(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to Fal.Con 22. We're here at the ARIA hotel in Las Vegas. We're here in Las Vegas, a lot. Dave Nicholson, Dave Alante. Fal.Con 22, wall to wall coverage, you're watching theCUBE. Anthony Kunya is here. He's the chief information security officer at Mercury Financial. And he's joined by his deputy CISO, Alex Arengo. Welcome, gentlemen. >> Good to see you. >> Thank you very much. Good to be here. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. >> Yeah, so this is a great event. This is our first time being at the, a CrowdStrike customer event. We do a lot of security shows, but this is really intimate. We got a high flying company. Tell us first about, of Mercury Financial. What are you guys all about? >> Oh, that's a fantastic question. Let's leeway into that. So Mercury Financial is a credit card company that serves people who are near prime. So be it some kind of hardship in their life. They had something impacted, be a financial impact, maybe a medical impact, an emergency, something, a death family where somehow their credit was impacted. We give 'em the opportunity through our motto, better credit, better life, to build up that credit score to add livelihood to their ability to be financially stable. >> I mean, I think this is huge because you know, so many people it's like, okay, one strike and you're out. >> Right. >> You know, that's just not right. You got- >> No, not at all. >> You got to give people another chance. And so there's so much talent out there. I think about some of the mistakes I made, Dave, when I was a younger man, but- >> No comment. >> Right. So I heard a stat today that I thought was great. Did you guys see the keynote? >> Yes. >> Of course. >> So in the keynote, the, they did the thing at Black Hat but they said what's XDR and I thought- Anthony] Oh goodness. >> My favorite, and I'm not going to ask you what XDR is. >> Okay, good, thank God. >> But my favorite answer was a holistic approach to endpoint security. And, you know, I think as a CISO you have to take a holistic approach to a security- >> Of course. >> Okay. >> Maybe talk about, a little bit about how you do that. >> Wow, a holistic approach I would say and I could, I'll give you an opportunity to speak as well, but a holistic approach it's people processes in technology. So a holistic approach would be, it isn't one box that you check. It's not a technology that is a silver bullet that fixes anything. Those technologies, those services are implemented by people. So good training, our human firewall, the forefront of implementing those technologies to build those processes and incorporate people and a level of sincerity and integrity that we build. So I feel like a holistic approach is both cyber culture to build the cyber resilience program that we so dearly need. >> And I could spend all day talking about security organizations, SecOps, DevSecOps, data SecOps, et cetera, but, but Alex, how, what is your role as the deputy CISO? How do you compliment what Anthony does? >> I got to bring it all together, right? So technically, what are we putting in place? What are the requirements that these stakeholders have? Their needs, their wants. We all have something that we need and want in our environment as an employee, as a customer, as a stakeholder. How do do we get that to market? How can we get it there quickly? You know, and it's really about finding the partners that can get us there, right? That can leverage us, that can force multiply us. >> Yes. >> You know, give my people more time to get the work done, the good work. >> Right, the hard work, of course. >> So paint a picture. You know, we hear a lot about all the different, the bevy of tools, the, how complicated CISOs tell us all the time, that we just don't have enough talent. We're looking for partners to help us compromise, but paint a picture of your environment and how you guys use CrowdStrike. >> Oh, that's a good one. Do you want to take this one? >> Great one, right? I mean, we leverage CrowdStrike at every way we can. We're a Fal.Con complete customer. So they're an extension of our team. They're an extension of our SOC right? >> Yeah. >> We leverage them for many things. We leverage them to understand the risk in our environment. Where we're at in zero trust. How we can really bring a lot of the new processes that the business wants to market, right? How can we get there as fast as possible? Can we make it secure, right? I'm a Mercury card customer also. So I'm, I have a vested interested in that. And I like to drive that, that's, so it comes down to can you align your holistic approach, or your organizational goals and bring that to a really good security product that is world class? >> And I can add a little bit to that as well. So I look at it as a triangle. So we leverage Fal.Con complete as that first level, tier one triage, people who do and understand the product extremely well, we leverage them quite a bit. We also have a VSOC service that we have this like, consider tier two or the middle of the triangle, by Verse, right? >> Yeah. >> Fantastic boutique security company that just has been working with us year over year, innovation, strategic initiatives, always there to play. And then Alex Arengo, and the threat management team, is our top tier, that's tier three, that's the top of the pyramid. By the time it bubbles up to Alex, that's when the real work happens, everyone's triaging, collecting data, putting together pieces. And then Alex and his teammates, and people that he's trained, fantastic, comes and puts it all together and paints a picture so we can then take that information and describe it in layman's terms, simple terms, to the business, to make them understand the level of risk, what we have to do to get to, and through that attack, or that indication of compromise, et cetera, so that we can remediate it, rectify it. >> Right, it's building that security culture foundation, right? It's getting everyone to buy into that. >> Yeah. >> It's a holistic approach and it's really the best way to do it, right? You get bought in from the stakeholders understand what they need to do, and what the goals of the business are. And it really works really well >> We journey together. >> We build a program together. >> Dave, I think that that cultural aspect is critical. Cause I've said many times, bad user behavior trumps good security every time. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Oh goodness. >> Every time. >> Nicely put, I like that. >> So, I know we're early in the week still, but we did have the keynote. Is there anything that you are hearing, in terms of vision, that peaks your interest specifically, and then also sort of the follow up question is, are you guys kind of like lifeguards who can't ever relax at the beach? >> That's why I have a deputy CISO. Well, nobody can take time off, we have to share this. Of course we do. Most definitely. What would you say would be the next, most innovative thing that were looking for? >> Yeah, what's the next big thing, as far as you're concerned? >> The next biggest thing is definitely building the relationships we have. As we bring in new technologies, we go even more Cloud native. How do we leverage that expertise, that of the partners that we're bringing on board like Zscaler, CrowdStrike, Verse, right? How do we make them a part of the team, and make them perform, bring that world class quality talent across the spectrum, you know, from DevOps to that security analyst, picking up the phone and saying, I'm not really sure what's going on, but there's a culture that's built there where everybody comes to the table to feed, right? We all eat together. >> The ecosystem. >> Yes. >> That is the tooling that we leverage day in and day out. That's how we sleep at night. We have to pick our partners. >> You know, we talked about the ecosystem up front, and you look around, you can see the ecosystem and it's growing. >> Yes. >> And I predict it's going to grow a lot more. >> Yes. >> That's, and it has to, right? I mean, exactly what you're saying is that no one company can do it alone. And we heard, you know, we heard, it is confusing. You hear CrowdStrike's doing Identity, but then they partner with Okta. Right, and they're here out on the floor. So that's what you guys need. Talk a little bit more about the importance of ecosystem and partnerships from your perspective. >> Oh I got a good one for this. So I use the metaphor of having a restaurant. So we run a restaurant really well. We know what we want in the menu. We have a chef, we know how we want to put together, but we need excellent ingredients. You make muffins well. Bring your muffin into the restaurant. That brings and builds that rapport. That I want the menu to be rich and empower people to come in and say, you know, I've never had scallops or octopus before, I hear you guys make it better than anyone else, well, our ingredients are fantastic. Therefore, no matter what we do when we present it, it's perfect, it's palatable. >> Yeah. That's great. You're not making ice cream, but you're serving it. >> I can't, if you ever want to show us. >> We're just converging our bakery, you know? >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, salt, salt is the key. >> We're just working the bakery part out, yeah. >> Okay, I want to ask you about Cloud because you know, in 2010, 2011, when you talk to a financial services firm, Cloud, no, that's an evil word, now everybody's Cloud first. George Kurts talks about how, I mean essentially CrowdStrike is dogmatic. We are Cloud native. We have a Cloud native architecture. I know Gartner has this term CNAP or Cloud native application platform. So what does the Cloud mean to you guys? How does it fit in? What does Cloud native architecture do for you? >> It lets us converge everything we've been talking about. How do we, you know, that's a really big struggle that all security teams are having at, having today. How do I converge threat intelligence? How do I converge the environment that I'm in? How do I converge the threat intel that's coming in, right? All this, you're getting, security teams are constantly on a swivel, right? They're looking left, they're looking right. They're trying to identify what to do first. And you bring in the right partners. >> Yes. >> And you get in, you build the right program. You cement that culture internally. And it really provides dividends. >> You know what I think as well, Dave, is in the past, everyone was more data center based. >> Right. >> The Cloud was like a thing we'd forklift, we'd move over, we were born in the Cloud. So Cloud native Application protection is something that we need and will drive innovation. Will align with our strategic initiatives. We need people to think like the Cloud is what's happening. Super Cloud, some of the things that we spoke about. >> Yeah, so I was at, when we were at reinforced, I had this new mental model emerge, and it sort of hit me in the face. And you tell me, I'd love to talk to practitioners to say, yeah, that makes sense or, no, that's crap. So it seems like the Cloud has become the first line of defense for CISOs. Now you're Cloud first or Cloud native, so, okay. But then now you've got the shared responsibility model. And I don't know if you use multiple Clouds. Do you use multiple Clouds? >> We cannot say. >> Cannot say, okay, let's assume for a second, your, some of your colleagues, CISO colleagues, use multiple Clouds. >> They should, okay, sure. >> Now they've got multiple shared responsibility models. Now you've got also the application development team. They're being asked to be the pivot point to actually execute, they got to secure the platform. They got to secure the containers, their run time. >> Workloads, yes. >> And then you got audit behind you is kind of the last line of defense. So things are shifting. Describe sort of the organizational dynamic that you see, not necessarily specific to Mercury Financial, or that would be cool, but generally in the industry. >> Oh, I would say, I could say this, that having Cloud, multitenancy Cloud or the super Cloud model where we could abstract our services our protection, the different levels of security tooling, being able to abstract and speak a common language where you could run in Azure, GCP or AWS, and still have a common language that you can interpret and leverage between all the tooling would be something I would love to see. >> That's Super Cloud >> A magical, that is that. >> That is a Cloud interpreter essentially. >> I think we use different words, but yes. >> A PAs layer, super PAs layer, sorry to take it too far. >> Yeah, like, I want to be able to abstract it and speak a language that would work in any of the- >> What does that do for you as a technology practitioner? >> Well, imagine if you had to speak three different languages with three different people, get lost in translation. If we could speak a common language across all the different platforms and all the different footprints, it would be easier to define our security posture. Where are we? Are we secure? You might say security groups in AWS, it might be, mean something else, but it's still a level of protection that surrounds the end point, right? Something that would abstract that level would be very fun. Very good for me. >> It's, you know, it's pretty easy to understand your use case for this. When you're talking about here we are, Mercury Financial, you have the most sensitive financial information about people, right? >> Right, absolutely. >> A data breach where all of the information about your customers getting out there on the dark web. Right? Heart attack time. >> Instantly. >> What are some things that people might not think about though, that are going on in your world? What would surprise someone who maybe isn't a security specialist in terms of the things that you're dealing with as far as threats are concerned? >> I'm going to leave that on you. >> Can you think of some examples of things that you could, you know, obviously generic examples. >> Right. >> Yes. >> I'm going to point to the number one and two most common ways that applications and businesses are getting owned right now. And that's misconfigurations on your web app or a vulnerable application or phishing. And those are both very important things, right? A lot of development teams, they want to get things to market as soon as possible. And maybe security's on the back foot. It's about building that culture and to, you know, being Cloud native helps you have a, you can provide different tool sets to your organization that helps you understand that posture and makes you help those business decisions. Are we in a good posture to go forward right now? That's a big question that I think most security organizations need to ask themselves and the need to hold other stakeholders accountable. >> So phishing and the concept of social engineering, still alive and well? >> Oh, goodness. >> Always. >> Everything starts with people. The human firewall has to be front of mind. Security can't be an afterthought or a bolt on, that's something that you think about, well, I guess if I have to meet our compliance, it doesn't work with us. >> Comes back to the culture that you're actually talking about before. >> 100%, yeah, cyber resiliency starts with cyber culture. >> Kevin Mandy has said it today. I, never underestimate the adversary. The adversary- >> Of course. >> Is highly capable, motivated, big ROI and it just keeps getting bigger. The more technology gets embedded into our lives. The more lucrative hacking becomes. >> And more attack vectors. We have more areas that we could be potentially penetrated. >> They have a lot of time. Those threat actors have a lot of time. >> They do have a lot of time, yeah. >> Right. >> Right and to your point, you're constantly on the swivel. Right, you don't have time. >> Right. >> No, we don't. >> So do your responsibilities touch on things like fraud detection as well? >> Yeah, oh, that- >> Is that a silly question? I'm thinking- >> Yeah, no, it really is, so- >> No, not at all. >> Or there isn't segregation between what we would think of as IT and the credit card transaction that fires up a red flag. >> Those are integrated. >> It's definitely important. And in any business, right? Is to, like I mentioned, I use this word a lot converge, right? It's converging that intel, that fraud intelligence and making it into a process where we're reducing the risk and the losses that the business is incurring. >> Yes. >> It's so important, right? That we build that culture within the fraud teams, the operational teams, the, you know really anybody who has a really large stake in whatever the business product is. And, you know, being Cloud native, bringing in the right partners, building that security culture. I mean, that's the biggest one. >> Yeah, we've flown. >> It's last and definitely not least, it is, the culture's where you need to be. >> Absolutely. >> You know, you guys, I'm sure, you know, work with a lot of different vendors, a lot of tools, or sometimes the tools are point tools, they're best to breed. CrowdStrike says it wants to be a generational company. >> Oh, yeah. >> It says this notion of an unstoppable breach is a myth. You guys can't live that way. You have to assume you're going to breach but can CrowdStrike be a generational company? >> I think they've proven themselves. They've been around over a decade now. it's 11 years. They just had their birthday yesterday, right? >> Yeah. >> Or anniversary, the company started? >> Yeah. 11 years, yeah. >> I absolutely, and I also agree to add it a little bit part, from the fraud part. I think CrowdStrike would be an integral piece of the overall solution that we have. It hits so many different aspects and looks at so many different potential attack vectors. I keep using that word, but I think integrating fraud in other parts and other functions of the business will start to see that they can leverage CrowdStrike. That there's tooling within CrowdStrike innovatively, like ahead of the game. And I always like that about CrowdStrike, being way ahead of the game and thinking in front of our adversaries. I think other departments will be like, what tools do you have, how can we use them? This is fantastic, this makes us feel better. We don't have to worry about that. We can focus in on what we're good at and build that best of breed solution. So fraud can focus on fraud and you can leverage the tooling and the infrastructure that we provide them together holistically to build a security program that's beyond reproach. >> Guys, we got to go, great perspectives. Always love having the practitioners on. >> Yeah, thank you. >> I really appreciate your time, thank you. >> Yeah, absolutely, always a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time. >> Anthony, Alex, Dave and Dave will be right back, right after this short break. You're watching theCUBE from Fal.Con 2022 from the ARIA in Las Vegas. >> Cheers my friend. >> Yeah, of course. (cheerful music)

(upbeat music) >> Hi everyone, and welcome back to managing risk across your extended attack service area with Armis Asset Intelligence Platform. I'm John Furrier, your host. We're here with the CISO Perspective. Alex Schuchman, who is the CISO of Colgate-Palmolive Company. Alex, thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having me. >> You know, unified visibility across the enterprise service area is about knowing what you got to protect. You can't protect what you can't see. Tell me more about how you guys are able to centralize your view with network assets with Armis. >> Yeah, I think the most important part of any security program is really visibility. And that's one of the building blocks when you're building a security program. You need to understand what's in your environment, what you can control, what is being introduced new into the environment, and that's really what, any solution that gives you full visibility to your infrastructure, to your environment, to all the assets that are there, that's really one of your bread and butter pieces to your security program. >> What's been the impact on your business? >> You know, I think from an IT point of view, running the security program, you know, our key thing is really enabling the business to do their job better. So if we can give them visibility into all the assets that are available in their individual environments, and we're doing that in an automated fashion with no manual collection, you know, that's yet another thing that they don't have to worry about, and then we're delivering. Because really IT is an enabler for the business. And then they can focus really on what their job is, which is to deliver product. >> Yeah, and a lot of changes in their network. You got infrastructure, you got IOT devices, OT devices. So vulnerability management becomes more important. It's been around for a while, but it's not just IT devices anymore. There are gaps in vulnerability across the OT network. What can you tell us about Colgate's use of Armis' vulnerability management? What can you see now? What couldn't you see before? Can you share your thoughts on this? >> Yeah, I think what's really interesting about the kind of manufacturing environments today is, if you look back a number of years, most of the manufacturing equipment was really disconnected from the internet. It was really running in silos. So it was very easy to protect equipment that isn't internet-connected. You could put a firewall, you could segment it off. And it was really on an island on its own. Nowadays, you have a lot of IOT devices. you have a lot of internet-connected devices, sensors providing information to multiple different suppliers or vendor solutions. And you have to really then open up your ecosystem more, which, of course, means you have to change your security posture, and you really have to embrace if there's a vulnerability with one of those suppliers then how do you mitigate the risk associated to that vulnerability? Armis really helps us get a lot of information so that we can then make a decision with our business teams. >> That whole operational aspect of criticality is huge, on the assets knowing what's key. How has that changed the security workload for you guys? >> You know, for us, I mean, it's all about being efficient. If we can have the visibility across our manufacturing environments, then my team can easily consume that information. You know, if we spend a lot of time trying to digest the information, trying to process it, trying to prioritize it, that really hurts our efficiency as a team or as a function. What we really like is being able to use technology to help us do that work. We're not an IT shop. We're a manufacturing shop, but we're a very technical shop so we like to drive everything through automation and not be a bottleneck for any of the actions that take place. >> You know the old expression, is the juice worth the squeeze? It comes up a lot when people are buying tools around vulnerability management, and point for all this stuff. So SaaS solution is key with no agents to deploy. They have that. Talk about how you operationalize Armis in your environment. How quickly did it achieve time to value? Take us through that consumption of the product, and what was the experience like? >> Yeah, I'll definitely say in the security ecosystem, that's one of the biggest promises you hear across the industry. And when we started with Armis, we started with a very small deployment, and we wanted to make sure if it was really worth the lift, to your point. We implemented the first set of plants very quickly, actually even quicker than we had put in our project plan, which is not typical for implementing complex security solutions. And then we were so successful with that, we expanded to cover more of our manufacturing plants, and we were able to get really true visibility across our entire manufacturing organization in the first year, with the ability to also say that we extended that information, that visibility to our manufacturing organization, and they could also consume it just as easily as we could. >> That's awesome. How many assets did you guys discover? Just curious on the numbers? >> Oh, that's the really interesting part. You know, before we started this project we would've had to do a manual audit of our plants, which is typical in our industry. You know, when we started this project and we put in estimates, we really didn't have a great handle on what we were going to find. And what's really nice about the Armis solution is it's truly giving you full visibility. So you're actually seeing, besides the servers, and the PLCs, and all the equipment that you're familiar with, you're also connecting it to your wireless access points. You're connecting it to see any of those IOT devices as well. And then you're really getting full visibility through all the integrations that they offer. You're amazed how many devices you're actually seeing across your entire ecosystem. >> It's like Google maps for your infrastructure. You know, the street view. You want to look at it. You get the, you know, fake tree in there, whatever, but it gives you the picture. That's key. >> Correct. And with a nice visualization and an easy search engine, similar to your Google analogy, you know, everything is really at your fingertips. If you want to find something, you just go to the search bar, click a couple entries and boom, you get your list of the associated devices or the the associated locations devices. >> Well, Alex, I appreciate your time. I know you're super busy at CSIG a lot of your plate. Thanks for coming on sharing. Appreciate it. >> No problem, John. Thanks for having me. >> Okay. In a moment, Bryan Inman, a sales engineer at Armis will be joining me. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in high tech coverage. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>Hello, Ron. Welcome back to the manage risk across your extended attack service area with Armas asset intelligence platform. I'm Sean furier host we're here at the CSO perspective, Alex Chuck bin, who is the CSO of Colgate Colgate Palm mall of company. Alex, thanks for coming on. >>Thanks for having >>Me, you know, unified visibility across the enterprise surface area is about knowing what you gotta protect. You can't protect what you can't see. Tell me more about how you guys are able to centralize your view with network assets with Armas. >>Yeah, I think the, the most important part of any security program is really visibility. And, and that's one of, kind of the building blocks. When you're building a security program, you need to understand what's in your environment. What's what you control, what is being introduced new into the environment. And that's really what any solution that gives you full visibility to your infrastructure, to your environment, to all the assets that are there, that that's really one of your bread and butter pieces to your security program. >>What's been the impact on your business? >>You know, I, I think from, from an it point of view, running the security program, you know, our key thing is really enabling the business to do their job better. So if we can give them visibility into all the assets that are available in their individual environments, and we're doing that in an automated fashion with no manual collection, you know, that's yet another thing that they don't have to worry about. And then we're delivering because really it is an enabler for the business. And then they can focus really on what their job is, which is to, to deliver product. >>Yeah. And a lot of changes in their network. You got infrastructure, you got OT devices, OT devices. So vulnerability management becomes more important. It's been around for a while, but it's not just it devices anymore. There are gaps in vulnerability across the OT network. What can you tell us about Colgate's use of Armas as vulnerability management? What can you, can you see now what you couldn't you see before? Can you share your thoughts on this? >>Yeah, I, I think what's really interesting about the, the kind of manufacturing environments today is if you look back a number of years, most of the manufacturing equipment was really disconnected from the internet. It was really running in silos. So it was very easy to protect equipment that, that isn't internet connected. You could put a firewall, you could segment it off. And it was, it was really on an island on its own. Nowadays you have a lot of IOT devices. You have a lot of internet connected devices, sensors providing information to multiple different suppliers or vendor solutions. And you have to really then open up your ecosystem more, which of course means you have to change your security posture and you really have to embrace. If there's a vulnerability with one of those suppliers, then how do you mitigate the risk associated to vulnerability? Armas really helps us get a lot of information so that we can then make a decision with our business teams. >>That whole operational aspect of criticality is huge. How on the assets knowing what's what's key? How has that changed your, the, the security workload for you guys? >>Yeah, for us, I mean, it, it's all about being efficient. If we can have the, the visibility across our manufacturing environments, then, then my team can easily consume that information. You know, if we spend a lot of time trying to digest the information, trying to process it, trying to prioritize it, that, that, that really hurts our efficiency as, as a team where as a function, what we really like is being able to use technology to help us do that work. We're, we're not an it shop. We're a manufacturing shop, but we're a very technical shop so that we like to drive everything through automation and not be a bottleneck for any of the, the actions that take place. >>You know, the old expression is the juice worth. The squeeze. It comes up a lot when people are buying tools around vulnerability management and point, all this stuff. So SAS solution is key with no agents to deploy. They have that talk about how you operationalize Armas in your environment, how quickly did it AC achieve time to value, take us through that, that consumption of the product. And, and, and what was the experience like? >>Yeah, I I'll definitely say a in, in the security ecosystem that that's one of the, the biggest promises you hear across the industry. And when, when we started with Armas, we started with a very small deployment and we wanted to make sure if, if it was really worth the lift to your point, we implemented the, the first set of plants very quickly, actually, even quicker than we had put in our project plan, which is, is not typical for implementing complex security solutions. And then we were so successful with that. We expanded to cover more of our manufacturing plants, and we were able to get really true visibility across our entire manufacturing organization in the first year with the ability to also say that we extended that, that information, that visibility to our manufacturing organization, and they could also consume it just as easily as we could. >>That's awesome. How many assets did you guys discover? Just curious on the numbers? >>Oh, that, that's the really interesting part, you know, before we started this project, we would've had to do a, a manual audit of, of our plants, which is typical in, in our industry. You know, when, when we started this project and, and we put in estimates, we really, really didn't have a great handle on what we were gonna find. And what's really nice about the Arma solution is it it's truly giving you full visibility. So you're actually seeing, besides the servers and the PLCs and all the equipment that you're familiar with, you're also connecting it to your wireless access points. You're connecting it to see any of those IOT devices as well. And then you're really getting full visibility through all the integrations that they offer. You're amazed how many devices you're actually seeing across your entire ecosystem. >>It's like Google maps for your infrastructure. You get little street view. You wanna look at it, you get the, you know, fake tree in there, whatever, but it gives you the picture that's key, >>Correct. And with a nice visualization and an easy search engine, similar to your, your Google analogy, you know, everything is, is, is really at your fingertips. If you wanna find something, you just go to the search bar, click a couple entries and, and boom, you get your, your list of the associated devices or the, the associated locations devices. >>Well, I appreciate your time. I know you're super busy at CSIG a lot of your plate. Thanks for coming on sharing. Appreciate it. >>No problem, John. Thanks for having me. >>Okay. In a moment, Brian Inman, a sales engineer at Armas will be joining me. You're watching the cube, the leader in high tech coverage. Thanks for watching.

>>Hello, and welcome to the cube conversation here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John furier host of the cube. We got a great guest, a chief information security officer CISO, Alex Shukman who's with Colgate Paul mall of company, Alex. Thanks for coming on this cube conversation. >>Thanks for having me, >>John. So fresh off the heels of RSA in San Francisco was quite the spectacle people back in person. Um, a lot of great conversations, kind of the old conversations, moving to the new, uh, really good to see, but CISO, the CISO agenda was clear on everyone's mind, more attacks, no surface area. Perimeter's dead. You got cloud native shift left, SBOs open sourced, supply chain and technology. Uh, software's now open source. How do you deal with that? A lot of complicated issues all through the prism of constantly being hacked with ransomware, everything else going on, you're in the middle of it. You gotta protect manufacturing assets, people, assets, intellectual property, you're in the middle of it. What's, what's the view. What's your current scope, the problem that you're dealing with every day. >>Yeah, it's really interesting world we live in today. Um, and, and definitely, uh, you know, the key topics were jumping around in RSA. Um, you know, everyone seems to be really trying to understand the, the environment better. And, you know, I, I think in the past we saw a lot of attacks against financial sector, a a lot of, of tax against critical infrastructure, but now many of us in the private sector, uh, especially in the non-critical manufacturing areas, you know, we're seeing the same thing that those industries have seen for many years. And so the criminals are getting, you know, less picky about their targets and, and they're targeting, uh, publicly traded companies, as much as they're targeting critical infrastructure. They're not as, uh, picky as they used to be. >>Yeah. You know, you see healthcare, financial services, uh, manufacturing, um, all there, intellectual, property's a big one, but you have, you know, now as you guys have your business, you're dealing with a global, um, borderless environment. You know, that's a big thing. You also have service providers probably work with. So you gotta have the business operations run modern in a modern way at the same time, protect in the modern way. What is the top agenda item for you in your sector, in, in manufacturing, in this area? What's the main high level, um, important task that you usually face every day? >>Yeah. When we talk to a lot of our, our peer companies or peers in the security industry, uh, especially in, in, at RSA, you know, a lot of 'em are very focused on their, their us business, a as well as you know, how to protect themselves. You know, I think one of the things that's really interesting about FGI Pala is that we are a global company and we really do have operations everywhere, uh, both from an, an office presence, a business presence, as well as manufacturing. So, you know, everything that, that those companies have to deal with who are primarily us based, and maybe they're aligning with some us intelligence, uh, we have to, to really incorporate global threats into our security program. Uh, and, and I think that's one of the really interesting things about Colgate, especially for people, uh, maybe who are familiar with our products, cuz they grew up using them. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, uh, you know, we have products, uh, all over the world and depending on which area you're in, you know, we are the one security team who's responsible for protecting the entire Colgate world. >>How has the pandemic pulled forward issues or highlighted more necessity around certain areas? Obviously the work from home thing is pretty obvious for many people and who would've thought you'd have to provision a hundred percent VPNs or whatever endpoint protection. Um, what, how has that affected you, your, your area, your company and your sector, um, how has the pandemic impacted your security? >>Yeah, and I think this is a really interesting topic. You've I I've heard many other people, uh, talk about their response to the COVID 19 pandemic over the last few years. Um, you know, I, I think the, the, the best way to answer it from, from my personal perspective is if, if you were prepared for remote work or you were prepared for a partially remote workforce, then you really could have been very prepared for the pandemic. So even prior to the pandemic, you had people traveling on business and you needed to provide system access, but in a secure way, you had people doing short term assignments, you had a remote sales force and you had a number of different, especially being a global company, uh, people working out of an office, that's not their traditional office. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. If, if you look at all the security prepared, preparedness that you need to do to enable all that, it's not that much different than the pandemic, except that it's really on steroids and it's gone a hundred times further. >>It makes everyone work harder. Yeah. You have to prepare for the a hundred percent scenario, not, you know, not some, uh, um, estimate, um, good, good call out. And the other thing too, is that there's also these, these markets where it gets pulled forward, but then pulls back when the pandemic is over. Have you seen any of that as we kind of come into our third year of, I guess, hybrid being steady state, what has kind of gone away, fell off the plate? What's been, what's the steady state. How do you, have you seen anything kind of go back? >>Yeah, I, I think one of the things that kind of seems to ping pong back and forth is, is our ability to really rely on suppliers to, to deliver it equipment. So, you know, being a, a global company we're, we have employees all over the world, we have it infrastructure that we're supporting across the globe. And, and as you see, different countries go into lockdowns, as you see different suppliers faced with, with different pressures, you know, that seems to be something that kind of ebbs and flows over the last few years, uh, being able to get laptops, being able to get multiple devices, being able to get communications equipment. So, um, you know, I think some of those industries are still trying to evolve, uh, post pandemic. Right. >>You know, I always, I always like to ask the question privately, but I won't do it on camera, how much budget you have and how much you spend on cyber. Um, but you know, generally speaking, I think it's pretty safe to say the number's going up and up, um, cuz of the threats and you got more vectors coming in, but on the question of what tools and platforms work best for you, what are you looking for? What works best from your perspective, as you evaluate new things, right? You gotta look at the new, then you gotta keep up with the state of the art to, to be ahead of the bad guys and obvious you take risk management very seriously, as well as prepare. Right. So what are some of the tools that work for you? What do you see out there that that's getting your attention? >>Yeah, you know, I, I look at a lot of different vendor solutions. I think, uh, that's pretty prevalent in our industry. I look for solutions from large names, suppliers that have been around for a number of years, but I also like to, to look at startup companies who are really trying to innovate and, and make a solution, that number one is easy to implement. And number two is, is easy to keep working. If, if we're spending more time keeping a solution working than we are using the solution. I think that's one of the pain points that than other security, uh, programs are, are fighting with. You know, we try to really avoid those types of solutions, put something in, make sure that it works well so that we can really focus on getting the value out of the solution versus trying to keep it running. >>You know, the old SAS equation, helping the enterprise get better at the old enterprise playbook, which was how do you solve complexity by adding more complexity and, you know, lock in or, you know, <laugh> more costs, hidden costs under the water, so to speak or the shark fan or the iceberg, uh, cost of ownership. I mean, so it's a time to value shift, um, cuz your time's valuable and you've got staff and the hiring's not easy. This is a huge point. >>Yeah. We're a manufacturing organization. Obviously our, our goal as a company is to produce, to sell to consumers. You know, it is a cost center. We're trying to be as efficient as possible yet still support our business and keep it safe. So, uh, if we're investing in a security solution or if we're investing in, in a, a vendor solution that that does provide some layer of protection, you know, we wanna make sure that that's efficient as possible for us and, and that we get value out of it immediately. Uh, you know, that's always the, the hardest thing to try to find a solution that, that fits your business, but also delivers value to your organization. >>You know, it's interesting, you mention it as a cost center and you're talking about cyber security, which is the, the jewels of the company. You're talking about the criticality of the business model. One hat could really take down companies. So you, you it's really offense you're it's profit center in inherently. If you look at it that way. Um, and a lot of people are looking at this this way because you're a private company, you're not a government, you don't have a militia, you got cyber protection issues. So there's a real trend for CISOs to come together. And we're seeing this, uh, about sharing for instance, you know, sharing a threat information. So there's been a big movement in the CISO community. Uh, and I'm curious to get your reaction to this and what your conversations are, where sharing is really about collective intelligence and winning and ex and helping each other. And there's this, it's a, it's a, it's an enable user enablement, a CISO enablement kind of vibe. How do you have those conversations? What is, uh, when you huddle with your CISO buddies and friends and colleagues, what's the conversations like, is this sharing thing real is how do you do it effectively? Is it data rooms? Is it, how do you protect the information? Can you share your perspective on that? Cause this is a kind of a real cutting edge area right now. >>Yeah, I think in the, in the public sector, especially in, in, uh, in the government side, as well as critical manufacturing, critical infrastructure, you know, they really do it best in class and have done it for years out, out of necessity. Uh, what's really nice to see, especially on CS a and some of the latest initiatives like shields up is, is a lot more public private sharing going on. There's a lot more information available to us as a private company. Who's not part of, of the DIB or any of the intelligence community, but at the same time, we need to protect ourselves from the bad guys as much as they do. So, you know, I like the fact that that we're seeing CS a do more and more outreach to connect public and private sector, plus there's more and more sharing initiatives going on in the ISAC communities and making sure that barrier is low and, and they're, they're sharing, uh, threat Intel IOCs, but in a safe way among a, a community of security practitioners, security practitioners are, are great at sharing. They just need the permission to do so. >>Exactly. And then getting that, getting that mindset of, we're not just a cost setter, we're a critical division or group that protects the assets. And I think that's where I seen security elevate from the it world where yeah, King's born in it, cuz that's where that, where everything is, assets are all there. And then as assets change it, you guys have a lot of operational technology called OT on your manufacturing. You gotta deal with that. Now that's usually locked down. Pretty good. Right. <laugh> so as you bring OT and it together, you guys are in the middle of that industrial I OT world. >>Yeah. What's really interesting about my, uh, career at Colgate. I I've been here for, for 25 years and uh, actually the majority of my career has been in it supporting business applications, uh, either for our sales force or our manufacturing organization, our finance and HR teams. So I really got a, a good partnership with our business teams and really understood what they were trying to deliver. Then in the last few years, when I shifted over security, it really helped me bridge that gap and understand, you know, what the business systems are doing, what the OT systems are doing and then how to best secure them. >>Yeah, it's interesting. It's it kind of goes away. It's everything now it's digital, right? Digital digitization, digital transformation. This is what what's awesome. And this is what I love about the cloud scale and it's about bringing the two worlds together and the hybrid is a steady state. Now, both workforce and environment, Alex. Great to get your perspective. Um, thanks for sharing, um, insight here on the cube. Final question, give a plug for what you're working on. What's the cool projects you got going. If you can share a little bit without getting confidential information out there, what's going on at Colgate? Uh what's on your plate. What are you excited about? Put a plug. Are you looking for hiring, give a quick plug for what you got working on? >>I mean, we have a great team. Uh, we've been growing the team steadily, uh, building out our, our security program. Uh, you know, we're always looking to hire new talent, uh, from different industries. Uh, we've been very focused on making sure that that we're building a diverse talent group inside my security program. So I'm not just looking for, uh, security practitioners. Who've been doing this for 25 years, but I've been hiring from various places like, uh, infrastructure service provider consultants, pen testers, and really trying to build, uh, uh, the best team possible. >>Yeah, just as a side to real quick note is I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day were old, old Foggie. Um, the young guns have never racked gear before. Right. They don't, they've never loaded Linux on a box. So, you know, as you start hiring some of the young talent, what's it like, what are they coming in? Obviously they probably probably have a broader CS perspective. Maybe they're probably more familiar, but you know, some of the different really rack gear all. So what is it like, what, what are some of the new, new, new young folks looking at right now? What's the, what's the skill. >>Yeah, they they're, they're used to cloud consoles and right clicking to, uh, to spin up a computer. And in an our day we unboxed the computer, put racks on, you know, had to plug in power and network and figure out, uh, you know, the right way to, to, to hook everything up and even load an OS. I mean, uh, you know, you're right out of, uh, university today, you, you probably right. Click spin up a, uh, an image in, in one of the public clouds and the OS boom comes up automatically for you, like imagine. So they >>Probably are like fish to water on the, on the dashboards and the, on some of the security challenges I can imagine they have a nice fit there, >>But at the same time, uh, you know, they have a great understanding of, uh, containers. They have a great understanding of server list. So you can really, uh, kind of marry the, the old school technology with some of the new ways of working. >>Yeah. Great stuff. Great. We'll have to do a segment on, uh, on talent and what the new roles are. A lot of openings, a lot of new opportunities. It really is a great time to be in this new digital, I don't know what the call it's nearly not it anymore. It's just digital transformation. Uh, it's just, it's just the way it is. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it, Alex. Thanks for your time. >>Thanks a lot, John. Okay. Take >>Care. Just a cube conversation here in Palo Alto. I'm John fur host of the cube. Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: TheCUBE presents KubeCon and CloudNativeCon Europe, 2022. Brought to you by Red Hat, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome to Valencia, Spain, a KubeCon, CloudNativeCon Europe, 2022. I'm your host, Keith Townsend alongside Paul Gillon, Senior Editor, Enterprise Architecture for SiliconANGLE. We are, I think at the half point way point this to be fair we've talked to a lot of folks in open source in general. What's the difference between open source communities and these closed source communities that we attend so so much? >> Well open source is just it's that it's open it's anybody can contribute. There are a set of rules that manage how your contributions are reflected in the code base. What has to be shared, what you can keep to yourself but the it's an entirely different vibe. You know, you go to a conventional conference where there's a lot of proprietary being sold and it's all about cash. It's all about money changing hands. It's all about doing the deal. And open source conferences I think are more, they're more transparent and yeah money changes hands, but it seems like the objective of the interaction is not to consummate a deal to the degree that it is at a more conventional computer conference. >> And I think that can create an uneven side effect. And we're going to talk about that a little bit with, honestly a friend of mine Alex Ellis, founder of OpenFaaS. Alex welcome back to the program. >> Thank you, good to see Keith. >> So how long you've been doing OpenFaaS? >> Well, I first had this idea that serverless and function should be run on your own hardware back in 2016. >> Wow and I remember seeing you at DockerCon EU, was that in 2017? >> Yeah, I think that's when we first met and Simon Foskett took us out to dinner and we got chatting. And I just remember you went back to your hotel room after the presentation. You just had your iPhone out and your headphones you were talking about how you tried to OpenWhisk and really struggled with it and OpenFaaS sort of got you where you needed to be to sort of get some value out of the solution. >> And I think that's the magic of these open source communities in open source conferences that you can try stuff, you can struggle with it, come to a conference either get some advice or go in another direction and try something like a OpenFaaS. But we're going to talk about the business perspective. >> Yeah. >> Give us some, like give us some hero numbers from the project. What types of organizations are using OpenFaaS and what are like the download and stars all those, the ways you guys measure project success. >> So there's a few ways that you hear this talked about at KubeCon specifically. And one of the metrics that you hear the most often is GitHub stars. Now a GitHub star means that somebody with their laptop like yourself has heard of a project or seen it on their phone and clicked a button that's it. There's not really an indication of adoption but of interest. And that might be fleeting and a blog post you might publish you might bump that up by 2000. And so OpenFaaS quite quickly got a lot of stars which encouraged me to go on and do more with it. And it's now just crossed 30,000 across the whole organization of about 40 different open source repositories. >> Wow that is a number. >> Now you are in ecosystem where Knative is also taken off. And can you distinguish your approach to serverless or FaaS to Knatives? >> Yes so, Knative isn't an approach to FaaS. That's simply put and if you listen to Aikas Ville from the Knative project, he was working inside Google and wished that Kubernetes would do a little bit more than what it did. And so he started an initiative with some others to start bringing more abstractions like Auto Scaling, revision management so he can have two versions of code and and shift traffic around. And that's really what they're trying to do is add onto Kubernetes and make it do some of the things that a platform might do. Now OpenFaaS started from a different angle and frankly, two years earlier. >> There was no Kubernetes when you started it. >> It kind of led in the space and and built out that ecosystem. So the idea was, I was working with Lambda and AWS Alexa skills. I wanted to run them on my own hardware and I couldn't. And so OpenFaaS from the beginning started from that developer experience of here's my code, run it for me. Knative is a set of extensions that may be a building block but you're still pretty much working with Kubernetes. We get calls come through. And actually recently I can't tell you who they are but there's a very large telecommunications provider in the US that was using OpenFaaS, like yourself heard of Knative and in the hype they switched. And then they switched back again recently to OpenFaaS and they've come to us for quite a large commercial deal. >> So did they find Knative to be more restrictive? >> No, it's the opposite. It's a lot less opinionated. It's more like building blocks and you are dealing with a lot more detail. It's a much bigger system to manage, but don't get me wrong. I mean the guys are very friendly. They have their sort of use cases that they pursue. Google's now donated the project to CNCF. And so they're running it that way. Now it doesn't mean that there aren't FaaS on top of it. Red Hat have a serverless product VMware have one. But OpenFaaS because it owns the whole stack can get you something that's always been very lean, simple to use to the point that Keith in his hotel room installed it and was product with it in an evening without having to be a Kubernetes expert. >> And that is and if you remember back that was very anti-Kubernetes. >> Yes. >> It was not a platform I thought that was. And for some of the very same reasons, I didn't think it was very user friendly. You know, I tried open with I'm thinking what enterprise is going to try this thing, especially without the handholding and the support needed to do that. And you know, something pretty interesting that happened as I shared this with you on Twitter, I was having a briefing by a big microprocessor company, one of the big two. And they were showing me some of the work they were doing in Cloud-native and the way that they stretch test the system to show me Auto Scaling. Is that they bought up a OpenFaaS what is it? The well text that just does a bunch of, >> The cows maybe. >> Yeah the cows. That does just a bunch of texts. And it just all, and I'm like one I was amazed at is super simple app. And the second one was the reason why they discovered it was because of that simplicity is just a thing that's in your store that you can just download and test. And it was open fast. And it was this big company that you had no idea that was using >> No >> OpenFaaS. >> No. >> How prevalent is that? That you're always running into like these surprises of who's using the solution. >> There are a lot of top tier companies, billion dollar companies that use software that I've worked on. And it's quite common. The main issue you have with open source is you don't have like the commercial software you talked about, the relationships. They don't tell you they're using it until it breaks. And then they may come in incognito with a personal email address asking for things. What they don't want to do often is lend their brands or support you. And so it is a big challenge. However, early on, when I met you, BT, live person the University of Washington, and a bunch of other companies had told us they were using it. We were having discussions with them took them to Kubecon and did talks with them. You can go and look at them in the video player. However, when I left my job in 2019 to work on this full time I went to them and I said, you know, use it in production it's useful for you. We've done a talk, we really understand the business value of how it saves you time. I haven't got a way to fund it and it won't exist unless you help they were like sucks to be you. >> Wow that's brutal. So, okay let me get this right. I remember the story 2019, you leave your job. You say I'm going to do OpenFaaS and support this project 100% of your time. If there's no one contributing to the project from a financial perspective how do you make money? I've always pitched open source because you're the first person that I've met that ran an open source project. And I always pitched them people like you who work on it on their side time. But they're not the Knatives of the world, the SDOs, they have full time developers. Sponsored by Google and Microsoft, etc. If you're not sponsored how do you make money off of open source? >> If this is the million dollar question, really? How do you make money from something that is completely free? Where all of the value has already been captured by a company and they have no incentive to support you build a relationship or send you money in any way. >> And no one has really figured it out. Arguably Red Hat is the only one that's pulled it off. >> Well, people do refer to Red Hat and they say the Red Hat model but I think that was a one off. And we quite, we can kind of agree about that in a business. However, I eventually accepted the fact that companies don't pay for something they can get for free. It took me a very long time to get around that because you know, with open source enthusiast built a huge community around this project, almost 400 people have contributed code to it over the years. And we have had full-time people working on it on and off. And there's some people who really support it in their working hours or at home on the weekends. But no, I had to really think, right, what am I going to offer? And to begin with it would support existing customers weren't interested. They're not really customers because they're consuming it as a project. So I needed to create a product because we understand we buy products. Initially I just couldn't find the right customers. And so many times I thought about giving up, leaving it behind, my family would've supported me with that as well. And they would've known exactly why even you would've done. And so what I started to do was offer my insights as a community leader, as a maintainer to companies like we've got here. So Casting one of my customers, CSIG one of my customers, Rancher R, DigitalOcean, a lot of the vendors you see here. And I was able to get a significant amount of money by lending my expertise and writing content that gave me enough buffer to give the doctors time to realize that maybe they do need support and go a bit further into production. And over the last 12 months, we've been signing six figure deals with existing users and new users alike in enterprise. >> For support >> For support, for licensing of new features that are close source and for consulting. >> So you have proprietary extensions. Also that are sort of enterprise class. Right and then also the consulting business, the support business which is a proven business model that has worked >> Is a proven business model. What it's not a proven business model is if you work hard enough, you deserve to be rewarded. >> Mmh. >> You have to go with the system. Winter comes after autumn. Summer comes after spring and you, it's no point saying why is it like that? That's the way it is. And if you go with it, you can benefit from it. And that's what the realization I had as much as I didn't want to do it. >> So you know this community, well you know there's other project founders out here thinking about making the leap. If you're giving advice to a project founder and they're thinking about making this leap, you know quitting their job and becoming the next Alex. And I think this is the perception that the misperception out there. >> Yes. >> You're, you're well known. There's a difference between being well known and well compensated. >> Yeah. >> What advice would you give those founders >> To be. >> Before they make the leap to say you know what I'm going to do my project full time. I'm going to lean on the generosity of the community. So there are some generous people in the community. You've done some really interesting things for individual like contributions etc but that's not enough. >> So look, I mean really you have to go back to the MBA mindset. What problem are you trying to solve? Who is your target customer? What do they care about? What do they eat and drink? When do they go to sleep? You really need to know who this is for. And then customize a journey for them so that they can come to you. And you need some way initially of funneling those people in qualifying them because not everybody that comes to a student or somebody doing a PhD is not your customer. >> Right, right. >> You need to understand sales. You need to understand a lot about business but you can work it out on your way. You know, I'm testament to that. And once you have people you then need something to sell them that might meet their needs and be prepared to tell them that what you've got isn't right for them. 'cause sometimes that's the one thing that will build integrity. >> That's very hard for community leaders. It's very hard for community leaders to say, no >> Absolutely so how do you help them over that hump? I think of what you've done. >> So you have to set some boundaries because as an open source developer and maintainer you want to help everybody that's there regardless. And I think for me it was taking some of the open source features that companies used not releasing them anymore in the open source edition, putting them into the paid developing new features based on what feedback we'd had, offering support as well but also understanding what is support. What do you need to offer? You may think you need a one hour SLA for a fix probably turns out that you could sell a three day response time or one day response time. And some people would want that and see value in it. But you're not going to know until you talk to your customers. >> I want to ask you, because this has been a particular interest of mine. It seems like managed services have been kind of the lifeline for pure open source companies. Enabling these companies to maintain their open source roots, but still have a revenue stream of delivering as a service. Is that a business model option you've looked at? >> There's three business models perhaps that are prevalent. One is OpenCore, which is roughly what I'm following. >> Right. >> Then there is SaaS, which is what you understand and then there's support on pure open source. So that's more like what Rancher does. Now if you think of a company like Buoyant that produces Linkerd they do a bit of both. So they don't have any close source pieces yet but they can host it for you or you can host it and they'll support you. And so I think if there's a way that you can put your product into a SaaS that makes it easier for them to run then you know go for it. However, we've OpenFaaS, remember what is the core problem we are solving, portability So why lock into my cloud? >> Take that option off the table, go ahead. >> It's been a long journey and I've been a fan since your start. I've seen the bumps and bruises and the scars get made. If you're open source leader and you're thinking about becoming as famous as Alex, hey you can do that, you can put in all the work become famous but if you want to make a living, solve a problem, understand what people are willing to pay for that problem and go out and sell it. Valuable lessons here on theCUBE. From Valencia, Spain I'm Keith Townsend along with Paul Gillon and you're watching theCUBE the leader in high-tech coverage. (Upbeat music)

>> theCUBE presents Dell technologies World, brought to you by Dell. >> Hey everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of Dell Technologies World 2022, from the show floor, the Venetian in lively Las Vegas. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante. We're having a little reunion with our guests that we haven't seen in a couple years. Please welcome back to theCUBE, Doug Schmitt, President of Dell Technologies and Services. Alex Barretto joins us as well, the Senior Vice President at Emerging Services and Technology. Guys, it's great to see you in 3D. >> I know great to be back. >> Yes. >> Its Awesome to be back. >> Isn't it great? >> And fantastic. >> It is. >> We were talking about how we have to get our sea legs back about, even just interacting with in life. >> That's exactly right. Being able to see everybody be back in person at these events. And it's great to see everybody it's like coming back to family. >> It is, it's been a reunion since Sunday. One of the, obviously the last two years have been quite challenging for everybody, for customers. Dell is coming off it's best year ever in FY22, over 100 billion in revenues, 17% growth year over year, astounding growth. The voice of the customer is always strong here at Dell technologies. But Doug, talk to us about some of the things that have been going on services perspective and how you really stepped in to help customers across industries succeed in the dynamic times we've been living in. >> Well. Yeah, thank you, and you're right. Coming off a very great, great year. And I think as you can see behind us and in the room here just great solutions for our customers. And that's what it's about, delivering the outcomes. And service is a huge piece of that, of making sure we bring all that together, deliver the outcomes our customers are looking for. If you look at the overall services organization just to take a step back just a little bit, we are a team around over 60,000 folks in 170 countries. And look, it's about this life cycle of services we provide. Everything from consulting to deployment to our support, manage services, security, education services, residency services, all the way to asset sustainability and recovery. So we can get all of the material back in and recycle it. So we have a great suite of services, and it's bringing all that together for the customer again to deliver with the products and the solutions and the software, the outcomes they're looking for. You asked a little bit about just to kind of double click that, about what our customers really saying, kind of what they're hearing, what we're hearing. I think there's three things. When I think about what they're looking for, one is the trusted advisor. You heard this during Michael's keynotes speech, that is key. They're navigating through the digital transformation, hybrid cloud, all of these things. Determining what they need to do to deliver their outcomes. And Dell can bring that trusted advisor status to them. So we can consult with them professional services, help bring that. The second thing is really around that life cycle services I talked about, all those different services that we bring. We allow our customers clearly the choice to say what pieces of the services do they need. Now we think we can bring everything together into a managed solution for them, but if there's certain pieces that they need to just, double click on, we can help with that. And then look, the third item that I'm hearing and that we can bring and that we have for them is flexible consumption. They can choose the way they want to consume the technology. You consume it by usage. You can consume by month, by quarter, or if you want the stability of long term contracts one, two, three years we'll do that. So really it's about trusted advisor and choice to help them deliver their outcomes. >> So a lot changed during the isolation economy. You guys obviously had to support new initiatives. First of all, budgets got squeezed in 2020. Then boom back, so they sort of slingshot it, real focus on obviously client solutions, remote work, endpoint security, identity access, VDI. Now in the post isolation economy, it's like, okay, some of the stuff at HQ you maybe needs to be updated, maybe we're rethinking the network. So, what are you hearing from customers? Where are they in their digital transformations, Alex? You know, what's hot. >> Yeah, so we actually recently created an emerging services group. And the reason for that is exactly what you're alluding today. So we actually talked in that group everything in this emerging. So APEX, telco, edge, data management, all the things our customers are asking for and we are convening new solutions, new services to meet their needs, and all that is housing in one unit, and we're thinking about the product management, the technology that goes with it, and we're working partnership with our customers to actually build and develop solutions that they're looking for. >> Yeah, there was no as a service really. I mean, you could do it with financial machinations before, now it's becoming much more mainstream. I mean, I know it's not a hundred percent of your business and maybe never will be. >> Yeah. >> But that's a whole new mindset. What else is changing in the business that you guys see? >> Well, yeah, I think there's, I think that's what comes back to what we saw, first of all we listen to the customers, follow what their needs are, and you're right. As far as the, as a service, I think it's back to that choice. If they want to purchase or consume as flexible or as needed, we'll do that. They want the contracts, the standard CapEx model, we'll do that as well. Look, there's three things. Professional services is really changing as well. We're seeing the needs again for going in and being able to deliver the services to customers, but also manage that in a lot of cases, they're asking us to take the workloads from them so that they can go and change their transformation, and their digitalization is one of the things that we're clearly hearing. And I know you're hearing the second one, security. I mean that is top of mind for everyone. And I, we have launched a lot of services around this. Some of those like MDR or Managed Detection Response our cyber vault, as well as our APEX cyber recovery services as well that we've announced here. So security's number two. And then the third one is this sustainability, again very important for us and our customers, is we have a 2030 goal around this as I'm sure or you've heard, but more importantly, that's something I know my team and I and everyone at Dell, that's a great personal feeling too. When you're getting up and you're doing something that you know, is right, really just doing it to help the customers as well is just an extra added benefit. So those would be the three things professional services changing, doing more and more of the manage take workloads off, two is the security, and the third is the sustainability clearly. >> We talked with JJ Davis yesterday, and we're talking a lot about ESG and how a tremendous percentage of RFPs come in wanting to know what is Dell technologies doing from an environmental, social, governance perspective. That it's really your customers wanting to work with companies like Dell who have a focused clear agenda on ESG. One thing that I'm curious when you talk about the increase in advantage services, the great resignation. We've all, that's been happening now for a couple years. It's probably going to persist for a while. Customers suddenly, labor shortages and the supply chain issues. How have you helped organizations deal with some of the challenges that they're going through from a labor perspective is that why one of the reasons the managed services is we're seeing an increase there. >> Yeah. I'm sure that can be and I wouldn't doubt that, you mean in terms of our customer is wanting more and more the managed and the professional. Yeah, I think that is a piece of it, but I also think part of that is that speed matters and customers are looking for the additional assistance to take things off, that they may have traditionally done so that they can, they can really get this transformation, this hybrid cloud, getting things moving very, very quickly. There's just so much to be done in terms of data management and bringing information to their end user customers. And they want to spend more time doing that. And so I'm hearing that more, but you are right. There's absolutely, there's absolutely the times where we have a residency service, we, and that has been growing very, very fast. And that tends to be why they ask for it, is because people have either left or are leaving >> Alex, Doug really kind of alluded to an area that I want to probe a little bit. And it's that's, I was talking to Jen Felch recently she's going to be on soon. And the, you mentioned security, Doug, as the top initiative clearly. And the distance between number two is widening, but number two is cloud migration. Now I asked Jen about that, because internally Dell has its own cloud. And I said, how do you interpret that? Or how do you, what's your second priority? She goes, well, I would translate that into modernization. So we're essentially building our own cloud is how I interpreted it. So my question to you is, are you seeing that with customers, how closely do you work with your own IT to take those learnings to your customers? And what does modernization actually mean to your customers? >> Yeah, that's a great question. It's actually the essence of why we're here. Talking to our customers and showcasing what we do within services, what we do within IT. Jen and I talk very often about her roadmap, our roadmap, and we want to showcase that to our customers because it's a proof point, it's a proof point of how they can do the transformation on their own. Do we have a whole slue of products from a services standpoint that are tied with what Jen is doing as well? And that's what we bring to market. So whether that's on APEX, that we announced right here two days ago, the cyber recovery services available now, that's working very closely with our IT counterparts. And we have a whole slue of roadmap with high performance computing, to be announced soon and machine learning operations, all that is to meet the customer needs, and what they're asking for. And if you look at the emergence of needs from a customer standpoint, it goes in a multitude of uses. We have telco customers, they have very specific needs and we're looking to meet those needs. We have the traditional customers, which may be going at a slower speed in their adoption of the cloud, we're there to help them. And we're all about to hybrid cloud. Hybrid cloud is a hundred percent of our strategy. So whether you want to go cloud based, whether you want to be OnPrem or you want to be hybrid, we're there to solve your needs. >> What's the partner story in terms of delivering services, we know that the Dell technologies' partner ecosystem is massive. We know how important partners are to the growth. I think I saw 59 billion in revenue came through the channel last year alone. How do you enable partners to deliver some of those key services that you talked about? >> To leverage the partners for the, on the broader ecosystem for that? >> Yes. >> Yes, well, you're right. We do have a very large partner network and we're very flexible on that. Again, it sounds like we are flexible in everything and we are by the way, for our customers and our partners, 'cause look it is about delivering first of all, how our customers want their service. I do like this idea and we talk about modernization, transformation, digitalization all these things are kind of the same thing about going in and looking about how we're improving the overall infrastructure and these outcomes. And to that end, we work with the customer on what they're looking for. And then we'll either do a couple things with working with the partners. Either we take prime and we'll take that and take the pieces that they can deliver and we can deliver together. But again, it's with the customer in mind of how they want to do that, working with the customer. We do have code delivery services as well. And look, we're very open with our partners about if they want to be prime and then leverage those same lifecycle services we have. What this is about is about getting this transformation and this technology and these so into the hands of the customers in the best way possible. >> So, I could white label as a partner. Could I white label your services? >> We don't have the white label. >> Okay. >> We do have co-delivery. >> Okay. So that's what I could do. I can say, okay, I'm bringing this value. Dell's bringing that value. You're visible to the customer. >> That's correct. >> Which is I presume a benefit to the customer. >> Correct, correct. >> The trust that you've built up. >> Now that gets, just the white label you would say like our ProSeries, ProSupport, ProDeploy, ProManage, all of those things. Isn't a white label, but at the same time our customers especially in the professional service side of it could be the prime, which would be the same thing as a label. >> How are client? This is kind of interesting thought I had the other day. How are client services changing? Do you see the point where, I mean, maybe you're doing it already. It's just a full manage all my client devices and just take that away from me, and Dell you take care of that and I'll pay you a monthly fee. >> Well, yeah, we are seeing that. And one of the things that they like the best about is doing that management, is bringing kind of the AI and the BI to it that we can with our support assist and all of the data that we give back, we're actually able to help manage those environments much better. And in terms of an end to end, keep things updated, upgraded, manage it. But more importantly, what we see when we do have those client managed services end to end, the customers are actually coming back and asking us to help improve their operational performance. And, and what I mean by that is, all of a sudden you'll see things where the trouble tickets are coming in 'cause we're seeing that. And we're actually going back in with that information to help alleviate or improve their operational processes, so that they're able to function and spend more time on their business outcomes >> And reduce that complexity, sorry, Dave. >> No worries. How about the tip of the spear, the consulting piece? What are you seeing there? Are we going through and as we modernize, are we going through another wave of application rationalization, people trying to figure out their digital transformation, what to double down on? What to retire? What to sun set? What's that like? >> Yeah, I think it's similar to the managed service conversation we just had. It's really pivoting to technology. Even in the services space, it was all about our physical footprint. Five, six years ago, our physical capabilities, the number of people, depots et cetera that we had, right now, our customers and even internally what we're pivoting towards is technology. They want to know how are you going to do is solve our problems, whether it's consulting or managed services using technology. Precisely to the point that Doug was making, because they want insights, value add from the services we provide, not just consult for me, not just manage my service, but provide me value added service on top of that so that I can actually differentiate my services, my solutions and that's where we're building, that's what delivering really leveraging technology. You look at the number of software engineers we have, data scientists, the algorithms we're building now inside services. It's really become a technology hub, whereas it used to be a physical hub. >> I'm just going to, oh, I'm sorry please. >> No, go ahead. >> Follow up. >> Where it's really headed is, if you look at this it's going to become this outcome based services. When I talk about outcome based services, it's not managing just the IT infrastructure, that you have to do, you have to modernize and transform. However you want to say that to customers. But in addition to that, they're looking for us to take that information and help change their business models as well, with the data and the and the insights we're getting back. >> Their operating model. >> Absolutely. >> But changing that in the last couple years and pivoting over and over again, to survive and to thrive, talk to us, Alex about the emerging services and how you've maybe a particular customer example of how you've helped an organization radically transform in the last two years to be competitive and to be thriving in this new economy in which we're living. >> Yeah. I think a great example is Dish. If you look at Dish, they're actually launching one of the first Open RAN networks. Leveraging the power of 5G. And we're working very closely with them on the services and solutions to enable them to deliver that service to their customers. And that's a new area for us, a new area for them. So we're actually working together in innovating and coming up with solutions and bringing those to the market. It's a great example. >> Lot of collaboration guys, thank you so much for joining us. Great to see you back in person again after couple years, probably three. We appreciate your time and your insights. >> Thanks guys. >> Thanks for having us. >> Our pleasure. Dave Vellante, Lisa Martin here, you're watching theCUBE's live from Dell Technologies World 2022. Stick around. Be right back with our next guest. (gentle music)

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Women in Data Science, 2022. I'm Lisa Martin, excited to be coming to you live from Stanford University at the Ariaga alumni center. I'm pleased to welcome fresh keynote stage Alex Hanna the director of research at the dare Institute. Alex, it's great to have you on the program. >> Yeah, lovely to be here. >> Talk to me a little bit about yourself. I know your background is in sociology. We were talking before we went live about your hobbies and roller derby, which I love. >> Yes. >> But talk to me a little bit about your background and what the DAIR Institute this is, distributed AI research Institute, what it actually is doing. >> Sure, absolutely. So happy to be here talking to the women in data science community. So my background's in sociology, but also in computer science and machine learning. So my dissertation work was actually focusing on developing some machine learning and natural language processing tools for analyzing protest event data and generating that and applying it to pertinent questions within social movement scholarship. After that, I was a faculty at University of Toronto and then research scientist at Google on the ethical AI team where I met Dr. Timnit Gebru who is the founder of DAIR. And so, DAIR is a nonprofit research Institute oriented on around independent community based AI work, focused really on, the kind of, lots of discussions around AI are done by big companies or companies focus on solutions that are very much oriented around collecting as much data as they can. Not really knowing if it's going to be for community benefit. At DAIR, we want to flip that, we want to really want to prioritize what that would mean if communities had input into data driven technologies what it would mean for those communities and how we can help there. >> Double click and just some of your research, where do your passions lie? >> So I'm a sociologist and a lot of that being, I think one of the big insights of sociology is to really highlight at how society can be more just, how we can interrogate inequality and understanding how to make those distances between people who are underserved and over served who already have quite a lot, how we can reduce the disparities. So finding out where that lies, especially in technology that's really what I'm passionate about. So it's not just technology, which I think can be helpful but it's really understanding what it means to reduce those gaps and make the world more just. >> And that's so important. I mean, as more and more data is generated, exponentially growing, so are some of the biases and the challenges that that causes. You just gave your tech vision talk which I had a chance to see most of it. And you were talking about something that's very interesting. That is the biases in facial recognition software. Maybe on a little bit about what you talked about and why that is such a challenge. And also what are some of the steps being made in the right direction where that's concerned? >> Yeah. So there's the work I was talking about in the talk was highlighting, not work I've done, but the work by doctors (indistinct) and (indistinct) focusing on the distance that exists and the biases that exist in facial recognition as a technical system. The fact remains also that facial recognition is used and is disproportionately deployed on marginalized population. So in the U.S, that means black and brown communities. That's where facial recognition is used disproportionately. And we also see this in refugee context where refugees will be leaving the country. And those facial recognition software will be used in those contexts and surveilling them. So these are people already in a really precarious place. And so, some of the movements there have been to debias some of the facial recognition tools. I actually don't think that's far enough. I'm fundamentally against facial recognition. I think that it shouldn't be used as a technology because it is used so pervasively in surveillance and policing. And if we're going to approach that we really need to think, rethink our models of security models of immigration and whatnot. >> Right, it's such an important topic to discuss because I think it needs more awareness about some of the the biases, but also some to your point about some of those vulnerable communities that are really potentially being harmed by technologies like that. We have to be, there's a fine line. Or maybe it's not so fine. >> I don't think it's that fine. So like, I think it's used, in an incredibly harsh way. And for instance there's research that's being done in which, so I'm a transgender woman and there's a research being done by researchers who collected data sets that people had on YouTube documenting their transitions. And already there was a researcher collecting those data and saying, well, we could have terrorists or something take hormones and cross borders. And you talk to any trans person, you're like, well, that's not how it works, first off. Second off, it's already viewing trans people and a trans body as kind of a mode of deception. And so that's, whereas researchers in this space were collecting those data and saying that well, we should collect these data to help make these facial recognitions more fair. But that's not fair if it's going to be used on a population that's already intensely surveilled and held in suspicion. >> Right. That's, the question of fairness is huge, absolutely. Were you always interested in tech, you talked about your background in sociology. Was it something that you always, were you a stem kid from the time you were little? Talk to me about your background and how you got to where you are now? >> Yeah. I've been using computers since I was four. I've been using, I was taking a part, my parents' gateway computer. yeah, when I was 10. Going to computer shows, slapping hard drives into things, seeing how much we could upgrade computer on our own and ruining more than in one computer, to my parents chagrin but I've always been that. I went to undergrad in triple major to computer science, math and sociology, and originally just in computer science and then added the other two where I got interested in things and understanding that, was really interested in this section of tech and society. And I think the more and more I sat within the field and went and did my graduate work in sociology and other social sciences really found that there was a place to interrogate those, that intersection of the two. >> Exactly. What are some of the things that excite you now about where technology is going? What are some of the positives that you see? >> I talk so much about the negatives. It's really hard to, I mean, there's I think, some of the things that I think that are positive are really the community driven initiatives that are saying, well, what can we do to remake this in such a way that is going to more be more positive for our community? And so seeing projects like, that try to do community control over certain kinds of AI models or really try to tie together different kinds of fields. I mean, that's exciting. And I think right now we're seeing a lot of people that are super politically and justice literate and they how to work and they know what's behind all these data driven technologies and they can really try to flip the script and try to understand what would it mean to kind of turn this into something that empowers us instead of being something that is really becoming centralized in a few companies >> Right. We need to be empowered with that for sure. How did you get involved with WIS? >> So Margo, one of the co-directors, we sit on a board together, the human rights data analysis group and I've been a huge fan of HR dag for a really long time because HR dag is probably one of the first projects I've seen that's really focused on using data for accountability for justice. Their methodology has been, called on to hold perpetrators of genocide to accounts to hold state violence, perpetrators to account. And I always thought that was really admirable. And so being on their board is sort of, kind of a dream. Not that they're actually coming to me for advice. So I met Margo and she said, come on down and let's do a thing for WIS and I happily obliged >> Is this your first Wis? >> This is my very first Wis. >> Oh, excellent. >> Yeah. >> What's your interpretation so far? >> I'm having a great time. I'm learning a lot meeting a lot of great people and I think it's great to bring folks from all levels here. Not only, people who are a super senior which they're not going to get the most out of it it's going to be the high school students the undergrads, grad students, folks who, and you're never too old to be mentored, so, fighting your own mentors too. >> You know, it's so great to see the young faces here and the mature faces as well. But one of the things that I was, I caught in the panel this morning was the the talk about mentors versus sponsors. And that's actually, I didn't know the difference until a few years ago in another women in tech event. And I thought it was such great advice for those panelists to be talking to the audience, talking about the importance of mentors, but also the difference between a mentor and sponsor. Who are some of your mentors? >> Yeah, I mean, great question. It's going to sound cheesy, but my boss (indistinct) I mean, she's been a huge mentor for me and with her and another mentor (indistinct) Mitchell, I wouldn't have been a research scientist. I was the first social scientist on the research scientist ladder at Google before I left and if it wasn't for their, they did sponsor but then they all also mentored me greatly. My PhD advisor, (indistinct) huge mentor by, and I mean, lots of primarily and then peer mentors, people that are kind of at the same stage as me academically but also in professionally, but are mentors. So folks like Anna Lauren Hoffman, who's at the UDub, she's a great inspiration in collaborating, co-conspirator, so yeah. >> Co-conspirator, I like that. I'm sure you have quite a few mentees as well. Talk to me a little bit about that and what excites you about being a mentor. >> Yeah. I have a lot of mentees either informally or formally. And I sought that out purposefully. I think one of the speakers this morning on the panel was saying, if you can mentor do it. And that's what I did and sought out that, I mean, it excites me because folks, I don't have all the answers, no one person does. You only get to those places, if you have a large community. And I think being smart is often something that people think comes like, there's kind of like a smart gene or whatever but like there probably is, like I'm not a biologist or a cognitive, anything, but what really takes cultivation is being kind and really advocating for other people and building solidarity. And so that's what mentorship really means to me is building that solidarity and really trying to lift other people up. I mean, I'm only here and where I'm at in my career, because many people were mentors and sponsors to me and that's only right to pay that forward. >> I love that, paying that forward. That's so true. There's nothing like a good community, right? I mean, there's so much opportunity that that ground swell just generates, which is what I love. We are, tomorrow is international women's day. And if we look at the numbers, women are 50% of the workforce, but only less than a quarter in stem positions. What's your advice and recommendation for those young girls who might be intimidated or might be being told even to this day, no, you can't do physics. You can't do computer science. What can you tell them? >> Yeah, I mean, so individual solutions to that are putting a bandaid on a very big wound. And I mean I think, finding other people in a working to change it, I mean, I think building structures of solidarity and care are really the only way we'll get out of that. >> I agree. Well, Alex, it's been great to have you on the program. Thank you for coming and sharing what you're doing at DAIR. The intersection of sociology and technology was fascinating and your roller derby, we'll have to talk well about that. >> For sure. >> Excellent. >> Thanks for joining me. >> Yeah, thank you Lisa. >> For Alex Hanna, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage live, of women in data science worldwide conference, 2022. Stick around, my next guest is coming right up. (upbeat music)

>>Hi, everyone. Welcome to the cubes presentation of the eight of us startup showcase open cloud innovations. This is season two episode one of the ongoing series covering the exciting startups from ABC ecosystems today. Uh, episode one, steam is the open source community and open cloud innovations. I'm Sean for your host got two great guests, Webb brown CEO of coop costs and as Thielen, head of business development, coop quest, gentlemen, thanks for coming on the cube for the showcase 80, but startups. >>Thanks for having a Sean. Great to be back, uh, really excited for the discussion we have here. >>I keep alumni from many, many coupons go. You guys are in a hot area right now, monitoring and reducing the Kubernetes spend. Okay. So first of all, we know one thing for sure. Kubernetes is the hottest thing going on because of all the benefits. So take us through you guys. Macro view of this market. Kubernetes is growing, what's going on with the company. What is your company's role? >>Yeah, so we've definitely seen this growth firsthand with our customers in addition to the broader market. Um, you know, and I think we believe that that's really indicative of the value that Kubernetes provides, right? And a lot of that is just faster time to market more scalability, improved agility for developer teams and, you know, there's even more there, but it's a really exciting time for our company and also for the broader cloud native community. Um, so what that means for our company is, you know, we're, we're scaling up quickly to meet our users and support our users, every, you know, metric that our company's grown about four X over the last year, including our team. Um, and the reason that one's the most important is just because, you know, the, the more folks and the larger that our company is, the better that we can support our users and help them monitor and reduce those costs, which ultimately makes Kubernetes easier to use for customers and users out there on the market. >>Okay. So I want to get into why Kubernetes is costing so much. Obviously the growth is there, but before we get there, what is the background? What's the origination story? Where did coop costs come from? Obviously you guys have a great name costs. Qube you guys probably reduced costs and Kubernetes great name, but what's the origination story. How'd you guys get here? What HR you scratching? What problem are you solving? >>So yeah, John, you, you guessed it, uh, you know, oftentimes the, the name is a dead giveaway there where we're cost monitoring cost management solutions for Kubernetes and cloud native. Um, and backstory here is our founding team was at Google before starting the company. Um, we were working on infrastructure monitoring, um, both on internal infrastructure, as well as Google cloud. Um, we had a handful of our teammates join the Kubernetes effort, you know, early days. And, uh, we saw a lot of teams, you know, struggling with the problems we're solving. We were solving internally at Google and we're we're solving today. Um, and to speak to those problems a little bit, uh, you know, you, you, you touched on how just scale alone is making this come to the forefront, right. You know, there's now many billions of dollars being spent on CU, um, that is bringing this issue, uh, to make it a business critical questions that is being asked in lots of organizations. Um, you know, that combined with, you know, the dynamic nature and complexity of Kubernetes, um, makes it really hard to manage, um, you know, costs, uh, when you scale across a very large organization. Um, so teams turned to coop costs today, you know, thousands of them do, uh, to get monitoring in place, you know, including alerts, recurring reports and like dynamic management insights or automation. >>Yeah. I know we talked to CubeCon before Webb and I want to come back to the problem statement because when you have these emerging growth areas that are really relevant and enabling technologies, um, you move to the next point of failure. And so, so you scaling these abstraction layers. Now services are being turned on more and more keeping it as clusters are out there. So I have to ask you, what is the main cost driver problem that's happening in the cube space that you guys are addressing? Is it just sheer volume? Is it different classes of services? Is it like different things are kind of working together, different monitoring tools? Is it not a platform and take us through the, the problem area? What do you guys see this? >>Yeah, the number one problem area is still actually what, uh, the CNCF fin ops survey highlighted earlier this year, um, which is that approximately two thirds of companies still don't have kind of baseline to visibility into spend when they moved to Kubernetes. Um, so, you know, even if you had a really complex, you know, chargeback program in place, when you're building all your applications on BMS, you move to Kubernetes and most teams again, can't answer these really simple questions. Um, so we're able to give them that visibility in real time, so they can start breaking these problems down. Right. They can start to see that, okay, it's these, you know, the deployments are staple sets that are driving our costs or no, it's actually, you know, these workloads that are talking to, you know, S3 buckets and, you know, really driving, you know, egress costs. Um, so it's really about first and foremost, just getting the visibility, getting the eyes and ears. We're able to give that to teams in real time at the largest scale Kubernetes clusters in the world. Um, and again, most teams, when they first start working with us, don't have that visibility, not having that visibility can have a whole bunch of downstream impacts, um, including kind of not getting, you know, costs right. You know, performance, right. Et cetera. >>Well, let's get into that downstream benefit, uh, um, problems and or situations. But the first question I have just throw naysayer comment at you would be like, oh, wait, I have all this cost monitoring stuff already. What's different about Kubernetes. Why what's what's the problem I can are my other tool is going to work for me. How do you answer that one? >>Yeah. So, you know, I think first and foremost containers are very dynamic right there. They're often complex, often transient and consume variable cluster resources. And so as much as this enables teams to contract construct powerful solutions, um, the associated costs and actually tracking those, those different variables can be really difficult. And so that's why we see why a solution like food costs. That's purpose built for developers using Kubernetes is really necessary because some of those older, you know, traditional cloud cost optimization tools are just not as fit for, for this space specifically. >>Yeah. I think that's exactly right, Alex. And I would add to that just the way that software is being architected deployed and managed is fundamentally changing with Kubernetes, right? It is deeply impacting every part of scifi software delivery process. And through that, you know, decisions are getting made and, you know, engineers are ultimately being empowered, um, to make more, you know, costs impacting decisions. Um, and so we've seen, you know, organizations that get real time kind of built for Kubernetes are built for cloud native, um, benefit from that massively throughout their, their culture, um, you know, cost performance, et cetera. >>Uh, well, can you just give a quick example because I think that's a great point. The architectures are shifting, they're changing there's new things coming in, so it's not like you can use an old tool and just retrofit it. That's sometimes that's awkward. What specific things you see changing with Kubernetes that's that environments are leveraging that's good. >>Yeah. Yeah. Um, one would be all these Kubernetes primitives are concepts that didn't exist before. Right. So, um, you know, I'm not, you know, managing just a generic workload, I'm managing a staple set and, or, you know, three replica sets. Right. And so having a language that is very much tailored towards all of these Kubernetes concepts and abstractions, et cetera. Um, but then secondly, it was like, you know, we're seeing this very obvious, you know, push towards microservices where, you know, typically again, you're shipping faster, um, you know, teams are making more distributed or decentralized decisions, uh, where there's not one single point where you can kind of gate check everything. Um, and that's a great thing for innovation, right? We can move much faster. Um, but for some teams, um, you know, not using a tool like coop costs, that means sacrificing having a safety net in place, right. >>Or guard rails in place to really help manage and monitor this. And I would just say, lastly, you know, uh, a solution like coop costs because it's built for Kubernetes sits in your infrastructure, um, it can be deployed with a single helmet stall. You don't have to share any data remotely. Um, but because it's listening to your infrastructure, it can give you data in real time. Right. And so we're moving from this world where you can make real time automated decisions or manual decisions as opposed to waiting for a bill, you know, a day, two days or a week later, um, when it may be already too late, you know, to avoid, >>Or he got the extra costs and you know what, he wants that. And he got to fight for a refund. Oh yeah. I threw a switch or wasn't paying attention or human error or code because a lot of automation is going on. So I could see that as a benefit. I gotta, I gotta ask the question on, um, developer uptake, because develop, you mentioned a good point. There that's another key modern dynamic developers are in, in the moment making decisions on security, on policy, um, things to do in the CIC D pipeline. So if I'm a developer, how do I engage with Qube cost? Do I have to, can I just download something? Is it easy? How's the onboarding process for your customers? >>Yeah. Great, great question. Um, so, you know, first and foremost, I think this gets to the roots of our company and the roots of coop costs, which is, you know, born in open-source, everything we do is built on top of open source. Uh, so the answer is, you know, you can go out and install it in minutes. Like, you know, thousands of other teams have, um, it is, you know, the, the recommended route or preferred route on our side is, you know, a helm installed. Um, again, you don't have to share any data remotely. You can truly not lock down, you know, namespace eat grass, for example, on the coop cost namespace. Um, and yeah, and in minutes you'll have this visibility and can start to see, you know, really interesting metrics that, again, most teams, when we started working with them, either didn't have them in place at all, or they had a really rough estimate based on maybe even a coop cost Scruff on a dashboard that they installed. >>How does cube cost provide the visibility across the environment? How do you guys actually make it work? >>Yeah, so we, you know, sit in your infrastructure. Um, we have integrations with, um, for on-prem like custom pricing sheets, uh, with card providers will integrate with your actual billing data, um, so that we can, uh, listen for events in your infrastructure, say like a nude node coming up, or a new pod being scheduled, et cetera. Um, we take that information, join with your billing data, whether it's on-prem or in one of the big three cloud providers. And then again, we can, in real time tell you the cost of, you know, any dimension of your infrastructure, whether it's one of the backing, you know, virtual assets you're using, or one of the application dimensions like a label or annotation namespace, you know, pod container, you name it >>Awesome. Alex, what's your take on the landscape with, with the customers as they look the cost reductions. I mean, everyone loves cost reductions as a, certainly I love the safety net comment that Webb made, but at the end of the day, Kubernetes is not so much a cost driver. It's more of a, I want the modern apps faster. Right? So, so, so people who are buying Kubernetes usually aren't price sensitive, but they also don't want to get gouged either on mistakes. Where is the customer path here around Kubernetes cost management and reduction and a scale? >>Yeah. So I think one thing that we're looking forward to hearing this upcoming year, just like we did last year is continuing to work with the various tools that customers are already using and, you know, meeting those customers where they are. So some examples of that are, you know, working with like CICT tools out there. Like we have a great integration with armoring Spinnaker to help customers actually take the insights from coop costs and deploy those, um, in a more efficient manner. Um, we're also working with a lot of partners, like, you know, for fauna to help customers visualize our data and, you know, integrate with or rancher, which are management platforms for Kubernetes. And all of that I think is just to make cost come more to the forefront of the conversation when folks are using Kubernetes and provide that, that data to customers and all the various tools that they're using across the ecosystem. Um, so I think we really want to surface this and make costs more of a first-class citizen across, you know, the, the ecosystem and then the community partners. >>What's your strategy of the biz dev side. As you guys look at a growing ecosystem with CubeCon CNCF, you mentioned that earlier, um, the community is growing. It's always been growing fast. You know, the number of people entering in are amazing, but now that we start going, you know, the S curves kicking in, um, integration and interoperability and openness is always a key part of company success. What's Qube costs is vision on how you're going to do biz dev going forward. >>Absolutely. So, you know, our products opensource that is deeply important to our company, we're always going to continue to drive innovation on our open source product. Um, as Webb mentioned, you know, we have thousands of teams that are, that are using our product. And most of that is actually on the free, but something that we want to make sure continues to be available for the community and continue to bring that development for the community. And so I think a part of that is making sure that we're working with folks not just on the commercial side, but also those open source, um, types of products, right? So, you know, for Fanta is open source Spinnaker's are open source. I think a lot of the biz dev strategies just sticking to our roots and make sure that we continue to drive it a strong open source presence and product for, for our community of users, keep that >>And a, an open source and commercial and keep it stable. Well, I got to ask you, obviously, the wave is here. I always joke, uh, going back. I remember when the word Kubernetes was just kicked around pre uh, the OpenStack days many, many years ago. It's the luxury of being a old cube guy that I am 11 years doing the cube, um, all fun. But if we remember talking to him in the early days, is that with Kubernetes was, if, if it worked, the, the phrase was rising, tide floats all boats, I would say right now, the tides rising pretty well right now, you guys are in a good spot with the cube costs. Are there areas that you see coming where cost monitoring, um, is going to expand more? Where do you see the Kubernetes? Um, what's the aperture, if you will, of the, of the cost monitoring space at your end that you think you can address. >>Yeah, John, I think you're exactly right. This, uh, tide has risen and it just keeps riding rising, right? Like, um, you know, the, the sheer number of organizations we use C using Kubernetes at massive scale is just mind blowing at this point. Um, you know, what we see is this really natural pattern for teams to start using a solution like coop costs, uh, start with, again, either limited or no visibility, get that visibility in place, and then really develop an action plan from there. And that could again be, you know, different governance solutions like alerts or, you know, management reports or, you know, engineering team reports, et cetera. Um, but it's really about, you know, phase two of taking that information and really starting to do something with it. Right. Um, we, we are seeing and expect to see more teams turn to an increasing amount of, of automation to do that. Um, but ultimately that is, uh, very much after you get this baseline highly accurate, uh, visibility that you feel very comfortable making, potentially critical, very critical related to reliability, performance decisions within your infrastructure. >>Yeah. I think getting it right key, you mentioned baseline. Let me ask you a quick follow-up on that. How fast can companies get there when you say baseline, there's probably levels of baseline. Obviously all environments are different now. Not all one's the same, but what's just anecdotally you see, as that baseline, how fast we will get there, is there a certain minimum viable configuration or architecture? Just take us through your thoughts on that. >>Yeah. Great question. It definitely depends on organizational complexity and, you know, can depend on applicational application complexity as well. But I would say most importantly is, um, you know, the, the array of cost centers, departments, you know, complexity across the org as opposed to, you know, technological. Um, so I would say for, you know, less complex organizations, we've seen it happen in, you know, hours or, you know, a day less, et cetera. Um, because that's, you know, one or two or a smaller engineering games, they can share that visibility really quickly. And, um, you know, they may be familiar with Kubernetes and they just get it right away. Um, for larger organizations, we've seen it take kind of up 90 days where it's really about infusing this kind of into their DNA. When again, there may not have been a visibility or transparency here before. Um, again, I think the, the, the bulk of the time there is really about kind of the cultural element, um, and kind of awareness building, um, and just buy in throughout the organization. >>Awesome. Well, guys got a great product. Congratulations, final question for both of you, it's early days in Kubernetes, even though the tide is rising, keeps rising, more boats are coming in. Harbor is getting bigger, whatever, whatever metaphor you want to use, it's really going great. You guys are seeing customer adoption. We're seeing cloud native. I was told that my friends at dock or the container side is going crazy as well. Everything's going great in cloud native. What's the vision on the innovation? How do you guys continue to push the envelope on value in open source and in the commercial area? What's the vision? >>Yeah, I think there's, there's many areas here and I know Alex will have more to add here. Um, but you know, one area that I know is relevant to his world is just more, really interesting integrations, right? So he mentioned coop costs, insights, powering decisions, and say Spinnaker, right? I think more and more of this tool chain really coming together and really seeing the benefits of all this interoperability. Right. Um, so that I think combined with, uh, just more and more intelligence and automation being deployed again, that's only after the fact that teams are really comfortable with his decisions and the information and the decisions that are being made. Um, but I think that increasingly we see the community again, being ready to leverage this information and really powerful ways. Um, just because, you know, as teams scale, there's just a lot to manage. And so a team, you know, leveraging automation can, you know, supercharge them and in really impactful ways. >>Awesome, great integration integrations, Alex, expand on that. A whole different kind of set of business development integrations. When you have lots of tool chains, lots of platforms and tools kind of coming together, sharing data, working together, automating together. >>Well. Yeah, we, so I think it's going to be super important to keep a pulse on the new tools. Right. Make sure that we're on the forefront of what customers are using and just continuing to meet them where they are. And a lot of that honestly, is working with AWS too, right? Like they have great services and EKS and managed Prometheus's. Um, so we want to make sure that we continue to work with that team and support their services as that launched as well. >>Great stuff. I got a couple of minutes left. I felt I'll throw one more question in there since I got two great experts here. Um, just, you know, a little bit change of pace, more of an industry question. That's really no wrong answer, but I'd love to get your reaction to, um, the SAS conversation cloud has changed what used to be SAS. SAS was, oh yeah. Software as a service. Now that you have all these kinds of new kinds of you have automation, horizontally, scalable cloud and edge, you now have vertical machine learning. Data-driven insights. A lot of things in the stack are changing. So the question is what's the new SAS look like it's the same as the old SAS? Or is it a new kind of refactoring of what SAS is? What's your take on this? >>Yeah. Um, there's a web, please jump in here wherever. But in, in my view, um, it's a spectrum, right? There's there's customers that are on both ends of this. Some customers just want a fully hosted, fully managed product that wouldn't benefit from the luxury of not having to do any, any sort of infrastructure management or patching or anything like that. And they just want to consume a great product. Um, on the other hand, there's other customers that have more highly regulated industries or security requirements, and they're going to need things to deploy in their environment. Um, right now QP cost is, is self hosted. But I think in the future, we want to make sure that, you know, we, we have versions of our product available for customers across that entire spectrum. Um, so that, you know, if somebody wants the benefit of just not having to manage anything, they can use a fully self hosted sat or a fully multitenant managed SAS, or, you know, other customers can use a self hosted product. And then there's going to be customers that are in the middle, right, where there's certain components that are okay to be a SAS or hosted elsewhere. But then there's going to be components that are really important to keep in their own environment. So I think, uh, it's really across the board and it's going to depend on customer and customer, but it's important to make sure we have options for all of them. >>Great guys, we have SAS, same as the old SAS. What's the SAS playbook. Now >>I think it is such a deep and interesting question and one that, um, it's going to touch so many aspects of software and on our lives, I predict that we'll continue to see this, um, you know, tension or real trade-off across on the one hand convenience. And now on the other hand, security, privacy and control. Um, and I think, you know, like Alex mentioned, you know, different organizations are going to make different decisions here based on kind of their relative trade-offs. Um, I think it's going to be of epic proportions. I think, you know, we'll look back on this period and just say that, you know, this was one of the foundational questions of how to get this right. We ultimately view it as like, again, we want to offer choice, um, and make, uh, make every choice be great, but let our users, uh, pick the right one, given their profile on those, on those streets. >>I think, I think it's a great comment choice. And also you got now dimensions of implementations, right? Multitenant, custom regulated, secure. I want have all these controls. Um, it's great. No one, no one SaaS rules the world, so to speak. So it's again, great, great dynamic. But ultimately, if you want to leverage the data, is it horizontally addressable? MultiTech and again, this is a whole nother ball game we're watching this closely and you guys are in the middle of it with cube costs, as you guys are creating that baseline for customers. Uh, congratulations. Uh, great to see you where thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. Thank you so much for having us again. Okay. Great. Conservation aiders startup showcase open cloud innovators here. Open source is driving a lot of value as it goes. Commercial, going to the next generation. This is season two episode, one of the AWS startup series with the cube. Thanks for watching.

(music) >> Hi, welcome to today's session of the CUBE's presentation of the AWS STARTUP SHOWCASE. New breakthroughs in DevOps, Data Analytics and Cloud Management Tools. This segment features HackerOne for DevOps. I'm Lisa Martin, and I am joined by Alex Rice, the founder and CTO of HackerOne. Alex, welcome to the program. >> Thank you for having me. >> Alex and I are going to spend the next 20 minutes or so talking about strengthening cloud application security with HackerOne. I want to go ahead Alex, and start you founded HackerOne back in 2012. Talk to me about, why you founded it? What were the glaring obvious gaps in the market? >> So I, I started out with the software development engineering background before moving into security about halfway through my career. And one of the things that's always bothered me about the security industry is how unreliable our feedback loops are. We only ever really get quality software by having as many, many points of feedback as possible in there from customer surveys and analytics and monitoring. And the security industry has just been really spotty about that. So when I was running the product security team for, for Facebook for a number of years, one of the surprising things that we did, that ended up being one of the best feedback loops we had, we just said to the, to the, the world hackers out there, if you find a vulnerability, find a security flaw, find something that we missed, we'll reward you for it. And we were really blown away with what very creative folks all across the world came back with. And so this concept of inviting outside friendly hackers to point out your flaws in exchange for compensation, ends up being a very valuable tool for any engineering team and any, any security team, particularly those that are adapting to more modern, faster agile environments. >> Right? Like DevOps. So you've amassed a community of over 1.2 million good actors, ethical hackers as you say. How do you vet those folks since there's so many nefarious actors out there? >> It's a great question what we start with. The bulk of the programs that we run on HackerOne are public. They're open to the world. There are organizations like Facebook and GM and the department of defense that say to anybody out there, if you find something that we've missed, we want to know about it. So it doesn't, you're not giving the hackers any special permissions or access that they wouldn't normally have. You're, you're inviting them to collaborate with you. From there we learned a lot about the hackers skillsets and demeanor and their track record to then vet them for more private or targeted programs. So while there are these public programs, that is where those million hackers originate from that list is, is vetted and filtered down for more private engagements. Because most folks building technology, they don't need a million hackers to help them out. They need 10 of the right hackers on their team at the right time. And vetting them and matching those hackers to the right challenges is, is a core part of what we try to do here at HackerOne. >> One of the things that we talk a lot about on this program is, you know, the last five years, this shortage, the cybersecurity skills gap. Is, is HackerOne's answer to that? These 1.2 million ethical hackers who can find those vulnerabilities that are open vectors for criminals to exploit. >> It's part of it. It's very much a part of it. My personal hypothesis about this on a big part of why we have such a glaring skills gap is because we've tried to separate it out from core engineering and DevOps principles. The most secure products out there, the ones that hopefully you trust and we all use regularly. Security is a core part of their engineering practices. It's a core part of their DevOps practices and the skillset overlaps dramatically there. And so we've had a lot more success in involving the core DevOps and engineering teams in security practices and really doing it as, as any other component of, of quality software development. And the challenge of that is that you're not going to find everything that you need in a single job description. If you're building a modern application or deploying modern infrastructure, the diversity of skill sets that you need is just staggering. And if you try to apply the old employment model of, okay, I need a security expert on this application. I need an expert in AWS and Kubernetes and RDS, and queuing systems and encryption for my and database security and account takeover. You quickly realize that it's just impossible for every organization that needs all that expertise to hire somebody with all that expertise. So our, our approach and what we try to do is to make sure that the core teams own responsibility for that security, but they're able to tap experts when they need them at, at, in a model that is really much more acclimated to how modern software is built. >> Got it. Okay. Interesting. Talk to me about the HackerOne security platform. Let's kind of dissect that. >> Absolutely. So there's a, there's a few different types of programs that we run for customers. At our, at its hard. There are public programs that we refer to as, as vulnerability disclosure programs. This is usually a security ad, it could be as simple as a security ad for a email address report vulnerabilities. That's really just an invitation to the world out there that says. Hey, we, our application is available to the public and you as a member of the public, if you find a security issue that we should be aware of, we'd like to hear about it. And it's incredible the amount of value that software teams receive just from asking, this putting that invitation out there. Then in parallel with those, for the organizations that are looking for more talented, a deeper dive we've run bug bounty programs, which is a very similar flavor, but the, our engineering and software teams will post bounties for the specific types of issues that they care about. Meaning if you can find a way to compromise user data, or if you can get access to our infrastructure, we'll reward $5,000 or $10,000. And you're specifically asking people to help you find things that will align with your goals and protect your customers. And then the, the third model that we do are our security assessments. These are a very targeted point in time assessments. They're not ongoing commitments. There are when a DevOps team is deploying a new application or releasing a new architecture or running new infrastructure, when they need a very targeted set of expertise for a constrained timeline to fit into their release processes, we can run assessments of matching just a small number of factors to what you care about and tie all that into your to release process. >> Okay. Let's talk about now, we know, one of the things that we've seen in the last 18 months as this massive acceleration to digital, we've seen a much more cloud adoption and really lifelines. Zoom, Netflix, for example, being these lifelines. As more organizations are moving to the cloud, we think, well, maybe risks are getting higher. With respect to customers that are moving to AWS. How does hacker one security platform help? >> The potential of technology. If it wasn't clear before the pandemic started, it should be clear to everybody now, like it is, it's unbelievable the positive impact it's able to have on our lives. And at the same time, most people don't trust technology. We as a technology industry have done a poor job of earning the public's trust that the technology that many of their lives are starting to depend upon is as trustworthy as they needed to be. And that's not a new challenge. Like as long as we've been developing software, there have been bugs, there have been security problems, but it's really amplified it both with the pace of development and just how accessible that's becoming to that to the world. And so in, in prior development models where we were releasing software, much more infrequently, where it was deployed in very controlled environments and accessible only to specific people who happen to be in a physical location or had a particular corporate account, that's all starting to change. Software is being released so much faster at a, at a pace that their traditional security models were already struggling to keep up with. And now are just completely, completely outclass. That's the trend number one that's changed. It's just the speed at which we have to apply. Security is, is unprecedented in this new world. And then at the same time, the access has just gone through the roof, the way of operating a modern business and surfing modern customers dictates that we have to meet them where they are wherever they are in the world, which means the adversaries have the same level of access that we're now affording to our, to our customers. So for our financial services customers that have gone completely remote access in the, in the last year, that's a whole range of attack surface. It wasn't accessible for many of them are using cloud systems to do that. Our healthcare customers that previously a tech service, it was only accessible when you were actually in the hospital is now open in large parts of the public and has many many more private conversations than it did before. And it's more than anything else that realization that we need this technology to be always on accessible anywhere in the world and trusted because people need to trust it. Like their lives depend on it. Literally has, has really changed how we need to look at this challenge. >> Yeah. That speed at which the attack surface is just spreading. And I was looking at some cybersecurity data in the last week or so, and there's really no signs of it slowing down. We saw this, the rapid shift to remote work a year and a half ago, remote learning. And we've got obviously we're in this hybrid world now where, you know, companies are in hybrid cloud, we're in this hybrid workforce of some remote, some homes, some doing both back and forth with that attack surface spreading. Give me an idea of some of the customers that you guys are working with to help them with HackerOne secure their AWS environments. >> Yeah. Our customer base really follows technology adoption trends. All of our early customers were, were tech companies that are kind of the ones that pioneered this model. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Uber were the, the early tech companies that quickly over the first ones to realize that the traditional approach to security model was just insufficient for a new cloud forward environment. Behind them you'll find technological, technology leaders in every industry. It's hard to just talk about the tech industry today. When you look at any industry out there, you can find one or two examples of very technology forward companies. On the finance side, customers like Goldman Sachs and Capital One. They really view themselves as technology companies these days. They're not finished service organizations or banking organizations, they're first and foremost technology companies. They were the first, some of the first to adopt this, this model. On the military side, the department of defense was one of the first organizations to do this cause they've long had, they're both one of the most traditional organizations out there. They've always had innovation arms to adapting practices like this. The automobile industry was a little bit early on the technology adoption trend. As consumers started relying on and demanding more technology in their vehicles. They were one of the early adopters of, of a practice here. And in the more recent years, the line has just completely gone away. We don't really use what we were engaging with a customer you don't really even ask. Are you, what's your, what's your digital strategy? or do you have a technology team? or are you developing first party applications? Do you use any cloud services? The answer to it is just is it's yes. So much more often than it's not. I think there's the safe assumption in 2021 is if you're, if you're doing business, you are probably have a software engineering team, you are probably deploying on the cloud. And if you're not, you're probably not going to be doing business in the, in the next decade. >> Right. That's, that's going to be a big differentiator, but you bring up a good point that every you can, you can almost say every company these days is a tech company or needs to become a tech powered company, a data-driven company. That is critical to especially organizations in this climate being able to pivot continuously as our world is changing. I want you to walk us through Alex, some of the HackerOne assessments that folks can do specifically in the AWS environment. >> For specifically for AWS, what we found is there's a category of AWS and we're really a cloud customers that want the always on security feedback loops that come from bounty programs. And so we, we've had that offering for quite a while of folks that want a feedback, no matter when it happens, because they're continuously received releasing applications. But then increasingly one of the use cases that we discovered was folks were in the midst of moving new applications to AWS, almost on a, on a weekly or monthly cadence. And they need needed a security testing cycle that would keep pace with that. Particularly folks that are ongoing any type of cloud migration or lifted shift of their, of their applications. And so we, we rolled out at AWS tailored specific version of our security assessment product. You can get it in the AWS marketplace as well, that lets you spin up a targeted security assessment on demand through the, through your native AWS tooling, whenever you need it. And the most common use case being this, we plan to open up access to this application next week. We'd love to have some hackers kicking the tires on it this week before the whole world has the opportunity to do that. All of those findings are then integrated back into Rietta U.S security hub, and tailored in a way that is meant for the DevOps teams and engineering teams that are deploying to, to be able to tell us what's going on. We're not asking folks to, to break out into specific security workflows. We really fundamentally believe that security accessible to DevOps teams is, is what's needed to keep us all moving fast and ship trustworthy now applications in the cloud. >> Is that at all a facilitator, you know, when we talk about DevOps folks, security folks, Devsecops. We talk about sort of the, the cultural shift and developers needing the DevOps folks need to be focusing on getting applications out at speed, security folks, developers, you know, we don't want to have to have security responsibilities. Are you helping to facilitate some of those? >> Yeah. We are, and it is more of a personal opinion here, but as someone who's worked on on many engineering teams and built multiple application and product security teams, the strongest ones in the industry, the lines between the product team and the product security team or the DevOps team or the security team are non-existent, those experts exist on to. I hate terms like Devsecops. We, it's necessary to, to approach things, but like if you're going to have a term like DevSecOps, you need to expand it to like DevQaSec in for ops. And it's just, you can't possibly capture every skillset and the critical aspect of quality software development in, in a short little acronym like that. And to me, DevSecOps just feels like a, an attempt by the industry to get invited to a party that nobody wants them at. And I really think we have to rewire our thinking. And if you have a, a development and an operations team, which are the two core functions there that doesn't take hands-on responsibility for the security of what they're developing and operating you're in trouble. Right? The more you try to outsource that to another team, another set of expertise, the worst you're going to be. There's a, there's a analogy that I draw to this that is a little bit of a poor analogy, but it, if it works well for me. For those of us that have been around in software engineering for, for long enough, there was a huge push in the early two thousands to build quality assurance processes across the board. Like everyone was investing in QA and building our QA teams. And every study across the board showed quality just tank after people invested millions in QA and quality assurance. And when, when you dig into it, it's intuitive, right? Like as soon as you can say. Oh, thank goodness quality is now somebody else's job. I've got, there's a dedicated team that can think about quality and deal with quality. Quality goes away. And security follows the exact same paradigm. Modern software is too complex, too interconnected, to be able to expect somebody else to completely do it for you. And so we really try to consult our customers on you should be thinking about organizational structures and responsibility, major SIGs that ensure developers and operations have the seat at the table in the security of the product. And then the challenge is how do we get the right people onto those teams? How do we get the right experience to them versus bolting it on with another acronym in the middle? >> I love your opinion there. In terms of facilitating that the latter part of what you just spoke, how are you finding those conversations within customers going? Is this now, I mean, think about it from a security perspective, it's going up to the board level imperative. Are you finding, especially in the last 18 months that your conversations with organizations are changing as that escalates up the chain? >> They are, but we also take a very pragmatic approach to this. I give you a very, a, a fairly, a personal opinion there on how to do it. The reality is most organizations aren't structured that way. They have a DevOps team, they have a security team, and the two are often in somewhat of an adversarial relationship. And, and we, we certainly work within those environments. You certainly can have a mature security program in an environment like that. It's not like there's one silver bullet to solve it, but we do work closely with our customers to try to bring down those walls. And increasingly technology leaders are engaged and hands-on, and are looking for ways to make this better. Five years ago, the CSO, The Chief Information Security Officer was almost always our main buyer, and our main point of contact. Is much, much more common now to see VPs of engineering, CIO's, CTOs have direct line responsibility for, security teams. And I think we're starting to see the early shifts of work structures that reflect that. If you have a DevOps team and you have a security team, that's responsible for the security of what the DevOps team is doing, and they are reporting to the same executive where there are major points of bureaucracy and politics between them. Every executive we talked to feels that, they lived through an experience like that, and they're motivated to start bringing those balls down. >> They've been through that pain and know the imperative give up getting alignment. So we've talked a lot in the last minute here. So I'm curious, we talked a lot about what HackerOne is doing, what you're doing for the AWS community, what's in it for your customers, but I'd love to understand just really quickly what's in it for the hackers? I do understand that you guys have more ethical hackers than black hats out there are out there, they're new assistants, which is good to know. But, what's in it? You know, from a bounty perspective for the hackers that work with you. >> We believe we're creating meaningful economic opportunity for, for hackers out there. We've had over a dozen hackers that have made a million dollars on the platform helping customers. But more importantly, it maps to how you want to develop your skillset. As hackers, a big part of the cyber security workforce challenge is these unrealistic job expectations that require every security engineer to be a Jack of all trades and work across 10 different product teams and master all of these skills. Whereas this model allows hackers to specialize. You can be a specialist in a very particular piece of technology and apply that specialization across everyone that depends upon it, and focus on what you can do best without dealing with the office politics or the unrealistic job expectations of what's needed in a modern school professional. It's one of the most painful things about the security community is you'll, you'll look at junior entry-level job descriptions for security engineers that already require five years of experience and expertise in 10 different technologies, which is just it's unrealistic. You're you're not going to find it. You don't want to, to be that individual. But it's also, it's back to what we were talking about earlier. It's trying to ask to find unicorns for roles that are just not in line with how modern software is built. And so I think for that, for the hacker community, what we hope we're doing is we hope we're creating meaningful economic opportunity. We're also hope we're enabling folks to develop and contribute to society with their skills in a way that they would like to. >> Awesome. Alex, thank you so much for joining me today, giving me kind of a background on what HackerOne's doing, what you're doing for AWS, the opportunities what's in it for me as a customer, what's in it for me as an ethical hacker. It's been great having you on the program. >> Thank you very much. Take care. >> This has been our coverage of the AWS startup showcase new breakthroughs in DevOps, data analytics and cloud management tools for Alex Rice. I'm Lisa Martin. Thanks for watching. (music)

>>well, thank you adam. We're back here at the Q we're live at the feta in Barcelona and we're here in cloud city which is just amazing. I'm really excited to have two guests here from a company called data on tap. Angus axe Tina's is the founder and Ceo and Alex Baumann is also a co founder and C Xo again, data on tap guys, welcome to the cube. Thanks so much for coming on Angus. Let's start with you. Tell us about data on tap is a great name. >>Yeah, thank you for we are designing and building digital attacker brands. Built entirely in public wealth. >>What does that mean? Digital attacker brand. So tell us more about that. >>I I think uh when you want to launch now a new wireless service provider, you have this challenge. We were built from current infrastructure or build something as a green field operation. We think building something a new is provides these new opportunities. So that's that's what we are. >>You guys know when you start a company with a blank sheet of paper, it's an exciting time. Why did you start the company? >>A good question. I think, I think for me, I mean, you know, I'm sure we both had our own reasons, but the biggest one for me was being held back on delivering the types of customer experiences that people were expecting. So, uh, telecom um, is notoriously slow moving, deliver great products, but take time to get there and you see all kinds of over the top products kind of leapfrogging ahead and needing lunch of telecoms in some places and kind of being held back. Uh, in that kind of older, you know, the full sheet of paper really drove us to decide what can we do with the blank sheet. How do we go green field, you know, all this new cloud technology, what types of things does not unlock for us? And that's really the impetus for >>it. So what are you actually selling? What's the service or product that you're selling? >>We started in Canadian market. The Canadian market is may be considered undeserved in, you know, when you compare to other markets. And we started with this full and final concept building out from core network all the way to consumer application, um, including e commerce, including other kind of value added services from the get go. Even before we launched before we launch our wireless service proposition, it's very hard to get into Canadian market. We're still battling out with regulator on on that front, but we're building a tax tax for Canada and for other countries to uh, in the model of the Fintech, in the model of this new business model that's becoming available with public cloud. >>So, public policy is obviously a big part of this where you have to ride on top of the existing infrastructure at least get permission to do that. And that's kind of your business model, right? >>Yeah, exactly. Um the infrastructure exists um very good networks in Canada and I believe elsewhere in the world as well, but this is the age of service innovation. Public cloud kind of brings that service innovation to the front rather than, you know, differentiating on the network technologies, which is kind of commanded commoditize thing. The new way of thinking is about service innovation, about what can you build on existing infrastructure, How can you use elements in the public cloud, the new economy, new business models to create this new new business. >>So let's talk about cloud economics. Specifically public cloud. When we say cloud, we need public cloud. Yeah, not fake cloud. So you've got, you've got cloud, you've got you've got cross cloud, you know, kind of imagining this abstraction layer cutting across clouds are extending to the edge. You talk about the cloud suppliers, they look at the the the edge as this opportunity, they see data centers is just another edge node. So talk about how do you think about public cloud economics as it relates to your business and your custom? >>Sure. So um you know, going with that blank sheet of paper and building out and kind of the entire stack exactly from start to finish everything you need from four to customer to deliver a customer experience to deliver all the tools that are necessary to sell in a completely digital model. Um The economics for us, when you look at the public cloud, allow you to do a kind of a composite application approach of using the api economy, you can just pick exactly what you need from individual pieces that exist out in the market. Um, and typically cloud based products as well. And by building in that model, you can really narrow down a per subscriber economic as a carrier that's kind of wasn't feasible before, you know, and on top of that, that kind of Capex the time to market, all those things are so small compared to what used to have as long as you're building out in that. >>So is your strategy to enable service providers and carriers to move beyond connectivity? Is that, is that even is that feasible? Or is it an ecosystem that gets built around that? On top of that? >>Our vision is that, and this is difficult. A lot of subscription based verticals. You, you need the subscriber but you need to know them on a 1 to 1 basis. You need that person, not just building account number. Uh And then once you've got that and you've got your core business around them, it is about all the other things that you can build a kind of an ecosystem around that customer. So it could be enabling um other verticals within the teletext act. It could just be about making sure that they have kind of our first approaches. You need to be digital, you need to have a digital experience, it needs to be good, needs to be premium, it can't just be a digitization, like the clipboard on the ipad, it needs to be a real rethought Greenfield experience to be competitive in >>the future. Because when you think about the brands and the pandemic, we're all watching movies and viewing on demand. The experience that we have with those services is awesome. Absolutely. The sales, the marketing and service all integrated into one. And you think about the experience that you have with traditional telcos and it's just frustration and so so you're, you're enhancing that experience. That's what it's all about, that user >>experience. Yeah. If you, if you go into our app in Canada right now and go into a marketplace stab you, you would kind of feel like netflix a bit because you know, uh, the subscription plans are just part of the range of products you can be buying from us and it truly depends on the customer segment and type and then on the particular customer, what we would bring up front for them to to consume. You know, if it's a youth customer student or perhaps a new Canadian or new immigrants to a certain place, they might need the banking product and we might have appreciate Mastercard or Visa available for them to to order together with decent is incurred. Or they might, if a university student, they might be buying certain clothing products or or other things from around for that university or or so on. Support. The customization is endless and personalization could be really truly personal and uh machine learned and and so on and so forth. >>And if I could, the most people don't describe themselves in terms of gigabytes, they have other things that they like and other things that make them who they are and being able to to understand who somebody is and deliver things outside of just like here is a plan with gigabytes were here a minute is really the next step. You know, you need to be able to put something other than one GB on a poster. >>It's interesting you say that Alex because you're right, we don't think there's consumers, we don't think in terms of gigabytes, but underneath all this is data, it's all about the data. And when I think about industries that are data intensive like telco financial services is another example. These organizations build data products and the time it takes for them to build data products is too long. The the user experience is oftentimes too cumbersome. And I think I think there's a new metric that's going to emerge in the industry is how long is a business person does it take me to go from idea to monetization as I mean a new industry Kpi you heard it here first in the queue because it's all about building data products in the in the digital world. And so when I think about what you're doing, if I understand it correctly, you're allowing the digital service providers first of all become digital and then build data products very quickly. Configure them very quickly and offer them to their consumers. >>Yeah, I like that idea um idea to monetization I think shortening that time is really important, but it goes beyond just like configuring a data product. Um It's anything that you could pull together within your own ecosystem or combinations of ecosystems or bundles of things. Um You know, as a marketer. Uh That idea comes to you and you want to test it, it's you know, it's idea to test the monetization to monetization. Um So you know, if you can rapidly test things iterate on them uh from an interface that happens in real time and you've got customers that are the data model and the construct around them is customer centric. So your marketing can be customer centric, um That's really the world we're building. >>What's the ecosystem, look how you envisioning and thinking about the ecosystem evolution? >>Well, starting point was obviously look at the retail store and look what's in the store and kind of have all of that as as a starting point, so you have that covered. But you can go you can go outside and and and see who else is selling what to add. Mobile consumer of yours. And trust me, all those ecosystem partners are eager to get in this digital kind of platform because they want they want that access to the consumer and they want a targeted access to that consumer and looking at whatever perhaps opportunities and and values exist outside of it. People pass down the phones to their kids and their senior members of the family. We try to sell their use phones. Um We we we started um monetizing or started developing systems that allow members to sell to members, something that, you know, is maybe part of a different marketplaces. But if you can get that process going and you can be a trusted party that handles these things. That's a really exciting opportunity for certain segments specifically. >>Well, that's the thing. The cloud enables, you can create these marketplaces and you can build your own ecosystems and that's sort of the next phase, last 10 years, we're going to be different than the next 10 years of cloud. And one of the big differences is the pace at which you can develop these ecosystems. I mentioned, uh, financial services, is that, uh, an industry segment? That's right for this wireless transformation. Are there other segments that you guys are looking? >>I think uh Fintech is maybe a good example of what telecom should be, uh, not necessarily mirroring, but at least looking to for inspiration because they've kind of dropped a little bit in terms of being open, opening up architecture, allowing that kind of service level innovation. Um so, you know, one thing is to create some digital transformation or digital green field operation for a network operator, um but kind of the next step is allowing other types of experimentation on top of what you've built. And kind of, Fintech is a good model for that. The cloud absolutely enables it. Um I mean, you know, up until cloud, I don't think we could have a conversation about, you know, a carrier opening up for other people to experiment and their platforms are on their systems, but the cloud really does allow for that. And I think uh you know, smaller groups of very capable minds will come up with things that we can't even dream up right now. Uh and that's the kind of stuff that you want to have happening first on your network and be enabling it and then pull it in and pull those minds into into your teams like attracting talent that can deliver the things we're talking about is also going to be important. >>We talked about in the cube data about the economy all the time and no we can talk about opening up the telcos and it scares people a lot. You know can we replicate the reliability of the network with open A PS and open no rand open systems. But are there examples of sort of open api is the ap economy in this digital service provider world? Oh >>um I think there are I think uh you know if you come from I. P. Void ecosystem there are a lot more open um uh and networks should be in a in a similar place. I think it provides opportunities in short tech. Is there security, home security iot everything can have come to play when you think about it, when when you have an app on each each of your consumers phone we have I think endless opportunities you have to be provide certain stickiness. You have to provide certain engagement. Why would people come back to you um Gamification loyalty? Um other things can come to play uh to provide this wholesome experience on why people would come back to you, not just for you know, service things >>I saw in some of your material private by design. What what is that? >>I think so it's it's a bit of a mindset in the strategy when you're when you're developing everything in your platform um as a as a telecommunications provider, you collect like an absurd amount of information about people, particularly if you are detected in the way that you know, whoever one of those people is. Um, and there's a little bit of a need to respect some of that data, respect some of the privacy that maybe around that um, and building within the cloud and constructing new data models around how that data is, is uh, stored, what things exist in a wallet, what traceability happens, inaudible bility happens on that data is really important. As you consider the future. We're already seeing lots of regulation around privacy and data and data processing. Um, so you can't like build now and think, oh whatever, we'll change it later. You a little bit forward thinking is very important for, for that type of >>Yeah. And I think starting point is important of how easy is it to get in and start of telecom telecommunications provider, you'll see during MWc and have evidence people are trying to re engineer the onboarding experiences. Um, I think that first step has to be very, very easy for users to take uh and uh, getting into ecosystem, so just email, good to go just as any other app and, and that's, and that's a starting point, and then the rest of it is sort of on demand when needed. Uh that's, you know, with the value you grow. So telecoms usually try to run the credit check before you even, you know, before you even know the name. >>Hey guys, we got to leave it there. Thanks so much, congratulations on getting off the ground adam. It's buzzing here, back to you.

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE. With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to IBM Think 2021. This is "theCUBE's" ongoing coverage, where we go out to the events, in this case, of course, virtually, to extract the signal from the noise. And now we're going to talk about the shifts in customer employee experiences and channels. The past year, obviously, has exposed gaps in both of those areas. The shift to digital channels, something that hit every industry. If you weren't a digital business, you were out of business. So, there's huge demand for better, a.k.a. less frustrating, and hopefully superior, customer experiences. That's never been higher. It puts a lot of pressure on companies and their marketing departments to deliver. And with me to talk about these trends are two great guests. Alex Shootman, the General Manager of Adobe Workfront. Alex was CEO of Workfront, which Adobe acquired last year. And Matthew Candy, Global Managing Director of IBM iX. Gentleman, welcome. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having us. >> Great to be here. >> Matt, let's start with you. Maybe you could talk to the shifts that I talked about earlier, in the past year, and customers' expectations, and how they changed, and how you guys responded. >> Yes, so, Dave, I mean, it's been, my goodness, what a year, right? If we'd gone back and thought, we never would have seen this coming. And certainly, I guess, for the clients, I run the digital customer experience business, the services business, here at IBM, and certainly, we have been very busy helping clients, across just about every industry, accelerate their digital transformation efforts. And I think what has been absolutely clear, is digital, mobile, all of these ways of engaging with customers through channels, has been an absolutely critical way in which businesses have kept going, and survived over this time. And certainly, we've seen that transformation accelerate, right? And companies shifting from face-to-face interactions from a B2B sales perspective, into a kind of online B2B commerce, et cetera. So, really it's become digital by default. And I think customers really demanding personalized experiences, and wanting to make sure that these companies really know you in how they deal with you. >> You know Matt, I mean, our business, you think about our business, it was predominantly going out to events, live events, and then overnight, our entire industry had to shift to virtual. And what it was is, you had all these physical capabilities, and people trying to shove it into virtual, and it was really hard. There was a lot of unknowns, and really different. I imagine there's some parallels within marketing organizations. And I wonder if you could talk, Matt, about what kind of barriers you saw about delivering those kind of digital interactions and experiences. >> Yes. So, I guess, we've seen kind of five core challenges that companies have been facing. So, firstly, around volume and velocity of content. So, as we're putting more demand into organizations, right, for more content at a greater pace, right, this causes challenges for companies in terms of being able to get content out there, and surface it through their digital channels, right? Whether that's kiosks, or voice, web, mobile, et cetera. And that pace is not slowing down. Second thing is this demand for personalization. So, as companies and individuals are touching through all of these touch points across marketing sales and service, the need to be able to interact in the right way, showing that you know me, using personal data to match the right offer at the right time, critically important. Thirdly, the martech stack, right. Across many of these organizations, this explosion in marketing technology over the last 10 years has been absolutely incredible. And so one of the big challenges companies have is how we tie all of these different components of the stack together, to build this seamless experience. Fourth challenge, right? Additional communication channels. So, as we need more content and personalization, and we've got to join up across all these different systems, how do we make this consistent across all of these channels, right, whether it's digital or physical, is a true test of many organizations' ability to respond. And the fifth point is the coordination needed across departments within companies. And so, how the marketing department deals with legal, with regulatory approvals, with sales. How they go out to their agency partners. And this has certainly got a lot more complex across geographies, and across boundaries, within companies and outside. And so we see, absolutely, this need to put in place, basically, the marketing system of record that helps manage this. And this is where we see huge opportunity together with Adobe. >> Yeah, so, Alex, maybe you could talk about this a little bit. I mean, you guys are well-known for deep expertise and leadership, and orchestrating marketing workflows and the like. Matt talked about the martech stack. What's your take on this? And how are IBM iX and Adobe Workfront working together? >> What has occurred in response to what Matt talked about, is that companies started realizing that work was a tier one asset inside the marketing team. You know, they looked at, if you go back in time, and you look at financials in a company, people thought, "Wow, this is really important to us. We should put a system in place to manage financials." They realized their customers were really important, so they said, "We should put a system in place to manage our customers." People are important. They bought Workday to make sure that they could manage their people. And all of this complexity that Matt talked about caused enterprises to realize that the work of marketing was as important as some of those other activities in the organization. And so they started investing in a marketing system of record, like Workfront. >> You know, that's interesting. Just a quick aside. I mean, if you think about a lot of the problems we have in data and big data, typical to talk about stovepipe. You just mentioned three examples, finance, HR, and now marketing, where we've contextualized the system. In other words, the domain experts, the people in finance, and HR, and marketing, they're the ones who know the data the best. They don't have to go, necessarily, to some big data team, and data scientist, and all this stuff. They know what they want and they know it. And that's really what you guys are serving in your streamlining. This notion, Alex, of a marketing system of record is really interesting. I mean, it's relatively new, isn't it? So, why does it matter so much to marketers? >> Yeah, if you think about it, we've been able to serve 3,000 enterprises around the globe. We serve all 10 of the top 10 brands. Half of the Fortune 100. And what has created the need for the new, if you think about it, are the challenges that start arising when you implement the concepts that Matt talked about. Consider one of the largest private credit card issuers on the planet. And you think about delivering that personalized experience all the way to an end customer. You've got a private credit card issuer. They do business with hundreds of thousands of companies. Their account managers are interacting with those companies, and all of that lands back on a marketing organization that has to jointly plan promotions with those companies to drive the private credit card business. That marketing team needs visibility to the work that's happening. Or consider a major medical manufacturer who's trying to get medical products out the door. And the marketing team is trying to coordinate with the product team, with the regulatory team, with the supply chain team, with the legal team. And they're trying to orchestrate all of that work, so that they can get products out the door more quickly. Or maybe a financial services organization that's also trying to get new products out the door, and they're trying to get all the approval about the content that goes with those products, and it's all about speed to market. That's what's creating the need for the new, as you phrased it, Dave. >> Yes. Excellent. Thank you. So, then Matt, paint a picture. A lot of people may not be familiar with IBM iX. Maybe how you guys... You got creators, you got deep expertise in this area. So, maybe talk about where you add value, and how you work with Adobe. >> Okay, so IBM iX, so, we sit within the services business at IBM. As you said, Dave, right, we have designers, experienced strategists, engineers, basically able to deliver kind of end-to-end digital and customer experience solution, right from the creative, all the way through to the technology platforms, and the operations. Adobe is one of our key strategic partners across IBM, and certainly within my part of the business. And so, we couldn't have been more delighted when Workfront joined Adobe, through the acquisition there. So, we already had a strong relationship with the Workfront team. And so now seeing that as part of the Adobe platform and family there, really opens up massive opportunities. We're working with several major airlines, automotive companies, retailers, using Adobe technology to transform the customer experiences that they have. Putting in place new digital platforms, and new ways of engaging with those customers. But what is absolutely clear, as Alex was talking about, this need for a marketing systems of record, as this landscape becomes more complex, as the velocity of change increases the need to not just focus on the customer experience, and how a customer interacts with the brand, but the need to get the workflows and the processes within the organization that sit behind that, organized, executing in the correct way, in an efficient way, in order to make sure that you can deliver on that customer promise. And so this is absolutely critical, effectively, to drive this kind of workflow improvement, the productivity improvement, and put intelligence and automation into these processes, across the organization. So there is, certainly, we believe a huge opportunity together in the market, to help clients transform, and to deliver the value in this space. >> Got it. Alex, maybe you can just, at a high level, share some examples of how Adobe, and drawing on your experiences from Workfront, how you've helped companies where they had to get content out, they had to automate the processes, and the outcomes that you saw, that you hope to share with other clients. >> You know what, what Matt's talking about is the need for intelligent workflows within a marketing organization. Because a marketing organization is trying to solve one of two challenges. Either they're trying to be more efficient because they can't get more resources to do the work that they need to do, or they're trying to operate with speed. And so what our breakthrough thinking was, Dave, in terms of solving these problems, and then I'll give an example, is the realization that while it seemed like work should be different in different enterprises, ultimately, all work has five elements to it. The first thing is, you decide to do something, or I ask you to do something. So, we have to have the strategic planning around the intake of work. Then we have to plan out the work. Then we actually have to execute the work. We have to understand who's doing what. We have to have transparency to whether or not that work is getting done, or if people need help in that work. Then that work needs to be approved by somebody. And then finally, especially in marketing, then we have to actually deliver that work to a technology like ADM, where we're going to publish it on the web. So, if you take the case of a major financial, a financial company that serves consumers, that financial company is constantly bringing new products to market. Now, if you're bringing new products to market, if you think about the United States, you have to make sure that you have supported the regulatory approval that's necessary for a product. So, that product has to be able to go to the right investor. That product, if it's in a certain state, has to have oversight to it. So, now you're a marketing team, in a financial services organization that's supporting getting new product to market, and in a particular customer, it used to take 'em 63 days to go through all of the approvals necessary to just get content out the door. Now that they are effectively intaking the work, planning the work, executing the work reviewing the work, and delivering the work digitally, that's down to eight days. >> And with the martech platform, you have the data. So, you know what content you want to get out, and you can make decisions much better. I mean, my big takeaway is, you got the art of marketing, and those with the marketing DNA, I don't have that gene, but it's intersecting with the science and automation, and the data, and the workflows, and driving efficiency, and ultimately driving results and revenue. So, that's my big takeaway from this conversation, but Alex, maybe you could give us your takeaway, and then Matt, you can bring us home. >> Yeah. I mean, my takeaway is in this new economy, marketing is a tier one corporate activity. Marketing is a peer activity to manufacturing, to distribution, to sales, and to finance. And every one of those disciplines are managed with a system. Marketing needs its own system, because it's as important as any other organization. And so to me, Dave, it's no more complicated than that. That marketing is now as important as every other function. And it needs to be managed as every other function. And Workfront is the application that marketing manages the workflows, and the business of marketing. >> All right, Matt. Give us your final thoughts, please. >> Yep, no. My final thought, building on what Alex said, so, we've put together a joint point of view with Adobe, and with Workfront, called "Intelligent Content Transformation," right. That is our strategic framework to help clients accelerate on this journey, both of delivering these amazing customer outcomes, but how we transform the processes within the marketing organization. And I think that yes, you can continue to focus on delivering amazing digital experiences for customers, and it's absolutely critical, and that's critical to revenue growth, but actually, what's also critical, is to drive efficiency in these workflows across the enterprise, right? And that is not only going to enable the revenue growth, it's going to enable you to deliver on that promise. But it's also going to result in significant cost and efficiency improvements for these companies, by focusing on marketing in the same way as we have done for procurement transformation, supply chain transformation, finance transformation, HR transformation, right? There's a lot of effort gone into the efficiency of those workflows. We've got to do the same for marketing. So, massive opportunity, Dave, massive. >> It is massive. Every company has to, in some way, shape, or form, put high-quality content in front of their customers to engage with them. Gentlemen, thanks so much for coming on "theCUBE." Really appreciate your time. >> Yeah, thanks for having us. >> All right- >> See you again. >> And thank you everybody for watching. This is Dave Vellante for "theCUBE." You're watching IBM Think 2021, the virtual edition. We'll be right back. (bright music) ♪ Da, de, de, da, da, de, da, la ♪ (bright music)

>>the service experience has dramatically changed over the course of history within enterprise it once a purely break fixed business that put out fires technology services has become a linchpin of customer I. T. Execution strategies where companies carefully select technology partners to anticipate and remediate potential problems before they occur. Moreover, organizations have come to expect a cloud like experience for their entire I. T. Estate spanning on prem cloud cross clouds. And increasingly the edge and technology services are looked upon by customers to provide a layer that helps abstract that underlying complexity of I. T. So they can focus on what they do best welcome to the cubes ongoing virtual coverage of Dell technologies world with me today to talk about the modern services experience are Doug Schmidt, who is the president of Dell Technologies and Services and Alex Barreto. Senior vice president. Dell Technology Services gentlemen welcome to the cube. Great to see you >>Well thank you. Dave big traven us >>really. My pleasure. Doug and I wonder if you could start by just giving us a quick overview of the organization that you lied. What's new with with Dell technology services? >>Well, yeah, so you know, first of all I get the privilege along with my team of leading over 60,000 service professionals and partners and we support customers in over 170 countries and 54 languages. And we can cover the entire technology spectrum from the edge to the core to the cloud. And our expertise in this area is broad and deep as you can imagine. And we help our customers with their transformation with the indian services and this includes consulting, uh deployment, support, managed services, education services as well as asset recovery. So just to name a few, so we use all of this technology and this capability to help our customers with their digital transformation. >>Greatest Alex, what's your wheelhouse? What's your role in in the services, strategy and technology? >>Yeah, I have the great opportunity to drive strategy, operations and technology. We're doing exciting things across all three day. But in particularly the technology space when I think about the intersection of technology and customer experience, a lot of exciting things there, I'm sure we'll talk about today. >>Yeah. Doug I mean if you look at the past 12 months, I mean you certainly saw you know, a real shift to work from home technologies and you guys, you know all about, you know the story well. But one of the things that we've been talking about is the uptick that we're expecting and we're already seeing it in professional services because there is a talent gap, there's a skills shortage and people have to they have to get hybrid right, they have to fund their digital transformation, they need help. So there's been a lot of changes in the market during the past year. What are you hearing from customers? What are their priorities? How are they changing? >>Well yeah you've stated Dave look there's a lot of changes in the market during the last year clearly and what our customers are telling us and where they're changing priorities are are really centered around two things. The first uh is that all of us are helping our customers deliver a better experience to their customers right to end customers that matters. You know in a brand new study we commissioned from Forrester consulting. Actually 56% of I. T. Leaders said that improving customer experience is the top driver for their digital transformation efforts. The second thing that we're hearing and that I'm hearing is that they're asking us to assist in this digital transformation. In that same research that I talked to you about From Forrester, 81 of the Iraqi leaders said that they need to leverage external technology specific expertise to help their internal I. T. Teams be successful. And I think just to deep dive these two items, you know first it's on the first one for the customer experience. It's just crucial for customers to transform their C. X. To be competitive. That's for all of us and you know there's not an industry or a team around that's not going through this whether it's schools uh doing digital learning healthcare and all of the things you know recently I just talked to a doctor via the you know zoom. I mean these are all new experiences, right? Uh government and corporations. It's just it's very remote. It's very seamless. It's very timely and uh look the employee experience is also closely tied to this right to the customer experience. Obviously if your employees aren't able to perform in this environment you can't really deliver the customer experience and they need the right technology and tools to really deliver that. And that's where we at Dell Technologies and Dell Technology Services are really helping our customers. Uh The second area I mentioned was really about getting our customers ready for the future and you know, digital transformation is not a one and done. This is a ongoing journey uh that gets our customers to assist their customers and their team members. And look they're looking for trusted advisor who can you know, specialized in the experience they need uh to guide them through this. And you know, I. T. Is not just back office anymore, as you know, it's really about getting in front of this, breaking down the silos, helping all of the departments not just I. T. Everything with their business needs and really delivering these outcomes that are going to help them with the customer experience and the digital transformation. >>Yeah thank you for that. And and doug I mean the Consumer Ization of I. T. Has been going on for the better part of a decade or or or more the cloud obviously has affected how we think about the experience and pricing and the like and and we're hearing a lot about Apex from Dell tech right now. What's the role of services in apex? >>Well look services has always been a primary interface with our customers and will continue to play a major part of that. And this is really about services and our products and our great solutions and software all coming together to really deliver the best experience for our customers. But specifically speaking about services, look this will be about services helping our customers seamlessly integrate apex offers and leverage the best of our infrastructure management capabilities into end. And I talked a little bit about those at the beginning, but this will be helping the customers deploy apex monitor it operated, optimized support, Decommissioning all those things from the end in life cycle. And look, we'll leverage our advantages in the supply slain as well. And scale Apex globally working with Kevin Brown and the operations team. So it's about bringing all the strength of Dell along with services to deliver apex, you know, services also is going to help accelerate the value of the customers with for example, apex data storage as a service, which I'm sure you're hearing about will manage the infrastructure across the lifecycle and help our customers get the most out of all of this great technology, we're bringing >>so Alex and then dug maybe you can you can chime in but you guys, you talked talked talked about how important customer experiences can you tell us more about what services is doing to specifically enhance that customer experience? Yeah, >>sure. Thank David. And look, you talked about which I thought was great about the notion of services much more than just break fixed. So that customer experience now spans the entire services lifecycle. So when we talk, yes, it's really that entire Cf. So we're doing a couple of things to to really drive customer experience to the next level. In fact three distinct focus areas. The first one is really around artificial intelligence, machine learning and embedding that notion of A I into everything that we do, whether that support deployment services, managed services, consulting services, education services. The entire spectrum of our services offering now carries a I into the services offering. We started with support but now we expanded to the entire entire spectrum that drives efficiency and customers see that and feel that in terms of lower costs, greater speed, it drives value for our customers as well because they're able to generate new and appreciated insights. And second, if you think about the total customer experience, there are times when they do have to interact with us and that interaction now is food and it's a seamless, unified in simple experience that the customers have with us across the entire product set of Dell. So there's pc servers, network storage we provide, we provide a single unified view in a simple view for our customers. And then third, if you think about our services offers, we're modernizing them, talked a little bit about this as well. We're embedding technology into the services offering, make them better and faster. Good example, that is modern provisioning. We launched at the beginning this year. Great market feedback has new features, new capability, leverages our cloud infrastructure to deliver the services. >>You know, Alex, I want to stay on that for a minute because when I when I think about apex to me it's it's it's a cultural transformation that's going on. I mean look, Del is a tech technology company, have been product company and you know, services there to support that, but it's always you've always had to align with product. But now that I almost see the, you know, the product is aligning with the customer service experience and they're coming together like this. So so we talked about the changes and obviously the focus on C. X. Can you tell us more about the specific technologies that services is leveraging to affect that? >>Yeah it's a good question. Often we actually talked about products and services now and services is the product, as you said, they're really coming together and there are a number of things we're doing to drive that technology change both within apex and also outside apex of our regular Capex model. So a couple examples of things were around the data management side as an example using graph technologies to really contextualized data generate insights from that data regardless of how the data is structured, regardless of where the data is stored, represent those values. Were using that inside L. For services, we actually then monetizing that in providing that to our customers. We are consulting services and manage services. You talked about Apex Cloud is and hybrid Cloud is a big big area for us. Big focus here. In fact all the apex offers are actually they'll manage customer operators. So that managed services component is integrated and is a fundamental part of everything our other apex offers that we're putting in place. There are a couple of other areas. We're also excited about two of them to highlight specifically Five G and the Edge and five G. We see phenomenal growth and opportunities around for customers around the new digital transformation that they can do with five G. But enabling that is the carriers behind that infrastructure of five G, which we are supporting with our managed services, developing carrier grade specific managed services capabilities for carriers around the globe. And on the edge side with the growth and phenomenal exponential growth actually of data around the far edge being driven by sensors and greater compute needs and storage needs at the far edge, we're actually providing services for those specific data centers. They're very distributed some of them in urban areas, some of them in non urban ears and there's hundreds of them and they require remote services capabilities which we have that infrastructure today. So we're deploying that in this far edge space, another area that we're excited about five G the edge apex and then our core services capabilities, >>the edges like this, this really infinite technology opportunity. It's so we see the, you know, the data center and you see the cloud and okay, we were largely a remote set of cloud services. You're seeing the cloud come into the on prem, you're seeing on prem come into the cloud. So you've got the hybrid connections here, cross cloud and then even at the edge you've got layers of edge, you think about, you know, the autonomous vehicle, there's so much going on their custom silicon etcetera, it's okay you're not gonna get into the auto business, I don't think at least any time soon. But all that data that's being collected that has to get back to the cloud and much of its not gonna get persisted. A lot of it's gonna stay at the edge of a lot of it's gonna come back to the cloud. Everything is just exploding. You've gotta roll there. It's just these layers and connections that are coming through into this, this kind of ubiquitous matrix. I mean it's like the movie, it's amazing. Very exciting times. And doug. I wonder just going off here Doug. I wonder if we could give you the last word. Maybe I'm looking into the future beyond apex what's next for Dell tech services and your customers? >>Well, first of all, they did a great job on that. It is exciting. Look, and the reason we're putting so much effort into the emerging technologies uh we've talked about is to prepare uh you know assist our customers with this and you and you brought this up as well. Look, the vast amount of customer data uh that they're going to have to contend with is just staggering. 175 0 bytes of data will be created worldwide by 2025 according to D. C. And even more amazing about that is 30% of it is you know, projected to be processed real time. You're talking about that edge, right? And more than you know 50% of the enterprise generated data will be created and processed at that edge according to Gartner. So look it's gonna be exciting. And over the next 5 to 10 years we predict that all devices will be able to communicate anywhere on earth. And you know look these types of support tools to gather intelligence from billions of in point, uh, is going to be fascinating as well. And there will be new ways to consume the this knowledge seamlessly, making the relationship between us and the intelligence even more seamless and natural. You know, an example of that that we're working with right now is augmented reality a R out for our field resources. And, you know, we're seeing the capability, it's going to provide our field engineers and it's, it's pretty amazing gonna buy a better experience for our team members and a better experience for our customers. You know, and customers are going to have to contend with all of these challenges. And so we're modernizing to help them and kind of just summarizing up, you know, look, the value of services is really about shifting to intelligence as a service. And there's three ways uh, that this will really come about. One is our relationship with our customers is evolving from providing technology solutions. You mentioned this in your opening to being fully integrated as a business partner. That's the first one. Second one, we're helping to shape how our customers run their business from processes to resources to the experience they delivered to their end customer. That's number two and number three, it's really about uh measuring our success. Everything we do is about our customers achieving their business targets and their outcomes. And that's why we believe intelligence as a service is the future of services. >>And this is where technology plays such an important role in the services component of that as they set up front is the linchpin. There's an inverse relationship over the course of my career between the customer experience and the technical complexity. The simpler it gets for customers, the more complex it gets at the back end, and you've got to hide that complexity and that's a big part of where technology and services comes in. We're seeing the explosion of data as you said, and and the explosion of processing power is very exciting times, Alex and Doug. Thanks so much for coming to the Cuban, sharing the update on Dell Tech services in the future. I really appreciate your time. >>Thank you. Thank you for having us. >>All right, and thank you for watching everybody's day volonte for the Cube and our ongoing coverage of Dell Technologies World 2021. The virtual edition will be right back.

>>from >>Around the globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of IBM think 2021 brought to you by >>IBM. Welcome back to IBM Think 2021. This is the cubes ongoing coverage where we go out to the events in this case of course virtually to extract the signal from the noise. And now we're gonna talk about the shifts in customer employee experiences and channels the past year obviously is exposed gap gaps in both of those areas. The shift to digital channels, I mean hit every industry if you weren't a digital business, you were out of business. So there's huge demand for better a. K. A less frustrating and hopefully superior customer experiences that's never been higher. It puts a lot of pressure on companies and their marketing departments to deliver. And with me to talk about these trends are two great guests Alex shooting in. The general manager of adobe work front Alex was ceo of Work front, which Adobe acquired last year and Matthew Candy Global managing director of I. B. M. I. X. Gentlemen welcome thanks for coming on, >>thanks for having us speaking >>matt, let's start with you. Maybe you could talk to the shifts that I talked about earlier and in the past year and customers expectations and how they changed and how you guys responded >>Yes, today, I mean it's been my goodness, what a year, right. Um you know, if we've got back and and thought yeah, we never would have seen this coming. Um and certainly I guess for the clients, you know, I run the digital customer experience business, the services business here at IBM and certainly, you know, we have been very busy helping clients across just about every industry accelerate their digital transformation efforts. And I think you know what has been absolutely clear is you know, digital mobile um you know, all of these ways of engaging with customers through channels has been an absolutely critical way in which businesses have kept going and survived over this time. And and certainly, you know, we've seen that transformation accelerate right? And and companies shifting from face to face interactions from a B two B sales perspective, um you know, into, you know, into a kind of online, B two B commerce etcetera. So really it's become digital by default and I think customers really demanding personalized experiences and wanting to make sure that these companies really know you and how they deal with you. >>You know, matt, I mean our business to think about our business, it was predominantly going out to events, live events and then overnight our entire industry had to shift to virtual and what it was is you had all these physical capabilities that people try to shove it into virtual. And it was really hard. It was it was a lot of unknowns really different. I imagine there's some parallels within marketing organizations and I wonder if you could talk about what kind of barriers you saw about delivering those kind of digital interactions and experiences. >>Yes, so I guess, you know, we've seen kind of five core challenges that companies have been facing. So firstly around volume and velocity of content. So, you know, as we're putting more demand into organizations right for more content to the greater pace. This causes challenges for companies in terms of being able to get content out there and surface it through their digital channels, right? Whether that's kiosks or voice, web mobile etcetera. And that pace is not slowing down. Second thing is this demand for personalization. So, you know, as companies and individuals are touching through all of these touchpoints across kind of marketing, sales and service, the need to be able to kind of interact in the right way, showing that, you know, me using personal data to match the right offer at the right time, critically important. Thirdly, the Martek stack across across many of these organizations is explosion in marketing technology over the last 10 years has been absolutely incredible. And so one of the big challenges companies have is how we tie all of these different components for stack together to build their seamless experience. Fourth challenge, right, additional communication channels. Um, so as we need more content and personalization and we've got to join up across these, all these different systems, how do we make this consistent across all of these channels? Right. Whether it's digital or physical, um, you know, is a true test of many organizations ability to respond. And the 5th point is the coordination needed across departments within companies. And so, you know how the marketing department deals with legal with regulatory approvals with sales, how they go out to their agency partners. And and and and this has certainly got a lot more complex across geography and across boundaries within companies and outside. And so we see, you know, absolutely this need to put in place and marketing, you know, basically the marketing system of record that helps kind of manage this and this is where we see huge opportunity together with adobe. >>Yeah, so Alex, maybe you could talk about this a little bit. I mean you guys are well known for deep expertise and leadership and orchestrating, you know, marketing workflows and the like Matt talked about the Martek stack. What's your take on this and how R R I B M I X and an adobe work front working together >>at what has occurred in response to what matt talked about is that companies started realizing that work was a tier one asset inside the marketing team. You know, they looked at, if you go back in time and you look at financials in a company, people thought, wow this is really important to us. We should put a system in place to manage financials. They realized their customers were really important, so we should put a system in place to manage our customers. People are important. They bought work day to make sure that they could manage their people. And all of this complexity that matt talked about caused enterprises to realize that the work of marketing was as important as some of those other activities in the organization. And so they started investing in a marketing system of record like work from. >>You know, that's interesting. Just a quick aside, I mean, if you think about a lot of the problems we have in in, you know, data and big data that people talk about stovepipe, you just mentioned three examples Finance HR and now marketing where we've contextualized the system, in other words, the domain experts, the people in finance and HR and marketing, they're the ones who know the date of the best. They don't have to go necessarily to some big data team and data scientists and all the stuff they know what they want and they know it and that's really what you guys are serving in your streamlining this this notion, Alex of a marketing system of record is really interesting. I mean, it's it's relatively new, isn't it? And so why does it matter so much to marketers >>if you think about it? We uh we've been able to serve 3000 enterprises around the, around the globe. We serve all 10 of the top 10 brands. Half of the fortune 100. And what what has created the need for the new if you think about it, are the challenges that start arising when you, when you implement the concepts that matt talked about, consider one of the largest private credit card issuers on the planet. Uh, and you think about delivering that personalized experience all the way to an end customer. You've got a private credit card issuer. They do business with hundreds of thousands of companies. Their account managers are interacting with those companies. And all that lands back on a marketing organization that has to jointly plan promotions with those companies to, uh, to, to drive the private credit card business. That marketing team needs visibility to the work that's happening. Or consider a major medical manufacturer who's trying to get medical products out the door. And the marketing team is trying to coordinate with the product team with the regulatory team, with the supply chain team, with the legal team and they're trying to orchestrate all of that work so that they can get products out the door more quickly. Or maybe a financial services organization that's getting new. Also trying to get new products out the door and they're trying to get all the approval about the content that goes with those products and it's all about speed to market. That's what's creating the need for the new, uh, kind of, as you phrased it Dave. >>Excellent. Thank you. So no matter paint a picture sort of, uh, you know, people may not be familiar with I. B. M. I X. Maybe how you guys, you got, you got creators, you've got deep expertise in this area. So maybe talk about how where you add value and how you work with adobe. >>So IBM so we sit within the services business at IBM um as you said, Dave Right, we have, you know, designers, experienced strategists, engineers, um you know, basically able to deliver kind of end to end digital customer experience solution right from the creative all the way through to the technology platforms. Um And the operations adobe is, you know, one of our key strategic partners across IBM and certainly within my part of the business. And so, you know, we couldn't have been more delighted when work front joined adobe through the acquisition there. So we already had a strong relationship with the work front team. Um and so now seeing that as part of the adobe kind of platform um and and family, they're really opens up massive opportunities. You know, we're working with several major airlines, automotive companies, retailers, um using adobe technology to transform the customer experiences that they have, putting in place new digital platforms, a new ways of engaging with those customers. But but what is absolutely clear, you know, and as Alex was talking about this need for a marketing systems of record, as this landscape becomes more complex, as the velocity of change kind of increases the need to not just focus on the customer experience and how a customer interacts with the brand, but the need to get the workflows and the processes within the organization that sit behind that, you know, organized executing in the correct way, uh you know, in an efficient way in order to make sure that you can deliver on that customer promise. And so this is absolutely critical effectively to get to get to drive this kind of workflow improvement of productivity improvement and put intelligence and automation into these processes across the organization. So there is a you know, certainly we know we believe a huge opportunity together in in in the market um to help clients transform um and to deliver the value in this space. Got >>it Alex, maybe you can just at a high level share some examples of how adobe and from your drawing on your experience from from work front, how you've helped companies where they had to get you know content out, you had to automate the processes and and the kind of outcomes that you saw that you hope to share with other clients. >>You know what that's talking about is the need for intelligent workflows within a marketing organization. Because the marketing organization is trying to solve one of two challenges. Either they're trying to be more efficient because they can't get more resources to do the work that they need to do or they're trying to operate with speed and so what our breakthrough thinking was there in terms of solving these problems. And then I'll give you an example is the realization that while it seems like work should be different in different enterprises. Ultimately all work has five elements to it. The first thing is you decide to do something or I ask you to do something. So we have to have this strategic planning around the intake of work. Then we have to plan out the work. Then we actually have to execute the work. We have to understand who's doing what we have to have transparency to whether or not that work is getting done or people need help in network, then network needs to be approved by somebody. And then finally, especially in marketing, then we have to actually deliver that work to a technology like Am where we're going to publish it on, on the web. So if you take the case of a major financial, uh, a financial company that serves consumers, that financial company is constantly bringing new products to market. Now, if you're bringing new products to market, if you think about the United States, you have to, you have to make sure that you have, uh, supported the regulatory approval that's necessary for a product. So that product has to be able to go to the right investor. That product, if it's in a certain state, has to have oversight to it. So now you're, you're a Marketing team in a financial services organization that supported getting new product to market. And in a particular customer used to take them 63 days to go through all of the approvals necessary to just get content out the door. Now that they are effectively uh in taking the work, Planning the work, executing the work, reviewing the work and delivering the work digitally. That's down to eight days. >>And with the Martek platform, you have the data so you know what content you want to get out and you can make decisions. Much about. My big takeaway is you got the art of of of of marketing. And those were the marketing D. N. A. I don't have that, you know that that gene uh but it's intersecting with with the science and automation and the data and the workflows and driving efficiency and ultimately driving results in in revenue. So that's kind of my big takeaway from this conversation. But but Alex maybe you can give us your take away and then matt, you can bring us home. >>Yeah, I mean my takeaway is in this new economy, marketing is a is a tier one corporate activity. Marketing is a pure activity to manufacturing, to distribution to sales into finance. And every one of those disciplines are managed with a system. Marketing needs its own system because it's as important as any other organization. And so to me, David is no more complicated than that, that marketing is now as important as every other function and it needs to be manages every other function. And work front is the application that marketing manages the workflows in the business of marketing. >>Alright. Matt, give us your final thoughts please. >>Yeah, no, my final thought, building on what building what Alex said. So we've put together a joint point of view with with Adobe in with Work front called intelligent content transformation. Right? That is our strategic framework to help clients accelerate on this journey, both of delivering these amazing customer outcomes. But how we transform the processes within the marketing organization and I think you know that yes, you can continue to focus on delivering amazing digital experiences for customers. And it's absolutely critical and that's critical to revenue growth. But actually what's also critical is to drive efficiency in these workflows across the enterprise. Right? And that is not only going to enable the revenue growth is going to enable you to deliver on that promise, but it's also going to result in significant cost and efficiency improvements for these companies by focusing on marketing in the same way as we have done for procurement, transformation, supply chain transformation, finance transformation, HR transformation, right? There's a lot of effort garment into, into the efficiency of those work clothes. We've got to do the same for marketing. Um so massive opportunity, massive. It is >>massive. Every company has to in some way, shape or form, put high quality content in front of their customers to engage with them. Gentlemen, thanks so much for coming on the cube. Really appreciate your time. >>Yeah, Thanks for having us. >>All right, and thank you everybody for watching. This is Dave Volonte for the Cube. You're watching IBM think 2021. The virtual edition. We're right back. >>Mhm.

>>Welcome to this IBM Watson health client conversation here. We're probing the dynamics of the relationship between IBM and its clients. And we're looking back, we're exploring the present situation and discussing the future state of healthcare. My name is Dave Volante from the cube and with me are Alex Dillard. Who's a senior director data analysis at blue choice, blue choice health plan, and Darryl decode, who is IBM with IBM Watson health. Of course. Welcome gentlemen. Good to see you. Thanks for coming on. >>Hey, >>So, you know, you think about lasting relationships. They're the foundation to any partnership and this past year, and it's tested all of us. We've had to rely on both personal and professional relationships to get us through the pandemic. So Alex, let me start with you. How has the partnership with IBM supported you in 2020? >>Well, uh, I've just a piece of a larger puzzle. Uh, the relationship that Darrell and I have had is confined to IBM Watson health, but blue cross blue shield, South Carolina, which food choice is a wholly owned subsidiary of has had a standing relationship with IBM on the it side. Uh, we are a mainframe shop, uh, about 70% of our it infrastructure is on a mainframe. And, uh, that puts us as a segment one client for IBM, we're in the top 300 of all of their clients in the Americans. And more specifically we're the fourth largest, um, uh, Linux on Z shop in the world. So, uh, we've got a lot of diversification at blue cross blue shield of South Carolina and the mainframe and the vastness of that. It infrastructure reflects that, uh, diversification. We are more than just a crossing the shield. Uh, that's typically what people think of is insurance when they think of crossing shield, but we also have a division that does a lot of subcontract work for government programs, uh, track air, which is the military healthcare, uh, claims processing and Medicare claims processing. >>We were a subcontractor of other folks that use our back office, it infrastructure to, to run their claims through. So that's, that's the larger, um, aspect of our relationship that, that blue cross blue shield of South Carolina house with IBM, uh, as it relates to Watson health, we have been a client since 1994 and obviously that predates the IBM proper. Uh, we were a client of med stat and then Truven, who then, uh, was bought by IBM. So we have used the products from Watson health throughout our system to support provider profiling, uh, count group reporting, um, and ad hoc analysis and to some extent to, uh, support our value-based products with, uh, ACO and PCMH, >>Uh, products. >>Awesome. Thank you for that. So Daryl is very long-term relationship. Obviously, if people forget sometimes that, uh, how IBM has modernized the Z Alex talked about, uh, Linux on the mainframe. That's pretty cool. I wonder if you could talk about specifically the things that, that you've done with Alex in his, in his, in his team, you know, thinking back last year, what were your accomplishments that you really stand out? >>Yeah, so, so one thing that jumps to mind is, uh, given the long standing relationship, I relied heavily on Alex to help us work through a multi-year renewal. And it was, it was a, um, a good adventure for us. We, we were able to laugh along the way. We certainly had some, some phone calls that, that were a little bit challenging, but the great thing about it was that the relationship that Alex and I had, he really views it as a partnership. And that was just so encouraging and uplifting. So to me, from my perspective, that was absolutely, uh, one of the highlights of my year and working through even through the pandemic and all that, we figured it out. >>So you guys, when you get together, go ahead, please. >>That's what I had as well. Um, you know, the, the unique thing about the Watson health contract is because it involves data. Uh, we take the stance that it's an it contract, so I'm on the business side. So I've got to just, as Daryl has to navigate it with me, we've got to navigate a large of your it bureaucracy. Um, and, uh, it, it was challenging. Um, you know, the business people kind of smooth the tracks and then you get the lawyers involved in, it just goes haywire. So, um, we were able to navigate that. Um, uh, so yeah, so it was a big accomplishment. So Alex, it's not real sexy to talk about, but we got it done >>Well. So Alex you're, you're in sales, so you're, you're used to role playing. So imagine you're, you're, you're sitting down, uh, sorry, Darryl. You're used to, role-playing out. Imagine you're sitting down with Alex and you're thinking about 20, 21 planning, so, you know, take it away. W what do you, what would you ask, what would you talk about or share with us? >>Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, so I, I know that, you know, one of the key objectives is, uh, continued to ingest, engage with your members and you have key business strategies. I know you recently migrated over to a new PBM, and so there, there's some complexities that come with that. Um, but just, you know, Alex, if you don't mind, why don't you share a little bit about kind of your, your perspective on what 2020 would hold for you in your organization? Well, I think that due to the pandemic, we are, I personally kick the, can down the road on a couple of things, particularly >>Having a strategic roadmap discussion, um, you know, uh, I was going to get into this later, but I enjoy doing things face-to-face rather than, uh, over the phone or, or virtually. And so, uh, I guess I was a little too optimistic about maybe being able to get together late 2020 to have that strategic roadmap discussion. Um, I think, uh, given what has developed with, um, the pandemic and vaccines and stuff, I may, I may be able to get everybody on the same page later this year, hopefully. Uh, but certainly we want to have a strategic roadmap discussion. Um, we license, uh, Watson Hills, uh, cat group insights, uh, tool, which we use for employer group reporting. And we are currently in the beginning stages of rolling that out to our external clients, whether it's agents, brokers, um, those types of folks. And then it vanished we as our core product that we use for analysis, and that product is transitioning to what is called health insights. And so from an analytical standpoint, my staff and the staff of our cluster areas will need to sort of move to health insights since that's where it's going, uh, from an analytic standpoint. So we're going to work on that as well. Um, and then some more detailed things around database rebuilds and stuff like that. Those are all sort of on the roadmap for 2021. >>Yeah. So, you know, you talk about strategic planning and you think about the way planning used to be. I mean, sometimes you take a longer term horizon, maybe that's five years, you know, technology cycles, you know, even though they go very fast, but you see major technology shifts, they're like go through these seven year cycles, you see that in financial world. And then with the, with the pandemic, we're talking about seven day cycles, you know, how do I support people work from home? Do I open the store or not? You know, it's a day-to-day type of thing. So I wonder if you could each talk about personally and professionally w how, how is 2020, you know, changed you and maybe position you for, for what's ahead, maybe Alex, you could start, >>Well, you know, I'm an analyst, so I always fall back to the numbers. What are the numbers show us, um, you know, people can have four perceptions, but, uh, the numbers give us a reality. So the reality is that a year ago, pre pandemic, uh, just 13% of blue cross blue shield employees were working from home a hundred percent, uh fast-forward to today. And that number is now 87%. So think about, uh, just the lift from a it infrastructure to support that we almost, all of those people are using Citrix to get in to our network. Uh, we're using a remote desktop. So you've got this pipeline that probably had to go from, you know, this small, to huge, to get all this bandwidth, all this data and everything. So you've got that huge lift. Um, and then it affects different areas, um, differently. Uh, I don't have any first-line staff, any staff that are member facing, so I didn't really have to navigate, you know, how do these people talk to our member? >>How does staff talk to our members on the phone when they're at home, as opposed to in the office, and, you know, is there background noise, things like that. So I've got analysts, uh, they're just crunching numbers. Um, but my, my, my personal, uh, feeling was I like doing managing by walking around, you know, stopping and talking to other, working on. So that went away and I like face-to-face meetings, as I've mentioned, and that went away. So it was really a culture change for me personally, it was a culture change for our organization. Uh, and, and now we're having conversations with executive management that, you know, if you've got staff who have been doing a good job and they remain productive, you know, give me a reason they got to come back in, which is just, as you told me that I'm going to be the case a year ago, I would have been, you know, flabbergasted, but that's where we are right now. >>And so on a personal standpoint, you know, I went home for a little while and then came back. And so my wife also works for blue cross blue shield of South Carolina. Um, so, you know, she set up in the dining room working, uh, I have my own book in our living room working, and then we've got a great side, you know, the school is not in session, you know, in person. So he's doing virtual learning. So combine all those things, and you've got all kinds of crazy things that could happen. Uh, and then you've got staff who are in the same situation. Um, so it was a lot to handle. And the longer it goes on the novelty of working from home wears off, and you kind of realize, you know, I can't go do this. I can't go out to eat. I can't do all types of things that I used to do. And so that affects your mental health. So as, as a leader, um, of my small area, and then our executives really had to become more, uh, uh, in, in people's faces. So we've got, we've done a lot more video, uh, messages, a lot more emails. Um, I have been tasked with being very deliberate about checking on how everything is going at their house. Are they getting what they need? Um, you know, how are they feeling? Are they getting up and exercising, all those things that you took for granted, uh, beforehand. >>Yeah. So Daryl, anything you'd add to that in terms of specifically in terms of how you might, how you might change the way in which you interact with your clients generally, uh, an Alex specifically, Alex likes, face to face, you know, we can't wait. All right. >>Yeah, yeah. It's funny. We never quite got to do it Alex, but we were talking about doing a virtual happy hour at one point too, to just celebrate the success. Um, but for me, you know, typically I would travel and visit Alex face-to-face on maybe a monthly basis. And so it it's been really hard for me. I didn't realize how, how much I enjoyed that in-person interaction. And so that, that was something that I I've been, you know, working through and finding ways to, to still interact with people. And I'm certainly making, making the best of, of the video phone calls and, you know, that sort of thing. So, uh, just work working to maintain those relationships. >>I wonder if I could ask you when, when, when this thing, when we're through the pandemic, what do you expect the work from home percentage? I think I heard 13% prior to the pandemic, 87% today. What do you think is going to be post pandemic? >>That is a good question. Um, it, it may go back to maybe 60% at home. I think, I think there will be a simple majority, uh, working from home. Um, that's, that's from our planning, uh, space planning standpoint. That's, that's what we are, uh, what we're expecting, um, if, if production stays, um, at acceptable levels, um, >>Do you feel like productivity was negatively impacted positive? It will be impacted or it's kind of weird. >>Yeah. All the metrics that we track show that it was, it was sustained and in some areas even better. Uh, and if you really think about, um, sort of your typical day when you work from home, I found, uh, that I was logged on an hour earlier. That's probably what's happening with other staff as well is they're, they're motivated to get up and, and get online, uh, earlier. >>Yeah. Mostly tech leaders that I talk to share that sentiment, that the productivity is actually improved. So Darryl, I presume you see the same thing in your observation space. Yeah. >>Yeah. I, I do. And, and I have other clients too, and, and, and they are definitely looking at ways to continue to work remotely. I know that for a lot of people who are in the office all the time, uh, having a little bit more flexibility when you work from home can be a good thing. And, and like you said, you, you have to make sure that the productivity is still there and the productivity is up. Um, but I, I could see that the trend continuing absolutely >>I'd love for you to, to look at Darryl and say, and tell him what the kinds of things that IBM can do to help you both today, immediately 20, 21, and in the future and a Darryl, how, how your, how you'll respond. >>Well, I'll tell you that. Um, so in 2020, what, what changed most dramatically for us as a health plan? Uh, and, and I, it echoes what we see across the country is the gigantic shift in telehealth. Um, you know, if, if, again, if you look at the numbers, uh, our telehealth visits per thousand, so that's the number of visits per thousand members in a given month, went up 1472%. And so, you know, the common response to that is, well, you know, your visits overall probably, you know, were flat because, uh, you know, they just weren't happening in that. And that's not necessarily true for us. So if you look at visits overall, they written down four and a half percent. Um, so there was a shift, but it, it was not a big enough shift to account for, uh, visits overall sustaining the level that they were pre pandemic. >>Um, so as we look into 2021, uh, we will be investigating how we can maintain, uh, the, uh, the accessibility of our healthcare providers via telehealth. Um, you know, one of the projects that we started in 2020, uh, was based upon the choosing wisely campaign. So if you're not familiar with choosing wisely, it's a very well thought out process. It involves many, many provider specialties and its sole target is to reduce low value care. Uh, so we took it upon ourselves to Institute sort of a mirror of that plan or that program at, at blue cross here in South Carolina. And so as we moved to 2021, obviously those low value services just because of the pandemic were reduced, uh, and some of the high-value care was reduced as well. And so what we are going to try to do is bring back habit, bring back that high value care, but not bring back that low value care and so low value care or things like vitamin D testing. Uh, it can be other things like, um, uh, CT for head headaches, um, imaging for low abdominal pain, things like that. So, uh, we want to focus on low, uh, eliminating what value care, bringing back high value care, >>Okay, Dale, you're up? How are you going to help Alex achieve that? So, so good news is, is that we've got the analytic warehouse and the database where all of the data is captured. And so we we've got the treasure trove of information and data. And so what we'll do is we'll come alongside Alex and his team will do the analytics, we'll provide the analytic methods measures, and we'll also help him uncover where perhaps those individuals may be, who had postponed care, um, because of the pandemic. And so we can put together strategies to help make sure that they get the care that they need. Uh, I also a hundred percent agree that tele-health hopefully is something that will continue because I do think that that is a good way and efficient way to get care for people. Um, and, you know, as a, as, as a way to, to address some of their needs and, and in, in a safe way too. >>So, um, I, I look forward to working with Alec and his team over this coming year. I think there is, uh, knowing Alex and, and the partnership and his readiness to be a client reference for us. You know, those are all great, um, recognition of how he partners with us. And we really value and appreciate, uh, the relationship that we have with blue cross blue shield, South Carolina and, and blue choice. Excellent. Daryl's right. The, the, the database we use already has some of that low value care measures baked into it. And so throughout 2020, I've worked with our analytic consulting team. Uh, it's under Daryl too, to talk about what's on the product product roadmap for adding to the cadre of live low value care measures inside advantage suite. Uh, so that's something that we'll actively be, um, uh, discussing because certainly, you know, we're, we're obviously not the only client only health plan clients. So there may be other plans that have priorities that very different made very differently than ours. Uh, so we want to give them what we're studying, what we're interested in, so they can just add it in to all their other client feedback, uh, for advantage suites, roadmap. Excellent. >>Look, my last question, Alex is how would you grade IBM, if you had to take a bundle of sort of attributes, you know, uh, delivery, uh, value for service relationship, uh, et cetera, how would you grade the job that IBM is doing? >>I, the thing that I enjoy most about working with IBM and Darryl specifically, is that they're always challenging us to look at different things. Um, things that sometimes we hadn't considered, because obviously it may be an issue for another health plan client or an employer client that they've got. Uh, they tell us, this is what we're seeing. You know, you should look at it. Uh, a lot of times they do some of the foundational work in producing a report to show us what they're seeing in our data that is similar to what is in some of their other clients data. So that's refreshing to be, uh, challenged by IBM to look at things that we may not be, uh, looking at, uh, or maybe missing, because we've got our eye on the ball on something else you >>Care to put a letter grade on that. >>Oh, definitely. Definitely. Thank you. >>Well, Darryl, congratulations, that says a lot and, uh, we have to leave it there and one at a time, but, but Daryl, anything that I didn't ask Alex, that you, you wanted me to, >>So, um, Alex re able to keep your tennis game up during the pandemic? Uh, I, yes, I tried as, as often as my wife would let me good. I would play every time I was asked, but, uh, yeah, so I, I did have to temper it a little bit, although when you spend all day with her and, and my son, you know, she may be a little more, uh, lenient on letting me leave the house. Well, maybe she's >>Yeah. The tribute to the late great comedian Mitch Hedberg, who says, uh, you know, when I, I played tennis, I played against the wall walls. Really good, hard to beat if it's pandemic appropriate. >>Oh, that's good. That's a true statement. And there was a lot of that going on, a lot of that play and playing against the wall. >>Hey, thanks so much, stay safe and really appreciate the time. Thank you. >>Thank you. Thank you. You're >>Really welcome. It was a great conversation and thank you for watching and spending some time with client conversations with IBM Watson health.

>> Welcome to this IBM Watson Health client conversation. And we're probing the dynamics of the relationship between IBM and it's clients. We're going to look back at some of the challenges of 2020 and look forward to, you know, present year's priorities. We'll also touch on the future state of healthcare. My name is Dave Vellante. I'll be your host and I'm from theCUBE. And with me are Doctor Alex Towbin, who's Associate Chief Clinical Operations and Informatics at Cincinnati ChilDoctoren's Hospital and John Chrisman of course from IBM Watson health. Welcome gentlemen, Good to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having us. >> Yeah, thanks for having me. >> Yeah I know from talking to many clients around the world, of course virtually this past year, 11 months or so that relationships with technology partners they've been critical over during the pandemic to really help folks get through that. Not that we're through it yet but, we're still through the year now, there's I'm talking professionally and personally and Doctor Towbin, I wonder if you could please talk about 2020 and what role the IBM partnership played in helping Cincinnati children's, you know press on in the face of incredible challenges? >> Yeah, I think our story of 2020 really starts before the pandemic and we were fortunate to be able to plan a disaster and do disaster drill scenarios. And so, as we were going through those disaster drill scenarios, we were trying to build a solution that would enable us to be able to work if all of our systems were down and we worked with IBM Watson Health to design that solution to implement it, it involves using other solutions from our primary one. And we performed that disaster drill in the late January, early February timeframe of 2020. And while that drill had nothing to do with COVID it got us thinking about how to deal with a disaster, how to prepare for a disaster. And so we've just completed that and COVID was coming on the horizon. I'm starting to hear about it coming into the U.S for the first time. And we took that very seriously on our department. And so, because we had prepared for this this disaster drill had gone through the entire exercise and we built out different scenarios for what could happen with COVID what would be our worst case scenarios and how we would deal with them. And so we were able to then bring that to quickly down to two options on how our department and our hospital would handle COVID and deal with that within the radiology department and like many other sites that becomes options of working from home or working in a isolated way and an and an office scenario like where I'm sitting now and we planned out both scenarios and eventually made the decision. Our decision at that point was to work in our offices. We're fortunate to have private offices where we can retreat to and something like that. And so then our relationship with IBM was helpful and that we needed to secure more pieces of hardware. And so even though IBM is our PACS vendor and our enterprise imaging vendor, they also help us to secure the high resolution monitors that are needed. And we needed a large influx of those during the pandemic and IBM was able to help us to get those. >> Wow! So yeah you were able to sort of test your organization resilience before the pandemic. I mean, John, that's quite an accomplishment for last year. I'm sure there are many others. I wonder if one of you could pick it up from here and bring your perspectives into it and, you know maybe ask any questions that you would like to ask them. >> Yeah, sure, Doctor Towbin, that's great that we were able to help you with the hardware and procure things. So I'm just curious before the pandemic how many of the radiologists ever got to read from home, was that a luxury back then? And then post pandemic, are you guys going to shift to how many are on-site versus remote? >> Yeah, so we have a couple of scenarios. We've had talk about it both from our PACS perspective as well as from our VNA enterprise imaging perspective from PACS perspective we always designed our solution to be able to work from a home machine. Our machines, people would access that through a hospital-based VPN. So they would log in directly to VPN and then access the PACS that way. And that worked well. And many of our radiologists do that particularly when they're on call works best for our neuroradiologist who are on call a little bit more frequently. And so they do read from home in that scenario. With enterprise imaging and are used to the enterprise viewer and iConnect access. We always wanted that solution to work over the internet. And so it's set up securely through the internet but not through the VPN. And we have radiologists use that as a way to view studies from home, even not from home, so it can be over one of their mobile devices, such as an iPad and could be at least reviewing studies then. We, for the most part for our radiologist in the hospital that's why we made the decision to stay in the hospital. At COVID time, we have such a strong teaching mission in our department in such a commitment to the education of our trainees. We think that hospital being in the hospital is our best way to do that, it's so hard. We find to do it over something like zoom or other sharing screen-sharing technology. So we've stayed in and I think we'll continue to stay in. There will be some of those needs from a call perspective for example, reading from home, and that will continue. >> And then what's your success been with this with the technology and the efficiency of reading from home? Do you feel like you're just as efficient when you're at home versus onsite? >> The technology is okay. The, our challenges when we're reading from the PACS which is the preferred way to do it rather than the enterprise archive, the challenge is we have to use the PACS So we have to be connected through VPN which limits our bandwidth and that makes it a little bit slower to read. And also the dictation software is a little bit slower when we're doing it. So moving study to study that rapid turnover doesn't happen but we have other ways to make, to accelerate the workflow. We cashed studies through the worklist. So they're on the machine, they load a little bit more rapidly and that works pretty well. So not quite as fast, but not terrible. >> We appreciate your partnership. I know it's been going on 10 years. I think you guys have a policy that you have to look at the market again every 10 years. So what do you think of how the market's changed and how we've evolved with the VNA and with the zero footprint viewers? A lot of that wasn't available when you initially signed up with Amicas years ago, so. >> Yeah, we signed up so we've been on this platform and then, you know now the IBM family starting in 2010, so it's now now 11 years that we're, we've been on as this version of the PACS and about eight, seven or eight years from the iConnect platform. And through that, we've seen quite an evolution. We were one of the first Amicas clients to be on version six and one of the largest enterprises. And that went from, we had trouble at the launch of that product. We've worked very closely with Amicas then to merge. And now IBM from the development side, as well as the support side to have really what we think is a great product that works very well for us and drives our entire workflow all the operations of our department. And so we've really relished that relationship with now IBM. And it's been a very good one, and it's allowed us to do the things like having disaster drill planning that we talked about earlier as far as where I see the market I think PACS in particular is on the verge of the 3.0 version as a marketplace. So PACSS 1 one was about building the packs, I think, and and having electronic imaging digital imaging, PACS 2.0 is more of web-based technology, getting it out of those private networks within a radiology department. And so giving a little bit more to the masses and 3.0 is going to be more about incorporating machine learning. I really see that as the way the market's going to go and to where I think we're at the infancy of that part of the market now about how do you bring books in for machine learning algorithms to help to drive workflow or to drive some image interpretation or analysis, as far as enterprise imaging, we're on the cusp of a lot there as well. So we've been really driving deep with enterprise imaging leading nationally enterprise imaging and I have a role in the MSAM Enterprise Imaging Community. And through all of that work we've been trying to tackle works well from enterprise imaging point of view the challenges are outside of radiology, outside of cardiology and the places where we're trying to deal with medical photos, the photographs taken with a smart device or a digital camera of another type, and trying to have workflow that makes sense for providers not in those specialty to that don't have tools like a DICOM modality workloads store these giant million-dollar MRI scanners that do all the work for you, but dealing with off the shelf, consumer electronics. So making sure the workflow works for them, trying to tie reports in trying to standardize the language around it, so how do we tag photos correctly so that we can identify relevancy all of those things we're working through and are not yet standard within our, within the industry. And so we're doing a lot there and trying and seeing the products in the marketplace continuing to evolve around that on the viewer side, there's really been a big emergence as you mentioned about the zero footprint viewers or the enterprise viewer, allowing easy access easy viewing of images throughout the enterprise of all types of imaging through obtained in the enterprise and will eventually incorporate video pathology. The market is also trying to figure out if there can be one type of viewer that does them all that and so that type of universal viewer, a viewer that cardiologists can use the same as a radiologist the same as a dermatologist, same as a pathologist we're all I think a long way away from that. But that's the Marcus trying to figure those two things out. >> Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with your assessment. You talked about the non DICOM areas, and I know you've you've partnered with us, with ImageMover and you've got some mobile device capture taking place. And you're looking to expand that more to the enterprise. Are you also starting to use the XDS registry? That's part of the iConnect enterprise archive, or as well as wrapping things in DICOM, or are you going to stick with just wrapping things in DICOM? >> Yeah, so far we've been very bunched pro DICOM and using that throughout the enterprise. And we've always thought, or maybe we've evolved to think that there is going to be a role for XDS are I think our early concerns with XDS are the lack of other institutions using it. And so, even though it's designed for portability if no one else reads it, it's not portable. If no one else is using that. But as we move more and more into other specialties things like dermatology, ophthalmology, some of the labeling that's needed in those images and the uses, the secondary uses of those images for education, for publication, for dermatology workflow or ophthalmology workflow, needs to get back to that native file and the DICOM wrap may not make sense for them. And so we've been actively talking about switching towards XDS for some of the non DICOM, such as dermatology. We've not yet done that though. >> Given the era children's hospital has the impact on your patient load, then similar to what regular adult hospitals are, or have you guys had a pretty steady number of studies over the last year? >> In relay through the pandemic, we've had, it has been decreased, but children fortunately have not been as severely affected as adults. There is definitely disease in children and we see a fair amount of that. There are some unique things that happen in kids but that fortunately rare. So there's this severe inflammatory response that kids can get and can cause them to get very sick but it is quite rare. Our volumes are, I think I'm not I think our volumes are stable and our advanced imaging things like CT, MRI, nuclear medicine, they're really most decreased in radiography. And we see some weird patterns, inpatient volumes are relatively stable. So our single view chest x-rays, for example, have been stable. ER, visits are way down because people are either wearing masks, isolating or not wanting to come to the ER. So they're not getting sick with things like the flu or or even common colds or pneumonias. And so they're not coming into the ER as much. So our two view x-rays have dropped by like 30%. And so we were looking at this just yesterday. If you follow the graphs for the two we saw a dip of both around March, but essentially the one view chest were a straight line and the two view chest were a straight line and in March dropped 30 to 50% and then stayed at that lower level. Other x-rays are on the, stay at that low level side. >> Thanks, I know in 2021 we've got a big upgrade coming with you guys soon and you're going to stay in our standalone mode. I understand what the PACSS and not integrate deeply to the VNA. And so you'll have a couple more layers of storage there but can you talk about your excitement about going to 8.1 and what you're looking forward to based on your testimony. >> Yeah we're actually in, we're upgrading as we're talking which is interesting, but it's a good time for talking. I'm not doing that part of the work. And so our testing has worked well. I think we're, we are excited. We, you know, we've been on the product as I mentioned for over 10 years now. And for many of those years we were among the first, at each version. Now we're way behind. And we want to get back up to the latest and greatest and we want to stay cutting edge. There've been a lot of reasons why we haven't moved up to that level, but we do. We're very careful in our testing and we needed a version that would work for us. And there were things about previous versions that just didn't and as you mentioned, we're staying in that standalone mode. We very much want to be on the integrated mode in our future because enterprise imaging is so important and understanding how the comparisons fit in with the comparison in dermatology or chest wall deformity clinic, or other areas how those fit into the radiology story is important and it helped me as a radiologist be a better radiologist to see all those other pictures. So I want them there but we have to have the workflow, right. And so that's the part that we're still working towards and making sure that that fits so we will get there. It'll probably be in the next year or two to get to that immigrating mode. >> As you, look at the number of vendors you have I think you guys prefer to have less vendor partners than than more I know in the cardiology area you guys do some cardiology work. What has been the history or any, any look to the future of that related to enterprise imaging? Do you look to incorporate more of that into a singular solution? >> Cardiology is entirely part of our enterprise imaging solution. We all the cardiology amendments go to our vendor neutral archive on the iConnect platform. All of them are viewed across the enterprise using our enterprise viewer. They have their unique specialty viewer which is, you know, fine. I'm a believer that specialty, different specialties, deserve to have their specialty viewers to do theirs specialty reads. And at this point I don't think the universal viewer works or makes sense until we have that. And so all the cardiology images are there. They're all of our historical cardiology images are migrated and part of our enterprise solution. So they're part of the entire reference the challenge is they're just not all in PACSS. And so that's where, you know, an example, great example, why we need to get to this to the integrated mode to be able to see those. And the reason we didn't do that is the cardiology archive is so large to add a storage to the PACS archive. Didn't make sense if we knew we were going to be in an integrated mode eventually, and we didn't want to double our PACS storage and then get rid of it a couple of years later. >> So once you're on a new version of merge PACS and you're beyond this, what are your other goals in 2021? Are you looking to bring AI in? Are you using anybody else's AI currently? >> Yeah, we do have AI clinical it's phone age, so it's not not a ton of things but we've been using it clinically, fully integrated, it launches. When I open a study, when I opened a bone age study impacts it launches we have a bone age calculator as well that we've been using for almost two decades now. And so that we have to use that still but launching that automatically includes the patient's sex and birth date, which are keys for determining bone age, and all that information is there automatically. But at the same time, the images are sent to the machine learning algorithm. And in the background the machine determines a bone age that in the background it sends it straight to our dictation system and it's there when we opened the study. And so if I agree with that I signed the report and we're done. If I disagree, I copy it from my calculator and put it in until it takes just a couple of clicks. We are working on expanding. We've done a lot of research in artificial intelligence and the department. And so we've been things are sort of in the middle of translation of moving it from the research pure research realm to the clinical realm, something we're actively working on trying to get them in. Others are a little bit more difficult. >> That's the question on that John, Doctor, when you talk about injecting, you know machine intelligence into the equation. >> Yeah. >> What, how do you sort of value that? Does that give you automation? Does it improve your quality? Does it speed the outcome and maybe it's all of those but how do you sort of evaluate the impact to your organisation? >> I there's a lot of ways you can do it. And you touched on one of my favorite one of my favorite talking points, in a lot of what we've been doing and early machine learning is around image interpretation helping me as a radiologist to see a finding. Unfortunately, most of the things are fairly simple tasks that it's asking us to do. Like, is there a broken bone? Yes or no, I'm not trying to sound self-congratulatory or anything, but I'm really good at finding broken bones. I get, I've been doing it for a long time and, and radio, you know so machines doing that, they're going to perform as well as I can perform, you know, and that's the goal. Maybe they'll perform a little bit better maybe a little bit worse but we're talking tiny increments there they're really to me, not much value of that it's not something I would want. I don't value that at a time where I think machine learning can have real value around more on some of the things that you mentioned. So can it make me more efficient? Can it do the things that are so annoying that and they'd take, they're so tedious that they make me unhappy. A lot of little measurements for example are like that an example. So in a patient with cancer, we measure a little tumors everywhere and that's really important for their care, but it's tedious and so if a machine could do that in an automated way and I checked it that, you know, patient when because he or she can get that good quality care and I have a, you know, a workflow efficiency game. So that one's important. Another one that would be important is if the machine can see things I can't see. So I'm really good at finding fractures. I'm not really good at understanding what all the pixels mean and, you know in that same patient with cancer, oh what do all the pixels mean in that tumor? I know it's a tumor. I can see the tumor, I can say it's a tumor but sometimes those pixels have a lot of information in them and may give us prognosis, you know, say that this patient may, maybe this patient will do well with this specific type of chemotherapy or a specific or has a better prognosis with one with one drug compared to another. Those are things that we can't usually pick out. You know, it's beyond the level of that are I can perceive that one is really the cutting edge of machine learning. We're not there yet and then the other thing are things that, you know just the behind the scenes stuff that I don't necessarily need to be doing, or, you know so it's the non interpretive artificial intelligence. >> Dave: Right. >> And that's what I've been also trying to push. So an example of when the algorithms that we've been developing here we check airways. And this is a little bit historical in our department, but we want to make sure we're not missing a severe airway infection. That can be deadly, it's incredibly rare. Vaccines have made it go away completely but we still check airways. And so what happens is the technologist takes the x-ray. They come in to ask us if it's okay, we are interrupted from what we're doing. We open up the study, say yes or no. Okay, not okay, if it's not okay they go back, take another study. Then come back to us again and say, is it okay or not? And we repeat this a couple of times it takes them time that they don't need to spend and takes us time. And so we have, we've built an algorithm where the machine can check that and their machine is as good or a little bit worse than us, but give can give that feedback. >> Dave: Got it. >> The challenge is getting that feedback to the technologist quickly. And so that's, that's I think part for us to work on stuff. >> Thank you for that. So, John, we've probably got three or four minutes left. I'll let you bring it home and appreciate that Doctor Towbin >> I think one of the biggest impacts probably I knew this last year with the pandemic, Doctor Towbin is this, I know you're a big foodie. So having been to some good restaurants and dinners with the hot nurse in a house how's the pandemic affected you personally. And some of the things you like to do outside of work. >> Everything is shut down. And everything has changed. I have not left the house since March besides come to work and my family hasn't either. And so we're hardcore quarantining and staying you know, staying out and keeping it home. So we've not gone out to dinner or done much else. >> So its DoorDash and Uber Eats or just learned to cook at home. >> It's all cooking at home. We're fortunate, my wife loves to cook. My kids love to cook. I enjoy cooking, but I don't have the time as often. So we've done a lot of different are on our own experimenting. Maybe when the silver lining one of the things I've really relished about all this is all this time I get to spend with my family. And that closeness that we've been able to achieve because of being confined in our house the whole time. And so I've played get to play video games with my kids every night. We'd been on a big Fortnite Keck lately since it's been down making. So we've been playing that every night since we've watched movies a lot. And so as a family, we've, I it's something I'll look back fondly even though it's been a very difficult time but it's been an enjoyable time. >> I agree, I've enjoyed more family time this year as well, but final question is in 2021, beyond the PACS upgrade what are the top other two projects that you want to accomplish with us this year? And how can we help you? >> I think our big one is are the big projects are unexpanded enterprise imaging. And so we want to continue rolling out to other areas that will include eventually incorporating scopes, all the images from the operating room. We need to be able to get into pathology. I think the pathology is really going to be a long game. Unfortunately, I've been saying that already for 10 years and it's still probably another 10 years ago but we need to go. We can start with the gross pathology images all the pictures that we take for tumor boards and get those in before we start talking about whole slide scanning and getting in more of the more of the photographs in the institution. So we have a route ambulatory but we need inpatient and ER. >> All right one last question. What can IBM do to be a better partner for you guys? >> I think it's keep listening keep listening and keep innovating. And don't be afraid to be that innovative partner sort of thinking as the small company that startup, rather than the giant bohemoth that can sometimes happen with large companies, it's harder. It is fear to turn quickly, but being a nimble company and making quick decisions, quick innovations. >> Great, quick question. How would you grade IBM, your a tough grader? >> It depends on what I am a tough grader but it depends on what, you know as the overall corporate partnership? >> Yeah the relationship. >> I'd say it's A minus. >> Its pretty good. >> I think, I mean, I, we get a lot of love from IBM. I'm talking specifically in the imaging space. I not, maybe not, I don't know as much on the hardware side but we, yeah, we have a really good relationship. We feel like we're listened to and we're valued. >> All right, well guys, thanks so much. >> So even if it's not an A plus- >> Go ahead. >> I think there's some more to, you know, from the to keep innovating side there's little things that we just let you know we've been asking for that we don't always get but understand the company has to make business decisions not decisions on what's best for me. >> Of course got to hold that carrot out too. Well thanks guys, really appreciate your time. Great conversation. >> Yeah, thank you. >> All right and thank you for spending some time with us. You're watching client conversations with IBM Watson Health.

>>From around the globe, it's the cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel and AWS. >>Oh, great. To have you with us here on the cube, as we continue our coverage of AWS reinvent 2020, doing it virtually of course, uh, out of a necessity as I'm sure all of you can appreciate we're joined now by Alex Sanchez, who is the head of cross GDC networks and Fujitsu and Fujitsu provider of global it services and solutions. And so their footprint, um, again, is, is around the world. Uh, Alex, thanks for joining us here on the cube. We appreciate your time. And, uh, I'd like to hear a little bit more about your role first off before we jump in and tell us a little bit about Fujitsu for those who might not be familiar with it. >>Thank you very much, Sean. I really appreciate it. Uh, well, uh, first, uh, let me start by providing some background on Fujitsu. We're a global it digital transformation company offering a full range of technology products, solutions, and services. Uh, we exist to keep our customer's business running and we strive to give the best possible experience across every customer touch point. My role as head of cross CDC networks, uh, makes me in charge of standardizing technology networks across our global delivery centers. And for the past couple of years, I have been working on the standardization of our contact center platform across all of our global delivery centers. >>Yeah, yeah. I mean, you mentioned global delivery centers, so let's, let's jump into that. Uh, first off, what are they, um, you know, how have you structured your business in that respect and, um, ultimately what kind of service or a solution are they providing to your customers? >>Absolutely. So our global delivery centers are interconnected, integrated global teams. Uh, we deliver a broad portfolio of standardized services, which includes cybersecurity workplace and much more. We're based out of, uh, eight different key countries. We serve customers in over 100 and uh, different countries and we provide support in over 40 different languages. Uh, we enabled, uh, those CDCs enabled us to consistently and resilient provide services to our customers, uh, 24 seven 365 days of the year. Uh, the service, uh, that we offer, uh, as, uh, for you to global delivery teams are constructed from fully standardized components. Uh, it allows us to, uh, be configured to meet our customer needs and deliver a flawless global consistency services. >>You just, you were just talking about multiple languages, right? You've got to deal with countries, uh, environments, uh, continents, uh, businesses with different needs of, of all, you know, all over the, over the map. If you might say that, um, how do you balance that? Or how do you approach that when you do have so many customers in a wide variety of venues with a wide variety of needs and yet, you know, you want to provide for them that exemplary service that they expect when they come to Fujitsu? >>Uh, well, yes, as I mentioned, uh, we strive to evolve our contact centers so that it meets that global need that global expansion. And we adapt to our customers' needs. Uh, we have our GDCs with teams that are engaged and enabled so that we can provide customers with, uh, the best customer experience we like to help our customers reimagine their employee experience. >>Yeah. You mentioned, uh, you're talking about the contact centers and I know that you're going through this major transformation right now, in terms of, of, uh, how they're operating, um, before we get into that and, and, and jump a little bit deeper into what you've already touched on, what was the problem before, or, you know, there's always a problem, right? We're always trying to solve something, make something better, put a little finer point on that in terms of, of what you were doing before, you know, where were we? >>Well, uh, if we get to this global delivery organization, uh, tries to build trust at every opportunity we aim to deepen our customer relationships by adding a value of mix, uh, of rock, solid delivery, innovation and collaboration. However, some of our previous systems, the net always offer us the functionality and flexibility that we needed to provide a diverse range of, uh, services to our customers and what they required. So that is the basis of our, uh, challenges and, uh, what we were striving to overcome. >>So you've, you've turned AWS, um, uh, again, Amazon connect, I know that, uh, that you've got widely deployed. What was it that, that attracted you to that in terms of finding the value in it, and then what kind of efficiencies and what kinds of improvement in your operations is, is connect providing you >>Well, uh, being able to, uh, think about the art of the possible adding value to our customers. Introducing next generation features, uh, our road with AWS connected started as a two month proof of concept, uh, with over 150 different agents initially supported out of one of those global delivery centers, providing support and services to, uh, one of the regions. So, uh, we started as a way to innovate and provide next generation functionality. >>Yeah. Proof of concept periods are always interesting, aren't they? Because you, you think you're going to find out some thing and, and you might, but then you sometimes find out something else, right. That, that you're like, okay, well, the, uh, there's another application here. There's another service here. There's another layer here. Um, what was it in that period of time for you then, as far as your takeaways that convinced you that, you know, this is right, this is good. We need this. And, and so we're going to jump in. Absolutely. So, >>Uh, I would say that one of those things is that we made marked improvements in our customer experience. We were able to rapidly onboard new agents and provide automated features, such as call recording sentiment analysis, integrated callback features. We were able to help our customers faster while simultaneously improving the service quality. >>Yeah. COVID, uh, has been, um, certainly wreaking havoc in, in every facet of life. Right. Um, no question personally, professionally unit, multiple industries. So how about the impact on your, in your world first off, just from, from COVID-19, uh, how you've had to assess what your client's needs are, how you, what your needs are and, and first off, how you've, how have you balanced that >>In the past year? Yes, well, uh, Fujitsu was able to move, uh, 95% of our contact survey agents to remote work environment, equipped with the tools that they needed to provide, uh, services while remaining safe and productive. Our contact center agents and operations was not able to persist, but actually thrive during the COVID 19 pandemic and provide the much needed support that our customers were expecting and, uh, provided from, from us. How fast >>Was it, you know, I guess it required, what, how quickly did you have to respond? Cause, uh, you know, I mean, this certainly has caught a lot of, or caught a lot of people by surprise back in early March and April. Um, and I assume that that Fujitsu's no different, right? All of a sudden you have, uh, a pandemic on your hands and you've got to move nimbly and quickly. So just talk about that, if you would, that, that quick transformation that you had to make and in terms of responding to the >>Absolutely. So with AWS connect, we were able to automate and simplify the complex contact center flows that we had previously, a product of this is it's ability to now make ad hoc changes in seconds while avoiding multiple vendors to actually get those implemented. One example of this is that for you to help one of our customers move from 4,500 QS to less than 400 by actually doing call tagging attributes, instead of just creating independent flows for each one of those countries. And this mainly because of the needs from the operation to be able to quickly create reports based on countries and languages. Yeah. >>And I know you were involved or, and, and, and I might still be, I'm not sure a beta testing, uh, with some of the new, um, AWS connect features that were announced recently, you know, here at, uh, during re-invent what, what is, um, what's got you going there, you know, what, what, uh, what's caught your attention and what are you excited about seeing I go into practice on a, on a wider basis? >>Well, John, I would to say that introduction of ado list tasks has greatly helped us improve our agent productivity. We were able to see improvements of around 30% and we expect refine our customer experience even further by adding additional AWS integrations. >>Now, you mentioned, mentioned further, there's always a next step, right? Isn't there Alex. I mean, there's always, it's as good as you are now. You can't afford to sit still. I mean, that's the competitive nature of your landscape. So where do you see yourself in, in terms of rollouts in the future, or if there's an area that you think this is the next, uh, challenge for us, uh, in the, in the short term, what would that be? >>Well, that AC very good question for you to provide, uh, contact center services to around 300 diverse customers with agents speaking dozens of different languages. And we are continually looking to improve those services and experience for our customers, as well as our employees. We believe that if our employees are happy and safe and they have the tools that they need to do their work, that would result in an M in a much more improved, uh, service to our customers as such, uh, for you to source invest money, invest in heavily in the of transformation. Some of those elements would include a location agnostic delivery. This would actually allow us to create virtual teams with so employees working from Fujitsu offices while some will continue working from home. This approach will offer, uh, significantly and greater flexibility for our employees, as well as an improved efficiency of our services. >>Uh, the ability to introduce self service and automation by introducing, uh, virtual assistants, uh, robotics, uh, voice recognition, speech to text conversion, sentiment analysis. It will help us reduce the time it takes for agents or staff in repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on the more important, uh, improvement, adding value to our customers. Being able to add, uh, tasks such as technology upgrades, uh, knowledge and data management, uh, that analytics business recommendations from our customers. This would then, uh, tied into what we're doing with improved planning, uh, as situation changes. And definitely COVID has been one example of that. Uh, Fujitsu needs to respond rapidly to ensure that we continue to provide support to all of our customers, uh, wrote a planning system, provides insights recommendations to help us deal with those changes as well as offering a level of flexibility for employees to align with their personal needs. And, uh, finally, and tying this up with those innovations that we're looking into, uh, being able to take those into employee engagement. We're introducing a proof of concept with gamification on some of our contact center, uh, desks to provide employees with a rewarding environment that offers an increase, uh, find while also doing the work reinforcing behaviors and enhancing customer satisfaction while there's certainly, um, a new >>Order, a new world, right? In, in terms of how we have to operate in a business environment. And I think you hit a key word there it's flexibility, right? Ultimately giving your employees the flexibility to still do their jobs in a very productive environment and a safe environment is critical. And it seems like Fujitsu is committed to doing that. So congratulations on that and thank you for the time today. We really appreciate it. >>Thank you very much, Sean. And thank you for the opportunity.

>>Welcome to the cubes coverage of Dell technologies, world 2020. The digital experience. I am Lisa Martin and I got two returning guests from Dell technologies during any back on the cube today, we've got Doug Schmidt, president of Dell technology services. Doug, welcome back to the virtual cube. >>Well, thank you. Thank you for having, uh, Alex and I back again, >>And Alex is here, Alex. Beretto SPP at the planning and technology for Dell technologies. Alex, welcome, >>Happy to be here. >>So there's a lot has happened since we last got to sit together about 18 months ago and Dell technologies world 2019, I think back right, the big bag, um, pre pandemic, but we could actually be not socially sense. Talk to us, talk about what's going on with Dell technology services. You gave us a great update then what's going on now and now you guys have 60,000 services and it folks you're working delivering services in 170 countries. Give us an update. >>Well, yeah, so look, it's really about, uh, Dell technology services, enabling our customers to effectively adopt and leverage and sustain their it investment bottom line, helping our customers get the most out of what they're looking for out of their it solutions and making sure we deliver that for them. And as you stated, the size of the organization, I had the privilege of leading that team of 60,000 direct and partners in 170 countries. We provide that service and over 55 languages and really we cover services from the edge to the core. So everything in between, and it's an end to end service, meaning we can help with consulting a deployment managed services, education services, right down to the support side of it. And that really gives us a lot of flexibility to help our customers deliver what they need. And it's really about helping them navigate the digital journey, right? Uh, it really is helping them pivot to the new business model we're seeing out there. Uh, especially today, considering as we said, last time we were sitting down together. Now we're doing this virtually, everyone's going through this transformation in addition to moving more to the edge and hybrid cloud. So it's, it's a, it's as important as ever for services to be there for our customers. That's what we're doing every single day. >>And we'll unpack a bit more. Some of the things that you've been doing since 2020 has started and made all these changes, but Alex, let's go to you for a little bit services, strategy services, technology what's going on there >>Really do you think about our physical footprint, quite a few countries as you pointed out. And if you look, we have everything from consumer all the way to the large enterprise. So we're fully perspective. And then if you look from our digital beach, we have massive digital reach, which is really quite unmatched. And actually that's where the technology piece really comes to shine. You think about it. We have 200 million assets in the field today. Those assets are generating 22 terabytes of data per day. That's a massive set of AI engines to generate customer insight. Last year alone, we were able to predict 3.7 million issues before they occurred and then take proactive action on those issues. And that's just one example, but we're really messy in our software engineering capabilities. Building tools enable our customers to drive their own actual digital transformation to do we do this across the entire services life cycle. So everything from consulting to deployment to support, to manage services. >>Excellent. Thanks for that, Alex. So Doug now let's kind of dig into, what's been going on in the year of 2020, the year of what's next lot of changes and big challenges for customers in every industry, you know, seven months ago, trying to figure out how do we survive in this mode, the massive shift to work from home to remote devices everywhere. Talk to us about how Dell technologies has responded and helped your customers to survive and get to that thrive state in this crazy time. >>Yeah, well, no, you're right. And it was a, it was something that happened very, very quickly obviously to all of us globally. Um, and these events in 2020, it really brought us even closer to our customers. We've always listened very closely, made sure we were in tune with that. Uh, obviously when all of this shit, uh, we were there for them, um, and we had to rapidly challenge and change, uh, how we delivered our service in this dynamic environment. We were able to do that. We have an incredible team that obviously went to imagine that with 60,000 folks, uh, changing our service offerings, so where we may have gone, uh, on site or customer, we then set up a Depot, uh, so that we were able to do that safely. We were able to get our PPE equipment out to the field service agents that needed to be in a data center and make sure we were following all the protocols. >>Uh, we leverage our five integrated global command centers. These are strategic hubs. We have around the world to really monitor and help, uh, and track all of this. So we were able to do that. That was, that had been digitized years before. So we were able to, to do all that safely, uh, really this was about going in then and helping our customers mitigate the impacts that they may have had helped them through that, whether it was through deployments, being virtual, getting them the systems that they needed and just helping them through their critical, uh, environment and changes. >>What are some of the things that you're hearing from customers? Because, you know, we talked about this massive pivot for everyone and the breadth of services that you cover from consulting to managed services to education. What were some of the things that were really, um, the highest need that you saw from customers, especially when this first happened? >>Well, when it first happened, it was clearly the working remote, right. And helping everybody do that and doing it virtually making sure that, uh, like I talked about, uh, making sure they have the systems, making sure connections for okay. If the centers were able to handle all of that and doing all that in a fashion, in a safe way for our team members and our customers team members that was first and foremost priority was the safety of everyone. Uh, once we had gotten through that, I'm going to say, you know, look no gauge exact. Uh, but I would say starting beginning of summer, you know, maybe may what we started seeing then is the people really actually pivoting even more into their transformation. So they weren't doing their digital transformations. Our customers were, and they were really looking for strategic guidance and on their planning. >>And so we set up where our consultants were delivering a half day accelerator workshops virtually to help them solve their it challenges that they may have had. We also, uh, help them understand what we add in, in the space of unified workspace as a complete solution that helps them deploy, support, manage all of their end user devices so that they can achieve full productivity in this new environment. And they were asking for it to be simple, how do we simplify a lot of this and how do they simplify that via our managed services capabilities? And so we were working through that again, setting up these virtual workshops and having them understand what those capabilities were and how we could help them through that. And then look, they were also as, you know, um, financing, financing options. How can we do this as a service, all these different methods that we were helping with as well. It was, it was really a great, uh, in the sense of us stepping up to help our customers. And we were there for him. >>And we talked about the digital transformation guys last year at Dell technologies world, that Dell technologies was undergoing. Let's talk to us about what is going on with that digital transformation that Dell has undergone and how technology services or other services technology is helping to play a role in that, especially in the last six, seven months. >>Yeah, it's amazing. We actually do this every day for our customers, but as you pointed out, we're actually undergoing fast with everything that's happening with our customers. Some of the insights that we learn in house, if you look at services, we invested quite heavily on software engineering, the number of software engineers that we have now with inside the services, visit units at an all time high. If you look at the number of data, scientists and PhDs that we have brought in, again, all time high, it really focused on developing our AI engines that we use both internally and externally driving digital transformation. A couple of examples of that. If you look at something called PCI, which is an proactive, uh, the proactive case intelligence, it actually looks at, uh, the entire services journey that our customer has. And we're able to detect and put information in front of agents at the right time, the right information then actually enables them to deliver a better customer experience. >>We've actually seen through the implementation of PCI, a 10% reduction to the time that we spent engaging with customers in at the same time and improvement in seaside, the tune of approximately 130 basis points. So we're on a productivity improvement, which helps us internally as well as obviously benefit for the customers. Another thing we're doing is actually digitizing our entire services processes. That means everything from consulting to the point of support. So we have a digital variant of what processes should look like. And then real time we're able to actually measure our active processes versus what they should be. And when we detect anomalies, we're able to correct those real time. That again gives us efficiencies internally, but more importantly enables us to deliver a better customer experience. >>And that customer experience is critical, not just for Dell technologies to deliver to its customers, but for your customers to deliver to their customers. You talked about improving the customer experience and some of the impact there, Alex, you think about in the last, in the year of 2020, how we suddenly went from this expectation that we can order anything on Amazon. And it shows up tomorrow to having things be delayed, that we were not anticipating. Talk to me about the transformation you guys are on. We, and we've heard a lot of, um, Dell folks talk about the acceleration in the digital transformation that your customers are undergoing. But if you, if you could walk us through from a strategic vision perspective, you've got the digitization going of the services. We know that a good amount of remote workforce will stay that way for quite some time, but give us a vision into the year 2021. >>Yeah, let's, let's talk about the future because T to your point, look, we have AI today and we plan to continue log any besting AI. We're going to continue to develop new software applications that have our customers to drive that transformation. But if you look forward to exciting areas, so let me, let me name three specifically. There are very interesting. The first is as a service, we actually taken our complete services portfolio and positioning all of it to be available as a service. That's what customers are looking for a very simple way to consume by in consumer service services. And we're doing that transformation and taking everything in transitioning to be available as a service second five G we're fully embracing that so that we can have and deliver cloud services, our solutions in a very simple and easy way and gets denied. >>And Doug wrap us up here with the vision overall from Dell technology services, the demand coming in from customers globally, all of the changing demands and this uncertainty in which we're living in, what does the future of the next year or so look like from Dell technologies services level? >>Well, yeah, as you, as we've talked about like the demand for exceptional customer and employee experiences through all of this is really driving these business model disruptions across the board. And look, we understand customers, uh, need to thrive during all this, and it's rapidly evolving and changing. So we're building our portfolio, uh, quickly to stay ahead of that. Uh, you know, being able to listen to customers and build those services out. So we're doing that as we mentioned earlier, uh, both Alex and I we've talked about the disruption. We're seeing with five G the edge cloud as a service, and this is driving a massive change in the industry, right? And therefore you have, uh, having all the services to help our customers manage through that. And it's really about this convergence, we're seeing capabilities that we provide the lines between, like I call these traditional silos inside support, uh, consulting, managed services, all of that, to being blurred, our customers are really looking for an outcome. >>They're looking for flexibility and some things to be simple. We're helping them achieve that. And like I talked about earlier, our customers want outcomes and they really want to select Dell, uh, for the comprehensive portfolio that we have. That could be everything from PC as a service storage, as a service right into hybrid cloud. So, you know, moving forward, uh, we work very closely, obviously integrated with our product teams, uh, hand in hand. We see that blurring as well. The product is a service. The service is a product. We think Dell technologies is in the ideal position to pull all this together. And we have a clear vision with a world class team are really to help our customers through their transformation, deliver the outcomes. >>Doug, Alex, thank you so much. It's nice to see you again, albeit virtually maybe someday soon, we'll get to be sitting down on a cube desk together again. I hope look forward to it. Thank you. Thank you for and Alex burrito. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of Dell technologies world. The virtual edition. Thanks for watching.