things that I was the customer obsession and this idea of innovating much more quickly. Obviously now the world has its eyes on drug development, and we've all learned a lot about it, uh, in the past few months and accelerating drug development is all, uh, is of great interest to all of us. Brian, how does a transformation like this help a company's ability to become more agile and more innovative and at a quicker speed to, >>Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think some of the things that Carl talked about just now are critical to that, right? I think where sometimes folks fall short is they think, you know, we're going to roll out the technology and the is going to be the silver bullet where in fact it is the culture, it is, is the talent. And it's the focus on that. That's going to be, you know, the determinant of success. And I will say, you know, in this power of three arrangement and Carl talked a little bit about the pyramid, um, talent and culture and that change, and that kind of thinking about that has been a first-class citizen since the very beginning, right. That absolutely is critical for, for being there. Um, and so that's been, that's been key. And so we think about innovation at Amazon and AWS and Chrome mentioned some of the things that, you know, a partner like AWS brings to the table is we talk a lot about builders, right? >>So we're kind of obsessive about builders. Um, and, and we meet what we mean by that is we, we, at Amazon, we hire for builders, we cultivate builders and we like to talk to our customers about it as well. And it also implies a different mindset, right? When you're a builder, you have that, that curiosity, you have that ownership, you have that stake and whatever I'm creating, I'm going to be a co-owner of this product or this service, right. Getting back to that kind of product oriented mindset. And it's not just the technical people or the it people who are builders. It is also the business people as, as Carl talked about. Right. So when we start thinking about, um, innovation again, where we see folks kind of get into a little bit of, uh, innovation, pilot paralysis, is that you can focus on the technology, but if you're not focusing on the talent and the culture and the processes and the mechanisms, you're going to be putting out technology, but you're not going to have an organization that's ready to take it and scale it and accelerate it. >>Right. And so that's, that's been absolutely critical. So just a couple of things we've been doing with, with the Qaeda and Decatur has really been leading the way is, think about a mechanism and a process. And it's really been working backward from the customer, right? In this case, again, the patient and the donor. And that was an easy one because the key value of Decatur is to be a patient focused bio-pharmaceutical right. So that was embedded in their DNA. So that working back from that, that patient, that donor was a key part of that process. And that's really deep in our DNA as well and Accentures. And so we were able to bring that together. The other one is, is, is getting used to experimenting and even perhaps failing, right. And being able to iterate and fail fast and experiment and understanding that, you know, some decisions, what we call it at Amazon are two two-way doors, meaning you can go through that door, not like what you see and turn around and go back. And cloud really helps there because the costs of experimenting and the cost of failure is so much lower than it's ever been. You can do it much faster and the implications are so much less. So just a couple of things that we've been really driving, uh, with Decatur around innovation, that's been really critical. >>Carl, where are you already seeing signs of success? Yeah, no, it's a great question. And so we chose, you know, uh, with our focus on, on innovation to try to unleash maybe the power of data digital in, uh, in focusing on what I call sort of a nave. And so we chose our, our, our plasma derived therapy business, um, and you know, the plasma-derived therapy business unit, it develops critical life-saving therapies for patients with rare and complex diseases. Um, but what we're doing is by bringing kind of our energy together, we're focusing on creating, I'll call it state of the art digitally connected donation centers. And we're really modernizing, you know, the, the, the donor experience right now, we're trying to, uh, improve also I'll call it the overall plasma collection process. And so we've, uh, selected a number of alcohol at a very high-speed pilots that we're working through right now, specifically in this, in this area. And we're seeing really great results already. Um, and so that's, that's one specific area of focus >>Arjun. I want you to close this out here. Any ideas, any best practices advice you would have for other pharmaceutical companies that are, that are at the early stage of their cloud journey for me? Yes. >>Yeah, no, I was breaking up a bit. No, I think they, um, the key is what's sort of been great for me to see is that when people think about cloud, you know, you always think about infrastructure technology. The reality is that the cloud is really the true enabler for innovation and innovating at scale. And, and if you think about that, right, in all the components that you need, that ultimately that's where the value is for the company, right? Because yes, you're going to get some cost synergies and that's great, but the true value is in how do we transform the organization in the case of the Qaeda and the life sciences clients, right. We're trying to take a 14 year process of research and development that takes billions of dollars and compress that, right. Tremendous amounts of innovation opportunity. You think about the commercial aspect, lots of innovation can come there. The plasma derived therapy is a great example of how we're going to really innovate to change the trajectory of that business. So I think innovation is at the heart of what most organizations need to do. And the formula, the cocktail that the Qaeda has constructed with this Fuji program really has all the ingredients, um, that are required for that success. >>Great. Well, thank you so much. Arjun, Brian and Carl was really an enlightening conversation. >>Yeah, it's been fun. Thanks Rebecca. >>Thank you for tuning into the cube virtuals coverage of the Accenture executive summit from around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. Welcome everyone to the cubes of Accenture >>Executive summit here at AWS reinvent. I'm your host Rebecca Knight for this segment? We have two guests. First. We have Helen Davis. She is the senior director of cloud platform services, assistant director for it and digital for the West Midlands police. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Helen, And we also have Matthew lb. He is Accenture health and public service associate director and West Midlands police account lead. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Matthew, thank you for having us. So we are going to be talking about delivering data-driven insights to the West Midlands police force. Helen, I want to start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about the West Midlands police force? How big is the force and also what were some of the challenges that you were grappling with prior to this initiative? >>Yes, certainly. So Westerners police is the second largest police force in the UK, outside of the metropolitan police in London. Um, we have an excessive, um, 11,000 people work at Westminster police serving communities, um, through, across the Midlands region. So geographically, we're quite a big area as well, as well as, um, being population, um, density, having that as a, at a high level. Um, so the reason we sort of embarked on the data-driven insights platform and it, which was a huge change for us was for a number of reasons. Um, namely we had a lot of disparate data, um, which was spread across a range of legacy systems that were many, many years old, um, with some duplication of, um, what was being captured and no single view for offices or, um, support staff. Um, some of the access was limited. You have to be in a, in an actual police building on a desktop computer to access it. Um, other information could only reach officers on the frontline through a telephone call back to one of our enabling services where they would do a manual checkup, um, look at the information, then call the offices back, um, and tell them what they needed to know. So it was a very long laborious process and not very efficient. Um, and we certainly weren't exploiting the data that we had in a very productive way. >>So it sounds like as you're describing and an old clunky system that needed a technological, uh, reimagination, so what was the main motivation for, for doing, for making this shift? >>It was really, um, about making us more efficient and more effective in how we do how we do business. So, um, you know, certainly as a, as an it leader and sort of my operational colleagues, we recognize the benefits, um, that data analytics could bring in, uh, in a policing environment, not something that was, um, really done in the UK at time. You know, we have a lot of data, so we're very data rich and the information that we have, but we needed to turn it into information that was actionable. So that's where we started looking for, um, technology partners and, um, suppliers to help us and sort of help us really with what's the art of the possible, you know, this hasn't been done before. So what could we do in this space that's appropriate for policing >>Helen? I love that idea. What is the art of the possible, can you tell us a little bit about why you chose AWS? >>I think really, you know, as with all things and when we're procuring a partner in the public sector that, you know, there are many rules and regulations quite rightly as you would expect that to be because we're spending public money. So we have to be very, very careful and, um, it's, it's a long process and we have to be open to public scrutiny. So, um, we sort of look to everything, everything that was available as part of that process, but we recognize the benefits that tide would provide in this space because, you know, without moving to a cloud environment, we would literally be replacing something that was legacy with something that was a bit more modern. Um, that's not what we wanted to do. Our ambition was far greater than that. So I think, um, in terms of AWS, really, it was around scalability, interoperability, you know, disaster things like the disaster recovery service, the fact that we can scale up and down quickly, we call it dialing up and dialing back. Um, you know, it's it's page go. So it just sort of ticked all the boxes for us. And then we went through the full procurement process, fortunately, um, it came out on top for us. So we were, we were able to move forward, but it just sort of had everything that we were looking for in that space. >>Matthew, I want to bring you into the conversation a little bit here. How are you working with the wet with the West Midlands police, sorry, and helping them implement this cloud first journey? >>Yeah, so I guess, um, by January the West Midlands police started, um, pay for five years ago now. So, um, we set up a partnership with the force I, and you to operate operation the way that was very different to a traditional supplier relationship. Um, secretary that the data difference insights program is, is one of many that we've been working with less neutral on, um, over the last five years. Um, as having said already, um, cloud gave a number of, uh, advantages certainly from a big data perspective and the things that that enabled us today, um, I'm from an Accenture perspective that allowed us to bring in a number of the different themes that we have say cloud themes, security teams, um, interacted from a design perspective, as well as more traditional services that people would associate with the country. >>So much of this is about embracing comprehensive change to experiment, innovate, and try different things. Matthew, how, how do you help an entity like West Midlands police think differently when they are, there are these ways of doing things that people are used to, how do you help them think about what is the art of the possible, as Helen said, >>There's a few things for that, you know, what's being critical is trying to co-create solutions together. Yeah. There's no point just turning up with, um, what we think is the right answer, try and say, um, collectively work through, um, the issues that the forest are seeing the outcomes they're looking to achieve rather than simply focusing on the long list of requirements I think was critical and then being really open to working together to create the right solution. Um, rather than just, you know, trying to pick something off the shelf that maybe doesn't fit the forces requirements in the way that it should to, right. It's not always a one size fits all. Obviously, you know, today what we thought was critical is making sure that we're creating something that met the forces needs, um, in terms of the outcomes they're looking to achieve the financial envelopes that were available, um, and how we can deliver those in a, uh, iterative agile way, um, rather than spending years and years, um, working towards an outcome, um, that is going to outdate before you even get that. >>How, how are things different? What kinds of business functions and processes have been re-imagined in, in light of this change and this shift >>It's, it's actually unrecognizable now, um, in certain areas of the business as it was before. So to give you a little bit of context, when we, um, started working with essentially century AWS on the data driven insights program, it was very much around providing, um, what was called locally, a wizzy tool for our intelligence analysts to interrogate data, look at data, you know, decide whether they could do anything predictive with it. And it was very much sort of a back office function to sort of tidy things up for us and make us a bit better in that, in that area or a lot better in that area. And it was rolled out to a number of offices, a small number on the front line. Um, I'm really, it was, um, in line with a mobility strategy that we, hardware officers were getting new smartphones for the first time, um, to do sort of a lot of things on, on, um, policing apps and things like that to again, to avoid them, having to keep driving back to police stations, et cetera. >>And the pilot was so successful. Every officer now has access to this data, um, on their mobile devices. So it literally went from a handful of people in an office somewhere using it to do sort of clever whizzbang things to, um, every officer in the force, being able to access that level of data at their fingertips literally. So what they would touch we've done before is if they needed to check and address or check, uh, details of an individual, um, just as one example, they would either have to, in many cases, go back to a police station to look it up themselves on a desktop computer. Well, they would have to make a call back to, um, a centralized function and speak to an operator, relay the questions either, wait for the answer or wait for a call back with the answer when those people are doing the data interrogation manually. >>So the biggest change for us is the self-service nature of the data we now have available. So officers can do it themselves on their phone, wherever they might be. So the efficiency savings, um, from that point of view are immense. And I think just parallel to that is the quality of our data because we had a lot of data, but just because you've got a lot of data and a lot of information doesn't mean it's big data and it's valuable necessarily. Um, so again, it was having the single source of truth as we, as we call it. So you know, that when you are completing those safe searches and getting the responses back, that it is the most accurate information we hold. And also you're getting it back within minutes as opposed to, you know, half an hour, an hour or a drive back to the station. So it's making officers more efficient and it's also making them safer. The more efficient they are, the more time they have to spend, um, out with the public doing what they, you know, we all should be doing. >>And have you seen that kind of return on investment because what you were just describing with all the steps that we'd needed to be taken in prior to this to verify and address say, and those are precious seconds when someone's life is on the line in, in sort of in the course of everyday police work. >>Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It's difficult to put a price on it. It's difficult to quantify. Um, but all the, you know, the minutes here and that certainly add up to a significant amount of efficiency savings, and we've certainly been able to demonstrate the officers are spending less time up police stations as a result and more time out on the front line. Also they're safer because they can get information about what may or may not be and address what may or may not have occurred in an area before very, very quickly without having to wait. >>Matthew, I want to hear your observations of working so closely with this West Midlands police. Have you noticed anything about changes in its culture and its operating model in how police officers interact with one another? Have you seen any changes since this technology change, >>Um, unique about the West new misplaces, the buy-in from the top, it depend on the chief and his exact team. And Helen is the leader from an IOT perspective. Um, the entire force is bought in. So what is a significant change program? Uh, uh, not trickles three. Um, everyone in the organization, um, change is difficult. Um, and there's a lot of time effort. That's been put into bake, the technical delivery and the business change and adoption aspects around each of the projects. Um, but you can see the step change that it's making in each aspect to the organization, uh, and where that's putting West Midlands police as a leader in, um, technology I'm policing in the UK. And I think globally, >>And this is a question for both of you because Matthew, as you said, change is difficult and there is always a certain intransigence in workplaces about this is just the way we've always done things and we're used to this and don't try to get us, don't try to get us to do anything new here. It works. How do you get the buy-in that you need to, to do this kind of digital transformation? >>I think it, it would be wrong to say it was easy. Um, um, we also have to bear in mind that this was one program in a five year program. So there was a lot of change going on, um, both internally for some of our back office functions, as well as front tie, uh, frontline offices. So with DDI in particular, I think the stat change occurred when people could see what it could do for them. You know, we had lots of workshops and seminars where we all talk about, you know, big data and it's going to be great and it's data analytics and it's transformational, you know, and quite rightly people that are very busy doing a day job that not necessarily technologists in the main and, you know, are particularly interested quite rightly so in what we are not dealing with the cloud, you know? >>And it was like, yeah, okay. It's one more thing. And then when they started to see on that, on their phones and what teams could do, that's when it started to sell itself. And I think that's when we started to see, you know, to see the stack change, you know, and, and if we, if we have any issues now it's literally, you know, our help desks in meltdown. Cause everyone's like, well, we call it manage without this anymore. And I think that speaks for itself. So it doesn't happen overnight. It's sort of incremental changes and then that's a step change in attitude. And when they see it working and they see the benefits, they want to use it more. And that's how it's become fundamental to our policing by itself, really without much selling >>Matthew, Helen just made a compelling case for how to get buy in. Have you discovered any other best practices when you are trying to get everyone on board for this kind of thing? >>So we've, um, we've used a lot of the traditional techniques, things around comms and engagement. We've also used things like, um, the 30 day challenge and nudge theory around how can we gradually encourage people to use things? Um, I think there's a point where all of this around, how do we just keep it simple and keep it user centric from an end user perspective? I think DDI is a great example of where the, the technology is incredibly complex. The solution itself is, um, you know, extremely large and, um, has been very difficult to, um, get delivered. But at the heart of it is a very simple front end for the user to encourage it and take that complexity away from them. Uh, I think that's been critical through the whole piece of video. >>One final word from Helen. I want to hear, where do you go from here? What is the longterm vision? I know that this made productivity, >>Um, productivity savings equivalent to 154 full-time officers. Uh, what's next, I think really it's around, um, exploiting what we've got. Um, I use the phrase quite a lot, dialing it up, which drives my technical architects crazy, but because it's apparently not that simple, but, um, you know, we've, we've been through significant change in the last five years and we are still continuing to batch all of those changes into everyday, um, operational policing. But what we need to see now is we need to exploit and build on the investments that we've made, um, in terms of data and claims specifically, the next step really is about expanding our pool of data and our functions. Um, so that, you know, we keep getting better and better, um, at this, um, the more we do, the more data we have, the more refined we can be, the more precise we are with all of our actions. >>Um, you know, we're always being expected to, again, look after the public purse and do more for less. And I think this is certainly an and our cloud journey and cloud first by design, which is where we are now, um, is helping us to be future-proofed. So for us, it's very much an investment. And I see now that we have good at embedded in operational policing for me, this is the start of our journey, not the end. So it's really exciting to see where we can go from here. Exciting times. Indeed. Thank you so much. And Matthew for joining us, I really appreciate it. And you are watching the cube stay tuned for more of the cubes coverage of the AWS reinvent Accenture executive summit. I'm Rebecca Knight from around the globe with digital coverage, >>AWS reinvent executive summit, 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. Everyone. Welcome to the cube virtual coverage of the executive summit at AWS reinvent 2020 virtual. This is the cube virtual. We can't be there in person like we are every year we have to be remote. This executive summit is with special programming supported by Accenture where the cube virtual I'm your host John for a year, we had a great panel here called uncloud first digital transformation from some experts, Stuart driver, the director of it and infrastructure and operates at lion Australia, Douglas Regan, managing director, client account lead at lion for Accenture as a deep Islam associate director application development lead for Accenture gentlemen, thanks for coming on the cube virtual that's a mouthful, all that digital, but the bottom line it's cloud transformation. This is a journey that you guys have been on together for over 10 years to be really a digital company. Now, some things have happened in the past year that kind of brings all this together. This is about the next generation organization. So I want to ask Stuart you first, if you can talk about this transformation at lion has undertaken some of the challenges and opportunities and how this year in particular has brought it together because you, you know, COVID has been the accelerant of digital transformation. Well, if you're 10 years in, I'm sure you're there. You're in the, uh, uh, on that wave right now. Take a minute to explain this transformation journey. >>Yeah, sure. So number of years back, we, we looked at kind of our infrastructure and our landscape. I'm trying to figure out where we wanted to go next. And we were very analog based, um, and stuck in the old it groove of, you know, capital refresh, um, struggling to transform, struggling to get to a digital platform and we needed to change it up so that we could, uh, become very different business to the one that we were back then. Um, obviously cloud is an accelerant to that and we had a number of initiatives that needed a platform to build on. And a cloud infrastructure was the way that we started to do that. So we went through a number of transformation programs that we didn't want to do that in the old world. We wanted to do it in a new world. So for us, it was partnering up with a, you know, great organizations that can take you on the journey and, uh, you know, start to deliver a bit by bit incremental progress, uh, to get to the, uh, I guess the promise land. >>Um, we're not, uh, not all the way there, but to where we're a long way along. And then when you get to some of the challenges like we've had this year, um, it makes all of the hard work worthwhile because you can actually change pretty quickly, um, provide capacity and, uh, and increase your environments and, you know, do the things that you need to do in a much more dynamic way than we would have been able to previously where we might've been waiting for the hardware vendors, et cetera, to deliver capacity for us this year, it's been a pretty strong year from an it perspective and delivering for the business needs, >>Forget the Douglas. I want to just real quick and redirect to you and say, you know, for all the people who said, Oh yeah, you got to jump on cloud, get in early, you know, a lot of naysayers like, well, wait till to mature a little bit. Really, if you got in early and you paying your dues, if you will taking that medicine with the cloud, you're really kind of peaking at the right time. Is that true? Is that one of the benefits that comes out of this getting in the cloud, >>John, this has been an unprecedented year, right. And, um, you know, Australia, we had to live through Bush fires and then we had covert and, and then we actually had to deliver a, um, a project I'm very know transformational product project, completely remote. And then we also had had some, some cyber challenges, which is public as well. And I don't think if we weren't moved into and enabled through the cloud would have been able to achieve that this year. It would have been much different. It would have been very difficult to do the fact that we were able to work and partner with Amazon through this year, which is unprecedented and actually come out the other end and we've delivered a brand new digital capability across the entire business. Um, it wouldn't >>Have been impossible if we could, I guess, stayed in the old world. The fact that we moved into the new Naval by the Navy allowed us to work in this unprecedented gear >>Just quick. What's your personal view on this? Because I've been saying on the Cuban reporting, necessity's the mother of all invention and the word agility has been kicked around as kind of a cliche, Oh, it'd be agile. You know, we're gonna get to Sydney. You get a minute on specifically, but from your perspective, uh, Douglas, what does that mean to you? Because there is benefits there for being agile. And >>I mean, I think as Stuart mentioned writing, and a lot of these things we try to do and, you know, typically, you know, hardware capabilities of the last to be told and, and always the only critical path to be done. You know, we really didn't have that in this case, what we were doing with our projects in our deployments, right. We were able to move quickly able to make decisions in line with the business and really get things going, right. So you, a lot of times in a traditional world, you have these inhibitors, you have these critical path, it takes weeks and months to get things done as opposed to hours and days. And it truly allowed us to, we had to VJ things, move things. And, you know, we were able to do that in this environment with AWS to support and the fact that we can kind of turn things off and on as quickly as we need it. Yeah. >>Cloud-scale is great for speed. So DECA got, Gardez get your thoughts on this cloud first mission, you know, it, you know, the dev ops worlds, they saw this early, that jumping in there, they saw the, the, the agility. Now the theme this year is modern applications with the COVID pandemic pressure, there's real business pressure to make that happen. How did you guys learn to get there fast? And what specifically did you guys do at Accenture and how did it all come together? Can you take us inside kind of how it played out? >>All right. So we started off with us and we work with lions experts and, uh, the lost knowledge that allowed reconstructive being had. Um, we then applied our journey group cloud strategy basically revolves around the seven Oz and, and, uh, you know, the deep peaking steps from our perspective, uh, assessing the current bottom, setting up the new cloud in modern. And as we go modernizing and, and migrating these applications to the cloud now, you know, one of the things that, uh, no we did not along this journey was that, you know, you can have the best plans, but bottom of that, we were dealing with, we often than not have to make changes. Uh, what a lot of agility and also work with a lot of collaboration with the, uh, Lyon team, as well as, uh, uh, AWS. I think the key thing for me was being able to really bring it all together. It's not just, uh, you know, essentially mobilize all of us. >>What were some of the learnings real quick, your journey there? >>So I think perspective the key learnings around that, you know, uh, you know, what, when we look back at, uh, the, the infrastructure that was that we were trying to migrate over to the cloud, a lot of the documentation, et cetera, was not, uh, available. We were having to, uh, figure out a lot of things on the fly. Now that really required us to have, uh, uh, people with deep expertise who could go into those environments and, and work out, uh, you know, the best ways to, to migrate the workloads to the cloud. Uh, I think, you know, the, the biggest thing for me was making Jovi had on that real SMEs across the board globally, that we could leverage across various technologies, uh, uh, and, and, and, you know, that would really work in our collaborative and agile environment would line >>Just do what I got to ask you. How did you address your approach to the cloud and what was your experience? >>Yeah, for me, it's around getting the foundations right. To start with and then building on them. Um, so, you know, you've got to have your, your process and you're going to have your, your kind of your infrastructure there and your blueprints ready. Um, AWS do a great job of that, right. Getting the foundations right. And then building upon it, and then, you know, partnering with Accenture allows you to do that very successfully. Um, I think, um, you know, the one thing that was probably surprising to us when we started down this journey and kind of, after we got a long way down, the track of looking backwards is actually how much you can just turn off. Right? So a lot of stuff that you, uh, you get left with a legacy in your environment, and when you start to work through it with the types of people that civic just mentioned, you know, the technical expertise working with the business, um, you can really rationalize your environment and, uh, um, you know, cloud is a good opportunity to do that, to drive that legacy out. >>Um, so you know, a few things there, the other thing is, um, you've got to try and figure out the benefits that you're going to get out of moving here. So there's no point just taking something that is not delivering a huge amount of value in the traditional world, moving it into the cloud, and guess what it's going to deliver the same limited amount of value. So you've got to transform it, and you've got to make sure that you build it for the future and understand exactly what you're trying to gain out of it. So again, you need a strong collaboration. You need a good partners to work with, and you need good engagement from the business as well, because the kind of, uh, you know, digital transformation, cloud transformation, isn't really an it project, I guess, fundamentally it is at the core, but it's a business project that you've got to get the whole business aligned on. You've got to make sure that your investment streams are appropriate and that you're able to understand the benefits and the value that you're going to drive back towards the business. >>Let's do it. If you don't mind me asking what was some of the obstacles encountered or learnings, um, that might've differed from the expectation we all been there, Hey, you know, we're going to change the world. Here's the sales pitch, here's the outcome. And then obviously things happen, you know, you learn legacy, okay. Let's put some containerization around that cloud native, um, all that rational. You're talking about what are, and you're going to have obstacles. That's how you learn. That's how perfection has developed. How, what obstacles did you come up with and how are they different from your expectations going in? >>Yeah, they're probably no different from other people that have gone down the same journey. If I'm totally honest, the, you know, 70 or 80% of what you do is relative music, because they're a known quantity, it's relatively modern architectures and infrastructures, and you can, you know, upgrade, migrate, move them into the cloud, whatever it is, rehost, replatform, rearchitect, whatever it is you want to do, it's the other stuff, right? It's the stuff that always gets left behind. And that's the challenge. It's, it's getting that last bit over the line and making sure that you haven't invested in the future while still carrying all of your legacy costs and complexity within your environment. So, um, to be quite honest, that's probably taken longer and, and has been more of a challenge than we thought it would be. Um, the other piece I touched on earlier on in terms of what was surprising was actually how much of your environment is actually not needed anymore. >>When you start to put a critical eye across it and understand, um, uh, ask the tough questions and start to understand exactly what, what it is you're trying to achieve. So if you ask a part of a business, do they still need this application or this service a hundred percent of the time, they'll say yes, until you start to lay out to them, okay, now I'm going to cost you this to migrate it or this, to run it in the future. And, you know, here's your ongoing costs and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And then, uh, for a significant amount of those answers, you get a different response when you start to layer on the true value of it. So you start to flush out those hidden costs within the business, and you start to make some critical decisions as a company based on, uh, based on that. So that was a little tougher than we first thought and probably broader than we thought there was more of that than we anticipated, which actually resulted in a much cleaner environment post and post migration. Yeah. >>Well, expression, if it moves automated, you know, it's kind of a joke on government, how they want to tax everything, you know, you want to automate, that's a key thing in cloud, and you've got to discover those opportunities to create value, uh, Stuart and Siddique. Mainly if you can weigh in on this love to know the percentage of total cloud that you have now, versus when you started, because as you start to uncover whether it's by design for purpose, or you discover opportunities to innovate, like you guys have, I'm sure it kind of, you took on some territory inside Lyon, what percentage of cloud now versus >>Yeah. At the start, it was minimal, right. You know, close to zero, right. Single and single digits. Right. It was mainly SAS environments that we had, uh, sitting in cloud when we, uh, when we started, um, Doug mentioned earlier a really significant transformation project that we've undertaken recently gone live on a multi-year one. Um, you know, that's all stood up on AWS and is a significant portion of our environment, um, in terms of what we can move to cloud. Uh, we're probably at about 80 or 90% now. And the balanced bit is, um, legacy infrastructure that is just gonna retire as we go through the cycle rather than migrate to the cloud. Um, so we are significantly cloud-based and, uh, you know, we're reaping the benefits of it in a year, like 2020, and makes you glad that you did all of the hard yards in the previous years when you start business challenges, trying out as, >>So do you get any common reaction to the cloud percentage penetration? >>Sorry, I didn't, I didn't catch that, but I, all I was going to say was, I think it's like the typical 80 20 rule, right? We, we, we worked really hard in the, you know, I think 2018, 19 to get 80% off the, uh, application onto the cloud. And over the last year is the 20% that we have been migrating. And Stuart said, right. A lot of it is also, that's going to be your diet. And I think our next big step is going to be obviously, you know, the icing on the cake, which is to decommission all of these apps as well. Right. So, you know, to get the real benefits out of, uh, out of the whole conservation program from a, uh, from a reduction of CapEx, OPEX perspective, >>Douglas and Stuart, can you guys talk about the decision around the clouds because you guys have had success with AWS? Why AWS how's that decision made? Can you guys give some insight into some of those things? >>I can, I can start, start off. I think back when the decision was made and it was, it was a while back, um, you know, there was some clear advantages of moving relay, Ws, a lot of alignment with some of the significant projects and, uh, the trend, that particular one big transformation project that we've alluded to as well. Um, you know, we needed some, um, some very robust and, um, just future proof and, and proven technology. And AWS gave that to us. We needed a lot of those blueprints to help us move down the path. We didn't want to reinvent everything. So, um, you know, having a lot of that legwork done for us and AWS gives you that, right. And particularly when you partner up with, uh, with a company like Accenture as well, you get combinations of technology and the, the skills and the knowledge to, to move you forward in that direction side. Um, you know, for us, it was a, uh, uh, it was a decision based on, you know, best of breed, um, you know, looking forward and, and trying to predict the future needs and, and, and kind of the environmental that we might need. Um, and, you know, partnering up with organizations that can then take you on the journey >>Just to build on that. So obviously, you know, lines like an antivirus, but, you know, we knew it was a very good choice given the, um, >>Uh, skills and the capability that we had, as well as the assets and tools we had to get the most out of an AWS. And obviously our CEO globally just made an announcement about a huge investment that we're making in cloud. Um, but you know, we've, we've worked very well with AWS. We've done some joint workshops and joint investments, um, some joint POC. So yeah, w we have a very good working relationship, AWS, and I think, um, one incident to reflect upon whether it's cyber it's and again, where we actually jointly, you know, dove in with, um, with Amazon and some of their security experts and our experts. And we're able to actually work through that with mine quite successful. So, um, you know, really good behaviors as an organization, but also really good capabilities. >>Yeah. As you guys, your essential cloud outcomes, research shown, it's the cycle of innovation with the cloud, that's creating a lot of benefits, knowing what you guys know now, looking back certainly COVID has impacted a lot of people kind of going through the same process, knowing what you guys know now, would you advocate people to jump on this transformation journey? If so, how, and what tweaks they make, which changes, what would you advise? >>I might take that one to start with. Um, I hate to think where we would have been when, uh, COVID kicked off here in Australia and, you know, we were all sent home, literally were at work on the Friday, and then over the weekend. And then Monday, we were told not to come back into the office and all of a sudden, um, our capacity in terms of remote access and I quadrupled, or more four, five X, what we had on the Friday we needed on the Monday. And we were able to stand that up during the day Monday into Tuesday, because we were cloud-based and, uh, you know, we just spun up your instances and, uh, you know, sort of our licensing, et cetera. And, and we had all of our people working remotely, um, within, uh, you know, effectively one business day. Um, I know peers of mine in other organizations and industries that are relying on kind of a traditional wise and getting hardware, et cetera, that were weeks and months before they could get the right hardware to be able to deliver to their user base. >>So, um, you know, one example where you're able to scale and, uh, uh, get, uh, get value out of this platform beyond probably what was anticipated at the time you talk about, um, you know, less this, the, and all of these kinds of things. And you can also think of a few scenarios, but real world ones where you're getting your business back up and running in that period of time is, is just phenomenal. There's other stuff, right? There's these programs that we've rolled out, you do your sizing, um, and in the traditional world, you would just go out and buy more servers than you need. And, you know, probably never realize the full value of those, you know, the capability of those servers over the life cycle of them. Whereas, you know, in a cloud world, you put in what you think is right. And if it's not right, you pump it up a little bit when, when all of your metrics and so on telling you that you need to bump it up and conversely Scarlett down at the same rate. So for us with the types of challenges and programs and, uh, uh, and just business need, that's come at as this year, uh, we wouldn't have been able to do it without a strong cloud base, uh, to, uh, to move forward with >>Yeah, Douglas, one of the things that I talked to, a lot of people on the right side of history who have been on the right wave with cloud, with the pandemic, and they're happy, they're like, and they're humble. Like, well, we're just lucky, you know, luck is preparation meets opportunity. And this is really about you guys getting in early and being prepared and readiness. This is kind of important as people realize, then you gotta be ready. I mean, it's not just, you don't get lucky by being in the right place, the right time. And there were a lot of companies were on the wrong side of history here who might get washed away. This is a second >>I think, to echo and kind of build on what Stewart said. I think that the reason that we've had success and I guess the momentum is we, we didn't just do it in isolation within it and technology. It was actually linked to broader business changes, you know, creating basically a digital platform for the entire business, moving the business, where are they going to be able to come back stronger after COVID, when they're actually set up for growth, um, and actually allows, you know, a line new achievements, growth objectives, and also its ambitions as far as what he wants to do, uh, with growth in whatever they may do as acquiring other companies and moving into different markets and launching new product. So we've actually done it in a way that there's, you know, real and direct business benefit, uh, that actually enables line to grow >>General. I really appreciate you coming. I have one final question. If you can wrap up here, uh, Stuart and Douglas, you don't mind waiting, and what's the priorities for the future. What's next for lion and a century >>Christmas holidays, I'll start Christmas holidays. And I spent a third year and then a, and then a reset, obviously, right? So, um, you know, it's, it's figuring out, uh, transform what we've already transformed, if that makes sense. So God, a huge proportion of our services sitting in the cloud. Um, but we know we're not done even with the stuff that is in there. We need to take those next steps. We need more and more automation and orchestration. We need to, um, our environment, there's more future growth. We need to be able to work with the business and understand what's coming at them so that we can, um, you know, build that into, into our environment. So again, it's really transformation on top of transformation is the way that I'll describe it. And it's really an open book, right? Once you get it in and you've got the capabilities and the evolving tool sets that AWS continue to bring to the market base, um, you know, working with the partners to, to figure out how we unlock that value, um, you know, drive our costs down our efficiency, uh, all of those kind of, you know, standard metrics. >>Um, but you know, we're looking for the next things to transform and show value back out to our customer base, um, that, uh, that we continue to, you know, sell our products to and work with and understand how we can better meet their needs. Yeah, I think just to echo that, I think it's really leveraging this and then digital capability they have and getting the most out of that investment. And then I think it's also moving to, >>Uh, and adopting more new ways of working as far as, you know, the state of the business. Um, it's getting up the speed of the market is changing. So being able to launch and do things quickly and also, um, competitive and efficient operating costs, uh, now that they're in the cloud, right. So I think it's really leveraging the most out of a platform and then, you know, being efficient in launching things. So putting the, with the business, >>Cedric, any word from you on your priorities by UC this year and folding. >>Yeah. So, uh, just going to say like e-learning squares, right for me were around, you know, just journey. This is a journey to the cloud, right. And, uh, you know, as well dug into sort of Saturday, it's getting all, you know, different parts of the organization along the journey business to ID to your, uh, product windows, et cetera. Right. And it takes time with this stuff, but, uh, uh, you know, you gotta get started on it and, you know, once we, once we finish off, uh, it's the realization of the benefits now that, you know, I'm looking forward? I think for, from Alliance perspective, it's, it is, uh, you know, once we migrate all the workloads to the cloud, it is leveraging, uh, all stack drive. And as I think Stewart said earlier, uh, with, uh, you know, the latest and greatest stuff that AWS it's basically working to see how we can really, uh, achieve more better operational excellence, uh, from a, uh, from a cloud perspective. >>Well, Stewart, thanks for coming on with a century and sharing your environment and what's going on and your journey you're on the right wave. Did the work you were in that it's all coming together with faster, congratulations for your success, and really appreciate Douglas with Steve for coming on as well from Accenture. Thank you for coming on. Thanks, John. Okay. Just the cubes coverage of executive summit at AWS reinvent. This is where all the thought leaders share their best practices, their journeys, and of course, special programming with the center and the cube. I'm Sean ferry, your host, thanks for watching From around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome everyone to the cube virtuals coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent 2020. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. We are talking today about reinventing the energy data platform. We have two guests joining us. First. We have Johan Krebbers. He is the GM digital emerging technologies and VP of it. Innovation at shell. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Johan you're welcome. And next we have Liz Dennett. She is the lead solution architect for O S D U on AWS. Thank you so much, Liz. You'll be. So I want to start our conversation by talking about OSD. You like so many great innovations. It started with a problem Johan. What was the problem you were trying to solve at shell? >>Yeah, the ethical back a couple of years, we started summer 2017, where we had a meeting with the deg, the gas exploration in shell, and the main problem they had. Of course, they got lots of lots of data, but are unable to find the right data. They need to work from once the day, this was scattered in is scattered my boss kind of Emirates all over the place and turned them into real, probably tried to solve is how that person working exploration could find their proper date, not just a day of loss of date. You really needed that we did probably talked about is summer 2017. We said, okay. The only way ABC is moving forward is to start pulling that data into a single data platform. And that, that was at the time that we called it as the, you, the subsurface data universe in there was about the shell name was so in, in January, 2018, we started a project with Amazon to start grating a freaking that building, that Stu environment that the, that universe, so that single data level to put all your exploration and Wells data into that single environment that was intent and every cent, um, already in March of that same year, we said, well, from Michele point of view, we will be far better off if we could make this an industry solution and not just a shelf solution, because Shelby, Shelby, if you can make this industry solution, but people are developing applications for it. >>It also is far better than for shell to say we haven't shell special solution because we don't make money out of how we start a day that we can make money out of, if you have access to the data, we can explore the data. So storing the data we should do as efficiently possibly can. So in March, we reached out to about eight or nine other large, uh, I gas operators, like the economics, like the totals, like the chefs of this world and say, Hey, we inshallah doing this. Do you want to join this effort? And to our surprise, they all said, yes. And then in September, 2018, we had our kickoff meeting with your open group where we said, we said, okay, if you want to work together, lots of other companies, we also need to look at, okay, how, how we organize that, or is that if you started working with lots of large companies, you need to have some legal framework around some framework around it. So that's why we went to the open group and said, okay, let's, let's form the ODU forum as we call it the time. So it's September, 2080, where I did a Galleria in Houston, but the kick off meeting for the OT four with about 10 members at the time. So there's just over two years ago, we started an exercise for me called ODU, kicked it off. Uh, and so that's really then we'll be coming from and how we got there. Also >>The origin story. Um, well, so what digging a little deeper there? What were some of the things you were trying to achieve with the OSD? >>Well, a couple of things we've tried to achieve with OSU, um, first is really separating data from applications. And what is the, what is the biggest problem we have in the subsurface space that the data and applications are all interlinked or tied together. And if you have them and a new company coming along and say, I have this new application and has access to the data that is not possible because the data often interlinked with the application. So the first thing we did is really breaking the link between the application, the data as those levels, the first thing we did, secondly, put all the data to a single data platform, take the silos out what was happening in the subsurface space. And they got all the data in what we call silos in small little islands out there. So we're trying to do is first break the link to great, great. >>They put the data in a single data bathroom, and a third part who does standard layer. On top of that, it's an API layer on top of the, a platform. So we could create an ecosystem out of companies to start developing soft applications on top of dev data platform across you might have a data platform, but you're only successful. If you have a rich ecosystem of people start developing applications on top of that. And then you can explore today, like small companies, last company, university, you name it, we're getting after create an ecosystem out here. So the three things, whereas was first break the link between application data, just break it and put data at the center and also make sure that data, this data structure would not be managed by one company. It would only be met. It will be managed the data structures by the OT forum. Secondly, then the data of single data platform certainly has an API layer on top and then create an ecosystem. Really go for people, say, please start developing applications because now you have access to the data. I've got the data no longer linked to somebody whose application was all freely available for an API layer. That was, that was all September, 2018, more or less. >>And to bring you in here a little bit, can you talk a little bit about some of the imperatives from the AWS standpoint in terms of what you were trying to achieve with this? Yeah, absolutely. And this whole thing is Johan said started with a challenge that was really brought out at shell. The challenges that geo-scientists spend up to 70% of their time looking for data, I'm a geologist I've spent more than 70% of my time trying to find data in these silos. And from there, instead of just figuring out how we could address that one problem, we worked together to really understand the root cause of these challenges and working backwards from that use case OSU and OSU on AWS has really enabled customers to create solutions that span, not just this in particular problem, but can really scale to be inclusive of the entire energy chain and deliver value from these use cases to the energy industry and beyond. Thank you, Lee, uh, Johann. So talk a little bit about Accenture's cloud first approach and how it has, uh, helped shell work faster and better with speed. >>Well, of course, access a cloud first approach only works together in an Amazon environment, AWS environment. So we really look at, at, at, at Accenture and others altogether helping shell in this space. Now the combination of the two is what we're really looking at, uh, where access of course can be, this is not a student who that environment operates, support knowledge to an environment. And of course, Amazon would be doing that to today's environment that underpinning, uh, services, et cetera. So, uh, we would expect a combination, a lot of goods when we started rolling out and put in production, the old you are three and bubble because we are anus. Then when the release feed comes to the market in Q1 next year of ODU, when he started going to Audi production inside shell, but as the first release, which is ready for prime time production across an enterprise will be released one just before Christmas, last year when he's still in may of this year. But release three is the first release we want to use for full scale production deployment inside shell, and also all the operators around the world. And there is what Amazon, sorry. Um, extensive can play a role in the ongoing, in the, in deployment building up, but also support environment. >>So one of the other things that we talk a lot about here on the cube is sustainability. And this is a big imperative at so many organizations around the world in particular energy companies. How does this move to OSD you, uh, help organizations become, how is this a greener solution for companies? >>Well, firstly make it, it's a great solution because you start making a much more efficient use of your resources, which is, which is already an important one. The second thing they're doing is also, we started with ODU in the oil and gas space with the expert development space. We've grown, uh OTU but in our strategy of growth, OSU now also do an alternative energy sociology. We'll all start supporting next year. Things like solar farms, wind farms, uh, the, the dermatomal environment hydration. So it becomes an and, and an open energy data platform, not just for the, for the, I want to get into steam that's for new industry, any type of energy industry. So our focus is to create, bring that data of all those various energy data sources together into a single data platform. You're going to use AI and other technology on top of that to exploit the data, to meet again in a single data platform. >>Liz, I want to ask you about security because security is, is, is such a big concern when it comes to how secure is the data on OSD you, um, actually, can I talk, can I do a follow up on the sustainability talking? Oh, absolutely. By all means. I mean, I want to interject though security is absolutely our top priority. I don't mean to move away from that, but with sustainability, in addition to the benefits of the OSU data platform, when a company moves from on-prem to the cloud, they're also able to leverage the benefits of scale. Now, AWS is committed to running our business in the most environmentally friendly way possible. And our scale allows us to achieve higher resource utilization and energy efficiency than a typical on-prem data center. Now, a recent study by four 51 research found that AWS is infrastructure is 3.6 times more energy efficient than the median of surveyed enterprise data centers. Two thirds of that advantage is due to higher server utilization and a more energy efficient server population. But when you factor in the carbon intensity of consumed electricity and renewable energy purchases, four 51 found that AWS performs the same task with an 88% lower carbon footprint. Now that's just another way that AWS and OSU are working to support our customers is they seek to better understand their workflows and make their legacy businesses less carbon intensive. >>That's that's those are those statistics are incredible. Do you want to talk a little bit now about security? Absolutely. And security will always be AWS is top priority. In fact, AWS has been architected to be the most flexible and secure cloud computing environment available today. Our core infrastructure is built to satisfy. There are the security requirements for the military global banks and other high sensitivity organizations. And in fact, AWS uses the same secure hardware and software to build and operate each of our regions. So that customers benefit from the only commercial cloud that's had hits service offerings and associated supply chain vetted and deemed secure enough for top secret workloads. That's backed by a deep set of cloud security tools with more than 200 security compliance and governmental service and key features as well as an ecosystem of partners like Accenture, that can really help our customers to make sure that their environments for their data meet and or exceed their security requirements. Johann, I want you to talk a little bit about how OSD you can be used today. Does it only handle subsurface data >>And today it's hundreds of servers or Wells data. We got to add to that production around the middle of next year. That means that the whole upstate business. So we've got, if you look at MC, obviously this goes from exploration all the way to production. You've been at the into to a single data platform. So production will be added the round Q3 of next year. Then it principal, we have a difficult, the elder data that single environment, and we want to extended them to other data sources or energy sources like solar farms, wheat farms, uh, hydrogen hydro at San Francisco. We want to add a whore or a list of other day. >>And he saw a student and B all the data together into a single data club. So we move from an fallen guest, a data platform to an energy data platform. That's really what our objective is because the whole industry we've looked at, I've looked at our company companies all moving in that same direction of quantity, of course are very strong at all, I guess, but also increase the, got into all the other energy sources like, like solar, like wind, like, like the hydrogen, et cetera. So we, we move exactly the same method that, that, that the whole OSU can really support at home. And as a spectrum of energy sources, of course, >>And Liz and Johan. I want you to close us out here by just giving us a look into your crystal balls and talking about the five and 10 year plan for OSD. You we'll start with you, Liz. What do you, what do you see as the future holding for this platform? Um, honestly, the incredibly cool thing about working at AWS is you never know where the innovation and the journey is going to take you. I personally am looking forward to work with our customers, wherever their OSU journeys, take them, whether it's enabling new energy solutions or continuing to expand, to support use cases throughout the energy value chain and beyond, but really looking forward to continuing to partner as we innovate to slay tomorrow's challenges. >>Yeah. First, nobody can look that far ahead, any more nowadays, especially 10 years mean now, who knows what happens in 10 years, but if you look what our whole objective is that really in the next five years owes you will become the key backbone for energy companies for storing your data. You are efficient intelligence and optimize the whole supply energy supply chain in this world out there. >>Rubbers Liz Dennett. Thank you so much for coming on the cube virtual, >>Thank you, >>Rebecca nights, stay tuned for more of our coverage of the Accenture executive summit >>Around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent executive summit 2020, sponsored by Accenture and AWS. >>Welcome everyone to the cubes coverage of the Accenture executive summit. Part of AWS reinvent. I'm your host Rebecca Knight today we're welcoming back to Kubila. We have Kishor Dirk. He is the Accenture senior managing director cloud first global services lead. Welcome back to the show >>Kishore. Thank you very much. >>Nice to meet again. And, uh, Tristin moral horse set. He is the managing director, Accenture cloud first North American growth. Welcome back to YouTube. >>Great to be back in. Great to see you again, Rebecca. >>Exactly. Even in this virtual format, it is good to see your faces. Um, today we're going to be talking about my nav and green cloud advisor >>Capability. Kishor I want to start with you. So my NAB is a platform that is really celebrating its first year in existence. Uh, November, 2019 is when Accenture introduced it. Uh, but it's, it has new relevance in light of this global pandemic that we are all enduring and suffering through. Tell us a little bit about the miner platform, what it is. >>Sure, Rebecca, you know, we lost it and now 2019 and, uh, you know, it is a cloud platform to help our clients navigate the complexity of cloud and cloud decisions and to make it faster and obviously innovate in the cloud, uh, you know, with the increased relevance and all the, especially over the last few months with the impact of COVID crisis and exhibition of digital transformation, you know, we are seeing the transformation of the acceleration to cloud much faster. This platform that you're talking about has enabled hundred and 40 clients globally across different industries. You identify the right cloud solution, navigate the complexity, provide a cloud specific solution simulate for our clients to meet the strategy business needs and the clients are loving it. >>I want to go to you now trust and tell us a little bit about how my nav works and how it helps companies make good cloud choices. >>Yeah. So Rebecca we've talked about cloud is, is more than just infrastructure and that's what mine app tries to solve for. It really looks at a variety of variables, including infrastructure operating model and fundamentally what clients business outcomes, um, uh, our clients are, are looking for and, and identify as the optimal solution for what they need. And we design this to accelerate and we mentioned the pandemic. One of the big focus now is to accelerate. And so we worked through a three-step process. The first is scanning and assessing our client's infrastructure, their data landscape, their application. Second, we use our automated artificial intelligence engine to interact with. We have a wide variety and library of, uh, collective plot expertise. And we look to recommend what is the enterprise architecture and solution. And then third, before we aligned with our clients, we look to simulate and test this scaled up model. And the simulation gives our clients a wait to see what cloud is going to look like, feel like and how it's going to transform their business before they go there. >>Tell us a little bit about that in real life. Now as a company, so many of people are working remotely having to collaborate, uh, not in real life. How is that helping them right now? >>So, um, the, the pandemic has put a tremendous strain on systems, uh, because of the demand on those systems. And so we talk about resiliency. We also now need to collaborate across data across people. Um, I think all of us are calling from a variety of different places where our last year we were all at the cube itself. Um, and, and cloud technologies such as teams, zoom that we're we're leveraging now has fundamentally accelerated and clients are looking to onboard this for their capabilities. They're trying to accelerate their journey. They realize that now the cloud is what is going to become important for them to differentiate. Once we come out of the pandemic and the ability to collaborate with their employees, their partners, and their clients through these systems is becoming a true business differentiator for our clients. >>Sure. I want to talk with you now about my NABS multiple capabilities, um, and helping clients design and navigate their cloud journeys. Tell us a little bit about the green cloud advisor capability and its significance, particularly as so many companies are thinking more deeply and thoughtfully about sustainability. >>Yes. So since the launch of my NAB, we continue to enhance capabilities for our clients. One of the significant, uh, capabilities that we have enabled is the brain trust advisor today. You know, Rebecca, a lot of the businesses are more environmentally aware and are expanding efforts to decrease power consumption, uh, and obviously carbon emissions and, uh, and run a sustainable operations across every aspect of the enterprise. Uh, as a result, you're seeing an increasing trend in adoption of energy, efficient infrastructure in the global market. And one of the things that we did, a lot of research we found out is that there's an ability to influence our client's carbon footprint through a better cloud solution. And that's what we entered by brings to us, uh, in, in terms of a lot of the client connotation that you're seeing in Europe, North America and others, lot of our clients are accelerating to a green cloud strategy to unlock beta financial, societal and environmental benefit, uh, through obviously cloud-based circular, operational and sustainable products and services. That is something that, uh, we are enhancing my now and we are having active client discussions at this point of time. >>So Tristan, tell us a little bit about how this capability helps clients make greener. >>Yeah. Um, well, let's start about the investments from the cloud providers in renewable and sustainable energy. Um, they have most of the hyperscalers today, um, have been investing significantly on data centers that are run or renewable energy, some incredibly creative constructs on the how to do that. And sustainability is therefore a key, um, key item of importance for the hyperscalers and also for our clients who now are looking for sustainable energy. And it turns out this marriage is now possible. I can, we marry the, the green capabilities of the cloud providers with a sustainability agenda of our clients. And so what we look into way the mine EF works is it looks at industry benchmarks and evaluates our current clients, um, capabilities and carpet footprint leveraging their existing data centers. We then look to model from an end-to-end perspective, how the, their journey to the cloud leveraging sustainable and, um, and data centers with renewable energy. We look at how their solution will look like and, and quantify carbon tax credits, um, improve a green index score and provide quantifiable, um, green cloud capabilities and measurable outcomes to our clients, shareholders, stakeholders, clients, and customers, um, and our green plot advisors, sustainability solutions already been implemented at three clients. And in many cases in two cases has helped them reduce the carbon footprint by up to 400% through migration from their existing data center to green club. Very, very important. Yeah, >>That is remarkable. Now tell us a little bit about the kinds of clients. Is this, is this more interesting to clients in Europe? Would you say that it's catching on in the United States where we're at? What is the breakdown that you're seeing right now? >>Sustainability is becoming such a global agenda and we're seeing our clients, um, uh, tie this and put this at board level, um, uh, agenda and requirements across the globe. Um, Europe has specific constraints around data sovereignty, right, where they need their data in country, but from a green, a sustainability agenda, we see clients across all our markets, North America, Europe, and our growth markets adopt this. And we have seen case studies in all three markets >>Kisha. I want to bring you back into the conversation. Talk a little bit about how mine up ties into Accenture's cloud first strategy, your Accenture's CEO, Julie Sweet has talked about post COVID leadership requiring every business to become a cloud first business. Tell us a little bit about how this ethos is in Accenture and how you're sort of looking outward with it too. >>So Rebecca mine is the launch pad, uh, to a cloud first transformation for our clients. Uh, Accenture, see you, uh, Julie Sweet, uh, shared the Accenture cloud first and our substantial investment demonstrate our commitment and is delivering data value for our clients when they need it the most. And with the district transformation requiring cloud at scale, you know, we're seeing that in the post COVID leadership, it requires that every business should become a cloud business. And my nap helps them get there by evaluating the cloud landscape, navigating the complexity, modeling architecting and simulating an optimal cloud solution for our clients. And as Justin was sharing a greener cloud, Tristan, talk a little >>Bit more about some of the real life use cases in terms of what are we, what are clients seeing? What are the results? >>Yes, thank you, Rebecca. I would say two key things right around my now the first is the iterative process. Clients don't want to wait, um, until they get started, they want to get started and see what their journey is going to look like. And the second is fundamental acceleration, dependent make, as we talked about, has accelerated the need to move to cloud very quickly. And my nav is there to do that. So how do we do that? First is generating the business cases. Clients need to know in many cases that they have a business case by business case, we talk about the financial benefits, as well as the business outcomes, the green green cloud impact sustainability impacts with minus we can build initial recommendations using a basic understanding of their environment and benchmarks in weeks versus months with indicative value savings in the millions of dollars arranges. >>So for example, very recently, we worked with a global oil and gas company, and in only two weeks, we're able to provide an indicative savings for $27 million over five years. This enabled the client to get started, knowing that there is a business case benefit and then iterate on it. And this iteration is, I would say the second point that is particularly important with my nav that we've seen in bank, the clients, which is, um, any journey starts with an understanding of what is the application landscape and what are we trying to do with those, these initial assessments that used to take six to eight weeks are now taking anywhere from two to four weeks. So we're seeing a 40 to 50% reduction in the initial assessment, which gets clients started in their journey. And then finally we've had discussions with all of the hyperscalers to help partner with Accenture and leverage mine after prepared their detailed business case module as they're going to clients. And as they're accelerating the client's journey, so real results, real acceleration. And is there a journey? Do I have a business case and furthermore accelerating the journey once we are by giving the ability to work in an iterative approach, >>It sounds as though that the company that clients and and employees are sort of saying, this is an amazing time savings look at what I can do here in, in so much in a condensed amount of time, but in terms of getting everyone on board, one of the things we talked about last time we met, uh, Tristin was just how much, uh, how one of the obstacles is getting people to sign on and the new technologies and new platforms. Those are often the obstacles and struggles that companies face. Have you found that at all? Or what is sort of the feedback that you're getting from? >>Yeah. Sorry. Yes. We clearly, there are always obstacles to a con journey. If there weren't obstacles, all our clients would be already fully in the cloud. What man I gives the ability is to navigate through those, to start quickly. And then as we identify obstacles, we can simulate what things are going to look like. We can continue with certain parts of the journey while we deal with that obstacle. And it's a fundamental accelerator. Whereas in the past one, obstacle would prevent a class from starting. We can now start to address the obstacles one at a time while continuing and accelerating the contrary. That is the fundamental difference. Kishor I want to give you the final word here. Tell us a little bit about what is next for Accenture might have and what we'll be discussing next year at the Accenture executive summit >>Sort of echo, we are continuously evolving with our client needs and reinventing, reinventing for the future. For my advisor, our plan is to help our clients reduce carbon footprint and again, migrate to a green cloud. Uh, and additionally, we're looking at, you know, two capabilities, uh, which include sovereign cloud advisor, uh, with clients, especially in, in Europe and others are under pressure to meet stringent data norms that Kristen was talking about. And the sovereign cloud advisor health organization to create an architecture cloud architecture that complies with the green. Uh, I would say the data sound-bitey norms that is out there. The other element is around data to cloud. We are seeing massive migration, uh, for, uh, for a lot of the data to cloud. And there's a lot of migration hurdles that come within that. Uh, we have expanded mine app to support assessment capabilities, uh, for, uh, assessing applications, infrastructure, but also covering the entire state, including data and the code level to determine the right cloud solution. So we are, we are pushing the boundaries on what might have can do with mine. And we have created the ability to take the guesswork out of cloud, navigate the complexity. We are rolling risks costs, and we are achieving clients strategy, business objectives, while building a sustainable lots with being cloud, >>Any platform that can take some of the guesswork out of the future. I'm I'm on board with. Thank you so much, Kristin and Kishore. This has been a great conversation. Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you, Rebecca. Stay tuned for more of the cubes coverage of the Accenture executive summit. I'm Rebecca Knight. >>Yeah, Yeah.

(electronic music) >> Welcome back to London everybody, this is Dave Vellante with theCUBE, the leader in tech coverage. We're here with a special session in London, we've been following the career of Teresa Carlson around, we asked, "hey, can we come to London to your headquarters there and interview some of the leaders and some of the startups and innovators both in public sector and commercial?" Andy Isherwood is here, he's the managing director of AWS EMEA. Andy, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Dave, great to be here, thank you very much for your time. >> So you're about a year in, so that's plenty of time to get acclimated, what are your impressions of AWS and then we'll get into the market? >> Yeah, so it's nearly a year and a half actually, so time definitely goes pretty quickly. So I'd say it's pretty different, I'd say probably a couple of things kind of jump out at me. One is, I think we just have a startup mentality in everything we do. So, y'know, if you think about everything we do kind of works back from the customer and we really feel like a kind of startup at heart. And we always say, y'know, within the organization, we should also make it feel like day one. If we get to day two, y'know, the game's over. So we always try and make day one something that's kind of relevant in what we're doing. I think the second thing is customer obsession. I think we are truly customer obsessed. And you could say that most organizations actually say, y'know, they're customer obsessed. I'd say we're truly customer obsessed in everything we do so if you think about our re:Invent program, if you think about, y'know, London, the summit coming up, what you will notice is that there will be customers everywhere, speaking about their experiences and that's really important. So we start with the customer and we always work back. So super important that we never forget that and if you think about how we develop our services, they start with the customer. We don't go out like a product company would and make great products and sell them. We start with the customer, work back, develop the solutions and then let the customer use them, and we iterate on those developments. So I'd say it's pretty different in those two aspects. I'd say the other thing is, it's just hugely relevant. Every customer I go into, and I've seen hundreds of customers in the last year and a half, were hugely relevant. Y'know, we are at the heart of what people want to do and need to do, which makes it important. >> Yeah, so we've been following the career of Andy Jassy for years and we've learnt about the Working Backwards documents, certainly you guys are raising the bar all the time, is sort of the mantra, and yeah, customer centricity, you said it's different, y'know, we do over a hundred events every year and every company out there talks about, "we're focused on the customer", but what makes AWS different? >> I think it's the fact that we truly listen and work back from the customer. So, y'know, we're not a product company, we don't make products with great R&D people and then take them and sell them. We don't obsess about the competition, y'know, we start with the customer, we go and speak to the customer, I think we listen intently to what they need, and we help them look round corners. We help them think about what they need to do for them to be successful, then we work back and probably 90% of what we do is fundamentally developed from those insights that the customer gives us. That's quite different. That really is a working back methodology. >> We run most of our business on AWS and it's true, so I remember we were in a meeting with Andy Jassy one time and he started asking us how we use the platform and what we like about it and don't like about it, and my business partner, John Furrier, he's kind of our CTO, he starts rattling off a number of things that he wanted to see, and Andy pulls out his pad and he starts writing it down, and he was asking questions back and forth, so I think I've seen that in action. One of the things that we've observed is that the adoption of cloud in EMEA and worldwide is pretty consistent and ubiquitous, there's not like a big gap, y'know, you used to see years later, y'know, Europe would maybe adopt a technology and you're seeing actually in many cases, you certainly see it with mobile, you're seeing greater advancements. GDPR, obviously, is a template for privacy, what are you seeing in Europe in terms of some of the major trends of cloud adoption? >> Yeah, I don't think we're seeing major differences, y'know, people talk a lot about, "well, Europe must be two years behind North America" in terms of adoption. We don't see that, I think it is slightly slower in some countries, but I don't think that's kind of common across the piste. So I'd say that the adoption, and if you think back to some customers that were very early adopters, just from an overall global cloud perspective, companies like Shell, for example, y'know they were really early adopters, and those were European-based companies, you could say they're global companies, absolutely, but a lot of what they did was developed in Europe. So I would say that there are countries that are slower to adopt, sometimes driven by the fact that, y'know, security is an issue, or was an issue, that data sovereignty was a bigger issue for some of these countries. But I think all of those are pretty much passed now, so I think we are very quickly kind of catching up with regards to the North American market. So, yeah. >> You mentioned your sort of startup mentality, you mentioned BP. Is it divisions within a large company like that that are startup-like? Is that what you're seeing in terms of the trends? >> No, I'm seeing three patterns. So I'm seeing a pattern which is, y'know, large organizations that go all-in very quickly, typically, y'know, strong leadership, clear vision, need to move quickly. >> Dave Vellante: We're going cloud? >> Yeah, we're going cloud, and we're going all in and that may be, like an NL would be a great example. So NL's a really good example of a top-down approach, very progressive CIO, very clear-thinking CEO that's driven adoption. So I'd say that's pattern one. For me, pattern two is where large organizations create an entity alongside, so almost a separate business. So probably Openbank is probably a good example, part of Santander. And now that organization has about one and a half million customers, obviously started in Spain, but they built a digital bank, clearly tapping into all of the data and customer sets within Santander, but building an experience which is fundamentally different. >> So a skunkworks that really grew and grew? >> Correct, absolutely, a skunkworks that grew, but grew quickly and now it's becoming y'know, a key part of their business. And then the third area, or the third pattern for me is very much a kind of a bottoms-up-led approach. So this is where the developers basically love the services that we have, they use the services, they typically put them on their credit card or AMEX, and then they'll go and use the services and create real value. That value is then seen and it snowballs. So those are kind of the three patterns. I'd say the only outlier to those three patterns is a startup organization, and as you know we've been hugely successful with startups, from, y'know, Pinterest, to Uber, to Careem, to all of these organizations and those organizations it's really important to influence them early on, to make sure that they are aware, and the developer community and the founders are aware of what we can do and we have a number of programs to really help them do that. And they start to use our services, and as those organizations are successful then our business grows alongside them and they, y'know, typically start to use a lot more of the services. >> One of the defining patterns of three, the bottoms-up and four, the start-ups, is they code infrastructure. And, y'know, sometimes the one, the top-down may not have the skillsets and the disciplines and the structure to do that. What are you seeing in terms of that whole programmable infrastructure, the skillsets, programmers essentially coding the infrastructure? Are you seeing CIOs come in and say, "Okay, we need to re-skill", are they bringing in new staff, kind of like number two, the Openbank example might be, y'know, some rockstars that they wanna sort of assign to the skunkwork. How is the number one category dealing with that in terms of their digital transformation? >> Yeah, so y'know, skills is something that is critically important, having the right skills in the right place at the right time. And if you think about Europe it's a big outsourced market, so a lot of those skills were outsourced typically to a lot of the outsourcing companies, as you'd expect. What you're seeing now is organizations, BP's a good example of this, where they're building the innovation capability back into their organizations to make sure that they can create the offerings and create the user experience and create the business models for the new world. And what we're doing is really trying to make sure that we're enabling those organizations to build the skills. So probably at a number of different levels, kind of, y'know, very basic level, or at a very junior level we're kind of influencing people in schools. So, y'know, we're going to be announcing, or announcing at the summit, Guess IT, which is basically a program to train up year eight students. So you start there, and basically you go all the way through to offering training and certification, we have a very big function associated with that to make sure that we're building the right skills for organizations to be successful, and also then working with partners, so all of those training and certification skills, we are working with the partners like the Cloudreaches of this world, but also the DXCs of this world, the Accentures of this world, the Atoses of this world, really to make sure that they have the right skills and capability, not only around our services but around the movement to cloud which is what these organizations need to do to help them innovate. >> And it sounds like your customers wanna learn how to fish, they see that as IP, in a sense, still work with partners, but help them transfer that knowledge and then, y'know, continue to innovate, raise the bars, as we like to say. >> Yes, yes. >> One of the biggest challenges that we see, we talk to customers all the time, is the data challenge. Particularly companies that have been around for a while, they have a lot of technical debt, the data's locked into these hardened silos, obviously I'm sure you see that as a challenge, maybe can you address that, how you're helping customers deal with that challenge and some of the other things that you see cloud addressing? >> Yeah, so y'know, we're really trying to help customers be successful in doing what they do in the timescale that they're setting themselves, and we're helping them be successful. I think from a data point of view, we have a lot of capability, so just to give you a perspective, so since I've been here that year and a half, we started with 125 services. That number of services has gone to 170-odd services now and the innovation that we have within those services has now reached, I think last year, just over the 1900 level so this is iterations on the product. In addition to that, we are continually building new offerings, so if you think about our database strategy, y'know, it's very much to create databases that customers can use in the right way at the right time to do the right job and that's just not one database, it's a number of different databases tuned for specific needs. So we have 14 databases, for example, which are really geared to make customers use the right database at the right time to achieve the right outcome, and we think that's really important, so that's helping people basically use their data in a different way. Obviously our S3, our core storage offering is critically important and hugely successful. We think that as-is, the bedrock for how people think about their data and then they expand and use data lakes, and then underpinning that is making sure that they've got the right databases to support and use that data effectively. >> At the start of this millennium there was like a few databases, databases was a boring marketplace and now it's exploded, as Inova says, dozens a minute it's actually amazing >> Yep >> how much innovation there is occurring in that space. What's your vision for AWS in EMEA? >> Yeah, so you know the overall Amazon vision is to be the world's most customer-obsessed organization, so y'know, here in EMEA, that holds true, so y'know, we start with the customer, we work back, and we wanna make sure that every single customer's happy with what we're doing. I think the second thing is making sure that we are bringing and enabling customers to be innovative. This is really important to us, and it's really important to the customers that we sell to, y'know, there's many insurgents kind of attacking historic business models, it's really important that we give all of the organizations the ability to use technology, whether they're a small company or a big company. And we call that the democratization of IT, we're making things available that were only available to big companies a while back. Now, we have made those services available to pretty much every single company, whether you're a startup in garage, y'know, to a large global organization. So that's really important that we bring and we continue to democratize IT to make it available for the masses, so that they can go out there and innovate and do what ultimately, customers wanna do, y'know, customers want people to innovate. Customers want a different experience. And it's important that we give organizations the tools and the wherewithal to go and do that. >> Well you've been in the industry long enough, and you've worked at product companies prior to this part of your career, and you know the innovation engine used to be Moore's Law. It used to be how fast can I take advantage of that curve, and that's totally changed now. You see a number of things happening, it's get rid of the heavy lifting, so you can focus on your business, that's what cloud does for you, but it's kind of this combination, the cocktail of data, plus machine intelligence, and then the cloud brings scale, it attracts innovative companies. How do you see, first of all do you buy that sort of new cocktail, and how do you see customers applying that innovation engine? >> Yeah, y'know, to answer the first bit first, we definitely see that cocktail. So y'know, the kind of undifferentiated work that was historically done to kind of build servers and make sure that they ran and all of those things, people don't need to do that now. We do that really really effectively. So they can really focus their time, attention, their money, their efforts, their innovation, on creating new experiences, new products, new offerings, for their customers. And they should also work back from customers themselves and work out what's really required. Every single business model, every single offering, needs to be questioned, by every single organization and I think that's what we do. We give the ability to organizations to really think differently about how they use what we have to do the really important things, the things that differentiate them and the things that ultimately give customers a different experience. And that's why I think we've seen so many very successful companies, y'know, from Airbnb, to Pinterest, to Uber. It's giving people a fundamentally different experience and that's what people want, so y'know, we're here to I think give people the ability to create those different experiences. >> Kind of amazing when you go back and you remember the book Does IT Matter? the Havard Business Review famous... It couldn't have been more wrong, at the same time it couldn't have been more right because it really underscored that IT was broken and that preceded 2006 introduction of EC2 and now technology matters more than ever before, every company's a technology company, y'know, you hear Marc Bennioff talk about software's eating the world, it's so true, and so as companies become technology companies, what's your advice to them? I mean obviously you gotta say, "Let us handle the heavy lifting," but what do they have to do to succeed in their digital transformation in your view? >> Yeah, I think it's about changing the mindset and changing the culture of organizations. So I think you can try and instill new processes and new tools on an organization but fundamentally you've gotta change the culture and I think we have to create and enable cultures to be created that are innovative and that requires, I think, a very different mindset. That requires a mindset which is about, "we don't mind if you fail". Y'know, and we'll applaud failure. We in Amazon have had many failures but it's applauded, and if it's applauded, people try again so they'll dust themselves off and they'll move on. You can see this in Israel which is, y'know, very much a startup nation. You can see people start a business, they might fail. Next day, they start a new one. So I think it's having this culture of innovation that allows people to experiment. Experimentation's good, but it's also prone to failure. But, y'know, out of 10 experiments you're gonna get one that's successful. That one could be the make or break for your organization to move forward, and give customers what they actually need, so, y'know, super important. >> Break things, move fast, right? >> Exactly. >> I love it. All right, what should we expect tomorrow at the London summit? We gotta big crowd coming, it's at the ExCeL Center >> Yeah, I think you'll see us continue to innovate, I think you'll see a lot of people, and I think you'll see a lot of customers talk about their experience and share their experience, y'know, these are learning summits, y'know, they're not kind of show and tell, they're very much about explaining what other customers are doing, how people can use the innovation and you'll see lots of experiences from different customers that people will be able to take away and learn from and go back to their offices and do similar things, but probably in a different way. So, y'know there'll be lots of exciting announcements, as you saw from re:Invent, we continue to innovate at a fair clip, as I said, 1950-odd innovations, y'know, significant releases last year, so not surprisingly you'll see a few of those. >> These summits are like mini re:Invents, aren't they? And as you said, Andy, very customer-focused, customer-centric; a lot of customer content. So, Andy Isherwood, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE, it was really great to have you. >> Great >> All right. >> Thank you >> You're welcome Keep it right there everybody, we'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. This is Dave Vellente, you're watching theCUBE.

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from San Jose, it's theCUBE presenting Big Data Silicon Valley brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media and its ecosystem partner. >> What am I going to spend time, next 15, 20 minutes or so, talking about. I'm going to answer three things. Our research has gone deep into where are we now in the big data community. I'm sorry, where is the big data community going, number one. Number two is how are we going to get there and number three, what do the numbers say about where we are? So those are the three things. Now, since when we want to get out of here, I'm going to fly through some of these slides but again there's a lot of opportunity for additional conversation because we're all about having conversations with the community. So let's start here. The first thing to know, when we think about where this is all going is it has to be bound. It's inextricably bound up with digital transformation. Well, what is digital transformation? We've done a lot of research on this. This is Peter Drucker who famously said many years ago, that the purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. That's what a business is. Now what's the difference between a business and a digital business? What's the business between Sears Roebuck, or what's the difference between Sears Roebuck and Amazon? It's data. A digital business uses data as an asset to create and keep customers. It infuses data and operations differently to create more automation. It infuses data and engagement differently to catalyze superior customer experiences. It reformats and restructures its concept of value proposition and product to move from a product to a services orientation. The role of data is the centerpiece of digital business transformation and in many respects that is where we're going, is an understanding and appreciation of that. Now, we think there's going to be a number of strategic capabilities that will have to be built out to make that possible. First off, we have to start thinking about what it means to put data to work. The whole notion of an asset is an asset is something that can be applied to a productive activity. Data can be applied to a productive activity. Now, there's a lot of very interesting implications that we won't get into now, but essentially if we're going to treat data as an asset and think about how we could put more data to work, we're going to focus on three core strategic capabilities about how to make that possible. One, we need to build a capability for collecting and capturing data. That's a lot of what IoT is about. It's a lot of what mobile computing is about. There's going to be a lot of implications around how to ethically and properly do some of those things but a lot of that investment is about finding better and superior ways to capture data. Two, once we are able to capture that data, we have to turn it into value. That in many respects is the essence of big data. How we turn data into data assets, in the form of models, in the form of insights, in the form of any number of other approaches to thinking about how we're going to appropriate value out of data. But it's not just enough to create value out of it and have it sit there as potential value. We have to turn it into kinetic value, to actually do the work with it and that is the last piece. We have to build new capabilities for how we're going to apply data to perform work better, to enact based on data. Now, we've got a concept we're researching now that we call systems of agency, which is the idea that there's going to be a lot of new approaches, new systems with a lot of intelligence and a lot of data that act on behalf of the brand. I'm not going to spend a lot of time going into this but remember that word because I will come back to it. Systems of agency is about how you're going to apply data to perform work with automation, augmentation, and actuation on behalf of your brand. Now, all this is going to happen against the backdrop of cloud optimization. I'll explain what we mean by that right now. Very importantly, increasingly how you create value out of data, how you create future options on the value of your data is going to drive your technology choices. For the first 10 years of the cloud, the presumption is all data was going to go to the cloud. We think that a better way of thinking about it is how is the cloud experience going to come to the data. We've done a lot of research on the cost of data movement and both in terms of the actual out-of-pocket costs but also the potential uncertainty, the transaction costs, etc, associated with data movement. And that's going to be one of the fundamental pieces or elements of how we think about the future of big data and how digital business works, is what we think about data movement. I'll come to that in a bit. But our proposition is increasingly, we're going to see architectural approaches that focus on how we're going to move the cloud experience to the data. We've got this notion of true private cloud which is effectively the idea of the cloud experience on or near premise. That doesn't diminish the role that the cloud's going to play on industry or doesn't say that Amazon and AWS and Microsoft Azure and all the other options are not important. They're crucially important but it means we have to start thinking architecturally about how we're going to create value of data out of data and recognize that means that it, we have to start envisioning how our organization and infrastructure is going to be set up so that we can use data where it needs to be or where it's most valuable and often that's close to the action. So if we think then about that very quickly because it's a backdrop for everything, increasingly we're going to start talking about the idea of where's the workload going to go? Where's workload the dog going to be against this kind of backdrop of the divorce of infrastructure? We believe that and our research pretty strongly shows that a lot of workloads are going to go to true private cloud but a lot of big data is moving into the cloud. This is a prediction we made a few years ago and it's clearly happening and it's underway and we'll get into what some of the implications are. So again, when we say that a lot of the big data elements, a lot of the process of creating value out of data is going to move into the cloud. That doesn't mean that all the systems of agency that build or rely on that data, the inference engines, etc, are also in a public cloud. A lot of them are going to be distributed out to the edge, out to where the action needs to be because of latency and other types of issues. This is a fundamental proposition and I know I'm going fast but hopefully I'm being clear. All right, so let's now get to the second part. This is kind of where the industry's going. Data is an asset. Invest in strategic business capabilities to appreciate, to create those data assets and appreciate the value of those assets and utilize the cloud intelligently to generate and ensure increasing returns. So the next question is well, how will we get there? Now. Right now, not too far from here, Neil Raden for example, was on the show floor yesterday. Neil made the observation that, as he wandered around, he only heard the word big data two or three times. The concept of big data is not dead. Whether the term is or is not is somebody else's decision. Our perspective, very simply, is that the notion is bifurcating. And it's bifurcating because we see different strategic imperatives happening at two different levels. On the one hand, we see infrastructure convergence. The idea that increasingly we have to think about how we're going to bring and federated data together, both from a systems and a data management standpoint. And on the other hand, we're going to see infrastructure or application specialization. That's going to have an enormous implication over next few years, if only because there just aren't enough people in the world that understand how to create value out of data. And there's going to be a lot of effort made over the next few years to find new ways to go from that one expertise group to billions of people, billions of devices, and those are the two dominant considerations in the industry right now. How can we converge data physically, logically, and on the other hand, how can we liberate more of the smarts associated with this very, very powerful approach so that more people get access to the capacities and the capabilities and the assets that are being generated by that process. Now, we've done at Wikibon, probably I don't know, 18, 20, 23 predictions overall on the role that or on the changes being wrought by digital business. Here I'm going to focus on four of them that are central to our big data research. We have many more but I'm just going to focus on four. The first one, when we think about infrastructure convergence we worry about hardware. Here's a prediction about what we think is going to happen with hardware and our observation is we believe pretty strongly that future systems are going to be built on the concept of how do you increase the value of data assets. The technologies are all in place. Simpler parts that it more successfully bind specifically through all its storage and network are going to play together. Why, because increasingly that's the fundamental constraint. How do I make data available to other machines, actors, sources of change, sources of process within the business. Now, we envision or we are watching before our very eyes, new technologies that allow us to take these simple piece parts and weave them together in very powerful fabrics or grids, what we call UniGrid. So that there is almost no latency between data that exists within one of these, call it a molecule, and anywhere else in that grid or lattice. Now again, these are not systems that are going to be here in five years. All the piece parts are here today and there are companies that are actually delivering them. So if you take a look at what Micron has done with Mellanox and other players, that's an example of one of these true private cloud oriented machines in place. The bottom line though is that there is a lot of room left in hardware. A lot of room. This is what cloud suppliers are building and are going to build but increasingly as we think about true private cloud, enterprises are going to look at this as well. So future systems for improving data assets. The capacity of this type of a system with low latency amongst any source of data means that we can now think about data not as... Not as a set of sources that have to be each individually, each having some control over its own data and sinks woven together by middleware and applications but literally as networks of data. As we start to think about distributing data and distributing control and authority associated with that data more broadly across systems, we now have to think about what does it mean to create networks of data? Because that, in many respects, is how these assets are going to be forged. I haven't even mentioned the role that security is going to play in all of this by the way but fundamentally that's how it's likely to play out. We'll have a lot of different sources but from a business standpoint, we're going to think about how those sources come together into a persistent network that can be acted upon by the business. One of the primary drivers of this is what's going on at the edge. Marc Andreessen famously said that software is eating the world, well our observation is great but if software's eating the world, it's eating it at the edge. That's where it's happening. Secondly, that this notion of agency zones. I said I'm going to bring that word up again, how systems act on behalf of a brand or act on behalf of an institution or business is very, very crucial because the time necessary to do the analysis, perform the intelligence, and then take action is a real constraint on how we do things. And our expectation is that we're going to see what we call an agency zone or a hub zone or cloud zone defined by latency and how we architect data to get the data that's necessary to perform that piece of work into the zone where it's required. Now, the implications of this is none of this is going to happen if we don't use AI and related technologies to increasingly automate how we handle infrastructure. And technologies like blockchain have the potential to provide a interesting way of imagining how these networks of data actually get structured. It's not going to solve everything. There's some people that think the blockchain is kind of everything that's necessary but it will be a way of describing a network of data. So we see those technologies on the ascension. But what does it mean for DBMS? In the old way, in the old world, the old way of thinking, the database manager was the control point for data. In the new world these networks of data are going to exist beyond a single DBMS and in fact, over time, that concept of federated data actually has a potential to become real. When we have these networks of data, we're going to need people to act upon them and that's essentially a lot of what the data scientist is going to be doing. Identifying the outcome, identifying the data that's required, and weaving that data through the construction and management, manipulation of pipelines, to ensure that the data as an asset can persist for the purposes of solving a near-term problem or over whatever duration is required to solve a longer term problem. Data scientists remain very important but we're going to see, as a consequence of improvements in tooling capable of doing these things, an increasing recognition that there's a difference between a data scientist and a data scientist. There's going to be a lot of folks that participate in the process of manipulating, maintaining, managing these networks of data to create these business outcomes but we're going to see specialization in those ranks as the tooling is more targeted to specific types of activities. So the data scientist is going to become or will remain an important job, going to lose a little bit of its luster because it's going to become clear what it means. So some data scientists will probably become more, let's call them data network administrators or networks of data administrators. And very importantly as I said earlier, there's just not enough of these people on the planet and so increasingly when we think about again, digital business and the idea of creating data assets. A central challenge is going to be how to create the data or how to turn all the data that can be captured into assets that can be applied to a lot of different uses. There's going to be two fundamental changes to the way we are currently conceiving of the big data world on the horizon. One is well, it's pretty clear that Hadoop can only go so far. Hadoop is a great tool for certain types of activities and certain numbers of individuals. So Hadoop solves problems for an important but relatively limited subset of the world. Some of the new data science platforms that we just talked about, that I just talked about, they're going to help with a degree of specialization that hasn't been available before in the data world, will certainly also help but it also will only take it so far. The real way that we see the work that we're doing, the work that the big data community is performing, turned into sources of value that extend into virtually every single corner of humankind is going to be through these cloud services that are being built and increasingly through packaged applications. A lot of computer science, it still exists between what I just said and when this actually happens. But in many respects, that's the challenge of the vendor ecosystem. How to reconstruct the idea of packaged software, which has historically been built around operations and transaction processing, with a known data model and an unknown or the known process and some technology challenges. How do we reapply that to a world where we now are thinking about, well we don't know exactly what the process is because the data tells us at the moment that the actions going to be taking place. It's a very different way of thinking about application development. A very different way of thinking about what's important in IT and very different way of thinking about how business is going to be constructed and how strategy's going to be established. Packaged applications are going to be crucially important. So in the last few minutes here, what are the numbers? So this is kind of the basis for our analysis. Digital business, role of data is an asset, having an enormous impact in how we think about hardware, how do we think about database management or data management, how we think about the people involved in this, and ultimately how we think about how we're going to deliver all this value out to the world. And the numbers are starting to reflect that. So why don't you think about four numbers as I go through the two or three slides. Hundred and three billion, 68%, 11%, and 2017. So of all the numbers that you will see, those are four of the most important numbers. So let's start by looking at the total market place. This is the growth of the hardware, software, and services pieces of the big data universe. Now we have a fair amount of additional research that breaks all these down into tighter segments, especially in software side. But the key number here is we're talking about big numbers. 103 billion over the course of next 10 years and let's be clear that 103 billion dollars actually has a dramatic amplification on the rest of the computing industry because a lot of the pricing models associated with, especially the software, are tied back to open source which has its own issues. And very importantly, the fact that the services business is going to go through an enormous amount of change over the next five years as service companies better understand how to deliver some of these big data rich applications. The second point to note here is that it was in 2017 that the software market surpassed the hardware market in big data. Again, for first number of years we focused on buying the hardware and the system software associated with that and the software became something that we hope to discover. So I was having a conversation here in theCUBE with the CEO of Transwarp which is a very interesting Chinese big data company and I asked what's the difference between how you do things in China and how we do things in the US? He said well, in the US you guys focus on proof of concept. You spend an enormous amount of time asking, does the hardware work? Does the database software work? Does the data management software work? In China we focus on the outcome. That's what we focus on. Here you have to placate the IT organization to make sure that everybody in IT is comfortable with what's about to happen. In China, were focused on the business people. This is the first year that software is bigger than hardware and it's only going to get bigger and bigger over time. It doesn't mean again, that hardware is dead or hardware is not important. It's going to remain very important but it does mean that the centerpiece of the locus of the industry is moving. Now, when we think about what the market shares look like, it's a very fragmented market. 60%, 68% of the market is still other. This is a highly immature market that's going to go through a number of changes over the next few years. Partly catalyzed by that notion of infrastructure convergence. So in four years our expectation is that, that 68% is going to start going down pretty fast as we see greater consolidation in how some of these numbers come together. Now IBM is the biggest one on the basis of the fact that they operate in all these different segments. They operating the hardware, software, and services segment but especially because they're very strong within the services business. The last one I want to point your attention to is this one. I mentioned earlier on, that our expectation is that the market increasingly is going to move to a packaged application orientation or packaged services orientation as a way of delivering expertise about big data to customers. Splunk is the leading software player right now. Why, because that's the perspective that they've taken. Now, perhaps we're a limited subset. It's perhaps for a limited subset of individuals or markets or of sectors but it takes a packaged application, weaves these technologies together, and applies them to an outcome. And we think this presages more of that kind of activity over the course of the next few years. Oracle, kind of different approach and we'll see how that plays out over the course of the next five years as well. Okay, so that's where the numbers are. Again, a lot more numbers, a lot of people you can talk to. Let me give you some action items. First one, if data was a core asset, how would IT, how would your business be different? Stop and think about that. If it wasn't your buildings that were the asset, it wasn't the machines that were the asset, it wasn't your people by themselves who were the asset, but data was the asset. How would you reinstitutionalize work? That's what every business is starting to ask, even if they don't ask it in the same way. And our advice is, then do it because that's the future of business. Not that data is the only asset but data is a recognized central asset and that's going to have enormous impacts on a lot of things. The second point I want to leave you with, tens of billions of users and I'm including people and devices, are dependent on thousands of data scientists that's an impedance mismatch that cannot be sustained. Packaged apps and these cloud services are going to be the way to bridge that gap. I'd love to tell you that it's all going to be about tools, that we're going to have hundreds of thousands or millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions of data scientists suddenly emerge out of the woodwork. It's not going to happen. The third thing is we think that big businesses, enterprises, have to master what we call the big inflection. The big tech inflection. The first 50 years were about known process and unknown technology. How do I take an accounting package and do I put on a mainframe or a mini computer a client/server or do I do it on the web? Unknown technology. Well increasingly today, all of us have a pretty good idea what the base technology is going to be. Does anybody doubt it's going to be the cloud? We got a pretty good idea what the base technology is going to be. What we don't know is what are the new problems that we can attack, that we can address with data rich approaches to thinking about how we turn those systems into actors on behalf of our business and customers. So I'm a couple minutes over, I apologize. I want to make sure everybody can get over to the keynotes if you want to. Feel free to stay, theCUBE's going to be live at 9:30. If I got that right. So it's actually pretty exciting if anybody wants to see how it works, feel free to stay. Georgia's here, Neil's here, I'm here. I mentioned Greg Terrio, Dave Volante, John Greco, I think I saw Sam Kahane back in the corner. Any questions, come and ask us, we'll be more than happy. Thank you very much for, oh David Volante. >> David: I have a question. >> Yes. >> David: Do you have time? >> Yep. >> David: So you talk about data as a core asset, that if you look at the top five companies by market cap in the US, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. They're data companies, they got data at the core which is kind of what your first bullet here describes. How do you see traditional companies closing that gap where humans, buildings, etc at the core as we enter this machine intelligence era, what's your advice to the traditional companies on how they close that gap? >> All right. So the question was, the most valuable companies in the world are companies that are well down the path of treating data as an asset. How does everybody else get going? Our observation is you go back to what's the value proposition? What actions are most important? what's data is necessary to perform those actions? Can changing the way the data is orchestrated and organized and put together inform or change the cost of performing that work by changing the cost transactions? Can you increase a new service along the same lines and then architect your infrastructure and your business to make sure that the data is near the action in time for the action to be absolute genius to your customer. So it's a relatively simple thought process. That's how Amazon thought, Apple increasingly thinks like that, where they design the experience and they think what data is necessary to deliver that experience. That's a simple approach but it works. Yes, sir. >> Audience Member: With the slide that you had a few slides ago, the market share, the big spenders, and you mentioned that, you asked the question do any of us doubt that cloud is the future? I'm with Snowflake, I don't see many of those large vendors in the cloud and I was wondering if you could speak to what are you seeing in terms of emerging vendors in that space. >> What a great question. So the question was, when you look at the companies that are catalyzing a lot of the change, you don't see a lot of the big companies being at the leadership. And someone from Snowflake just said, well who's going to lead it? That's a big question that has a lot of implications but at this point time it's very clear that the big companies are suffering a bit from the old, from the old, trying to remember what the... RCA syndrome. I think Clay Christensen talked about this. You know, the innovators dilemma. So RCA actually is one of the first creators. They created the transistor and they held a lot of original patents on it. They put that incredible new technology, back in the forties and fifties, under the control of the people who ran the vacuum tube business. When was the last time anybody bought RCA stock? The same problem is existing today. Now, how is that going to play out? Are we going to see a lot of, as we've always seen, a lot of new vendors emerge out of this industry, grow into big vendors with IPO related exits to try to scale their business? Or are we going to see a whole bunch of gobbling up? That's what I'm not clear on but it's pretty clear at this point in time that a lot of the technology, a lot of the science, is being done in smaller places. The moderating feature of that is the services side. Because there's limited groupings of expertise that the companies that today are able to attract that expertise. The Googles, the Facebooks, the AWSs, etc, the Amazons. Are doing so in support of a particular service. IBM and others are trying to attract that talent so they can apply it to customer problems. We'll see over the next few years whether the IBMs and the Accentures and the big service providers are able to attract the kind of talent necessary to diffuse that knowledge into the industry faster. So it's the rate at which that the idea of internet scale computing, the idea of big data being applied to business problems, can diffuse into the marketplace through services. If it can diffuse faster that will have both an accelerating impact for smaller vendors, as it has in the past. But it may also again, have a moderating impact because a lot of that expertise that comes out of IBM, IBM is going to find ways to drive in the product faster than it ever has before. So it's a complicated answer but that's our thinking at this point time. >> Dave: Can I add to that? >> Yeah. (audience member speaking faintly) >> I think that's true now but I think the real question, not to not to argue with Dave but this is part of what we do. The real question is how is that knowledge going to diffuse into the enterprise broadly? Because Airbnb, I doubt is going to get into the business of providing services. (audience member speaking faintly) So I think that the whole concept of community, partnership, ecosystem is going to remain very important as it always has and we'll see how fast those service companies that are dedicated to diffusing knowledge, diffusing knowledge into customer problems actually occurs. Our expectation is that as the tooling gets better, we will see more people be able to present themselves truly as capable of doing this and that will accelerate the process. But the next few years are going to be really turbulent and we'll see which way it actually ends up going. (audience member speaking faintly) >> Audience Member: So I'm with IBM. So I can tell you 100% for sure that we are, I hired literally 50 data scientists in the last three months to go out and do exactly what you're saying. Sit down with clients and help them figure out how to do data science in the enterprise. And so we are in fact scaling it, we're getting people that have done this at Google, Facebook. Not a whole lot of those 'cause we want to do it with people that have actually done it in legacy fortune 500 Companies, right? Because there's a little bit difference there. >> So. >> Audience Member: So we are doing exactly what you said and Microsoft is doing the same thing, Amazon is actually doing the same thing too, Domino Data Lab. >> They don't like they're like talking about it too much but they're doing it. >> Audience Member: But all the big players from the data science platform game are doing this at a different scale. >> Exactly. >> Audience Member: IBM is doing it on a much bigger scale than anyone else. >> And that will have an impact on ultimately how the market gets structured and who the winners end up being. >> Audience Member: To add too, a lot of people thought that, you mentioned the Red Hat of big data, a lot of people thought Cloudera was going to be the Red Hat of big data and if you look at what's happened to their business. (background noise drowns out other sounds) They're getting surrounded by the cloud. We look at like how can we get closer to companies like AWS? That was like a wild card that wasn't expected. >> Yeah but look, at the end of the day Red Hat isn't even the Red Hat of open source. So the bottom line is the thing to focus on is how is this knowledge going to diffuse. That's the thing to focus on. And there's a lot of different ways, some of its going to diffuse through tools. If it diffuses through tools, it increases the likelihood that we'll have more people capable of doing this in IBM and others can hire more. That Citibank can hire more. That's an important participant, that's an important play. So you have something to say about that but it also says we're going to see more of the packaged applications emerge because that facilitates the diffusion. This is not, we haven't figured out, I don't know exactly, nobody knows exactly the exact shape it's going to take. But that's the centerpiece of our big data researches. How is that diffusion process going to happen, accelerate, and what's the resulting structure going to look like? And ultimately how are enterprises going to create value with whatever results. Yes, sir. (audience member asks question faintly) So the recap question is you see more people coming in and promising the moon but being incapable of delivering because they are, partly because the technology is uncertain and for other reasons. So here's our approach. Or here's our observation. We actually did a fair amount of research on this. When you take a look at what we call a approach to doing big data that's optimized for the costs of procurement i.e. let's get the simplest combination of infrastructure, the simplest combination of open-source software, the simplest contracting, to create that proof of concept that you can stand things up very quickly if you have enough expertise but you can create that proof of concept but the process of turning that into actually a production system extends dramatically. And that's one of the reasons why the Clouderas did not take over the universe. There are other reasons. As George Gilbert's research has pointed out, that Cloudera is spending 53, 55 % of their money right now just integrating all the stuff that they bought into the distribution five years ago. Which is a real great recipe for creating customer value. The bottom line though is that if we focus on the time to value in production, we end up taking a different path. We don't focus as much on whether the hardware is going to work and the network is going to work and the storage can be integrated and how it's going to impact the database and what that's going to mean to our Oracle license pool and all the other things that people tend to think about if they're focused on the technology. And so as a consequence, you get better time to value if you focus on bringing the domain expertise, working with the right partner, working with the appropriate approach, to go from what's the value proposition, what actions are associated with a value proposition, what's stated in that area to perform those actions, how can I take transaction costs out of performing those actions, where's the data need to be, what infrastructure do I require? So we have to focus on a time to value not the time to procure. And that's not what a lot of professional IT oriented people are doing because many of them, I hate say it, but many of them still acquire new technology with the promise to helping the business but having a stronger focus on what it's going to mean to their careers. All right, I want to be really respectful to everybody's time. The keynotes start in about five minutes which means you just got time. If you want to stay, feel free to stay. We'll be here, we'll be happy to talk but I think that's pretty much going to close our presentation broadcast. Thank you very much for being an attentive audience and I hope you found this useful. (upbeat music)

(upbeat pop music) >> [Narrator] France! It's theCUBE, covering .NEXT Conference 2017 Europe. Brought to you by Nutanix. (upbeat pop music) >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCube. Happy to welcome to the program, first time guest, gonna help me with some analysis of what's been happening here at the show, Keith Humphreys, who is the managing consultant at euroLAN Research. Thanks so much for joining us. >> My pleasure, Stu. >> Alright, so, Keith, you and I were the only analysts at the Vienna show last year, they've grown he analyst program a little bit as, you know, most of us in the community been watching Nutanix for many years. Tell us a little bit about kind of your background, and what specifically you focus on. >> Okay, so, euroLAN is an industry analyst company focused on helping vendors optimize routes to market in Europe. So, we're a channel analyst company founded in '93, in Paris, France, I was employee number five, and we're still about five consultants, and as I say, we're very vendor focused on channels. >> Yeah, well, it goes without saying, in our industry things are changing a lot, but boy, has the channel been changing massively, you know, everything from the impact of service providers to the public cloud. So, let's start kind of at the macro level a little bit. What are some of the big issues? The channels always, you know, we say they're coin operated. Where do they make money, where are they concerned about, what's exciting them these days? >> I think at a macro level what's really exciting, if you look at the book B four B, it describes the risk having gone from corporate back to the vendor. So, before the enterprise used to buy kit, buy stuff, buy products and have to integrate them themselves, take 18 months before they actually got a working product, but in the mean time the vendors had produced the invoice, maybe not even shipped the kit before they could recognize the revenue, now with as-a-service that's totally changed. The risk is gone from the customer, right they way back to the vendor, it's a fascinating point, and the channel's stuck in between here, trying to be the good guys, still trying to integrate that stuff, still trying to produce those solutions, but only getting paid at an annuity revenue model. It's very different. >> Yeah, you know, I was involved in some of the early convergent infrastructure solutions, and you go to some companies and they're like, "We make tons of money racking and stacking and cabling." We're like, "Come on, that's not huge value add, let's help you add more value, get more involved, be more consultative solution-selling and the like." We've only seen that accelerate with the like of hyper converge infrastructure and solutions-as-a-service as you said where sometimes it's just frictionless, just acquire what I need when I need it. How's the channel doing? >> I think the channel's doing okay, but they're in denial, because of this issue. I think if you look at the way Nutanix started as a box provider and now moving to software, some of the channel is really railing against that, and saying, "We still want to do it this way." They're not learning the lesson that they must move to an annuity model basis, because it's a huge business transformation. We jointly run a workshop with IDC to help system integrators make that transition across, and we've only booked through a half a dozen companies for it. They should be knocking our door down to go through this, but they're finding it really hard. >> Alright, so, how's Nutanix doing in the channel? >> So, I think, interestingly, I think it was Chad Sakac of VMware said that they're having to bring out a proof of concept box for vSphere. So they can put that box into customers, so they can try it out. Interesting for a software vendor you're having to package something, so they've gone in that direction. Where as Nutanix are moving in the other direction, going to software only from the box. That's fascinating, but they're trying to drag that channel with them. Are CDW really happy that they're moving to a software-only model? Maybe not. >> Well, look, we've been discussing this week the software-only model, of course, there's still gotta be an appliance somewhere. So, from a channel standpoint, if tomorrow Nutanix says, "Hey, we're only gonna do software and you're gonna do..." does that have a significant impact on the channel, if they now get it if it's a distributor, or some other piece, how much will that impact the channel? >> I think it's going back to the old model of digital days where the channel partner's going back to integrating stuff. Which I think is great news for them, because they can add value, but have they still got the skills? A lot of them have lost those skills, they've been de-franchised or they've de-franchised themselves. >> Yeah, we'll see how that plays out, as to whether it comes in a similar form factor. I don't expect that they're gonna be getting Lego pieces and putting together, it's still mostly gonna be pieces. How 'bout Nutanix's been going a lot of new directions, trying to expand, software-only isn't just about saying, kinda the base stack and AHV, but Zai and calm. Some of these other pieces. Is the channel ready for these kind of things? Does Nutanix have to then do way more of it and the channel's just for filling it? How does that dynamic work? >> I think Nutanix has to go out and create the market. They've got to make end customers aware of this and then the enterprise customers will be asking their channel partners for it so they'll have to get up to speed. You know it's a push and pull model to channel. You can't just push through the channel. I heard someone from Nutanix describe the channel as an extension of their sales force. It's just not. You know computer center's go out and sell computer centers. They don't sell Nutanix. They sell their customer benefit and Nutanix is a small part of that solution. Every project is software based. It's around SAP. It's around Oracle and there's some infrastructure to run it on. It's a small part. >> It's interesting, I got to interview a service provider that has then become a reseller of Nutanix solutions. We sometimes say that service providers are the new channel. How is that dynamic playing out? >> Well, if I was to want infrastructure in our office I wouldn't phone British Telecom for it. (laughs) >> Fair enough. What about, we're talking about the multi cloud world. I've found that there's some systems integrators out there that are offering Azure services, some are engaging AWS has been really good at building out their channel. How's that in Europe these days? How much is the channel engaged in the public cloud? >> We're seeing Amazon with AWS starting to reach out to the channel at long last, with channel programs, channel recruitment. They're not gonna get rich reselling that but they'll get rich by putting the professional services on there. You know, what should I run on here? Is it good for computers? Is it good for scaling? Is it good for additional workloads? They've gotta add professional services but even as we run our workshops we see exactly the same thing. As they move to as-a-service, it might be profitable to a degree but it takes you four or five years to get there. So you've gotta be adding professional services on top of that revenue to maintain it. >> Well, I have to think there's good opportunity there because while there was this promise the future's gonna be simple. Right? Public cloud, it's nice and easy swipe a credit card and good. There's so many features out there. SaaS, anybody's that's used SaaS providers when they really wanna use it there's requirements there. So is the channel stepping up to fill some of that gap or will the Accentures, those kind of consulting come in and take that revenue? >> I think it depends on the company's size. We profiled in our newsletter a small UK company who get digital transformation. This quarter we profiled Accenture. They're both doing the same things, just addressing different parts of the market. I think the other interesting thing is, you mentioned the difficulty, obviously AWS uses its own terminology and it looks very complicated but what I do like is the Nutanix one click based around machine learning. That's really exciting. Sudheesh Nair was just talking about DeepMind's AlphaGo Zero and how it's learned the Chinese Go Program. It self learned that. No one taught that. It actually self learned that. There was an article on the FT which was trying to say this is frightening. It's not frightening if we're gonna move into an IoT age, if we're gonna move into an autonomous car age. We're gonna need software that's written to Sigma Nine not Sigma Six and I think only machines can do that. We're not very good at writing software. >> Keith, what more should Nutanix be doing? What advice do you give them on what they can do to engage even more with the channel? >> They've gotta ramp up the marketing. They've gotta provide the air cover for the channel. They've gotta go out and create the demand, create the awareness. The channel will follow through on that. >> One last question I have for you, what advice do you give to the channel today? For them to stay profitable, stay relevant, in this ever changing future? >> It's professional services and annuity revenue. Days of selling boxes are gone. They'll always be boxes you say but you know, it's pure commodity now. Maybe they should invest in super micro? >> Alright. Well Keith Humphries, pleasure to talk with you again and thank you much for joining us. >> Thanks Stu >> We'll be back with lots more coverage here from Nutanix .Next in Nice, France. You're watching theCube. (upbeat pop music)

(upbeat synthesized music) >> Announcer: Live from the Javits Center in New York City, it's The Cube, covering Inforum 2017. Brought to you by Infor. >> Welcome back to The Cube's live coverage of Inforum, I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Dave Vellante. We're joined by Pam Murphy, she is the Infor COO, thanks so much for coming on the program-- >> Thank you for having us, thank you. >> So you're hosting for the third time, a special session devoted to WIN, the Women's Infor Network. Tell us a little bit about this session and who are the guests and what we can expect. >> Yes, absolutely, so as you said, it's our third year hosting it. It's a very popular session, it's the only non product session of the entire conference and open to everybody, men and women. We always have a fantastic lineup of speakers and this year is no different. So the way we work it is we do a combination of TED Talks and panel sessions so we've got Tan Lee, who's the founder of Emotiv brain augmentation technology. And then we've got Reshma Saujani who's the founder of Girls Who Code. She's done great stuff in terms of pioneering STEM and getting girls to code. So she's going to talk us through her work, if you will, in training so many girls to code and how she wants girls to adopt, and behaviors she wants them to exhibit in this industry. And then we've got what will be I'm sure a lively panel with Ambassador Susan Rice and Farah Pandith and we're going to be talking about the government's ability to manage the terrorism that we're seeing today and we're going to be talking counter terrorism, we're going to be talking about what lessons are we learning from what's going on in Europe and what is the role in technology in helping curb terrorism. So that's going to be an exciting and interesting session. And then we're going to have Dr. Jill Biden come in and hopefully lighten up the session and talk about resilience and leadership today, so very exciting, very much looking forward to it. It's 11 AM tomorrow morning in the Special Events Hall, and hopefully it will be good if not better than the last two years. >> Rebecca: And we're going to have many of those guests on our program >> Yes. >> after that too. So why, what is the purpose of it? It sounds like a great session and it's going to be enlightening and exciting to hear all those women talk, but what is your goal in gathering this group of women? >> I guess I should go back to the founding of WIN. So I started WIN probably over four or five years ago at this point and its purpose was to just galvanize and bring women together, allow forum in which they could mentor each other and where we could work on the advancement of women within the organization. It's something that as I traveled through the offices, people have been asking me a lot to create that forum, create that environment and so we've got hundreds of WIN chapters around the globe with thousands of women participating. So we have very regular sessions and we talk about topics that are relevant to women and also just about advancing their careers and given that at a forum we have so many thousands and thousands of not only our own Infor WIN members but also customers, we just thought it was a great opportunity to have one of our sessions at Inforum and invite inspiring female speakers to come and talk to us about their experiences, how they got to be where they are, the challenges that they met along the way. So what's interesting is that the only WIN or female aspect of the session is the fact that every speaker on stage is female. Outside of that, that's where the relevance ends in the sense that it really is talking to topics that is applicable to everyone. So that's why it is just a topic and an audience that appeals to everybody, men, female, old, and young. >> So these sessions are always interesting and inspiring. What kind of impact have they had? Can you share with us any results? >> Absolutely, so we have, first of all they're very inspirational for everybody attending and I've had customers, not only our own employees, but I've had customers reach out to me and say that they were inspired by a story and it caused them to take action and change in their life. And before they may have felt something but they heard from somebody else saying that how they overcame it and it caused them to honestly take change within their own lives and their own organizations. So for customers, partners, whoever's attending, it just, to hear from someone else, you often have the perception with these speakers that they have this fantastic upbringing, fantastic education, they're successful because it's a function of that. Well actually that's not often the case. People have had a hard upbringing or they've met a lot of challenges around the way and it's how they overcame those challenges and the resilience that they brought into the mix is what inspires people. So really that's what I would say people get out of it, and often spawning from that, we often end up as well tailoring programs or development techniques which we feel would be of benefit to folks beyond that. So one of our speakers last year prompted a big thought about diversity and how we should be dealing with ways in which we may be dismissive of certain topics or abrasive to people, so it's thought provoking and it inspires action, which is obviously what we want to get out of it. >> We funded a nonprofit initiative last year in partner with another journalism outfit, The GroundTruth, to study women in tech and we presented at the, we had The Cube at the Grace Hopper Conference and some of the things that came out of that, I wanted to comment, chief data officers actually have a disproportionately higher percentage of women, maybe it's 'cause it's such a thankless job and they're (laughing) wiling to take it on. And then we found cyber bullying had a very negative effect on the participation of women in tech which is about 17% of the women. And then of course the salary disparity, one of the areas that we found was most egregious was Cambridge, Mass, now this is supposed to be a progressive, relatively liberal area. >> Our hometown. >> And it was huge, our hometown, very high disparity of low participation of women in tech. Any thoughts on that data and what kind of progress you'd like to see us make as an industry? >> I'm hopeful of the fact that the next generation will look back on where technology is now from the perspective of the low representation of women and that whole diversity factor and look on it as being a non-issue. I'm hopeful in the sense that, I don't think it's going to be as pronounced as we have it now. I think we're doing a far better job of going out to colleges, to institutions, and enabling girls and providing girls with coding courses. So I'm hoping it's not going to be a longterm issue for us. From our perspective, to your point, we look at the various line of businesses and functions within our organization and we see where is the disparity arising and where do we need to focus? And so interestingly enough, if you look at G&A functions or if you look at marketing functions, it's 50/50, right, in terms of representation, but there's definitely certain functions where either the nature of what they're doing or if it's a high travel related function, meaning you're away for long periods of time, there are certainly the areas I think which don't have as equal distribution in terms of men, and for those really, we've been working on creating programs to ease those burdens that may be had, or else promote them positively where it literally is an unconscious bias, if you will. It's a long topic, for sure, that I could go on about for a long period of time but I just think it's constant, looking at unconscious biases, it's looking at ways in which we feel that there's fairness, if you will, into the equation. And a lot of the time I honestly feel that it's not conscious, if you will, and it therefore just needs to be looked at specifically at ways and means in which that could be addressed or tackled. >> So as a successful woman in technology, COO at a major technology company, what advice do you have for that young woman who wants to get into technology but is dispirited by the headlines and by what appears to be a very macho culture where there is vast salary discrepancies? >> Yeah, it's unfortunate that that has come out all too much more frequently and with volume in the last six months for the companies that we're aware of. But I would say, I personally haven't experienced that, and I'm personally of the view that, by the way, I never meant to end up in this industry, so I look back and think how on Earth did I actually get here, but I think you have to be willing to take risks and you have to be wiling to dismiss a lot of what you hear and look on the fact that there is a lot of very successful women, even within Infor. Since we started WIN, we have had a huge increase in the amount of SVPs and VPs within our organization. I think it's something like a 60% increase in terms of who we have. There is so much more women in very, very senior roles now than we've ever had before, so I'm hopeful that it is changing. I hope that some recent coverage and recent events have not, will not create a longterm impact, but I think people just need to look and see with the tech industry booming, with the way in which people are being compensated, that it's a good industry in which you can be very successful and do great things. >> Dave: And cloud helps. >> Yeah. >> It does. >> Yeah. >> There are far more women at application oriented shows than there are infrastructure oriented, 'cause hardware guys are hardware guys. I don't know why, like mechanics, other than Mona Lisa Vito, mostly hardware people. But let's shift gears a little bit and talk about the global alliances. You are running that initiative here. These are folks that we haven't typically seen at Inforum but they're coming out of the wood works, what's going on, what's driving that? >> Yeah first of all we have a fantastic base of existing partners who had great successes in implementing Infor applications for their customers and so but with the growth that we've been seeing, honestly, in our business, over the last number of years, we just need to have more and more delivery capacity to create more choice for our customers as to who they can go to to implement our software. And if you think about the move to the cloud and if you think about digitalization and the fact that every customer is becoming more consumed and obsessed with technology because it's changing their businesses so fundamentally, they do want the option and the choice of having the large global system integrators, digital integrators, that they can go to do massive transformation work and business process re-engineering and program management and change management. And so for us it was important to form good reliances with the Deloittes, the Accentures, the Caps, and the Grant Thorntons in order to provide that larger ecosystem of transformational services that we can offer to our customers. So it's great, they're all platinum sponsors here at Inforum this year and there's over a hundred very senior executives and managing directors from those four. And we're just very excited about the extent and pace to which they're building out Infor practices, so it's great. >> I have to ask you, so don't hate me for saying this, but those guys love to pig out on big complicated ERP implementations that take two and three years. Is that world just going away and it's moving toward more of a digital transformation and a whole new line of thinking and that's why there's a good fit with Infor or is it something else? >> I think they understand and know that the older days of a company spending $100 million on an ERP implementation are gone, that's really not acceptable anymore. It's absolutely not our strategy, as you know from being here at the conference, our strategy is around creating industry specific end to end suites which don't require modifications and which are purpose built for the cloud. And so that is very clear to them and they understand that and are embracing the concept because they realize that cloud is an enabler, it's just another deployment method, but fundamentally it's about helping the customers take advantage of that technology and transform their businesses and to do that, it requires a lot more than software. And so they're changing, our industry is changing. Steve talked to the point of the stage today that the cost of technology is becoming very low and that therefore the permeation of technology in everything we do is going to be so prevalent. So it's understood and for them, it's more about helping our customers get to that digital age and being able to transform their businesses to cope with the changing technology. >> Are you satisfied with the pace? >> Pace of? >> Of the change, of getting people to the cloud. Do you feel there is, is the momentum there? >> Well we've seen huge growth in our sector. We have completely tipped the balances. I would have said, obviously it's been coming, it's like Salesforce.com and companies who basically do certain applications in the cloud and for us, we're different because we have complete end to end suites in the cloud, mission critical applications. And so our business has grown enormously over the course of the last three years and I think now it's mainstream, if you will. And so we're very pleased and happy. We have a lot of customers who have made, obviously we have over 8,400 customers now already there. And the pace is increasing. And it's just a continuous effort for the customers who haven't gone already, helping them understand what they need to do to get there, and that's what we've been doing in spades for the last couple of years. >> Great, well Pam Murphy, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you. >> We really appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Dave Vallente, we will have more from The Cube's coverage of Inforum 2017 just after this. 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>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube covering HPE Discover 2017. Brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. (techno music) >> Welcome back, everyone. We're here live in Las Vegas for theCube's exclusive three days of coverage of HPE Discover 2017. This is SiliconANGLE's flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, and my cohost, Dave Vellante. Partner in crime here. Our next guest is Ana Pinczuk, Senior Vice President, General Manager, HPE Pointnext, the new organization >> Ana: That's correct. Yeah. >> John: Anyways, welcome to theCube. Good to see you again. >> Thank you. Really nice to see you as well. Yeah, excited to be here with you guys. >> Cube alumni also. Part of the Grace Hopper Community as well with women in tech. Great work there. Just want to give you props. >> Ana: Thank you, yeah. >> Shout out there. Okay, so you're in the new job here. You're a seasoned veteran. >> Ana: Yes. >> You know the industry. Your thoughts? I mean, you're coming in fresh. >> Ana: Yeah, I'm coming in fresh. So, first of all, three whole months here, you know. So, it's been kind of a whirlwind since we came onboard. We announced the new brand. So HP Pointnext is the new brand for really our future-facing services organization, right. And we've got this great opportunity, you know? We've got customers that are really undergoing tremendous digital transformation, right, and they need help, and we're the arm of HP that can really help them through that journey. All the way from sort of advice and transform services, professional services, like design and implementation services, and then when we go to operational support services as well, so. >> John: One of the things that Meg Whitman was talking about, I want to get your thoughts and reaction to, is, she said it's a cleaner positioning with HPE now. Because the partner relationships have always been center. We had the Chief Channel Officer on earlier, Denzel. 70 percent of the revenues comes from partners. >> Ana: That's right. >> And so, having Pointnext the way it's structured makes it cleanier. What is she-- Cleaner, for everyone to understand what's happening. What does she mean by that? And give us your perspective. >> Ana: Yeah. Well, I'll give you, you know. Look, before, we had a huge outsourcing business, right. And with the DXC business moving off, we've got the opportunity to really partner with the Accentures, the DeLoyds, the WhitPros, the Tatas of the world, right? We provide mostly technology services, so, to the extent that they go and they help customers with applications and really figuring out their business processes, then we come together with them and then figure out how to translate that business architecture to the technology architecture and then how to do that technology road map for them, right. So, um, it's really positioned us much closer to different kinds of SI's, both sort of the traditional SI's as well as other ecosystem partners. And today, I mean, if you think about mostly every vertical is transforming, right, so. Whether you're in retail or transportation, et cetera. And frankly with DXC, you know, really going off focusing on outsourcing, we're still a huge partner of theirs, you know. They're a customer of ours. But at the same time, it opens up huge opportunities to go after other verticals and other solutions as well. >> Dave: Yeah, it's kind of a strange TAM expansion for the core of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. >> Ana: Yeah, it is. >> You sort of concede the outsourcing business. Okay, we're out of that business. >> Ana: That's right. >> But now you've got so many other partners that really could boost your core business. >> Ana: Yeah. And, you know, um, I mean. Nobody owns advise and transform, right? I mean, nobody owns the whole digital transformation journey. The opportunity there greatly, sort of, outweighs the constraints that we have in that space, right. And so, you know, it's really important for us to go with the Accentures or the Deloyds, other partners, and be able to come with them and provide those solutions to customers. >> John: Ana, I'd like to get your thoughts on the trend and the particular question if it's going to be around the cloud transformation, which is the driver. You got big data, you've got IOTs, you have, obviously you have your hybrid IT solutions here, but, you know, cloud computing in general and big data point to a new set of applications. Dave and I always comment on theCube as we go to all these different events that we're old enough to remember the 80's and 90's. >> Ana: You're not that old. >> The 80's and 90's, the ERP generation. The mini computer was a massive opportunity for service providers. >> Ana: That's right. >> You know you had the big six accounting firms back in the day. Now you have thousands of partners. That was a big movement. That was a big wave. >> Ana: It is. >> This wave is almost bigger than that, but different. >> Ana: It is. >> What's different now as the new apps come out? >> Ana: Yeah. >> John: And we've seen this movie before in a way. >> Ana: Yes. >> John: With the ERPs of the world and CRMs. >> Ana: Yeah. >> John: What's different now with cloud that makes this bigger, and what's your thoughts on this opportunity? >> Ana: Well, I think, two things for me. One is-- In fact, over the last couple of days, we've been talking to a lot of customers about not what I would consider traditional, but even S, you know, SAP HANA, right? And those migrations. Those are like, a little bit like, still the old wave, you know. With new, sort of a new flavor to it as people go more into big data and analytics as well. But the biggest thing is that, you know, think about the world of the future. Everything's going to communicate with everything else. Everything is going to compute, right? And so, you know, the patterns of communications are really shifting, you know, as well. It used to be very data center, centric, and those traditional models, or the old IBM models of the 80's, right. >> John: Big iron, all the-- >> Ana: Big iron, everything in the servers and the data center. But think about, you know, your toaster talking to you, you know. Think about smart meters out there. Think about your car being really a roaming, you know, office and entertainment center, right. >> John: Yeah. >> So I think that's what's really shifting. It's just the magnitude of data that's going to be, you know, computable, in a sense, at the edge, and that's really helping us think about whole new different applications that we didn't have, you know, back then. >> Dave: So cloud is obviously this huge megatrend, and everybody, I think Hewlett-Packard Enterprises included, is trying to substantially mimic the cloud experience on-prim, create hybrid. And it seems like you're having a great deal of success there, at least early, some early wins. The other component of that is the business model side of things. >> Ana: Yes. >> The whole as a service piece of it. >> Ana: Yes. >> And as you transition into that, you know, cloud-like world, what happens on the business model side? I mean, we've heard a lot about flex capacity and things of that nature, but it feels like the services business can transform dramatically into that model. I wonder if you can comment on that. >> No, it's true. I mean, just think about it. In the more traditional world, we've been mostly a product company with sort of services attached. You know, you sell a hardware box and you attach support to it and some installation services. We're completely shifting the model, right? So we're really services led and hardware attached, right, of the model going forward. And, so that's one thing that's shifting. And then the business models are really outcome based. You know, so, I'll give you an example. You know, I was talking to a customer, in fact, earlier this morning, about providing retail store as a service. That's a very different model, right. That means that we're looking at the whole architecture for them. We're looking at what value constitutes in a retail store. You know, how do they make money. What that outcome should be, right. Then how do you deliver that as a solution on a per, you know, something basis. Per outcome basis. So completely shifts the way that we think about delivering services. >> Dave: And so has it become services as a service? I mean do you go to-- >> Ana: I call it-- Yeah, I mean, I've been calling it, you know, experience as a service, and it is service as a service or outcome as a service. I mean, in a sense what the customer cares about is the value that they get out of that thing that you delivered to them, right. And so-- >> John: It's important to them. >> It's important to them. >> John: It's their business. >> I think, that's their business. That's what they care about. You know, I'll give you an example. Data is so important. Backing up your data is really important. But what the customer cares about is not whether they have back up, but it's whether the back up actually worked, you know. >> Dave: And can I recover. >> Ana: And can I recover from it, restore it, right. And so, when you think about that, you know, experience as a service. The experience is, gees, you know, that I get my data backed up and can I restore or recover from it. And then that becomes the outcome that they want. >> John: Which is the digital transformation. I mean, digital transformation has been around for awhile. It's been that buzzword. Certainly center stage here. But you're talking about business transformation. You're talking about really changing how companies are doing business. >> Ana: That's correct. >> John: Chop line revenue driven by digital services or digital apps or-- >> That's right, that's right. >> John: Interfaces, experiences. Whether it's feeling good or actually delivering something. >> Ana: That's right. And, you know, what's happening. I mean, think about the retail store of the future, right. I mean, you know, you have, you have a teenage daughter or a teenage son as I have. You know, you want to make it really interesting for them to go into a store and have a different kind of experience, right? And so, you know, location based services, all these, all these things that you can enable in terms of, you know, helping them buy new things or getting, you know, I don't know, some sort of discount when they go into the store. Or really seeing what it looks like when it's on. You know, those are the experiences of the future that are going to make that retailer relevant, you know, especially moving on. >> John: Well, we're going to have my daughter-- She's down in the front desk. She's interning for us. She's a Berkeley student. Say hi to her. She's going to come in and tell us about what she thinks of HPE as a youngster. >> Ana: Oh, good. >> John: But more importantly, this is a big trend. I mean, we're seeing-- I want to talk about the women in tech piece of what you're involved in because, you know, we were having a conversation at dinner two nights ago that, you know, people consume technology, whether they're the end user, and that word to even exist. End user, or consumer. >> Ana: That's right. >> End user isn't even a word anymore. >> Ana: Isn't that, yeah-- Who is that? >> John: Who do we call end user? >> Ana: I know. Or end thing. >> John: But people who are-- >> Ana: In the future. >> We're all connected, right? >> Ana: That's right. >> So, so this makes up this-- 50 percent of the population's women. >> Ana: That's right. >> And they're not making the products as much, so the percentage of women in tech is a big issue. I know you're, you're involved with Grace Hopper. >> Ana: Yes. >> Your thoughts on women in tech, because we need more women building products or being involved in the design or something. >> Ana: Yeah, yeah. It's a great, as you know, a great passion area for me. And we've got about-- You know, if you think about computing, we've got about 17 percent or 18 percent of the graduates come out in computer science, right. But if you think about technology in general, you know, because everything is going to be digital, because everything is going to compute, you now have, for example, women that are going into tech that have, sort of, a real different variety of backgrounds, right? I mean, they could be designers, because your fabrics are going to be, sort of, lit up with, you know, with sensor technologies. Your knees will be, you know, will have capabilities that are computational. You know, so. What we're seeing is the opportunity to open up the space for women because some of the things that are out there that are going to be technology are going to be much more interesting generally to, to women. >> John: So if I get this right, you're saying is that it's, "Okay, we want more people, more women in software." Except that's not the restriction. It should be computer science, now, is broader. >> Ana: That's right. >> John: And in analytics, I mean, we see a lot of women who are crushing it and being great data scientists. >> Ana: That's right. >> Bring some creativity to it or expertise. >> Dave: In that stat, you said 17 percent with a degree and a small, a much smaller percentage actually enter the technology field, correct? >> Yeah, you know, yeah. What happens, I mean, especially, we get about 17 to 22 percent or so that enter the technology field, but then many of them don't stay. You know, especially those, you know-- There's attrition as you go up the, up the chain as well. >> Okay, so maybe this new dynamic >> Ana: Yeah. >> Changes that. >> Ana: Yeah, well, I mean, I think the kinds of degrees that people are getting. You know, every degree will have a technology aspect to it, right? You're in textiles or you're in, you know, design. >> John: Healthcare. Science, everywhere. >> Or you're in healthcare. And, you're in-- Yeah, you know, you're a doctor, you're a lawyer. Every degree will have an aspect of tech, that means, frankly, that we as a tech industry have to open up the kinds of people that we attract, right? We've got to look for, not just computer science people, but people that understand business processes. You know, people that understand industry verticals, because digital's going to all these different, sort of, you know, places. >> John: And you're an inspiration. Thanks for all that work. And we agree. Science is everywhere now. >> Ana: Yeah, that's right. >> And whether it's block chain or some sort of medical breakthrough, >> Ana: That's right. >> You don't have to be a hardcore programmer. >> Ana: That's right, that's right. >> Ana, thanks so much for coming on theCube. Really appreciate you sharing your insight. >> Thank you. Thanks for having me. >> John: Congratulations on the new opportunity. >> Yeah, appreciate it. >> John: And Pointnext is, points to what's next. >> The place to be. That's right. As I try to tell people. (laughter) >> John: It's like dabbing and pointing at the same time. Thanks so much, really appreciate it. >> Ana: Thank you so much. >> John: I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante, live coverage of HPE Discover 2017. Our 7th year covering HP Discover, now HPE Discover in it's 2nd year. Be right back with more live coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)

>>The cube at big data SV 2014 is brought to you by headline sponsors. When disco we make Hadoop invincible and Aptean accelerating big data, 2.0, >>Okay. We're back here, live in Silicon valley. This is big data. It has to be, this is Silicon England, Wiki bonds, the cube coverage of big data in Silicon valley and all around the world covering the strata conference. All the latest news analysis here in Silicon valley, the cube was our flagship program about the events extract the signal from noise. I'm John furrier, the founders of looking angle. So my co-host and co-founder of Wiki bond.org, Dave Volante, uh, George Matthew CEO, altruist on the cube again, back from big data NYC just a few months ago. Um, our two events, um, welcome back. Great to be here. So, um, what fruit is dropped into the blend or the change, the colors of the big data space this this time. So we were in new Yorkers. We saw what happened there. A lot of talk about financial services, you know, big business, Silicon valley Kool-Aid is more about innovation. Partnerships are being formed, channel expansion. Obviously the market's hot growth is still basing. Valuations are high. What's your take on the current state of the market? >>Yeah. Great question. So John, when we see this market today, I remember even a few years ago when I first visited the cave, particularly when it came to a deep world and strata a few years back, it was amazing that we talked about this early innings of a ballgame, right? We said it was like, man, we're probably in the second or third inning of this ball game. And what has progressed particularly this last few years has been how much the actual productionization, the actual industrialization of this activity, particularly from a big data analytics standpoint has merged. And that's amazing, right? And in a short span, two, three years, we're talking about technologies and capabilities that were kind of considered things that you play with. And now these are things that are keeping the lights on and running, you know, major portions of how better decision-making and analytics are done inside of organizations. So I think that industrialization is a big shift forward. In fact, if you've listened to guys like Narendra Mulani who runs most of analytics at Accenture, he'll actually highlight that as one of the key elements of how not only the transformation is occurring among organizations, but even the people that are servicing a large companies today are going through this big shift. And we're right in the middle of it. >>We saw, you mentioned a censure. We look at CSC, but service mesh and the cloud side, you seeing the consulting firms really seeing build-out mandates, not just POC, like let's go and lock down now for the vendors. That means is people looking for reference accounts right now? So to me, I'm kind of seeing the tea leaves say, okay, who's going to knock down the reference accounts and what is that going to look like? You know, how do you go in and say, I'm going to tune up this database against SAP or this against that incumbent legacy vendor with this new scale-out, all these things are on in play. So we're seeing that, that focus of okay, tire kicking is over real growth, real, real referenceable deployments, not, not like a, you know, POC on steroids, like full on game-changing deployments. Do you see that? And, and if you do, what versions of that do you seeing happening and what ending of that is that like the first pitch of the sixth inning? Uh, w what do you, how would you benchmark that? >>Yeah, so I, I would say we're, we're definitely in the fourth or fifth inning of a non ballgame now. And, and there's innings. What we're seeing is I describe this as a new analytic stack that's emerged, right? And that started years ago when particularly the major Hadoop distro vendors started to rethink how data management was effectively being delivered. And once that data management layer started to be re thought, particularly in terms of, you know, what the schema was on read what the ability to do MPP and scale-out was in terms of how much cheaper it is to bring storage and compute closer to data. What's now coming above that stack is, you know, how do I blend data? How do I be able to give solutions to data analysts who can make better decisions off of what's being stored inside of that petabyte scale infrastructure? So we're seeing this new stack emerge where, you know, Cloudera Hortonworks map are kind of that underpinning underlying infrastructure where now our based analytics that revolution provides Altrix for data blending for analytic work, that's in the hands of data analysts, Tableau for visual analysis and dashboarding. Those are basically the solutions that are moving forward as a capability that are package and product. >>Is that the game-changing feature right now, do you think that integration of the stack, or is that the big, game-changer this sheet, >>That's the hardening that's happening as we speak right now, if you think about the industrialization of big data analytics that, you know, as I think of it as the fourth or fifth inning of the ballgame, that hardening that ability to take solutions that either, you know, the Accentures, the KPMGs, the Deloitte of the world deliver to their clients, but also how people build stuff internally, right? They have much better solutions that work out of the box, as opposed to fumbling with, you know, things that aren't, you know, stitched as well together because of the bailing wire and bubblegum that was involved for the last few years. >>I got it. I got to ask you, uh, one of the big trends you saw in certainly in the tech world, you mentioned stacks, and that's the success of Amazon, the cloud. You're seeing integrated stacks being a key part of the, kind of the, kind of the formation of you said hardening of the stack, but the word horizontally scalable is a term that's used in a lot of these open source environments, where you have commodity hardware, you have open source software. So, you know, everything it's horizontally scalable. Now, that's, that's very easy to envision, but thinking about the implementation in an enterprise or a large organization, horizontally scalable is not a no brainer. What's your take on that. And how does that hyperscale infrastructure mindset of scale-out scalable, which is a big benefit of the current infrastructure? How does that fit into, into the big day? >>Well, I think it fits extremely well, right? Because when you look at the capabilities of the last, as we describe it stack, we almost think of it as vertical hardware and software that's factually built up, but right now, for anyone who's building scale in this world, it's all about scale-out and really being able to build that stack on a horizontal basis. So if you look at examples of this, right, say for instance, what a cloud era recently announced with their enterprise hub. And so when you look at that capability of the enterprise data hub, a lot of it is about taking what yarn has become as a resource manager. What HDFS has been ACOM as a scale-out storage infrastructure, what the new plugin engines have merged beyond MapReduce as a capability for engines to come into a deep. And that is a very horizontal description of how you can do scale out, particularly for data management. >>When we built a lot of the work that was announced at strata a few years ago, particularly around how the analytics architecture for Galerie, uh, emerged at Altryx. Now we have hundreds of, of apps, thousands of users in that infrastructure. And when we built that out was actually scaling out on Amazon where the worker nodes and the capability for us to manage workload was very horizontal built out. If you look at servers today of any layer of that stack, it is really about that horizontal. Scale-out less so about throwing more hardware, more, uh, you know, high-end infrastructure at it, but more about how commodity hardware can be leveraged and use up and down that stack very easily. So Georgia, >>I asked you a question, so why is analytics so hard for so many companies? Um, and you've been in this big data, we've been talking to you since the beginning, um, and when's it going to get easier? And what are you guys specifically doing? You know, >>So facilitate that. Sure. So a few things that we've seen to date is that a lot of the analytics work that many people do internal and external to organizations is very rote, hand driven coding, right? And I think that's been one of the biggest challenges because the two end points in analytics have been either you hard code stuff that you push into a, you know, a C plus plus or a Java function, and you push it into database, or you're doing lightweight analytics in Excel. And really there needs to be a middle ground where someone can do effective scale-out and have repeatability in what's been done and ease of use. And what's been done that you don't have to necessarily be a programmer and Java programmer in C plus plus to push an analytic function and database. And you certainly don't have to deal with the limitations of Excel today. >>And really that middle ground is what Altryx serves. We look at it as an opportunity for analysts to start work with a very repeatable re reasonable workflow of how they would build their initial constructs around an analytic function that they would want to deploy. And then the scale-out happens because all of the infrastructure works on that analyst behalf, whether that be the infrastructure on Hadoop, would that be the infrastructure of the scale out of how we would publish an analytic function? Would that be how the visualizations would occur inside of a product like Tableau? And so that, I think Dave is one of the biggest things that needs to shift over where you don't have the only options in front of you for analytics is either Excel or hard coding, a bunch of code in C plus plus, or Java and pushing it in database. Yeah. >>And you correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to be building your partnerships and your ecosystem really around driving that solution and, and, and really driving a revolution in the way in which people think about analytics, >>Ease of use. The idea is that ultimately if you can't get data analysts to be able to not only create work, that they can actually self-describe deploy and deliver and deliver success inside of an organization. And scale that out at the petabyte scale information that exists inside of most organizations you fail. And that's the job of folks like ourselves to provide great software. >>Well, you mentioned Tableau, you guys have a strong partnership there, and Christian Chabot, I think has a good vision. And you talked about sort of, you know, the, the, the choices of the spectrum and neither are good. Can you talk a little bit more about that, that, that partnership and the relationship and what you guys are doing together? Yeah. >>Uh, I would say Tableau's our strongest and most strategic partner today. I mean, we were diamond sponsors of their conference. I think I was there at their conference when I was on the cube the time before, and they are diamond sponsors of our conference. So our customers and particular users are one in the same for Tablo. It really becomes a, an experience around how visual analysis and dashboard, and can be very easily delivered by data analysts. And we think of those same users, the same exact people that Tablo works with to be able to do data blending and advanced analytics. And so that's why the two software products, that's why the two companies, that's where our two customer bases are one in the same because of that integrated experience. So, you know, Tableau is basically replacing XL and that's the mission that thereafter. And we feel that anyone who wants to be able to do the first form of data blending, which I would think of as a V lookup in Excel, should look at Altryx as a solution for that one. >>So you mentioned your conference it's inspire, right? It >>Is inspiring was coming up in June, >>June. Yeah. Uh, how many years have you done inspire? >>Inspire is now in its fifth year. And you're gonna bring the >>Cube this year. Yeah. >>That would be great. You guys, yeah, that would be fun. >>You should do it. So talk about the conference a little bit. I don't know much about it, but I mean, I know of it. >>Yeah. It's very centered around business users, particularly data analysts and many organizations that cut across retail, financial services, communications, where companies like Walmart at and T sprint Verizon bring a lot of their underlying data problems, underlying analytic opportunities that they've wrestled with and bring a community together this year. We're expecting somewhere in the neighborhood of 550 600 folks attending. So largely to, uh, figure out how to bring this, this, uh, you know, game forward, really to build out this next rate analytic capability that's emerging for most organizations. And we think that that starts ultimately with data analysts. All right. We think that there are well over two and a half million data analysts that are underserved by the current big data tools that are in this space. And we've just been highly focused on targeting those users. And so far, it's been pretty good at us. >>It's moving, it's obviously moving to the casual user at some levels, but I ended up getting there not soon, but I want to, I want to ask you the role of the cloud and all this, because when you have underneath the hood is a lot of leverage. You mentioned integrates that's when to get your perspective on the data cloud, not data cloud is it's putting data in the cloud, but the role of cloud, the role of dev ops that intersection, but you're seeing dev ops, you know, fueling a lot of that growth, certainly under the hood. Now on the top of the stack, you have the, I guess, this middle layer for lack of a better description, I'm of use old, old metaphor developing. So that's the enablement piece. Ultimately the end game is fully turnkey, data science, personalization, all that's, that's the holy grail. We all know. So how do you see that collision with cloud and the big, the big data? >>Yeah. So cloud is basically become three things for a lot of folks in our space. One is what we talked about, which is scale up and scale out, uh, is something that is much more feasible when you can spin up and spin down infrastructure as needed, particularly on an elastic basis. And so many of us who built our solutions leverage Amazon being one of the most defacto solutions for cloud based deployment, that it just makes it easy to do the scale-out that's necessary. This is the second thing it actually enables us. Uh, and many of our friends and partners to do is to be able to bring a lower cost basis to how infrastructure stood up, right? Because at the end of the day, the challenge for the last generation of analytics and data warehousing that was in this space is your starting conversation is two to $3 million just in infrastructure alone before you even buy software and services. >>And so now if you can rent everything that's involved with the infrastructure and the software is actually working within days, hours of actually starting the effort, as opposed to a 14 month life cycle, it's really compressing the time to success and value that's involved. And so we see almost a similarity to how Salesforce really disrupted the market. 10 years ago, I happened to be at Salesforce when that disruption occurred and the analytics movement that is underway really impacted by cloud. And the ability to scale out in the cloud is really driving an economic basis. That's unheard of with that >>Developer market, that's robust, right? I mean, you have easy kind of turnkey development, right? Tapping >>It is right, because there's a robust, uh, economy that's surrounding the APIs that are now available for cloud services. So it's not even just at the starting point of infrastructure, but there's definite higher level services where all the way to software as industry, >>How much growth. And you'll see in those, in that, as that, that valley of wealth and opportunity that will be created from your costs, not only for the companies involved, but the company's customers, they have top line focus. And then the goal of the movement we've seen with analytics is you seeing the CIO kind of with less of a role, more of the CEO wants to the chief data officer wants most of the top line drivers to be app focused. So you seeing a big shift there. >>Yeah. I mean, one of the, one of the real proponents of the cloud is now the fact that there is an ability for a business analyst business users and the business line to make impacts on how decisions are done faster without the infrastructure underpinnings that were needed inside the four walls in our organization. So the decision maker and the buyer effectively has become to your point, the chief analytics officer, the chief marketing officer, right. Less so that the chief information officer of an organization. And so I think that that is accelerating in a tremendous, uh, pace, right? Because even if you look at the statistics that are out there today, the buying power of the CMO is now outstrip the buying power of the CIO, probably by 1.2 to 1.3 X. Right. And that used to be a whole different calculus that was in front of us before. So I would see that, uh, >>The faster, so yeah, so Natalie just kind of picked this out here real time. So you got it, which we all know, right. I went to the it world for a long time service, little catalog. Self-service, you know, Sarah's already architectures whatever you want to call it, evolve in modern era. That's good. But on the business side, there's still a need for this same kind of cataloguing of tooling platform analytics. So do you agree with that? I mean, do you see that kind of happening that way, where there's still some connection, but it's not a complete dependency. That's kind of what we're kind of rethinking real time you see that happen. >>Yeah. I think it's pretty spot on because when you look at what businesses are doing today, they're selecting software that enables them to be more self-reliant the reason why we have been growing as much among business analysts as we have is we deliver self-reliance software and in some way, uh, that's what tablet does. And so the, the winners in this space are going to be the ones that will really help users get to results faster for self-reliance. And that's, that's really what companies like Altrix Stanford today. >>So I want to ask you a follow up on that CMOs CIO discussion. Um, so given that, that, that CMOs are spending a lot more where's the, who owns the data, is that, is we, we talk, well, I don't know if I asked you this before, but do you see the role of a chief data officer emerging? And is that individual, is that individual part of the marketing organization? Is it part of it? Is it a separate parallel role? What are you, >>One of the things I will tell you is that as I've seen chief analytics and chief data officers emerge, and that is a real category entitled real deal of folks that have real responsibilities in the organization, the one place that's not is in it, which is interesting to see, right? Because oftentimes those individuals are reporting straight to the CEO, uh, or they have very close access to line of business owners, general managers, or the heads of marketing, the heads of sales. So I seeing that shift where wherever that chief data officer is, whether that's reporting to CEOs or line of business managers or general managers of, of, you know, large strategic business units, it's not in the information office, it's not in the CEO's, uh, purview anymore. And that, uh, is kind of telling for how people are thinking about their data, right? Data is becoming much more of an asset and a weapon for how companies grow and build their scale less. So about something that we just have to deal with. >>Yeah. And it's clearly emerging that role in certain industry sectors, you know, clearly financial services, government and healthcare, but slowly, but we have been saying that, >>Yeah, it's going to cross the board. Right. And one of the reasons why I wrote the article at the end of last year, I literally titled it. Uh, analytics is eating the world, is this exact idea, right? Because, uh, you have this, this notion that you no longer are locked down with data and infrastructure kind of holding you back, right? This is now much more in the hands of people who are responsible for making better decisions inside their organizations, using data to drive those decisions. And it doesn't matter the size and shape of the data that it's coming in. >>Yeah. Data is like the F the food that just spilled all over it spilled out from the truck and analytics is on the Pac-Man eating out. Sorry. >>Okay. Final question in this segment is, um, summarize big data SV for us this year, from your perspective, knowing what's going on now, what's the big game changer. What should the folks know who are watching and should take note of which they pay attention to? What's the big story here at this moment. >>There's definite swim lanes that are being created as you can see. I mean, and, and now that the bigger distribution providers, particularly on the Hadoop side of the world have started to call out what they all stand for. Right. You can tell that map are, is definitely about creating a fast, slightly proprietary Hadoop distro for enterprise. You can tell that the folks at cloud era are focusing themselves on enterprise scale and really building out that hub for enterprise scale. And you can tell Horton works is basically embedding, enabling an open source for anyone to be able to take advantage of. And certainly, you know, the previous announcements and some of the recent ones give you an indicator of that. So I see the sense swimlanes forming in that layer. And now what is going to happen is that focus and attention is going to move away from how that layer has evolved into what I would think of as advanced analytics, being able to do the visual analysis and blending of information. That's where the next, uh, you know, battle war turf is going to be in particularly, uh, the strata space. So we're, we're really looking forward to that because it basically puts us in a great position as a company and a market leader in particularly advanced analytics to really serve customers in how this new battleground is emerging. >>Well, we really appreciate you taking the time. You're an awesome guest on the queue biopsy. You know, you have a company that you're running and a great team, and you come and share your great knowledge with our fans and an audience. Appreciate it. Uh, what's next for you this year in the company with some of your goals, let's just share that. >>Yeah. We have a few things that are, we mentioned a person inspired coming up in June. There's a big product release. Most of our product team is actually here and we have a release coming up at the beginning of Q2, which is Altryx nine oh. So that has quite a bit involved in it, including expansion of connectivity, uh, being able to go and introduce a fair degree of modeling capability so that the AR based modeling that we do scales out very well with revolution and Cloudera in mind, as well as being able to package into play analytic apps very quickly from those data analysts in mind. So it's, uh, it's a release. That's been almost a year in the works, and we're very much looking forward to a big launch at the beginning of Q2. >>George, thanks so much. You got inspire coming out. A lot of great success as a growing market, valuations are high, and the good news is this is just the beginning, call it mid innings in the industry, but in the customers, I call the top of the first lot of build-out real deployment, real budgets, real deal, big data. It's going to collide with cloud again, and I'm going to start a load, get a lot of innovation all happening right here. Big data SV all the big data Silicon valley coverage here at the cube. I'm Jennifer with Dave Alonzo. We'll be right back with our next guest. After the short break.