(upbeat music) >> From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Welcome to the CUBE studios for another CUBE Conversation. We go in depth with thought leaders driving business outcomes with technology. One of the biggest challenges that every business faces is how do I navigate these significant transformations that are taking place on a global scale as a consequence of digital opportunities? And then how do I utilize marketing as a basis for engaging my customers differently? It's a significant problem that affects virtually all business of all size and all segments. So to have that conversation, we've got a great guest here with us today, Alicia Tillman is the CMO of SAP. Alicia, welcome to theCUBE. >> Peter, thank you so much for having me here today. >> All right, so, Alicia, I want to start with your perspective on some of the big changes that SAP sees occurring in the marketplace, and then we'll kind of talk about how that informs an evolving role for marketing. >> Well, I mean, look, everybody is transforming something, right, you know? And we are very much in the thick of a digital transformation. I think we've gone past the point where it was education on what does it mean and why I need to get onboard, how is it affecting my business? To now, real application. And it comes in many forms. The definitely of digital transformation is extremely broad and there's application of it across your entire business. One of the things that I will say that really is what companies need to solve for is the business of delivering exceptional customer experiences. Customer service has been taken to a whole new level of competition, a lot of it is because of choice that exists and because of how much digital has impacted, on a positive level, our ability to do many things. Personalization is one option to really delivering enhanced experience, and so that is, I think, the biggest focus in the marketplace today that companies of all sizes are trying to figure out, which is how do we win in the experience economy that we're living in right now? >> Now, the experience economy has a lot of different implications. But certainly one of them is your customers need to have a better experience and that's going to be a feature of your overall sustainable differentiation or not, but also it's the idea that I have expertise that you can use within your business so that you can be more competitive and more successful in dealing with your customers. I know that's been a major feature of SAP strategy over the last 20, 30 years is bringing that deep understanding of how a business should operate and the role that software should play in making businesses operate really well. Talk a little bit about how overall the SAP approach in the experience economy informs how you think about marketing. >> Yeah, I mean, what companies are trying to solve for is how can I be an experience company that thrives in this experience economy that we're living in? And SAP is about helping companies understand that outcome and understand the marketplace and where they need to compete, number one, and then secondly, we help companies learn and embrace how to succeed and be competitive and successful in the marketplace that we're in, and when you think about the how, we live also in an intelligence era. We've gone from big data and access to data and how do we derive the appropriate insights from data to now be able to apply it in a way that allows me as a company to run it my best so that I can succeed in the experience economy that we live in, and this is really the hallmark of SAP, we're a technology company, a 47 year old brand that has always been in the business of helping companies run at their best. And whether you're an HR professional to a head of marketing to a head of sales to a CIO, a CFO, having a very unified integrated technology to run your applications with the most embedded intelligence, so that your operations are running at their best, that enables you to then deliver at your best for your customers, which is very tied to, overall, the experience that you're ultimately delivering. >> So one of the challenges that we have here, especially as we think about a company that's supplying the core operational capabilities to customers, is what is it that marketing must do to help customers transform their business? There's a couple of things that I always like to talk about, let me start with one. Increasingly, we think that marketing needs to take a more active role in demonstrating a company's expertise and thought leadership to help customers establish an agreement about how to move forward in periods of significant transformation. Would you agree with that? >> Absolutely, I mean, look. This is a marketer's dream, the environment that we live in right now, and it is up to marketing to grab hold of it and really chart their destiny in terms of the leadership that they can bring to their companies. This is an era where it's about intelligence, it's about insight, and it's about experiences. And when you think about the role of the marketer, and let's talk about the core role. No matter what company you ask, there's certain things that come to mind when they think about what the role of marketing should be. The one thing that you typically hear time and time again is marketing should be representative of the voice of the customer. And I don't think that there is any bigger function to serve the needs and to respond and to help inform the company on what's necessary, but also to help shape the story, to help our customers understand where they can best compete in this environment, and so I think that understanding those needs, combining it with insights of what's happening in the marketplace, and then help to architect how our value proposition works in support, both of what the customer needs are together with what's happening in the marketplace, it's a beautiful role. And not to mention, the other piece of it, which is every company wanting to invest in some way in someone else that has a purpose. That is focused on doing something good above and beyond what we contribute every day, and I also believe that there's no better functioning than marketing as well to help companies understand their purpose and to articulate the purpose of your own company so that your customer sees values, shared value and common purpose that you share with each other. >> So it sounds as though it's important that marketing become an overall advocate for engaging across the entire customer journey. Helping the customer understand the problem and hopefully biasing them towards your solutions, of course, but even after the sale, helping the customer envision what the outcome is, helping the customer comprehend and establish approaches to change the way the business operates and embed things and working with those many, many, that multitude of actual users out there that are ultimately going to dictate whether or not a solution succeeds or is abandoned within the business. Do you see marketing play a more active role across the entire life cycle? >> Have to, have to. I mean, you know, marketing obviously plays a significant role in driving awareness around a company's brand, and then driving increased understanding to lead to purchase decisions in a company, but now even more when you think of the second half of that life cycle, that focuses on retention and implementation and engagement, which ultimately leads to a desire and an ability for you to keep customers for life, that has got to be an inherent part of the role that marketing plays, because even if you think about it in comparison to something like social media, we've gone from a platform that allowed you to share your opinion and frankly have a voice to now measuring the effectiveness based on how much engagement you get from the voice and the opinions that you're sharing, I mean, that is really the evolution that we also need to think about in terms of marketing's role as it relates to the customer journey. There's been so much effort that's been put in the front half of the journey, which is to get the customer to buy, but now it's equally as important, especially in this economy that we live in right now, that you have to focus on renewal. You have to focus on retention, and the way to do that is in helping through the implementation and the engagement process, and one such opportunity for marketing to play that role is find those use cases. Showcase those customers who are using the products, engaging with the products, make it relevant. Make it relevant so that the customer can really optimize how they're engaging with your brand, how they're engaging with your products, and I don't think there's any better department in the organization than marketing to lead that effort for their organization. >> Alicia, I was at Sapphire recently and one of the things that I really enjoyed about the way you presented SAP there is that you actually celebrated customer success. You didn't just talk about it and reveal it, you actually celebrate it, and I totally agree with you, I think that's a crucially important part of the evolving marketing experience as customers take increasingly center stage in determining success or failure. So let me ask you one more question here, Alicia. We've just described a changed, an evolved role for marketing that's made possible in part because we now can engage customers through data without ever losing the sight that data is not the person, is not the brand, but that suggests a different set of, you know, a different mission, of all a different mission for the CMO. How do you think the CMO's job is going to evolve over the course of the next couple of years in light of what we're talking about? >> So I think it's about balance. I think that we live in a world today that also everybody wants to be heard. They want to embrace brands that are relevant to them, that care about them, that are creating services and products and solutions that really help them solve problems or make them better at what they're trying to accomplish, and there's a fair bit of data that helps you gain that understanding, understand that sentiment, and that is incredibly important. That we use that data so that we know what products and services we need to build to support customer need. On the other half, though, of that equation is always this notion of empathy, and often times the data isn't going to give you that empathy that is such a big part of connecting at a human level. How you create that story, you know, how you respond to the needs of the customer, so there has to be a balance. And I think that, you know, where marketers can once, you know, believe that we've lived in a world where data didn't exist and we had to operate purely on instinct and empathy, we live in a world now where we have more data than ever that can help inform what we're creating, but how we deliver it and how it creates relevancy to the customer, that's where the empathy and the intuition and your understanding of the customer really needs to go hand in hand, and I think that that's a beautiful role for marketing to play. >> And so CMOs increasingly have to be able to lead the organization on the data oriented activities, but also sustain a clear company focus, empathetic focus on customer needs and outcomes. >> That's exactly, right, and you said a very key word, Peter, it's about outcomes. You know, we as marketers have to transition from being representations of products and more leaders of experiences. It's how do the products that we create help to enhance an experience which is the ultimate outcome that we're working to support. We want to deliver memorable experiences through each and every engagement that we have with out brand. We have to create a sense of community. And so if we can start to think about how we market, how we tell our story, how we support the customer journey, end to end, from awareness to retention, think about it in terms of the ultimate outcome that we're working to deliver to our customers, and what I have found is when you focus more there, you focus less on the product itself and more about the outcome and the experience it creates, that is really where you increase the value overall of marketing, because you're increasing the relevancy with your customer. >> Excellent, Alicia Tillman, CMO of SAP. Thank you very much for being on the CUBE. >> Peter, thank you so much for having me today, I really enjoyed it. >> And once again, I'm Peter Burris, you've been watching a CUBE Conversation, until next time. (upbeat music)

>> From the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering AT&T Spark. Now here's Jeff Frick. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco at the AT&T Spark event. It's really all about 5G and what 5G is going to enable. You know, this is a really big technology that's very, very close. I think a lot closer than most people understand. And one of the most important components of 5G is it was designed from the ground up really not so much for people-to-people communications as much as machine-to-machine communications. So we're really excited to have someone who's right in the thick of that and talk about the implications, especially another topic that we hear all the time, which is Edge computing. So it's Alicia Abella. She is the VP of Operational Automation in Program Management from AT&T Labs. Alicia, welcome. >> Thank you for having me, Jeff. >> Absolutely. So we were talking a little bit before we turn on the cameras about 5G and Edge computing. And how the two, while not directly tied together, are huge enablers of one another. I wonder if you can unpack a little bit about why is 5G such an important component to kind of the vision of Edge computing? >> Sure, absolutely. Yeah, happy to do so. So Edge computing is really about bringing processing power closer to the end device, closer to the end user, where a lot of the processing data analytics has to occur. And you want to do that because you want to be able to deliver the services and applications close to the edge, close to where the customer is, so that you can deliver on the speeds that those applications need. 5G plays a role because 5G is promising to be very fast and also very reliable and very secure. So now you've got three things to your advantage paired up with Edge to be able to deliver on a lot of these use cases that we hear a lot about when we talk about 5G, when we talk about Edge. Some example use cases are the autonomous vehicle. The autonomous vehicle is a classic example for Edge computing as well as 5G. And in fact, it illustrates a kind of continuum, because you can have processing that always has to remain in the car. Anything related to safety? That processing has to happen right on that device. The device in this case being the car. But there are other processing capabilities, like maybe updates to real-time maps. That could happen on the Edge. You still have to be near real-time, so you want to have that kind of processing and updating happening at the Edge. Then maybe you have something where you want to download some new entertainment, a movie to your car. Well, that can reside back at the data center, further away from where the device or the car is. So you've got this continuum. >> So really, what the 5G does is really open up the balance of how you can distribute that store computing and communications. It's always about latency. At the end of the day, it's always about latency. And as much as we want to get as much compute close, oh, and also, I guess power. Power and latency. >> Power and Edge actually go hand-in-hand as well. >> It's a big deal, right? >> Mhm. >> So what you're saying is, because of 5G, and the fact that now you have a much lower latency, faster connectivity port, you can now have some of that stuff maybe not at the Edge and enable that Edge device to do more, other things? >> Yes, so I often like to say that we are unleashing the device away from having it be tethered to the compute processor that's handling it and now you can go mobile. Because now what you do is, if the processing is happening on the Edge and not on the device, you save on battery life, but you also make the device more lightweight, easier to manage, easier to move around. The form factor can become smaller. So there's also an advantage to Edge computing to the device as well. >> Right. It's pretty interesting. There was an NVIDIA demo in the keynote of running a video game on the NVIDIA chips in a data center and pumping a really high resolution experience back out to the laptop screen I think is what he was using it for. And it's a really interesting use case in how when you do have these fast, reliable networks, you can shift the compute, and not just a peer compute, but the graphics, et cetera, and really start to redistribute that in lots of different ways that were just not even fathomable before. Before you had to buy the big gaming machine. You had to buy the big, giant GPU. You had to have that locally, and all that was running on your local machine. You just showed a demo where it's all running back in their data center in Santa Clara. Really opens up a huge amount of opportunity. >> That's right. So Edge computing is really distributed in nature. I mean, it is all about distribution. And distributing that compute power wherever you need it. Sprinkling it across the country of where you need it. So we've gone, there's been this pendulum shift, where we started with the mainframe, big rooms, lots of air conditioning, and then the pendulum swung over to the PC. And that client-server model. Where now you had your PC and you did your computing locally. And then it swung back the other way for Cloud computing where everything was centralized again and all that compute power was centralized. And now the pendulum is swinging back again the other way to this distributed model where now you've got your compute capabilities distributed across the country where you need it. >> Right. So interesting. I mean, networking was the last of the virtualized platform between storage and compute, and then finally networking. But if you really start to think of a world with basically infinite power, compute, infinite store, and infinite networking, basically asymptotically approaching zero pricing. Think of the world from that way. We're not there. We're never going to get to that absolute place, but it really opens up a lot of different ways to think about what you could do with that power. So I wonder if there's some other things you can share with us. At Labs, you guys are looking forward to this 5G world. What are some of the things that you see that just, wow, I would have never even thought that was even in the realm of possibility that some people are coming up with? >> Yeah. >> Any favorites? >> Oh, I think one of our favorites is certainly looking at the case of manufacturing. Even though you would think of manufacturing as very fixed, the challenge with manufacturing is that a lot of those robotics capabilities that are in the manufacturing assembly lines, for example, they're all based on wires and they can't change and upgrade what they're doing very quickly. So being able to deliver 5G, have things that are wireless, and have Edge compute capabilities that are very powerful means that they can now shift and move around their assembly lines very quickly. So that's going to help the economy. Help those businesses be able to adapt more quickly to changes in their businesses. And so that's one that is quite exciting to us. And I would say the next one that's also exciting for us would be, we talked about autonomous vehicles already, 'cause that one's kind of far out, right? >> I don't think it's as far as most people think, actually. We covered a lot of autonomous vehicle companies, and there's just so much research being done now. I don't think it's as far out as people think. >> Yes, and so I think we are definitely committed to deploying Edge compute. And in the process, from a more technical perspective, I think one of the things that we are going to be interested in doing is, and you alluded to it before, is how do you manage all of those applications and services and distribute them in a way that is economical, that we can do it at scale, that we can do it on demand? So that too is part of what's exciting about being able to deploy Edge. >> Yeah. It's pretty interesting, the manufacturing example, 'cause it came up again in the keynote to really embracing software-defined, embracing open source. And the takeaway was moving at the speed of software development, not moving at the speed of hardware development. Because software moves a lot faster. And can be more flexible. It's easy to respond to market demands, or competitive demands, or just to innovate a lot faster. So really taking that approach, and obviously a lot of conversation about you guys in the open Stack community and the open-source projects enables you and your customers to start to adapt to software-defined innovation as opposed to just pure hardware-defined innovation. >> That's right. That's right, yup. >> Alright, Alicia, I'll give you the final word. Any surprises? Oh, no, you've got a chat coming up, so why don't you give us a quick preview for what your conversation is going to be about later today? >> Yeah, thank you, Jeff. So yeah, later I'll be talking about AT&T's initiatives around encouraging women to pursue stem fields. In particular, computer science. It turns out that the number of women getting undergraduate degrees in computer science peaked in the mid-80s. And it's been going downhill since. Last year, only 17% of women were getting degrees in computer science So AT&T's mission, and what we announced today was a million dollar donation to the Girls Who Code organization. That's one of many different non-profit organizations that AT&T is involved with to make sure that we continue to encourage young women and also underrepresented minorities and others who want to get in the stem fields to get involved because technology is changing very quickly. We need people who can understand the technology, who can develop the software we talked about, and we need to get that pipeline filled up. And so we're very committed to helping the community and helping to encourage young girls to pursue degrees in stem. >> That's great. Girls Who Code is a fantastic organization. We've had 'em on. Anita Borg, I mean, there's so much good work that goes on out there, so that's a great announcement. And congratulations. >> Thank you. >> And I'm sure that's a meaningful contribution. >> Yeah, thank you. >> So Alicia, thanks for stopping by, and good luck this afternoon, and we'll see you next time. >> Thank you, Jeff. >> Alright. >> Appreciate it. >> She's Alicia, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're at AT&T Spark in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (upbeat electronic music)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas! It's theCUBE! Covering Dell Technologies World 2018, brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin and you might notice some different kind of guests on the program right now. We are live in Las Vegas, day three of Dell Technologies World. We've had lots of great conversations with technologists from many, many companies. But, one of the cool things that's here, if you've heard any dogs barking in the background during any of our segments, there is Michael's Angel Paws actually right next to our set. And this is the second year that they have been with Dell, last year Dell EMC World, now Dell Technologies World. I'm excited to be joined by Alicia Halloran. >> Hi. >> Hi Alicia. >> Hi. >> And we're also joined by Odie and Gracie who are both certified therapy dogs. >> Yes, through Michael's Angel Paws. >> Through Michael's Angel Paws. So this was, I was telling Alicia before we went live that I, when I got to the set Monday morning, I assumed that this area, Michael's Angel Paws, was for attendees of the event who have service dogs. And when I heard, no it's actually part of the event to give people that are here, walking around all day, learning lots of things about technology, just a little bit of respite, I thought that was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. >> Exactly. >> In all the trade shows that I have done. This is your second year participating. >> Yeah, this is the second year that we've done this and it is the most fun event to do because there is so much technology, there's so much going on here and it's so wonderful to have people come by and be able to squeeze our dogs and feel like they're home and think about and talk about their dogs because they're not getting an opportunity to do that at the conference they're working. So, to be able to take a break and just spend some time breathing with some animals, really really good. >> Oh, and I can tell you it does wonders. So, talk to us about therapy dogs. They're both certified. >> Alicia: Right. >> What are the different programs that they go through? >> Well, they start out in obedience, learning how to be dogs and good well-behaved dogs and they pass the Canine Good Citizenship test, and then afterwards, they go through two different levels of therapy dog training. And a lot of that, is based on distraction, being able to be in huge groups of people, big crowds, and maintain their composure, not walk off of tables, and that they can withstand being with people as much. So you kind of figure out if your dog is good enough for it, if they want to do it, and that's really important, they have to want to do it because it is a lot of attention and these guys just love it. >> I'm amazed at how calm they are. >> Yes. >> So this is actually something that's near and dear to Michael Dell's heart. >> Alicia: Yes, yes >> The chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies. Tell us a little bit about his contributions. >> Yeah, he made a generous donation that will provide three scholarships for Michael's Angel Paws for veterans. And what that will do is, it will take three dogs through our therapy dog training program, excuse me, Service Dog Training program and the Service Dog Training program is built to have dogs help veterans in assimilation. And help them with daily activities and Post-traumatic Stress, all sorts of different things. And they're different, those are therapy dogs, so those are dogs that will go everywhere with someone and really take care of them. It's a beautiful, beautiful donation and experience for the veterans to be able to have that. >> Absolutely. That's fantastic. Well, it's been really neat to see how people are reacting to seeing a pen full of dogs. >> Yes, yes. >> In the middle of, you talked about some requirements for them. There have been very loud noises here >> Alicia: Oh yeah. >> Lisa: Every evening, it's basically being in a concert, loads of people. >> Right, yes. >> And it's, I've been very impressed with how calm they are and how people are reacting. You're providing a really nice service and it's really cool to know that this is something that is very near and dear to Michael Dell's heart and Dell Technologies. >> Yeah, that's so wonderful. Yeah, it's so wonderful to be invited to this. It's such an incredible experience and I think it provides a comfort to everybody here. >> Lisa: I agree. >> So, it's very generous. >> I'm sure I'm going to get the sniff test when I get home at 11 o'clock tonight from my dog. >> Oh, yes! >> But we want to thank you, Alicia, for stopping by! >> Yes, it was my pleasure. >> Sharing with us about the program >> Absolutely, it was my pleasure. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> I'm Lisa Martin, otherwise known as Zara's mom. You're watching theCUBE, live from Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Male Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Veritas Vision 2017. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Welcome back to The Aria in Las Vegas, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante. I'm here With Stu Miniman. Alicia Johnson is here. She's the managing director at Accenture Operations, and we're going to have a conversation about diversity, women in tech. Alicia, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate it. >> Delighted to be here today. Thank you. >> Yeah, we're thrilled because we saw some action on Twitter, we saw the WAVE activity going on, we said, "Hey, we got to get some of these folks on theCUBE," so really appreciate you taking the time here. Let's start with your role at Accenture, and then we'll get into WAVE and what that's all about. >> Fantastic. So thank you for having me today, and I'm delighted to represent the Accenture and Veritas partnership and be able to speak at WAVE last evening. Within Accenture, we put a high priority on inclusion and diversity. One of the things that we've come out and publicly announced is that we want a 50% women workforce by 2025. We've been doing research over the last three years, and Accenture is publicly committed to growing that percentage of our women managing directors to at least 25% by 2020, so we really focus on retaining, attaining, and advancing women, and sponsoring them in that pursuit for gender balance. >> So that's an amazing statistic. I mean, I think the average in the tech industry is 17%. Is that about right? >> About that, yeah. And a lot of the fundraising these days actually goes to venture capital men-run firms, and so we're really interested in helping set that gender paradigm as well so that more VC money goes out toward women and women investments and women VCs. >> Well, it's interesting. I mean, we've done some work in this area at siliconANGLE, and we've funded some fellowships to study this problem, and two of the places that were egregious offenders, Silicon Valley and Cambridge, Massachusetts, but you have to get it out there and talk about it, right? But so, when you say 50% by 2025, that's a goal? Is that a strict, people would use the term quota? Let's have that discussion. What does that all mean? >> It's a commitment that we're making, and one of the ways that within Accenture we really feel that we can hold to that commitment is making some changes internally and also being very transparent. So we have set that transparency goal across not only sponsoring women in P&L goals, but coming forward and making that commitment to transparency by publicly making the announcement. So the company has already set these clear, published, measurable targets to grow the number of women. We publish our workforce demographics, and we do this across many countries, including U.S., Canada, South Africa, Japan, India, and also our Asian countries. We also launch initiatives that are very focused on high-demand, short-supply, high-performing women in technical architect roles, and so what we do is we not only collaborate with the teams across our business and government, but we look at the programs that we have internally, and we set metrics internally as well about hiring and promoting, and so we're really committed to this through the transparency, so answering your question directly, it is not only a goal that we're after, but we are on a clear transaction path to make that happen, and hopefully we can make it happen sooner. >> Yeah, so, many events have some piece at the conference. THey'll have a panel, they'll have breakfast. We actually at theCUBE covered many Women in Tech events. Here at the Veritas Vision, they have it the Women At Vision Empowered, or WAVE Program, which there's a workshop, there's networking, there's some other things, maybe. Walk us through a little bit of it. There was the panel last night. What's the breadth of the experience here at the show? >> The experience yesterday was very much about empowering women in technology. We went through some discussions around not only gender balance, but also how to empower women and support women in your careers. We also talked about women in technology, other groups that we can align to. We also talked about some of the gender balance conversations that you often don't get to have when you're not meeting, and we encourage men to also join us in these WAVE events, but really, it's about professionally and successfully being fulfilled in your career. Within Accenture, we actually created what we call a B operations program to foster, really, this inclusive culture, and I think that the WAVE event is also looking toward fostering this inclusive culture. The people are really at the center of everything that we do, and so having a culture that's really respectful of women, their careers, their personal goals, and the culture that focuses on work-life choices, that's really very important, because those aspirations, we encourage you to become who you really can be. Some of our Accenture operations and B operations goals are focused around being limitless, driving business outcomes, being relevant, being part of others' successes and failures because you learn through growing with success and failure, be caring, and then really be yourself. Be authentic, and bringing that to the WAVE conference and that empowering diversity initiative is really key to the success of that event. We do hope next year that we'll have an opportunity to have the event actually more during the conference so that we can really get more attendants and drive much more passion and invigoration to the event, but we really believe that the opportunity above all is to get the initiative out there, start talking about it, and really make a difference. >> So let's have a conversation about the why. We can all agree it's the right thing to do, but let's have a business case conversation. What's the business benefit of inclusion? >> Well, obviously, we all come from different backgrounds and different walks of life, and bringing those experiences to the business, it's been proven time and again with all of the factors that you can look at that women make different choices, and women can be different types of role models, and in business, you actually are more successful as an organization by having women lead oftentimes in a scenario where sometimes men have been typically the leaders, and so creating more women role models will change the dynamic of the business, and as a diverse culture, you probably watched the Emmys last night. Diversity and inclusion was a hot topic, so we're changing the world as we're going through and changing technology, and this is an area that we can control, and I think that it's time for us to take control and make that difference, and really going after, really going after the fact of the matter is why wouldn't we already be there, right? And if we can make a difference to really be effective, be good communicators, be authentic, be inspiring, why wouldn't we want women bringing that to the table? >> Yeah, we were having a conversation on theCUBE a couple weeks ago, and you bring up the P&L manager, and it was interesting to talk about some of the stereotypes. I wonder if you could comment as a woman. P&L managers tend to be leaders, and somebody did an analysis of performance reviews, and the adjectives for the male leaders tended to be assertive, great leader, and the adjectives for the female leaders tended to be things like abrasive, okay? But both high-performing individuals. As a woman, I mean, I'm sure you've experienced that in your career, and your colleagues have, as well. I wonder if you could comment on that. Are things changing, and where do you want to see it all go? >> Sure. That's a really great topic, and yes, I mean, in the work world you often see if a woman is assertive, she's referred to in a negative tone, and oftentimes you'll find women, the higher power they are in organizations, they're not looked upon as being friendly individuals, and I think that that's a cultural dynamic that goes back to probably maternal instinct, that you're trained to think, oh, well, we don't see empowered women as wildly successful, and that's something that we need to change as a culture. You mentioned you have a daughter, so seeing your daughter in an empowered position is going to be something that you want as a father. And then being able to proactively build upon why we look at males in a position of power as being someone who is assertive, but if the woman says the same thing, she's maybe looked at in a negative connotation, these are the questions we need to start asking, right, and is there a reason for that? There shouldn't be a reason for that. Equally intelligent, equally able to succeed. And so assertive and powerful is that gender balance, and that's really what we should start questioning in business, and it will make us better as large organizations, as individuals, and as fathers in going after what we want our children and the rest of our society to achieve. >> Yeah, and you certainly see some high-profile examples of women in leadership positions. Obviously, Accenture, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Enterprise, and some others, but you also see on the masthead, if you will, it's like, man, man, man, man, oh, Head of HR, woman, and so a lot of the P&L managers, it's interesting. That's the first time specifically the P&L management. Why the P&L management? Why that emphasis? Maybe you could share with us. >> Well, within Accenture, one of the things that we can do is actually measure the goals that help us advance internally, and so we sponsored the company's most senior women to advance in P&L roles. We've been doing this for the last six years, and approximately 80% of the women in our global executive leadership program have been promoted and significantly expanded their areas of responsibility, and I think that we looked at the goals we could take within Accenture and really make examples of those goals. We also, the commitment to transparency, which I talked about a bit ago, that's really setting and measuring publicly and holding ourselves accountable, right, to those goals and measurable targets that we can grow to. We publish that, and we also challenge other organizations to come out and publish their workforce demographics, and I think before Accenture did that, there wasn't a lot of companies that were maybe as eager to come out and publish that workplace demographic, and so we're looking to make a change. We really want to launch initiatives within our organization that we can control, and ensuring that we can collaborate and create that gender balance in the workforce is key. One other area that I want to talk briefly about is within Accenture Operations, so just in my realm of Accenture. I did mention that we finished our fiscal year 2017 with 45.9% women, really setting the bar across Accenture. One of the things that I want to mention is what we're doing to sponsor and retain women in our local programs within Accenture and their careers, and we focus on staying true to passion, which I talked about with our B operations initiative. We also introduced a flexible work option, which is really focused on our teams in India. They allow the women to fit work and school around their nursery hours, and that's one of the other reasons that you find often women not staying in the workforce is because they make the choice between family and working and the working hours, and then within Accenture, we focus on hosting our International Women's Day, very similar to the WAVE event, and we would be delighted for you guys to join us this year at the upcoming event in March. And then we also sponsor what's called a woman stream, which is internally, to our 400+ thousand employees, at major events, we're able to promote women in cloud, we're able to promote WAVE events, we're able to promote our women in IT initiatives, and on a grassroots level, we'll go out and sponsor programs that are around Girls Who Code and get involved in NPower and other initiatives which bring people into the technical workforce, be it women or men, families, looking at how can we empower and help grow our society including all inclusion and diversity. >> Alicia, how about compensation? I feel like, actually, ironically, one of the best things that happened for women was when Satya Nadella put his foot in his mouth a couple of years ago at the Grace Hopper Conference. Since then, you've seen a much heightened awareness of compensation levels. Many companies have come out and said okay, we're going to, it should be transparent. States' Attorneys General have come out with strong advocates, in some cases laws mandating equal compensation. Maybe you could make some comments there, and what specifically is Accenture doing? >> Accenture is actually looking at the salaries of MDs and down through the food chain. We weigh what the percentage of men are paid versus the percentage of women, highest percentage-earning, and we also do adjustments based on that. I do find it interesting you had mentioned that the comments were made. Yes, that's true, and it's a very common fact that women make $0.49 on the dollar for what a man makes, and I can tell you, I don't believe that I'm only worth $0.49 on the dollar. It's really important for us to bring about these initiatives. You also hear people make excuses that maybe women aren't as good at negotiating, or maybe we don't go out and ask for the same balance, but it makes me say, well, why should women go out and have to ask for the same treatment, equal treatment? So I don't think it comes down to that. We all have to fight for what we want. We all have to go after how successful we want to be, and I think empowering and collaborating and really being authentic in that pursuit is really key, so yeah, good point. >> Well, and I think it's a bit self-fulfilling. Because women have historically been paid less than men, certainly in our industry, their expectations are perhaps lower, so that when they switch a job, if they're offered something lower, they're more apt to take it, and the hiring person says, "Okay, fine, that's good," so the only way out of it is if companies proactively adjust, and understandably, that can't happen overnight because there's economic realities, but it can and it feels like it's beginning to happen, slowly, maybe not as fast as you'd like. >> Yeah, and I would love to see women and girls getting more involved in tech. I watched a bit of a program last evening, actually, that referred to around in 4th grade, we start giving boys toys to work with and we start giving girls dolls to play with and different things like that. We can change that. Starting from the basic skills that you aspire for your children, you can start on paradigm, you can start with teaching others about technology. Women might always say it's not super sexy to be a technical architect, but I might disagree, with my background as a CIO. So I think it's really talking about the inclusion culture, getting more people interested in it from the beginning, and bringing more women with the opportunity to really fulfill that gender equality, and whether we promote them, within Accenture, you had asked me about the P&L case, that's something we can control as an organization, so each organization I would challenge to look at the ways that you can balance gender equality, and within Veritas, obviously, there's a very strong WAVE program that's being driven and Accenture's delighted to partner with and support, and that's a commitment to being a champion for change. >> Well, congratulations on being a champion for change and all the progress you're making at Accenture. Very impressive story, so thanks for coming on theCUBE and sharing it. >> Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here today, and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak with you gentlemen. >> It's our pleasure. All right, keep it right there, everybody. Stu and I will be back with our next guest. It's theCUBE. We're live from Veritas Vision 2017. We'll be right back. (intelligent electronic theme)

>>Hi, we're back. We're watching, you're watching the cube coverage of Falcon 2022 live from the aria in Las Vegas, Dave Valante with Dave Nicholson and we, yes, folks, there are females in the cyber security industry. Amanda Adams is here. So the vice president of America Alliance at CrowdStrike. Thanks for coming on. >>Thank you so much for having me. >>We it's, it's fantastic to, to actually, as I was starting to wonder, but we >>Do have females in leadership. >>Wait, I'm just kidding. There are plenty of females here, but this cybersecurity industry in general, maybe if we have time, we can talk about that, but I wanna talk about the, the Alliance program, but before I do, yeah. You know, you, you got a nice career here at CrowdStrike, right? You've kind of seen the ascendancy, the rocket ship you've been on it for five years. Yep. So what's that been like? And if you had to put on the binoculars and look five years forward, what can you tell us in that 10 year span? Oh >>My goodness. What a journey it's been over the last five, six years. I've been with CrowdStrike almost six years and really starting with our first core group of partners and building out the alliances, seen obviously the transformation with our sales organization. And as we scaled, I think of our, of our technology. We started with, I think, two products at that time, we were focused on reinventing how our customers thought about NextGen AB but also endpoint detection response. From there, the evolution is really driving towards that cloud security platform, right? How our partners fit into that. And, and how we've evolved is it's not just resell. It's not just focusing on the margin and transactions. We really have focused on building the strategic relationships with our partners, but also our customers and fitting them in that better together story with that CrowdStrike platform. It's been the biggest shift. Yeah. >>And you've got that. The platform chops for that. It's just, I think you're up to 22 modules now. So you're not a point product. You guys make that, that, that point lot now in terms of the, the partners and the ecosystem, you know, it's, it's, it's good here. I mean, it's, this it's buzzing. I've said it's like service. I've said, number of times, it's like service. Now back in 2013, I was there now. They didn't have the down market, the SMB that you have that's right. And I think you you're gonna have an order. You got 20,000 customers. That's right. I predict CrowdStrike's gonna have 200,000. I, I'm not gonna predict when I need to think about that. But, but in thinking about the, the, the co your colleagues and the partners and the skill sets that have evolved, what's critical today. And, and, and what do you see as critical in the future? >>So from a skill set standpoint, if I'm a partner and engaging with CrowdStrike and our customers, if you think about, again, evolving away from just resell, we have eight routes to market. So while that may sound complicated, the way that I like to think about it is that we truly flex to our partners, go to market their business models of what works best for their organization, but also their customers. The way that they've changed, I think from a skillset standpoint is looking beyond just the technology from a platform, building a better together story with our tech Alliance partners or store, if thinking about the XDR Alliance, which we are focusing on, there's so much great value in bringing that to our customers from a skillset standpoint, beyond those services services, we've talked about every day. I know that this is gonna be a top topic for the week yesterday through our partner summit, George, our CEO, as well as Jim Cidel, that's really the opportunity as we expand in new modules. If you think about humo or log scale identity, and then cloud our partners play a critical role when it comes into the cloud migration deployment integration services, really, we're not gonna get bigger from a services organization. And that's where we need our partners to step in. >>Yeah. And, you know, we we've talked a lot about XDR yeah. Already in day one here. Yeah. With, with the X extending into other areas. That's right. I think that services be, would become even more critical at that point, you know, as you spread out into the, really the internet of things that's right. Especially all of the old things that are out there that maybe should be on the internet, but aren't yet. Yeah. But once they are security is important. So what are you doing in that arena from a services perspective to, to bolster that capability? Is it, is it, is it internally, or is it through partners generally? >>It's definitely, I think we look to our partners to extend beyond the core of what we do. We do endpoint really well, right? Our services is one of the best in the business. When you look at instant response, our proactive services, supporting our customers. If you think to XDR of integration, building out those connect air packs with our customers, building the alliances, we really do work with our partners to drive that successful outcome with our customers. But also too, I think about it with our tech alliances of building out the integration that takes a lot of effort and work. We have a great team internally, which will help guide those services to be, to be built. Right. You have to have support when you're building the integrations, which is great, but really from like a tech Alliance and store standpoint, looking to add use cases, add value to more store apps for our customers, that's where we're headed. Right. >>What about developers? Do you see that as a component of the ecosystem in the future? Yeah, >>Without a doubt. I mean, I think that as our partner program evolves right now working with our, our developers, I mean, there's different personas that we work with with our customer standpoint, but from a partner working with them to build our new codes, the integration that's gonna be pretty important. >>So we were, we sort of tongue in cheek at the beginning of this interview yeah. With women in tech. And it's a, it's a topic that, on the cube that we've been very passionate about since day one yep. On the cube. So how'd you get in to this business? H how did your, your career progress, how did you get to where you are? >>You know, I have been incredibly fortunate to have connections, and I think it's who, you know, and your network, not necessarily what, you know, to a certain extent, you have to be smart to make it long term. Right. You have to have integrity. Do what you're saying. You're gonna do. I first started at Cisco and I had a connection of, it was actually a parent of somebody I grew up with. And they're like, you would fit in very nicely to Cisco. And I started with their channel marketing team, learned a ton about the business, how to structure, how to support. And that was the first step into technology. If you would've asked me 20 years ago, what did I wanna do? I actually wanted to be a GM of an organization. And I was coming outta I come on, which is great, which I'm, it really is right up. >>If you knew me, you're like, that actually makes a lot of sense. But coming outta college, I had an opportunity. I was interviewing with the golden state warriors in California, and I was interviewing with Cisco and that I had two ops and I was living in San Jose at the time. The golden state warriors of course paid less. It was a better opportunity in sales, but it was obviously where I wanted to go from athletics. And I grew up in athletics, playing volleyball. Cisco paid me more, and it was in San Jose. And really the, the golden state warriors seemed that I was having that conversation. They said, one year community is gonna be awful. It's awful from San Jose to Oakland, but also too, like you have more money on the table. Go take that. And so I could have very much ended up in athletics, most likely in the back office, somewhere. Like I would love that. And then from there, I went from Cisco. I actually worked for a reseller for quite some time, looking at, or selling into Manhattan when I moved from California to Manhattan, went to tenable. And that was when I shifted really into channel management. I love relationships, getting snow people, building partnerships, seeing that long term, that's really where I thrive. And then from there came to CrowdStrike, which in itself has been an incredible journey. I bet. Yeah. >>Yeah. I think there's an important thread there to pull on. And that is, we, we put a lot of emphasis on stem, which people, some sometimes translate into one thing, writing code that's right. There are, but would you agree? There are many, many, many opportunities in tech that aren't just coding. >>Absolutely. >>And I think I, as a father of three daughters, it's, it's a message that I have shared with them. Yeah. They are not interested in the coding part of things, but still, they need to know that there are so many opportunities and, and it's always, sometimes it's happenstance in terms of finding the opportunity in your case, it was, you know, cosmic connection that's right. But, but that's, you know, that's something that we can foster is that idea that it's not just about the hardcore engineering and coding aspect, it's business >>That's right. So if, if there was one thing that I can walk away from today is I say that all the time, right? If you look at CrowdStrike in our mission, we really don't have a mission statement. We stop breaches every single day. When I come to work and I support our partners, I'm not super technical. I obviously know our technology and I, I enable and train our partners, but I'm not coding. Right. And I make an impact to our business, our partners, more importantly, our customers, every single day, we have folks that you can come from a marketing operations. There is legal, there's finance. I deal with folks all across the business that aren't super technical, but are making a huge impact. And I, I don't think that we talk about the opportunities outside of engineering with the broader groups. We talk about stem a lot, but within college, and I look to see like getting those early in career folks, either through an intern program could be sales, but too, if they don't like, like sales, then they shift into marketing or operations. It's a great way to get into the industry. >>Yeah. But I still think you gotta like tech to be in the tech business. Oh, you >>Do? Yeah. You do. I'm >>Not saying it's like deep down is like, not all of us, but a lot of us are kind of just, you know, well, at least you, >>At least you can't hate it. >>Right. Okay. But so women, 50% of the population, I think the stat is 17% in the technology. Yeah. Industry, maybe it's changed a little bit, but you know, 20% or, or less, why do you think that is? >>I, you know, I always go back to within technology, people hire from their network and people that they know, and usually your network are people that are very like-minded or similar to you. I have referred females into CrowdStrike. It's a priority of mine. I also have a circle that is also men, but also too, if you look at the folks that are hired into CrowdStrike, but also other technology companies, that's the first thing that I go to also too. I think it's a little bit intimidating. Right. I have a very strong personality and I'm very direct, but also too, like I can keep up with our industry when it comes to that stereotypes essentially. And some people maybe are introverted and they're not quite sure where they fit in. Right. Whether it's marketing operations, et cetera. So they, they're not sure of the opportunities or even aware of where to get started. You know what I mean? >>Yeah. I mean, I think there is a, a, a stereotype today, but I'm not sure why it's, is it unique to the, to the technology industry? No. Is it not? Right? It happens >>Thinking, I mean, there's so many industries where healthcare, >>Maybe not so much. Right. Because you know, >>You have nurses versus doctors. I feel like that is flipped. >>Yeah. That's true. Nurses versus doctors. Right. Well, I, I know a lot of women doctors though, but >>Yeah. That's kind of flipped. It's better. >>Yeah. Says >>Flipped over. Yeah. I think it's more women in medical school now, but than than men. But, >>And, and I do think in our industry, you know, when you look at companies like IBM, HPE, Cisco, Dell, and, and, and many others. Yeah. They are making a concerted effort for on round diversity. They typically have somebody who's in charge of diversity. They report, you know, maybe not directly to the CEO, but they certainly have a seat at the table. That's right. And you know, maybe you call it, oh, it's quotas. Maybe the, the old white guys feel, you know, a little slighted, whatever. It's like, nobody's crying for us. I mean, it's not like we got screwed. >>See, I know problema we can do this in Spanish. Oh, oh, >>Oh, you're not a old white guy. Sorry. We can do >>This in Spanish if you want. >>Okay. Here we go. So, no, but, but, but I, so I do think that, that the industry in general, I talked to John Chambers about this recently and he was like, look, we gotta do way better. And I don't disagree with that. But I think that, I think the industry is doing better, but I wonder if like a rocket ship company, like CrowdStrike who has so many other things going on, you know, maybe they gotta get you a certain size. I mean, you've reached escape velocity. You're doing obviously a lot of corporate, you know, good. Yeah. You know, and, and, and, and we just had earlier on we, you know, motor motor guides was very cool. Yeah. So maybe it's a maturity thing. Maybe these larger companies with you crowd size $40 billion market cap, but maybe the, the hundred plus billion dollar market cap companies. I don't know. I don't know. You guys got a bigger market cap than Dell. So >>I, I don't think it's necessarily related to market cap. I think it's the size of the organization of how many roles are open that we currently write. So we're at just over 6,000 employees. If you look at Cisco, how many thousands of employees they have there's >>Right. Maybe a hundred thousand employees. >>That's right. There's >>More opportunities. How many, what's a headcount of crowd strike >>Just over 6,000, >>6,000. So, okay. But >>If you think about the, the areas of opportunity for advancement, and we were talking about this earlier, when you look at early and career or entry level, it's actually quite, even right across the Americas of, we do have a great female population. And then as progression happens, that's where it, it tees off from a, a female in leadership. And we're doing, we're focusing on that, right? Under JC Herrera's leadership, as well as with George. One of the things that I always think is important though, is that you're mindful as, as the female within the organization and that you're out seeking somebody, who's not only a mentor, but is a direct champion for you when you're not in the room. Right. This is true of CrowdStrike. It's true of every organization. You're not gonna be aware of the opportunities as the roles are being created. And really, as the roles are being created, they probably have somebody in mind. Right. And so if you have somebody that's in that room says, you know what, Amanda Adams would be perfect for that. Let's go talk to her about it. You have to have somebody who's your champion. Yeah. >>There there's, there's, there's a saying that 80% of the most important moments in your life happen in your absence. Yeah. And that's exactly right. You know, when they're, when someone needs to be there to champion, you, >>Did that happen for you? >>Yes. I have a very strong champion. >>So I mean, I, my observation is if, if you are a woman in tech and you're in a senior leadership position, like you are, or you're a, you're a general manager or a P and L manager or a CEO, you have to be so incredibly talented because all things being equal, maybe it's changing somewhat in some of those companies I talked about, but for the last 30 years, all takes be equal. A, a, a woman is gonna lose out to a man who is as qualified. And, and I think that's maybe slowly changing. Maybe you agree with that, maybe you don't. And maybe that's, some people think that's unfair, but you know, think about people of color. Right. They, they, they, they grew up with less op opportunities for education. And this is just the statistics that's right. Right. So should society overcompensate for that? I personally think, yes, the, the answer is just, they should, there should still be some type of meritocracy that's right. You know, but society has a responsibility to, you know, rise up all ships. >>I think there's a couple ways that you can address that through Falcon funds, scholarship programs, absolutely. Looking at supporting folks that are coming outta school, our internship program, providing those opportunities, but then just being mindful right. Of whether or not you publish the stats or not. We do have somebody who's responsible for D I, within CrowdStrike. They are looking at that and at least taking that step to understand what can we do to support the advancement across minorities. But also women is really, really important. >>Did you not have a good educational opportunity when you were growing up where you're like you had to me? Yeah, no, seriously, >>No. Seriously. I went to pretty scary schools. Right. >>Okay. So you could have gone down a really bad path. >>I, a lot of people that I grew up with went down really, really bad paths. I think the inflection point at, at least for me what the inflection point was becoming aware of this entire universe. Yeah. I was, I was headed down a path where I wasn't aware that any of this existed, when I got out of college, they were advertising in the newspaper for Cisco sales engineers, $150,000 a year. We will train. I'm a smart guy. I had no idea what that meant. Right. I could have easily gone and gotten one of those jobs. It was seven or eight years before I intersected with the tech world again. And so, you know, kind of parallel with your experience with you had someone randomly, it's like, you'd be great at Cisco. Yeah. But if, if you're not around that, and so you take people in different communities who are just, this might as well be a different planet. Yes. Yeah. The idea of eating in a restaurant where someone is serving you, food is uncomfortable, right? The idea of checking into a hotel, the idea of flying somewhere on an airplane, we talk about imposter syndrome. That's right. There are deep seated discomfort levels that people have because they just, this is completely foreign, but >>You're saying you could have foreign, you could have gone down a path where selling drugs or jacking cars was, was, was lucrative. >>I had, I had, yeah. I mean, we're getting, we're getting like deep into societal things. I was, I was very lucky. My parents were very, very young, but they're still together to this day. I had loving parents. We were very, very poor. We were surrounded by really, really, really bad stuff. So. >>Okay. So, so, okay. So this, >>I, I don't, I don't compare my situation to others. >>White woman. That's I guess this is my point. Yeah. The dynamic is different than, than a kid who grew up in the inner city. Yes. Right. And, and, and they're both important to address, but yeah. I think you gotta address them in different ways. >>Yes. But if they're, but if they're both completely ignorant of this, >>They don't know it. So it's lack of >>A, they'll never be here. >>You >>Never be here. And it's such a huge, this is such a huge difference from the rest of the world and from the rest, from the rest of our economy. >>So what would you tell a young girl? My daughters, aren't interested in tech. They want to go into fashion or healthcare, whatever Dave's daughters maybe would be a young girl, preteen, maybe teen interested in, not sure which path, why tech, what would advice would you give? >>I think just understanding what you enjoy about life, right? Like which skills are you great at? What characteristics about roles and not really focusing on a specific product. Definitely not cybersecurity versus like the broader network. I mean, literally what do you enjoy doing? And then the roles of, you know, from the skillset that's needed, whether that be marketing, and then you can start to dive into, do I wanna support marketing for a corporate environment for retail, for technology like that will come and follow your passion, which I know is so easy to say, right? But if you're passionate about certain things, I love relationships. I think that holding myself from integrity standpoint, leading with integrity, but building strong relationships on trust, that's something I take really pride in and what I get enjoyment with. It's >>Obviously your superpower. >>It, >>It is. >>But >>Then it will go back to OST too, just being authentic in the process of building those relationships, being direct to the transparency of understanding, like again, knowing what you're good at and then where you can fit into an organization, awareness of technology opportunities, I think will all lend that to. But I also wouldn't worry, like when I was 17 year old, I, I thought I would be playing volleyball in college and then going to work for a professional sports team. You know, life works out very differently. Yeah. >>Right. And then, and for those of you out there, so I love that. Thank you for that great interview. Really appreciate letting us go far field for those of you might say, well, I don't know, man. I don't know what my passion is. I'll give you a line from my daughter, Alicia, you don't learn a lot for your kids. She said, well, if you don't know what your passion is, follow your curiosity. That's great. There you go. Amanda Adams. Thanks so much. It was great to have you on. Okay. Thank you. Keep it right there. We're back with George Kurtz. We're to the short break. Dave ante, Dave Nicholson. You watching the cube from Falcon 22 in Las Vegas.

>> live from Las Vegas. It's the queue covering del Technologies. World twenty nineteen. Brought to you by Del Technologies and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome on board technologies World. Lisa Martin with Rebecca Night for the first time hosting together. And I have to say this is probably one of my favorite times of del technologies world because we have dogs on the Cube joining us for Michael Angel Pause. We've got Alicia Halloran. She's back. She's a Q. Pietro's here last year. Your Fallen here, Here's OD and Gracie and holding Creasy is Denise Michael's Cox Global Experiential marketing from Del Technologies. Tony's Thank you for joining us as well. Certainly a lot of female power. You right out. He's just letting a male hanging out. Alicia, it's so good to have you back Way have enjoyed being having our set Next. Tio Michael's age. Applause again. This year. It's so great to hear barking. Yeah, when you're talking about, I think I'm at home so true. Talk to us a little bit about Michael's Angel. Pause your experience as a volunteer out. Yeah, D'Oh well, first of all, Michael Angel paused >> is was a static to nonprofit established in Las Vegas, and they have three main programs. They have a community dog program, which really strengthens the bonds between people and their animals. And they have a therapy dog program, which is what these lovelies air part of, and we just love to bring joy and delight everywhere we go. And then they also have a service dog training, which allows people with autism or with their mobility issues or any kind of medical alert. So that's the main process of what Michael Angel paused does way air volunteers with them. We have loved being volunteers with them. Uh, OD is blind, and we managed to get him through the therapy dog program, and we love to come to conferences and just really help people feel better. And Gracie, of course, is just a little beauties. So, >> yeah, so Denise, tell me a little bit about why Dell has partnered with this with this organ, which is a great organization. And why might people need to feel better when they're out of touch? Honor. That's been may be related to this morning's kid note address with the anxiety, sometimes technology way. You do like >> to say we think of everything for Del Technologies world. So what is one more thing? How to surprise and delight our costumers? Air attendees here. And also it's really important for us as Del Technologies to give back to the community. And so it's a great opportunity to give back to great organization like Michael's Angels. Pause and surprise and delight our guests with the with several dogs to pet. Because you know, when you go to a conference when you travel, you miss your pets a lot. A lot of people miss their dogs, and so we're here for them to get a dog fix or maybe just come in for a few minutes. Distress. Er, jetsam dogs come out happy. Everyone who walks in, walks in, smiling and walks out, smiling bigger. So it's a great place. Tio work here, too. >> We were hearing last year that Michael Age, a PAS exhibit exhibit, was one of the most popular places for Get fourteen fifteen thousand people to congregate. Ru. Do you experience the same thing this year? Yes, >> definitely, definitely didn't really. It's been really busy, like these little ebbs and flows like you just catch a breath and then twenty five people are there and they're all like, Oh, it's so great. It's so great to see people relax and be able to kind of sit down and take a breath, which I think is really hard in a conference like this. >> It is, and it's also STD. So you mentioned it's nice to recognize that they're all people. They all have families, a lot of them, whether their pet owners or not. It's just a nice way to just sort of get back to reality, maybe come down from the cloud right on and actually have a little bit of something that just brings a just a smile to your heart. Yes, >> bring some joy even without technology. >> So we know the humans love it. But here, the Toups, how are they doing? Because, as you said, they usually you're going toe spills There. You told each home write and write and how are they handling? They >> handle it. Amazingly, they love to come. You know, the energy is very, very different, so they can be a little bit more rambunctious. They could move a little bit more because they're not working with somebody that is in hospice or you know has an illness. So it's people who are exactly feeling sad that they don't have their animals with them, and they get to get cuddled and squeezed and they love it. So it's a wonderful experience for them. They love to do it. She kind of looks a little sleepy, but that's kind of her way of being like >> he's himself. You're >> yeah, Just loves it. What is some of the reactions elation that you've experience out in the field like, for example, in the hospital or a hospice organization or in firemen's Yeah, that you see patients. Oh, yeah, they light owns, >> they light up. I mean, when you go to a hospital, people are in a hospital, and so everything is very regimented, their way woken up in the middle of the night to do whatever needs to be done. And people are kind of like talking about them, but not actually to them, and that animals don't differentiate there just like we want to sit with you, and that's what we're going to do. We're just going to sit with you, so it gives them a moment to just relax again and not have to think about. When's the next blood draw? When's the next thing that's gonna happen? So it's a really wonderful, relaxing experience for them. It's it's it's and and the joy that it brings. And I think there's a lot of healing in that that when your feel good, you feel good, you have the ability to heal better. And so I think therapy dogs are so important in a in a hospital environment, and >> this is a two step sort of certification program. They become a therapy dog first, and then they would become a service dog. Or can they go into a hospital as a therapy dog to >> go in as a therapy dog? Yes, so that's That's the work that these guys do service dogs or more about if you have something on illness, or that you have some mobility issues that you need balance or you need if you have PTSD that you need to have a dog with you all the time just to kind of keep you keep you together, which I think everybody understands that it feels good to have an animal with you. So these guys are therapy dogs, which is not the service dogs. >> Got it? Yeah. >> Denise, this is your baby. This thing, The show. Congratulations. It was a great show. Fifteen thousand attendees. Eso money partners. So money. A lot of great energy and a great vibe. Can you just talk a little bit? About what? This year's event This this dull world technologies has meant to you. This has >> been a great event every year. It's a great about. But this year, Thea Energy is even higher, so positive it's always really positive. Be here anyway. And so many more people this year, too. It's just a constant Gogo energy all the time. And it's It's wonderful. It's so fun. I love being part of the organization and proud to be able to say that I helped and some a little bit put this together. And so I'm just happy to be here and proud to be a part of Del Technologies to >> Denise before we let you go and get some well deserved. This's also a charity and philanthropy that's close, and Michael Dell's Hart Can you explain a little bit about that? And how he helps veterans in this way? >> Well, how Michael helps veterans or Michael's Angels pause veterans because they both do. >> Michael, let's talk about Michael Dell for since this is kind of his thing, yeah, well, it's, >> um, like for Del itself, a Michael Dell to is very important to him. To give back to the community is is important to us all. And that's a big part of what we dio and this opportunity to that now contribute event. Veterans like these guys go to that veteran homes and help with, um now Del itself. And Michael Dell also contributes Teo many veteran organizations helping veterans with PTSD. And we saw that last year at Del World talking a lot about continue working with veterans, working through PTSD with the art art for veterans. And so there's many organizations like that we work with our Del Technologies and Michael Dell works with, and that give that >> exit was we heard that maybe there was some support financial support for dogs that go through service training to become service dogs for veterans, which is a pretty extensive process and quite expensive. So nice to hear how much it really doesn't mean to the heart of Adele Denise Alicia. Thank you. Someone like you, but I mean, of course, Odeon, Gracie. Humans think they are. Thanks, guys. Really brought a smile to my heart and I got to go home to my dog with first. She's yet, right? Yeah. Like for Rebecca Knight. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching The Cube live from Dale Technologies World twenty nineteen. Thanks so much for watching.

>> Live from Washington DC. It's theCUBE, covering Inforum DC2018, brought to you by Infor. >> Well good afternoon and welcome back to Inform18, we are live in Washington DC, the nation's capital for this year's show. Joining Dave Vellante and me is Corey Tollefson, who is the Senior Vice President and General Manager for retail at Infor. Corey good to see you today sir. >> Good to see you, good to be seen. >> Yeah, right (laughs) it is, under any circumstance right. >> Absolutely. >> So retail, you talk about a world that's kind of upside down now. The brick and mortar guys are, they aren't brick and mortar anymore. So talk about the state of the industry if you would a little bit since it's moved to the digital platform and how that's changing your work with it. >> It certainly was simple 20 years ago. Manufacturers manufactured things, wholesale distributors distributed things, and then retailers sold things. Right, and so the whole business model has been disrupted. Mainly because of the advent of the mobile phone, a mobile device. I said it last year it feels like everyday you wake up and it's very chaotic and there is a lot of disorder. And I think it's an amazing opportunity for retailers to reinvent themselves into a modern 21st century retailer. Everyday is a challenge but we're working on it. >> So what's it like, I mean, every retailer I talk to has this sort of Amazon war room. They're trying to use their physical presence to drive online. They're really getting creative. Amazon continues to do super well. There are those who are predicting the end of of retail stores because of AI etcetera. What's your take? You're knee deep in this business. >> Well I feel, I mean Amazon certainly is bringing a lot of downward pressure. It's the first digital, retail is the first industry to be digitally disrupted. It is happening in healthcare, its happening in manufacturing, but retail brought on the initial wave so to speak. And what I'm seeing is a lot of the middle of the road retailers that don't have too much of an online presence, their legacy brands that maybe had their following 20 years ago. They're going to get squeezed out because the middle in this group is going to get squeezed out. The high end brands that control their own brand image, they brand manufacture their own products, they also have their own retail stores. Those are the companies that are uniquely qualified to compete and thrive against Amazon because the last I looked having stores and having an outlet for immediate gratification of getting products and services is a good thing. The retailers that we are working with are combating that against pure plays like Amazon. >> But there's some consumer friction there right, and it's generational, so how we shop is different then how our kids shop. They look at retail in a very different, through a very different prism then we do. So how do you address that in terms of, how do you help your clients address that through different segmentation of their audiences and addressing those unique problems? >> Well even as a kid I remember that the retail shopping was a destination shopping experience, so we'd load up the family truck, and we'd go to a mall, and spend the whole day. There would be entertainment there, there would be restaurants to eat at. We'd shop and then we'd come home, it was a destination. Try doing that when it is 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year on your phone, suddenly the social engagement, with social media, and Snapchat, and Twitter, and Facebook. Facebook is a little old for a lot of the younglings now, but the moral of the story is social media takes on everything and that's where the influence is. And that whole shopping experience it used to be, well I'm just going to get some product information and then I'm going to go into the store. That's been completely disrupted as well. One other aspect of this is the whole concept of consumerism is disrupted. There is a lot of, you know you look at a lot of the cool brands that are in other adjacent industries whether its Uber or Airbnb, they don't own any of their assets. Same thing is happening in retail, a lot of the new emerging brands are going to have disruptive business models. Like you go into a store and they don't even have any inventory. It's all made to order right. So there's a lot of disruption that's happening and we're working with a lot of brands to help. >> So talk about the next big thing NBT, next big thing in retail is that one of them? I go into a store and say that's what I want send it to my house, what else? >> Well I think one of the next big things that we're working on is the whole concept of machine learning. I think you guys have heard about this before, but the whole technology singularity where its the point in which there is no differentiation between engaging with a customer. Oh sorry engaging with a human versus engaging with a computer. We're not that far away and its a little bit scary. I think we talked about it a couple years ago but the whole concept is why do I need to interact with a human being for my shopping experience? I can just interact with a chat bot, for example. As long as I the customer gets the information I need to make an informed decision, I don't really feel weird talking to a computer anymore. >> Yeah so that's the idea of systems of agency, right, where the machine is taking action on behalf of the brand, and the consumer either doesn't know or doesn't care. >> Right that's right. >> So do you have customers that are on the precipice of doing that? >> Yeah we do. In one of the areas I have talked about this before, machine learning-based demand forecasting. So getting better at forecasting the right product, the right skew on a store-by-location basis. And what we do is we leverage a lot of the inherent capabilities of the internet. A lot of companies talk about cloud as simply a cost reduction. We view cloud as taking advantage of the world's greatest super computer which is the internet. And so, that's one of the areas in which we've been using machine learning. >> So what's the, you say the company, that mid-lane, or middle range, what are they to do now? Because they are kind of stuck, they have their challenges, they have this legacy approach that they are kind of in a tough spot. >> The die has been cast, if I was in their shoes, a lot of these middle of the road retailers. I would look at finding ways to optimize what I have. So whether that's optimizing your inventory, optimizing your labor. That's another thing we talked about, Charles this morning mentioned the whole concept of unleashing maximizing human behavior and unleashing human capital. For years we've been on shows like this talking about products, instead it's about engaging your customer. Everybody's a customer, if you're in healthcare you're a customer. In manufacturing distribution, you have customers. To look at it more from a human element around store associates, I think there's are a lot of middle of the road retailers that have an old iconic brand that could reinvent themselves with time and enough patience. >> How do you deal with the inevitable, well first of all how do your customers deploy your software? It's in the cloud. >> Yeah. >> It's in the Amazon cloud right? >> Well three years ago we made a fundamental decision that we were not going to be an on premise company. So we are a cloud-only applications provider. The second decision point we made was, do we want to be suite or best-to-breed. And when we say suite that was our decision. The third point was, how do you want it to be able to be deployed? So when I started off in this industry which felt like yesterday. I feel like I'm super old now, I started off as a software developer for a company called Retech out of Minneapolis. You know I was doing batch forms, and Oracle PL/SQL and everything was tied to the database, and the user experience was basically a graphical depiction of a database. (Dave laughs) But back in those days-- >> And it still is in a lot of apps. >> Yeah. In those days it was pretty much all about developing that individual code. I kind of lost my train of thought on that. The way you can deploy our assets is on an individualized basis. You can deploy our demand forecasting engine for example. You can deploy our allocation and replenishment engine. And when you tie it all together, you can have a suite that doesn't need to be deployed like it used to be in the old days is where I was going. Which is you have to deploy the whole data model to get all the information that you're looking for. >> Okay so in retail you've got the inevitable, oh well, I'm going to run this in Amazon, they're my big competitor, they're disrupting me. What's the conversation like with customers? How do you guarantee we're protecting their data, you point to Netflix and say hey it's working for them? What do you say? >> Well I think, I mean we're Infor, we're a big company. It's on a case-by-case basis. Yes we have a relationship with AWS and yes they are a strategic partner for us. That doesn't preclude the fact that we work with Google we work with Azure. We are cloud agnostic in retail so, it hasn't been as big of an issue as a lot of industry critics and analysts have made it out to be. >> So if there were an issue, you'd could run it anywhere you want. >> Yeah you just swap it out yeah. >> Alright I want to change gears here. Announcement on the stage today, keynote Van Jones from CNN was talking about #YesWeCode, an organization he has an affiliation with. You've created this, well launched an initiative NextGen. First off explain what that is but fill us back up to the genesis of that because as we found out just a few moments before it's a pretty interesting journey. >> Yeah. >> That you personally were involved in. >> Yeah, I know I am sure a lot of friends and family that know me well are going to be tired of hearing this story. I will give you the condensed version, which is-- >> Take your time. >> Growing up in Minneapolis, I was a huge Prince fan like most Minneapolis people are. And through serendipity I met Prince's brother, and Prince's brother pre-social, pre-internet, pre-mobile, put me on Prince's private guest list for parties at Paisley Park. And so here I am I had a loving family, and I can't believe my mom and dad would let me do this, but I am 16, 17 years old going to parties with Prince. And when I say parties I mean these were intimate parties, maybe the most was 50 people in his house. Sometimes there's like five of us, and what happened at these parties were he would play new music. If we danced and got up there and jammed with him, then he'd put it on an album. If it wasn't very good, or he felt like there wasn't a good strong reaction he put it in his vault. So we were a test case, a Petri dish so to speak, for his music. And I got to build a relationship with him as much as anyone that could. He was a very stand-offish person, but a brilliant artist, and a brilliant human being for that matter. I got to build that relationship and through that relationship I met Van Jones. We hooked up again at one of Prince's memorials a couple of years ago after his death, and we looked at each other and we connected and I said I'm in the technology industry. And he goes we got to talk because there's some things related to Prince's legacy we should really talk about. Which ties us back to #YesWeCode and the announcement we made today about GenOne. >> For GenOne excuse me I said NextGen. >> Yeah GenOne. >> My fault. >> Yeah no, no worries. And the genesis of this was Prince, Rogers Nelson, and Van Jones had a conversation right after Trayvon Martin was shot and killed. And a lot of people suspect the main reason was he looked suspect because he had a hoodie on. And here is an African American kid wearing a hoodie, they follow him and bad things happen right. Van Jones asked Prince directly he goes, you know clearly that guy was racist. And Prince said, think again, maybe if that was a white kid in Silicon Valley wearing a hoodie he'd be a dot.com billionaire, but because we haven't produced enough people of color in CEO level positions in our tech industry, that's on us. Meaning we need to develop more of our own. And so this project means a lot to us, because of the fact that we don't think diversity is just a check box that you have on your corporate mission statement. We think diversity can change the DNA of your company and it can influence better products, solutions, and services to our customers. So it's really important for us and this is just the first step of a multi-echelon, multi-year, multi-faceted program. That we want to take this and roll it out to the entire industry. I'd love for Salesforce and Oracle and SAP and Workday. I'd love for all of them to adapt a program similar to this. This isn't pride of ownership, it's the right thing to do and putting brilliant kids and brilliant minds that maybe came from a bad circumstance, they all deserve a chance too. And it only makes all of us better, and I feel like a lot of great things have happened to me in my career and I feel like I have to give back. And if I can be a small part of this with Van, so be it. >> So that's a very thoughtful response by Prince, and you were saying earlier Corey it was sort of hard to get to know him. Was that typical of Prince, was he sort of introspective and maybe pensive and prescient in that way? >> Well the piece the people that don't understand about Prince is that the whole story of his life is written in his music. And he's released over two thousand songs, you know I'm sure the family and the estate might see this but I've heard another couple thousand songs that have been unreleased and it's beautiful brilliant music and his whole life story is there. You just need to listen to the lyrics, or read the lyrics and listen to the music. >> So was... You mentioned this story, and I just thought 17-year-old kid, I mean with all do respect you don't look like one of Prince's friends right. You're a Minnesota guy, he was too, but just different and I think, did you ever just think that what in the world am I doing here? >> I had that moment, I will never forget that one moment. So it was probably the summer of 1995, Prince was standing five feet from me. He had his right hand strumming his electric guitar, his left hand was playing lead keyboard lines on the keyboard, his right foot was controlling the pitch of the guitar, the left foot was controlling the pitch on the keys, and he was singing vocals and dancing. And I said to myself, I pinched myself, and I said this moment in time, if Amadeus Mozart was standing here he would be blown away. Because there is nobody in the history of music that can write, produce all this great music, but also maintain that look, that image. And then the musicianship, he's a musician's musician. You know we talk about Lenny Kravitz, I ran into Lenny Kravitz about 20 years ago sitting on Prince's couch. He probably doesn't remember me, I am pretty sure he doesn't. >> We'll find out tomorrow night. >> We'll find out tomorrow, but I mean the moral of the story is he was a musician's musician. I'll never forget sitting on the couch and this really soft spoken gal said to me she was really nervous to perform tonight. And I am like don't worry you go this, and it was an 18 year old Alicia Keys. And Prince behind the scenes had been cultivating and developing talent whether its Beyonce, Alicia Keys, Nora Jones, you know. These people he helped develop behind the scenes, and no one really knew it. >> Well his band members were always incredibly talented. I don't know if you ever saw Prince live. >> Nope, did not. >> You've saw him many times. Man as he would say, that band was tight. (laughing) >> That's right. >> Well the program's a great legacy. >> It is. >> And one that is certainly not apparent, but it is great to know that back story to know the generation of that. What got going and certainly I think there's a lot seems like of emotional equity that you and the company have invested, to make sure it's successful as well. >> We think that it was Prince's legacy, but we feel like he has passed the torch between Van, myself and Charles. This really means a lot to us. So we want to take it to the next level so, we are pretty excited. >> Fantastic. >> Congratulations. >> Thanks for having me here. >> Thanks for sharing the story too. I'm glad and it's just wonderful and look forward to talking to Charles about it, when we have him on tomorrow. Alright back with more we are live here, theCUBE is covering Inforum18 in Washington D.C. 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>> From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018. Brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome to theCUBE, Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend. We are just wrapping up day two at SAP SAPPHIRE 2018. Keith, this event is enormous. We were just comparing our step goals. This event size is 16 American football fields. Enormous, 20,000 people. I think, combined, we have around 15,000 steps today. >> That sounds about right. >> Quite a few of them go to your longer legs than mine but this event is really been incredible, the energy that SAP's CEO Bill McDermott kicked off with yesterday morning has really been carried through this event and with our guests on the show for the last two days. >> No, we did 23, 24 interviews and every last one of them was high-energy. The guests were extremely excited about the products, the solutions, and the problems they're solving for, not just enterprise, but for society. I thought that was a really great theme of the guests today specifically. >> It's amazing, and you talk about, you know, the impact on society and SAP wants to be one of the top world's most valuable brands like Apple, Google, Coca Cola, who are all customers of SAP's and who all sell products that we can interact with, that we can taste, you know, Mercedes Benz, we can drive. They've got this invisible software product. They've been around for 46 years. And to your point, the stories that we have heard about how these invisible product, products, are transforming industries, are saving lives, was really something that I did not expect. >> Well when you make a great product that impact lives or... I compare it to making great content. theCUBE makes great content, that content would be found, people would take notice, you make a great product that impacts people's lives. It's no wonder that SAP is near the top of that brand recognition, brand value, 17th on the list. If they continue to do that, if they become the product, the ERP solution that you can talk to and you can ask a question, you know, not just business questions of what were the numbers the last quarter for Chicago, but you can ask a question, you know what, where is the best place to take my family to live in Eastern Europe during the summer months? That becomes value-add that people wouldn't be able to ignore. >> They've done a tremendous job building this partner ecosystem. There were hundreds of partner sessions alone. We've heard from a lot of their partners. We're in the NetApp booth, thanks to NetApp for having theCUBE here. NetApp is a customer and a partner of SAP and we heard a lot about how SAP is transforming to the cloud dramatically with the help of this massive partner ecosystem. >> You know what, we've had Microsoft, Fujitsu, SAP, NetApp, Nvidia, the list goes on and on of customers and partnerships of examples of companies that have come together and they've been consistent. In some areas, obviously Microsoft competes with SAP. In some areas, Microsoft competes with NetApp. But they recognize that without these alliances, without these partnerships, they can't solve these large, complex problems of ridding parts of Africa with mosquitoes. SAP can't do that by themselves. Microsoft can't do that by themselves. And this week was a great acknowledgement and a example of how the ecosystem works. >> They also talked a lot at this event about the intelligent enterprise where it's, you know, it's not just about digital transformation as table stakes. Companies that do it well have, or are working towards getting, this true 360-degree view of the customer which is essential. They talked about enabling that via certain things that they're leading in, or pioneering, which is connecting the demand chain and the supply chain. They really talked about enabling this new, this current SAP that's built for this fourth generation customer experience. Our lives as consumers have dramatically influenced business. We expect to have the ability to, you know, try and buy an app if we want it, right? And they're using that model very well to give customers in many industries, they have 390,000 customers, choice and flexibility. And the partner ecosystem is just part of that flexibility that they have to give. And they do a great job of listening to their customers who really are helping with a lot of the co-development in a very symbiotic way. >> Yeah, SAP is reentering this people-centric view of ERP, CRM, of data, saying that their relationship is about people. Bill McDermott spent a lot of time talking about trust. One of the reasons why people trust the brand of theCUBE is because we're on the ground, we're talking to the users, we're talking to the people. People can reach out and touch and feel you, there's a personal relationship between that brand and the community. The same thing with, got the same feel for what SAP is trying to do of, you know, obviously with over 20,000 people, I dunno if the number is 21,000, 22,000, but more than 20,000 people, a million people online watching the event, SAP the serious about this C/4HANA move, of being able to say, you know what, we are going to create a ecosystem of trust. We talked about trust with the app center and being able to validate applications on the platform. SAP has long been one of those companies that's serious about their partnerships and validation and certification of platforms. So whether it's HCI, storage with NetApp, the deep relationship with NetApp, SAP is going to put its brand upfront and say that if you're going to engage with one of our partnerships, there's a transient trust that goes from SAP to their partners. >> And we talked with a number of folks working in different groups within SAP focused on the customer. This morning we had on their Chief Customer, a guy from their Chief Customer Office who talked about these, kinda top 100 strategic accounts that they partner with who then also they take that information, those learnings and don't just improve the technologies but they also use them to influence much greater than a hundred customers. They're strategically utilizing that data. We talked yesterday with one of the gentlemen running the SAP four, S/4HANA community rather, and the Leonardo community and the amount of engagement that they have in that community, especially in Leonardo which has only been around for a year. The customer engagement is key but also their reaction to it, and I would say even, I think we heard a lot of how they're being proactive with creating content and enabling their customers to be able to learn at the same time as they're learning from their customers. >> Yeah some hero numbers that we heard this week: 6,000 people in that HANA, the S/4HANA community. While the Customer Success Group focuses on the top 100 customers, there were, I think 38,000 people following the Twitter account, so there's obviously outreached stretch. The Leonardo and S/4 communities have created a thousand videos on how-to. So obviously the impact of and the reach of SAP has ambitions of not just raising brand awareness and getting into that Top 10 with Apple and Google, they also have the ambitions of becoming a platform, a ecosystem. You know, we look at Microsoft as kinda one of the ultimate platform companies. Microsoft partners make more money off of Windows than Microsoft makes off of Windows. SAP seems to have the same goal of their partners, there's a hundred partners on the show floor, that should generate more revenue than SAP which would be impressive. SAP, I looked the other day, $136 billion market capital, not a small company at all. >> So you have an interesting perspective, for many reasons, but one you've run large SAP infrastructures before. And here you are now at SAPPHIRE from the press and media, the analyst perspective. What are some of the things that really surprised you in all of your experience as a user of SAP to now covering it from this angle. >> You know what, I don't know if it was a year ago. It was not even a full year, my anniversary for running my company is August. So less than a year ago I ran SAP for a large pharmaceutical. And we're in the throes of selecting where our next platform was gonna be hosted. Cloud was a possibility and it is amazing how the conversations have changed from my peers a year ago, or a year and a half or even a year ago, to now to how readily acceptable customers are of running mission-critical, the core of the business, 77% of the world's transactions, we heard today, goes through SAP, how willing customers are at running those work goals in the cloud. Second piece, which was probably a proof point, how much SAP has improved SAP in the cloud. SAP has marketed SAP HANA and SAP as cloud-ready applications, it was more of something that you... I took legacy application, I installed it on VMs in the cloud, cloud-ready. No we've given examples from the hyperscalers, specifically Google, of how, and Microsoft of how, customers are coming whipping their credit card up, spinning up instances of HANA, spinning them down. Google talked about how you can migrate your whole ECC on HANA to the cloud within 30 minutes to two hours, amazing movement in cloud. I think it's by far my biggest surprise coming to this show. I didn't expect SAP to accelerate their cloud adoption as fast as they have. >> I'm curious to your thoughts too about simplicity, simplicity of message, you know, what's their best-run businesses campaign? Best-run businesses run on SAP. Simplicity has long been part of their messaging. As we look at the SAP cloud platform and some of the announcements there today and you look at, they've got Ariba, and Concur, and Fieldglass, and SuccessFactors, with the C/4 announcement from yesterday, what is your impression on, have they been able to sort of simplify and kind of reduce customer confusion in terms of this breadth of products and technologies that SAP now delivers? >> You know, SAP is a big company and they have a lot of products. They've been around for 46 years. You know, we didn't talk about any legacy database stuff. They still own Siebel so they still own a traditional database company. It's easier said than done to simplify the message. When you come to... You know, we talked to interviewee after interviewee, customers are still overwhelmed when they look at a overall problem. They can even identify SAP as the potential partner to solve it, but 300 products is still 300 products. It's very... You can help simplify the message by throwing those products in categories, sales force, which product you lead with, so new customers, you know, sales force will help you with that. Traditional customers that don't have deep relationships with their sales force and solution providers, maybe, I think there's still a little difficulty around understanding the messaging around all of 300 products. I mean, it's 300 products. >> Well, there's always work to be done and well we have... There was a lot of product announcements, a lot of energy, and evangelicalism that you and I heard consistently throughout the event and on-set here. A third area that I think really struck me is, SAP has been very vocal about having an initiative to raise the profile of women in technology. They did an excellent job of getting women onstage during both keynote sessions, yesterday and today. From their CMO, Alicia Tillman, to Lindsey Vonn and a whole suite of women Olympic athletes that were yesterday in the general session, to some of the women that were doing some of these outstanding demos and I, I really tip my hat to SAP because for being as large and as lengthy of an incumbent as they are, they're really able to focus on some of these key areas and we at theCUBE love to cover that because it's something that really needs consistent awareness. >> Well, I dunno if people would notice but we probably, both of us, are very vested in diversity and Silicon Valley, in general, is always appreciated when companies go, not just acknowledge the challenge of diversity, it is a very, very difficult problem. It's probably one of the most difficult problems in our industry. So to actually put some meat on a bone, announce the problem, announce the challenge, and go forth and put, you know, obviously, extremely capable women and minorities in the forefront. >> Yeah. Well Keith, always a pleasure hosting with you. Thanks so much for working with me the last couple of days, it's been-- >> I always enjoy it. >> I do too. It's really been a really fun, energetic show so thanks for all of your help. >> Thank you. >> Keith and I wanna thank you for watching theCUBE. Lisa Martin for Keith Townsend, we're from SAP SAPPHIRE 2018. Thanks for watching. (energetic music)

>> From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE! Covering SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018. Brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome to the CUBE we are in Orlando, at SAP SAPPHIRE 2018, I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend as my co-host. We're in the NetApp booth, and we are very excited to talk to the VP of the Chief Customer Office at SAP, Mark Marcus, Mark, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, glad to be here I appreciate it. >> This event is enormous. One of the things that really struck me in Bill McDermott's key note was, you know, we always here about, oh we are expecting 20 thousand people, he talked about a million people engaging with SAP SAPPHIRE this week, via the in person, and the live, and the on demand video experiences. Massive! 390 thousand customers, hundreds of customer sessions the voice of the customer validating SAP as one of the world's most valuable brands is not only pervasive here its palpable. So talk to us about the Chief Customer Office. What is it, what's it's mission, why was it created? >> Yes, okay that's a great, a great way, so first of all thank you, I appreciate you being here, I live in Orlando so it's great to see this event in my-- People wonder why SAPPHIRE is actually in Orlando, it's because I live here. (all laughing) >> You're the reason! >> You're the reason. >> I'm the reason SAPPHIRE is in Orlando, Florida. >> Okay, you heard it, Mark Marcus, you're the reason. >> No, so what happened is, when Bill McDermott came to SAP, he was a different type of leader, and what he wanted to do immediately is start meeting with customers. So what he did is, he started meeting with customers, and he said if you have any questions or problems, give me a call. And so what happened is, his phone started ringing, people needed help, so he needed somebody that could help him with the customers when he ran North America. And so that was the genesis to Chief Customer Office. So we started off, first, we were extremely reactive. And so what I mean by that is, if the customer had a problem, we'd have to go in, and we'd have to help them. And it's much more difficult when you have a problem, then try to prevent a problem. So what we've been doin' the last several years, is trying to be much more proactive, so instead of waiting for the phone to ring, we've been getting with customers, and making sure, you know, as their project start, begin their steering committee meetings and make sure that things go well. >> So, you've taken that more proactive approach, it's almost how the organization's evolved. What is the focus today? >> Yes, well the focus has always been the customer, but I think it's more of, taking the best practices that we've learned, and actually sharing those with the customers, and helping them explain how other people have done their journey, because what you'll find, is people are in different phases of their journey, and what they like to hear more of is, you know, what did other customers do, what did they do right, what did they do wrong, and how can we be more successful? So we've been able to, over the years, if you think about, just to put it in perspective again, there are, SAP North America has 158 thousand customers, and we're only on, my particular team only has about a hundred of those customers, that we have. So it's a very, very small amount, they're are ones that, you know, are strategic to SAP, that we get involved in. But what we're able to do though, is, through social media and other areas is, customers wanna hear what happened, again, in the past, and how we can, you know, learn from that and move forward. >> So, I'm a big social media fan. Twitter handle has 38 thousand followers, which a lot for your focus on a hundred customers, so I think that, that you're echoing the, the theme very well. Talk to us about how it's changed over the past, 14 or so years, shift has focused from on-premises solutions to hybrid-cloud, to cloud analytics, AI, what's the, what are customers talking about? >> I'll tell you what, you're talkin' my language now, (Keith laughing) okay, because what happened is what we did is, actually what I'm in part, what I'm a part of is actually the cloud ambassador program. And so what that is, is it's focusing on our cloud customers so, you know, success factors, Ariba, Concur, and those kinda things, and so, really what happened, is, you know, when SAP, when I came to SAP 14 years ago, it was all on-premise ERP, alright? So it's very contained, very controlled with what people had now there's Cloud's, we're not really sure what customers are doing, how they're interacting with the solutions, and so what we have to do is we really focus, and again, my group is 100% focused in on that, so. What part of our mission has been is, we're not necessarily know what customers are doing, so we're helping to understand what they're doing, and trying to help educate groups inside SAP to be more responsive and help them. >> So you mentioned having responsibility for some strategic accounts, about a hundred. Do those represent kind of a subset of some of the key areas in which you're looking for the voice of the customer, and their practice using your technology to influence the direction of some of the key technologies? >> Yes, 'cause I'd say they're some of the biggest, most strategic customers that we have, and so what we do a lot of is, we're able to, we align directly with the executives, at the customer, so one of things with Chief Customer Office, is we're aligned at the C level, so it's, the CIO, the CEO, the CFO, at that level, so we're able to say we heard directly from the leaders of the companies, our most important customers, key customers, and we're able to take that back the other areas of SAP, and say, this is the what the leadership's demanding, and that's what we're able to help them with. >> So, as we're going through this phase of digital transformation, through a lot of organizations, that audience is even more important than, what?! (chuckles) Tell me how, as digital transformation has become, more than just a buzzword but a imperative from the C-suite, from CEOs to CIOs, CMOs, CDO, all the C's, CXO! How has the conversation between those groups changed, from the SAP perspective? >> Yeah, I'll tell ya, that is, again, I'm not just sayin' that you are, you're hitting exactly what we focus in on because, traditionally SAP has been focused more on the CIO level, so it's more the IT groups of implemented ERP, it's been more of a back-office type solution, well now, what we're finding is the line of businesses are the people that are actually making the decisions. So what we're finding out is that, it's not necessarily so much that the, technically, how they work, it's more the business processes they have, and how we can help actually, basically automate, and help them run more smoothly. >> Yeah, Hasso Plattner actually, and some of the guys this morning during the keynote talked about that, in terms of, customers were saying, you know, I'm getting kind of confused, there's so many different product names, a lot of acquisitions, he was talking about that, we heard from customers that there was confusion there. So when he was talking about, in the context of C4 for example of, making things simpler to understand, but also to your point, the back office and the front office now has to be connected so they also talked about that, in terms of, the integration with SAP Cloud, and how they really focused on enabling wholistic integration because it's the processes that have to now communicate together, so that, a whole, kind of proactive, customer responsiveness, that was really apparent this morning. 46 years young SAP, you have a new initiative about the customer for life, tell us about that. >> Okay, so customer for life is a new initiative that we have, so what I told you, at the Chief Customer Office we've done, we're able to touch very few customers, but, you know, again, you know we have 156 thousand, in SAP North America, you know, multiply that all over the world, I mean, it's many customers, okay. So what we've tried to do, is take what we've done on a small scale in the Chief Customer Office, and make that pervasive throughout the whole company. And so what we're really good at too is actually, you know, understanding what the customers do, finding them a solution, but now what we wanna do is go through the whole life-cycle of what we do so, I mentioned, you know, having a customer executive assigned to every customer. Being able to be part of the steering committees that we have, and being able to follow them through so we can help guide them, so it's not only selling the solutions but actually helping them through all the way, so the new initiative we set is customer for life, it's something that we're rolling out right now, and we've had, and again, it's taking what we did in the Chief Customer Office and, you know, propagating that through the rest of SAP. >> So, this facility, you like to say it, 16 football fields, American football fields, so that's a big facility. I walked the facility this morning, got in about three thousand steps. Hundred plus partners on the floor, ranging from system integrators, technology partners, and infrastructure space, software SIs. Help us understand as SAP, 20 thousand plus people here at the show, a million people online engaging on SAPPHIRE, SAP is becoming a platform company. How has that changed your role, your conversations? >> Well, I think what has happened a lot is, especially in the cloud projects, again I'm gonna focus more on what I'm a part of is, you know, there's a lot of new partners that come up. Because what happened is that, you know, we acquired several companies, we did, you know Concur, Ariba, SuccessFactors, a lot of big companies, and a lot of different partners. So really what our role is, in the Chief Customer Office is, to basically, to help these partners to understand how to work together, and we do a lot of things in meetings, we have, what we do, is, it's usually like the three legged stool, it is, you know, it's SAP, the partner, and the customer together, and we all do that together. And what I've found is, some of the problems that we've had is not neces-- you know, I always say like, how can take the exact same solution, and it works well in one company, and it doesn't work in another company? And what it is, to your point, with all the partners here, is it's communication, are they working together, you know, is the partner, and SAP, and the customer all working together, and so that's what I'm really focused on today is meeting with all the, you know, do the SAPPHIREs, to meet with the partners, to make sure we're aligned, you know, talk about our key customers, and make sure that we're all working together. >> We talked to one of the gentleman yesterday who was running some of the communities around HANA and Leonardo and, just the massive amount of content that is being generated to enable and educate customers across 25 plus industries, was massive, as well as, leveraging that peer validation from customers, like you're saying, you know, some customers in certain industries have a ton of success with the same thing that others customers struggle, depending on a lot of different variables. So that sort of collaboration and communication, even within the SAP communities alone, was very apparent yesterday that that's one of the big drivers, of I'm sure, the customer for life initiative is, as you have evolved, so have your customers. One thing that struck me yesterday was, you know, looking at, you're now number 17 of the World's top most valuable brands up there with Apple, you know, products that we can engage with and, I saw on a bus yesterday some of the messaging, and ERP you can talk to, and hear from. (Keith laughing) So SAP really set a very lofty ambition of being up there with the Amazons, and the Coca-Colas, and the Googles, and now you have technology that people can, you know, like at home with their digital assistant, talk to and communicate with. I thought that was very powerful message. >> And I'd say that's, I'd say too that, you know, I've worked with SAP for 14 years, and when I came to SAP, nobody had really heard of SAP and what they were, they thought maybe, you know, sometimes on TV when you see SAP when it's translated in other languages or something, that's what they think of SAP, they don't really know what the company is but, yeah, it's been great to see how, you know, people would stop you, you know, whether you're wearin', you know, they'll see somethin' on your laptop, on your shirts or somethin' like that, yeah so it's been good. I think that's been a big focus of getting it out because, one thing is is we have 150 million cloud users, that's a lot of people, so a lot of people use SAP, so. Again, one of the cloud products that we have is called Concur, it's for expense and reporting, and so a lot of times people might not've heard of SAP, but they've heard of Concur, because they all do their expenses, that kinda stuff. So, exactly right, it is pretty good, you know, when you have even family members know who SAP is now. They've done a great job, you know, hiring, you know, with the market department and the people they've hired, it's been great, it's been good. >> So, okay, we talked a little bit about analytics and the customer experience as we're looking at intelligent business. Is that a message that's actually resonating with customers in that top 100 strategic accounts, are they using analytics to actually power business, What are some of the data analysis success stories? >> Yeah, I would say that, what I would say is that, what I've found a lot of times is that, you know, people can get the information in, but they need to be able to get the information out. And so, everybody across that has done it, so, I would just say almost every customer we have has basically needed to get that out, and do reporting and those kinda things, you know? So, part of what we do at the Chief Customer Office is, you know, not only, you know, help them with the reports that they have, but to be able to run that kinda stuff. >> You guys also have, you know, some really interesting use-cases, I'm a Formula One fan, I've worked with Formula One before, I'm, I understand it from a fan perspective. You guys are really involved in McLaren Motorsport, for example, from finance, to procurement, to manufacturing. How are you seeing some of these really big use-cases like Formula One, or Coca-Cola, infuse into some of the, you know, the mid-sized businesses, who, you say, might be using Concur for example. What is some of the value that a small company can get from the massive users? >> Yeah, well I'd say there's a lot of things, because what happens is that from those big massive customers that we have, we're able to put together as we call model company. And so what a model company is, is it takes the best practices you have and puts it into more of a, I'd say nothings out-of-the-box, but makes it much more easier to implement, to be able to do it, so what we're able to do is, you know, with the massive amounts of info like McLaren, I think Hasso mentioned what, there's 400 sensors that they're getting on their cars, and that kind of stuff. So basically being able to take all the information that we have, and then from that, distill it down into where it's a very, repeatable type instance we can use for other customers. So there's a lot, I mean that's what we do with a lot of the, what the customers have, we try to get that back to where other people can use it. >> A Formula One car is basically an IOT device. You said 400 sensors, generating a ton of data, per race weekend, times three days, times 20 events a year. I read from Gartner just the other day that by 2020, which is around the corner, there's expected to be 20 billion IOT devices. What are you hearing from your customer base regarding IOT and being able to synchronize this, you know, modern next-gen data center with myriad devices? >> Yeah, so that is one of our top initiatives that we have right now. Because, one of the things that we've done is, we have an offering that we have called Leonardo, and what Leonardo is, it was named after the inventor Leonardo da Vinci, alright? So, you know, in his time he was, you know, a great innovator, actually went and saw his house and went over to Europe, and I've done a lot with Leonardo, you know what I'm sayin'? To be able to do that, right? But what that is, is that's basically all about, you know, getting devices to be able to get that information in. Because what you do is, you have you know, thousands of sensors and stuff like that and a good, you asked me earlier about a good success story on that, is one of the ones that I think resonates the most on that is in Buenos Aires, they have a massive problem with rain, you know, it rains a lot, and they have severe flooding, and the architecture is antiquated. But what they've found, is the reason that they were having these flooding problems, is because the sewers and the drains were all getting clogged up. So what they did was, they put a sensor in every one of the drains to be able to make sure that they were unclogged and they were flowing freely. So what they did is, they were able to, if the water flow started going down they were able to empty out the drains, even with an antiquated sewer system, because they were keeping it aligned with, you know, using Leonardo now, they can go and keep it cleaned out, they've had massive rains and the flooding hasn't really been there where it is, so now, what's interesting is every time I go by and see a gutter that's all clogged up, I think, you know, they need Leonardo to be able to help! >> I was reading as well about Alicia Tillman, your CMO, who's been at the helm for about nine months now and, in the context of this desire to become one of the top global brands with an invisible product, she said, you know, that one of the most important things for SAP right now is brand narrative, messages and campaigns will change quarterly or, every six months as they should but, she said, you know, to be able to show the value of basically under-the-hood software, you've gotta be able to show how it transforms countries, lives, industries, and that's one of the things that I think is very, very palpable here at the event is how much impact SAP is making in, whether it's rhino conservation in Africa or, you know, helping water scarcity in India, the impact, which is really the most, the biggest validation that you get, right from the voice of your customers is massive. >> Yeah, and I'd say to that, you know I like to say that, you know, it sounds like, you know, yes we're a software company, and, you know, that kinda stuff, but, it is really a noble endeavor, because we are doing a lot of things to help people's lives, and to run their businesses better, and what you realize is that, Chief Customer Office sometimes we see that other side when the systems aren't running properly at times, you know, they're usually runnin' right, but sometimes they have problems, and when they do, you can just see the impact you have on, you know, people's lives and businesses and stuff like that, that it is really running, you know, it is core to what you have, you know. So I'll tell you one of the interesting things that SAP's involved in is, they do a lot with instant messaging, so they have a part of, one of the acquisitions we have does instant messaging, well, you don't think about that but like, when you use, let's say, Facebook Messenger, or something like that, those messages go inside an SAP infrastructure at times, right? So imagine, you know, if you can't change messages, or doin' those kinda things, you know, so. You're exactly right, it definitely does, what we're doing does really impact a lot of peoples lives, so it's important. >> Well mark, thanks so much for taking some time to stop by theCUBE and chat with us about what SAP is doing with customers, how they're really symbiotically working together with you to evolve and transform this company. >> I wanna say one other thing too, it's great to work with two professionals here, you guys have really helped me a lot. >> Aww! >> I don't do this a lot, but it really made me feel comfortable, so you, I appreciate your help, thank you. >> Our pleasure, thanks so much! And, so you're the reason SAPPHIRE's in Orlando, are you also the reason they got Justin Timberlake tomorrow night?! (Mark laughing) >> I would like that. But I would like to say real quick, one thing before we cut real quick, I would like to say one thing just about the NetApp partnership we have. So RJ Bibby is the person that I work with at NetApp, and, just what he's done to basically, because NetApp really helps run a lot of our infrastructure inside SAP, so it's success factors, some of the high-availability in things that we have, and just working with RJ, and kinda learning how we, how we work and can help other customers, they've really volunteered to help a lot of our customers, and so, I just wanna thank NetApp again for helping us sponsor this. >> Great, great closing. We wanna thank NetApp for having theCUBE in their booth. Lisa Martin, with Keith Townsend, we are at SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018, thanks for watching! (bubbly music)

>> From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering SAP Sapphire Now 2018, brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, I am Lisa Martin, with Keith Townsend. We have been here all day at SAP Sapphire 2018. Keith, this venue in Orlando is so huge. It's the equivalent of 16 American football fields. >> Yeah, probably should not have worn a pair of new shoes. >> No, but you did close your rings, so it's a trade-off, right? >> It's a trade-off, yeah. >> So, the keynote this morning started out with a bang. Bill McDermott, the CEO of SAP, is probably the most energetic, evangelical, C-level I've ever seen on stage. You really could feel the excitement, the momentum. They also followed that with some great announcements. You know, they've been saying for awhile, being pretty bullish about wanting to not just disrupt the Sierra market, but wanting to become one of the world's most valuable brands. They wanna be up there with the Apples, and the Googles, and Coca-Cola and Mercedes-Benz, who all have products that we all see, and touch, and feel, and buy. And they announced that the brands e-rankings just came out the other day, that they're number 17, up four spots from last year. So, their momentum is, they're really putting their money where their mouth is. >> Yeah, so SAP is the cash register of the world. 70% of the world's transactions go through SAP, but most of us don't see it. So, it's amazing to see that they're ranked number 17 on those brands that are very, you know, if you told somebody you worked for SAP, they'd be like, oh, okay, I think I might have heard of that. >> Right. >> Or, I've heard that that was the reason why manufacturing is down, because the SAP system was down. So, it is a bold statement to say that you're gonna go from that, to a household name. Interestingly enough, part of that is becoming an ecosystem. So, becoming a platform. What we've heard today was a lot of talk about how SAP is transforming from a product company. You know, a point-of-sale system is one thing, but to say that you've built a ecosystem, and a platform around that, is the goal that I think I heard today from the stage floor. >> And you're right, you talk about, you know, them becoming a household name, with a product that's basically invisible to most people who probably use it. They have amassed 390,000 customers in 46 years. They've been around for a long time. This event, though, is massive. The partner area alone is huge. There's probably more than 20,000 people not just that are here, in Orlando, but, he said, Bill McDermott, a million people engaging with SAP Sapphire via the online experience. That's enormous. But to your point, it's all really fundamentally due to the partnerships, the systems integrators, the technology partners and more who have helped them on their transformation. >> Yeah, we had KPIT on, they said the guest has been on 20 Sapphires for 20 years, the event has gone on for 25 years in some form. He remembered, initially, they might have had one or two sessions. They have 12, KPIT has 12 sessions this year at the Sapphire 2018. There's a huge ecosystem of partners, here on the show floor. Over 500, I think, sessions in general. We had the VP of Community for S/4. They have 1,000 how-to videos on how to just do basic things in S/4. Huge community, huge event. SAP is starting to make end rolls and becoming, again, not just a products company, but an ecosystem company, I think. Sapphire in Orlando is a great example of how they're expanding the brand. >> Yes, and in fact, on the brand part, you know, that's one of the things that their CMO, Alicia Tillman, who was on main stage this morning, that's something that I've heard her talk about before. She's been the CMO for about nine months now, and she said, you know, and marketers will know, campaigns and messaging will change every quarter, six months, and that is fine. It's the brand narrative that they really started to work on at SAP. So, you're seeing this "Best-run companies run on SAP", it's sharing the value of what SAP can deliver with their partner ecosystem, in terms of how it's helping customers transform their businesses, transform industries, save lives. They've done a very focused job on showing how this invisible technology is really revolutionizing the world. They're now going, you know, full-force, embedding A.I., and really being quite bold, they're saying. I loved what Bill McDermott had on the slide this morning, of augmented intelligence. And there's always a lot of concern with A.I, right? Jobs being replaced. And he talked about what he, and some of the other world leaders, were talking about. And I liked augmented intelligence, to augment humanity, this connection of humans and machines working together. They're really being quite bold, and focused, in that area. I'm just curious what your take was from an advanced analytics A.I. perspective. >> So, there's a lot of talk around advanced A.I. analytics. At the end of the day, it's about actual business results. We're here in the booth of NetApp, who has done a great job, frankly, of transforming their image from a storage company in the middle of a transformation to being known as a data-driven company. So, NetApp has gone through a similar change that SAP is looking to do, from a brand perspective. Reasonably enough, we had the CIO, Bill, from NetApp, that talked about that transformation, and how data is a key part of their own transformation, internally. And, how SAP could probably hold NetApp up as a great example of a company that's using the predecessor to C/4HANA, which was just announced, on the staged hypers of taking data, analyzing that data, applying A.I, machine learning, more like machine learning in reality. Machine learning to that data, and then getting insights, so that humans can make better decisions. >> Right. You know, on that front, one of the themes I heard today, Keith, from not just Bill Miller, the CIO of NetApp, who was on here with us earlier, but some of their other partners, NetApp and SAP's partners, all talk about their own transformations, internally, as essential for them to become intelligent enterprises, which is a lot of what SAP's talking about. But I also thought that was quite valuable, from an external perspective, to hear NetApp talk so candidly about their transformation, and share that with their customers who are in similar positions. I think, when vendors will, say, drink their own champagne, and there's real proof there in the pudding. I think that's tremendously valuable for these brands. And we've just heard that kind of consistently throughout the day today, of companies that are showing how they're transforming to then help their customers also transform. >> So, one of the things that we like to ask on theCUBE is not just about current customer base, but, what new customers are you attracting? So, one of the interesting conversations is one of the last ones we had with WorkSpan, and how they're a small company, and they started out the gate with SAP, and how the brand has gone beyond this, oh, this is a manufacturing, supply chain, you must be a Fortune 500 company to even consider rolling it out to. You know what? We're a brand new company, providing a data-driven product, and out of the gate, we're selecting a S/4HANA and the platform to create this new product that's consumed by not necessarily technologists, that powers an alliance platform to find and curate business alliances. I thought that was an extremely interesting interview that shows the power of expanding beyond just a focus on traditional enterprise, but the power of data. And once you've become a platform, how you can power your partner ecosystem. >> I thought that was a great example, as well, of a company that's only been in business for three years, less than four years. How they saw this gap in the market, where they said, you know, we're surrounded by alliance partners of SAP's in this 16 football fields location that we're in. And WorkSpan found that 60 to 75% of announced alliances fail. Huge opportunity for them to then get in from a systematic perspective and align, you know, two companies' marketing automation systems, for example, and sales automation systems. And they really saw this big opportunity to, like you were saying, create an entirely new product, and probably create a new market as a result. I thought that was a really modern example of an idea that saw a huge gap, and can be transformative. I asked Ahmed, after we stopped rolling the cameras, all right, so you found 60 to 75% of these announced alliances fail, typically. What does WorkSpan think you can do to bring that number down? And he said, within two years, we wanna get that down to about 30%. >> Wow. That is an amazing stat. So, let's look at the companies that are digitally transforming. So we had two guests that I want to highlight, one with Mike McGivney from SAP SuccessFactors, which is SAP's people-focused cloud, and then Wolfgang Hopfes, the head of SAP Business for EMEA. And they're on a unique challenge. SAP has been around for 46 years, and in IT years, that's like, you know, 1,000. So, there's a lot of technical debt, that companies are now paying for. You know, back in the nineties, early 2000s, customizing SAP was all the rage. Now, customers are faced with, they have to digitally transform their organizations, how do they do so? Well, it's not so easy to move from a customized SAP to S/4. Bill trumpeted the numbers of 1,800 SAP HANA customers, which is great, well over a billion dollars in sales for an in-memory database. However, SAP has over 300,000 customers. So there's a lot of opportunity, but a lot of challenge. So, the ecosystem of partners, Fujitsu, NetApp, other infrastructure companies looking to help simplify the infrastructure so that technologists within these customer organizations can focus on the higher stack of those larger business challenges of basically pulling apart what they've built. Bill from NetApp shared how difficult their transformation was from their CRM to >> Hypers? >> Hypers. He called it painful, a painful six months. And what we saw today, I think, was a reality check. A lot of enterprises have a lot of pain ahead of them. >> Well, it's pain in a number of areas, and one of them is cultural. And I really thought, you know, you say, SAP being 46 years old is like, 1,000 in IT, or dog years. They're like the Gandalf of IT, right? But one of the things that I found quite remarkable is 46 year-old history, 390,000 customers. But clearly, they have been able to evolve their culture to be able to support what their customers need, and go from just being a supply chain procurement-focused type of business. And I thought that was really quite compelling, to see how they must have had to transform their culture, so that they can help businesses transform. They make it look easy, with the messaging and the momentum, but that was something that for a company that's an incumbent like that, is a bit of, you might say, even a model for how to do that right. >> Yeah, we talked to Joe Lazar, he's the SAP VP of Global Technology Partners. He talked about how SAP likes to be pushed to be a little uncomfortable by their partners, and we asked him the tough questions. You know, there's been tweets and there's been announcements from all the ACI vendors. I've talked to customer after customer that says, you know what, S/4HANA on HCI is what we want. A very quotable comment that he made was, we're not doing S/4 on HANA because we want to, we're doing S/4 on HANA because customers demand it. So, SAP is definitely listening to customer demand, S/4 on HANA is one of those things. You know, he tried to stay away from the bad word of certified on 4HANA, and validated, and focused on solutions, but SAP has a little ways to go. And that's kind of a, you talk to any HCI customer, validated and certified 4HANA is a bad word today, but SAP understands it and they're moving to certify the platform for HCI, so I thought that was a great example of them listening to customers and continuing to transform over the years. >> You're absolutely right. In fact, you know, if you look up digital transformation, one of the first pillars that you're gonna see is you gotta become customer-centric. And we really heard that a lot today. Even NetApp, when you were talking with Bill Miller about ONTAP in the cloud, going it's okay guys, maybe we have to listen to our customers. If we don't we won't be in business. That's a hallmark of an enterprise that is digitally transforming. >> Yeah, I'd argue that Dave Hitts was the one who forced that, that kind of cultural change. You had to bring in the founder to talk to the engineers and that had very engineer-driven thinking And I think Dave was very direct, like you know, we have to make the change or we won't be in business. The pendulum has changed to cloud. The SAP, which is not by any stretch of the mind, was never designed to run in the cloud, but they're adopting the technology for what customers are demanding. There's an AWS booth here, Fujitsu was the first one to say that, you know what, if customers need fail-fast environments, that's exactly where they should go, and put S/4 implementations, and then steady states should be moved to RMPRAM or private dating center or hosted solutions. So, the ecosystem seems to be embracing this change. >> Definitely. Anything that you're particularly looking forward to tomorrow for Day 2? >> You know what? I love talking to customers, so I'm looking forward to more customer conversations, talking about how is this being used? We haven't really talked a lot about Leonardo much. So, you know, IoT, A.I., how are these things that get a lot of press being perceived by actual customers? How are they being implemented? What's their true adoption rate? >> Awesome. Well, I look forward to hosting with you tomorrow, Keith. Thanks so much. >> I appreciate it. >> Thanks for watching. Keith and I have been at SAP Sapphire, bringing you some hopefully great informative content. From the NetApp booth, Lisa Martin for Keith Townsend. Thanks for watching.

>> From Orlando, Florida it's theCUBE. Covering SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018. Brought to you by NetApp. >> Hi, welcome to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend and we are in Orlando Florida, at SAP SAPPHIRE 2018 in the NetApp booth. We're excited to welcome to theCUBE from SAP the SVP of global technology partners Joe Zarb. Joe, welcome to theCUBE. >> I am so happy to be here. Thank you for having me, excited to share with you all the great things that are going on here at SAPPHIRE and with SAP. >> This event is huge. Bill McDermott was saying this morning in his keynote that it's the biggest SAPPHIRE that you guys have ever done, and one of the numbers, he gave a lot of numbers this morning, I always geek out on numbers, >> Right. (laughs) >> He said you guys are expecting about a million people to engage with SAP related to SAPPHIRE. That's incredible. >> It's incredible, it's incredible. A million people, think about the global reach a company with 70% of the world's commerce transactions going through our systems, people want to know what's next? What's coming out next from an innovation point of view, what are our leaders saying? What are our partners saying about where the future is and it really speaks to the whole concept of digitizing business processes. Every company wants to be a startup and I think what you're seeing here is a lot of that excitement that SAP, we just consider ourselves a very big startup with a broad reach. So, I think Bill was able to capture that excitement, convey that excitement and I think the ecosystem is reflecting that. >> A 46 year old startup nonetheless, right? >> Yeah, right exactly. >> So as the leader of the technology partners, talk to us about how those technology partners have been fundamental in SAP's transformation. >> Totally fundamental, particularly as SAP starts to transform into really a platform company. The platform provides a level of abstraction that customers can leverage to simplify their infrastructure and their access to applications, and it also creates extensibility and it's all about the partner ecosystem. So one of the biggest agenda items that we have in terms of that is really the whole hyper-converged infrastructure play, and it's really going to be something that is going to help customers innovate, drive down costs and drive up ROI. There's very few plays that are a triple whammy and this is one of them. So the partner ecosystem to us that spans our global service providers, our technology partners which are both hardware and software partners, but we also have data syndication partners, and we have other partners in the management consultant fields, et cetera. They all contribute to expanding and enhancing our digital platform and our applications. >> So, one of the areas I like to challenge infrastructure companies on, NetApp is a data-driven infrastructure company, and when you're talking to enterprise, application-centric people, infrastructure's one of these things that's an afterthought. >> Right. >> But HCI is really changing the game. NetApp's SolidFire Division along with some of their now compute innovations to form this new HCI story. Can you provide some color? What's the significance of having an HCI based infrastructure for your SAP deployment? >> Yes, that's a great question. First let me back up and I completely agree with you, when you talk to most customers, their eyes glaze over when you start talking about storage, what have you, but when you start talking about the sophisticated customers that are driving innovation and trying to transform their business, there's really three technical elements that they're very focused on. One is connectivity. They're trying to connect to all kinds of devices, business processes, and aspects of their business that haven't been connected. They're connecting because they want to retrieve signals from areas in the field and areas of customers and products they've never collected before, as they connect these signals, they're creating tremendous storages of data. And so, until you get over that, realize the enormity of that problem and the scope of "How do you now take this data "and turn it into a collection "of perishable insights that you can act on?" Until you've reached that level of sophistication, you don't understand why a company like NetApp is critical to your entire digital infrastructure and story. And that whole hyper-converged area is really the ability to promise, it's a promise to the customer that their workload can scale essentially infinitely on premise, in the cloud, cloud to cloud, back to on premise. And so at SAP, as an application provider, we look at applications that are going to run at the edge, at the core and on premise, and in the cloud. HCI helps us deliver that vision at the application tier but you have to have the platform and the infrastructure there. And NetApp is a great partner to help us fulfill that vision as well as other partners, but they're very key. >> So you have your business applications, you have SAP HANA from a database and memory database capability. Now we're talking about the Leonardo stack. You have this, what's becoming a platform, and as a platform provider, you look towards your ecosystem to extend the capability of the platform, to create more value. Where are you seeing the value generated in the partnership with NetApp? >> That's a great question, so all of our partners have the ability to one, reinforce the dominance in those markets we choose to serve and those applications we choose to deliver. However the real value of the ecosystem and a company like NetApp, is when they take us out of our comfort zone, and by taking us out of our comfort zone, they're taking us to roll your own applications, custom applications, or third party non-SAP applications where they're storing and managing the data yet making it accessible to Leonardo for machine learning, to create block chain scenarios where we can create trusted relationships, leveraging data that may not be SAP data, and also in the whole internet of things. Connecting to sensors and using that data from sensors in ways that really have nothing to do with SAP's core applications per se, but may have benefits to the customer in ways that really needs to be co-innovated. So our partners are a critical player to put us outside of our comfort zone, force us to grow, force us to learn, force us to expand, and NetApp has proven to be one of those partners that can deal with a myriad of data types from a myriad of applications that force us to stretch into voice recognition, to force us into data mining and data analytics and the like. >> So as we talk about pushing out of your comfort zone, SAP has been extremely steady in being able to provide a mixture between hardware partners, whether it's appliance model for deployment of HANA to a partnerships with first level support through partners such as NetApp. Talk through where you guys are at in the partnership, specifically with a technology that's killer, that Bill talked about which is SAP HANA on HCI. Are we going to see HANA on HCI in the near future? Customers are really interested in it and it seems like a slam dunk. >> It seems like a no brainer, right? >> Yeah, like no brainer, yeah. >> And it is, it is a no brainer. We're going to see HANA on HCI, not because SAP wants HANA on HCI, it's because our customers want HANA on HCI, and we're slaves to our customers. So where we are right now is we know that we are a trusted supplier and provider to our customers and they know that the SAP brand stands for integrity and all of the -ilities that go with running a large complex enterprise, reliability, serviceability, maintainability et cetera. So we're actually working very closely with all of our HCI partners to go through a rather arduous certification process. Through that certification process it's a commitment that we're asking them to make and they're asking us to make for the long term. I don't like the word certification, I prefer new product introduction, because what we're asking them to do is build their products, tune it to our products, we're going to do the same and we're going to continuously innovate and continuously introduce new products. So the word, the former word, is certification. All I can say is, we don't like to pre-release or announce anything so watch this space, but I am so excited to be a tech head. >> What are some of the, if we look at a retailer, for example, who has to work with, say it's an apparel manufacturer and they've got a designer they've got to work with, textiles, all these different sources of information and it might take a year from a design to go from concept to actual product that they can sell. So you mentioned and I really like that you talked about insights as perishable, it was something about actionalbe insights, but for a company like an apparel company who has such a long cycle from concept to delivery, how will HCI facilitate them being able to link and sync, what Bill McDermott said this morning is, synchronize the supply chain with the demand chain? >> Right, yes, that whole value chain, value proposition. So, the beautiful thing is, all of those companies have a track record and a history of data. A lot of that data is right now in NetApp. So there's a lot of learnings and knowledge that haven't been mined and pooled out of that data that exists today. HCI is going to enable a couple of things. One is when you look at a distributed supply chain, we have probably the industry's leading distributed supply chain solution, track and trace capabilities, to be able to follow that product throughout it's life cycle. As we capture that data with HCI infrastructure, we're going to be able to analyze and transform those business processes, candidly, in ways that we haven't thought of yet. The beauty of HCI is, when you talk about retailers you're often times dealing with companies that have wire thin margins, so they want to be able to create products quickly, get them to market quickly and do it within the cost constraints. HCI is one of those rare platform and enabling technologies that delivers on that. It's going to allow you to rightsize your workload in the cloud or on premise or on the right size servers et cetera. And it's going to allow you to scale up as needed and manage a more efficient yet effective infrastructure. So I see HCI playing a role not only in retailers, but really across all industries. It's one of those really beautiful horizontal technologies that adds immediate value to those people that have reached that maturity curve. >> So as we talk about these advanced applications, can't help but get into topics such as ILT, edge in general, applications as we look at SAP as a platform company, applications SAP may not build directly but have to integrate with. How do you see HCI and your global partners figuring into those advanced applications and the infrastructure around that? >> Yeah so that's a great question, thank you. If you really look at those new emerging applications that are edge, core and cloud, lots of moving parts. Lots of moving parts gives you the opportunity to rightsize the workload and the processing at the edge or at the core at the cloud, but it also creates a tremendous amount of complexity. So to really create a breakthrough, you have to radically simplify and standardize the processes that manage that core, cloud, edge relationship. If you can create that environment, then people can deploy, manage, monitor, maintain these environments much more effectively with a lower skillset, right? So there's not that hurdle. I kind of think of it as today's IT infrastructure is kind of like a manual car and as you get bigger IT it becomes an 18-wheeler, it's a little hard to, unwieldy. You've got to be really good at driving in reverse and stuff like that. When you add HCI you're not necessarily going to an autonomous car but you've definitely got an automatic transmission, you probably could do a couple of things pretty well automatically right? And that allows a whole new class of drivers to get in the car. And so I think that's what HCI is going to do, as the architectures and the deployment methods get more complex, it's going to keep it manageable and within a skill base and price point that people can live with. >> I like that analogy, I think that's very simple to follow speaking of simplicity. I wanted to ask you about when you guys are going to market with partners. Bill McDermott has been very vocal, as we talked about when we kicked off this segment, about wanting to be one of the top ten most valuable brands. Among the likes of Apple, Coca-Cola, Mercedes Benz, Google, who sell products that we can touch and wear and feel and see. With technology like SAP and even, say, what you're doing with NetApp on hyper-converged, what's the conversation like when you're talking about products that people may not even know are under the hood? How do you ignite a customer to be excited? What are some of those exciting customer examples that you see that really show how this technology from SAP and your partners can change a company, change an industry, change a life? >> Right. That's a great question and it's really the essence of a brand right? So first I would encourage all of your viewers, go play Bill's keynote from SAPPHIRE today, I mean, I think he was totally evangelical and I think he painted the picture so. From my perspective the brand, so first all of those brands that you mentioned, right, Apple and Google, these are all loyal SAP customers. They're also SAP partners so we're punching with the heavyweights. We're at, I think, number 17 in brand equity and we're working our way up. I think our focus isn't so much touching and feeling our products. I think it's more about trust, making a promise and a commitment to the market and that market validating that commitment and statement with money. Basically buying our products, deploying our products, and basing their business on our products. And so, when I think of SAP becoming that brand as more and more companies continue to rely on us, trust in us and as we become a more integrated economy and society, they're going to realize Apple is going to be able to trust Google because they're using SAP and they know there's integrity of the data and their processing. Google's going to be able to trust their suppliers, like NetApp and HP and et cetera because they're using SAP as well. So there's this, basically this movement of trust and brand identity that will be validated by our customers. We create the message, the customers create the brand. So I think that's our approach. >> Like trust is the new currency. >> It is, it really is, particularly in the data-based, data-oriented society and economy. >> My good friend Tom, on Twitter said that the future is data, the future isn't databases. So, I thought it was a brilliant quote, so shout out to Tom. So as we look at that, the future is data and not databases, and you guys have rolled out an established database in HANA, but how do you refocus, not on the actual technology but on the data itself as it relates to, you know NetApp has started to market themselves as a data-driven company. What's the relationship between the infrastructure, the database, the application and the actual data? >> So, good question, it's a long answer, so let me try to net out a couple of key areas there. So if you kind of look at data, data plays a point of origination where you're going to enter data and capture the transactions of the business. It's also the source of innovation. After capturing all that data there are these perishable insights and there are these anomalies and signals that are trapped in there that you're going to pull out. So when you look at the infrastructure itself, our belief is that consumers and the consumer experience with technology has created a very real time society. We chat in real time, we post images in real time, we message in real time and we believe that level of performance is what enterprises are going to demand. Batches going away. People, they don't want to hear, "Oh no it takes hours "to sift though a petabyte of data." They don't want to hear it. So they want to move to, they want their answers now, and so that's what we've really focused on is that whole real time experience, and we believe that data, like you said data, it is going to be both the source of insight, it's going to be the system of record and then it's really going to be the basis of the next generation products and services. So if you look at all the companies that people are trying to copy and mirror, they're giving away their software products and they're monetizing the insights that they glean from that data, right? So Facebook makes their money off of advertising that is based on your likes and preferences and shares, et cetera, like that. So their business isn't software, it's how do I monetize that data, that behavior that is trapped in that data, how do I surface those behaviors? So we think that's very core to us. We have a group within SAP that works with our partners and customers to help them build data-driven business models, data-driven business products and data-driven solutions and NetApp is core to all that. I think once you get and start to deal with the order of magnitude of data that we're talking about here, you have to move to an HCI and you have to move to a trusted player like that. >> The Facebook example as we wrap things up, you kind of just alluded to one of the things that I've heard some of your execs saying, including your CMO, Alicia Tillman, where, our customers don't care about the technology, they care about their customers and you kind of just articulated that really well. That that's what you need to be able to enable is what Facebook is delivering, what Apple is delivering, or what Google is delivering. So thanks so much Joe, for stopping by and sharing what you guys are doing with partners to really kind of fundamentally change the direction that SAP is going in. >> Thanks, it's great to be here and thanks for having me. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend from SAPPHIRE 2018, thanks for watching. (digital music)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube! Covering Veritas Vision, 2017. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas, everybody. This is the Cube, the leader in live tech coverage and we're here covering, wall-to-wall coverage of Veritas Vision 2017, hashtag: VtasVision. I'm Dave Vellante, with Stu Miniman. Lynn Lucas is here. She's the CMO of Veritas; welcome to The Cube. >> I am so excited to be on The Cube for the first time. Thank you for joining us. >> Well, thank you for having us. We're really excited to have you. We were talking off camera and this morning, in our open, about Richard Branson, the keynote. Very inspiring, so interesting, and then you got an opportunity to interview him and it was really substantive. So what was that like, what was it like meeting him, what was he like backstage? Share it with our audience. >> Absolutely. So, first, I, it really was an honor. The man has, when you do the research on him, the number of businesses he's created and disrupted is really amazing when you go back and look at it. The record industry, phone industry, airline industry. I mean, it goes on and on and he's still doing it. What I was most struck with, though, is that he's really humble and approachable. So we spent about 20 minutes with him in the backstage, and he was just a very genuine person. Very concerned, as you and your listeners may have heard, in the keynote, about the impact of the hurricanes. Really committed to philanthropy now, and what I loved is that he really understood what Veritas is doing with data, and he was able to really quickly connect that with how it might help on important issues that he's concerned about, namely climate change, making communities part of businesses, and so forth. It was fantastic. >> Well, I thought he did a really good job, and you guys did a really good job, because he's like, wow, Richard Branson, big name. But why is he at Veritas Vision? And he came, he talked about his agenda, he talked about the hurricane, he connected it to data, to climate change, and he very, like I said off camera, in a non-self-promoting way, let us know very quietly that yeah, of course the fee that I'm getting here I'm donating to the cause, and you should donate too. Right, and it was just really, congratulations on such a good get. >> Well, we were thrilled to have him and really honored to have him, and I truly felt that he understands the importance technology is playing. He actually told us that they were without cell phone and any kind of internet connection right after the hurricane for about, I think what he said was about seven days, and he said it was a very weird, disconnected feeling, because it's become so prevalent in our lives, and then when they all left and got on his plane to go back to London to mobilize aid for the British Virgin Islands, he said that he looked back in the plane, and he said every single person is on their phone like this. And it's such an interesting and powerful tool though, for generating interest in, unfortunately, the very horrible events that have happened, and so the social media, the connectivity that we all experience and getting that word out, I think he really connected with what we do as technologists here, and he had a really fascinating conversation with us about his interest in flying cars, so he's seeing potential for flying cars in the next few years and as a way to perhaps help us reduce carbon emissions and he's excited about technology. So I think he had a lot of fun. >> And we should mention, I think, Bill Coleman and Veritas is matching contributions and then you have extended that through his non-profit? >> Correct, so Bill Coleman also is a great philanthropist like Richard is, and ever since he's arrived here at Veritas he's been very lean-forward with making sure that Veritas is giving back. It was part of the culture, but I really feel that Bill has augmented that, and so for these recent set of disasters, hurricane Harvey, hurricane Irma, Veritas has set up a funding, and then we are doing double matching, and what we did after the unfortunate hurricane Irma came through is Virgin Unite is donating to the BBI's. We've added that to the list of charities and double matching that, as well. >> So people can go to Virgin Unite and donate, or they can donate through your website as well? >> They should go to Virgin Unite and donate, they should go to the, there's also the American Red Cross in the Houston area and the Miami area that are doing donations. Donate, you know, direct through them. >> So please, take a moment, if you can. Donate often, you know, every little bit helps for sure. Okay, so let's get into it. Quite a show, second year of Veritas. It's the rebirth of Veritas, and Veritas, in our view, how do you feel, give us the sort of rundown on the show. >> Oh, I, ah, fantastic. The feedback from the customers, which is what I'm really most concerned about here has been, this year, last year was a great coming out, but this Veritas is much more innovative than we ever thought you could be. We heard the predictions around 360 Data Management last year, but wow, you've delivered. You've got a new set of exciting announcements around what we're doing to move to the cloud. Clearly, the partnership with Microsoft is a huge part of that. New innovations in SDS. And so we've seen a great rise in attendance this year, in terms of our customers, and we've had a fabulous new set of sponsors, which I'm just thrilled to have here. Microsoft, Google, Oracle, IBM, which I think shows the strength of what we're doing to help customers as they move to the cloud, and they really are transforming their datacenter environment. >> So, talk a little bit about digital, as a marketing pro. Every customer we talked to is going through, if you talk to the C-level, they're going through digital transformations; it's real. As a CMO, you're living in a digital transformation. What does it mean from a marketing perspective? How are you addressing, you know, these trends and taking advantage of them? >> It's crucial. I spend most of my time with my staff thinking about: how do we advance our own digital expertise and take advantage of the data that we too have. Really, CMOs are in command of so much data around customers, or should be in command of so much data around customers, in a good way, to provide more content that is directed at what their problems are. I think we've all experienced the uncomfortable feeling where maybe you Google something and suddenly you're getting ad after ad after ad from a company, and it might have been an accidental Google search, right? So we can use it for good in that way, understanding our customers. We're on a real digitization journey. It's a big word, but what it means for me in marketing at Veritas is really advancing and investing in our marketing infrastructure. One of the new things that we've just done is a complete underpinning reboot of Veritas.com, which the audience can see has gone live right here, for Vision. Making the site more personalized and more relevant to those that are visiting it. >> Yeah, Lynn, one of the things we've been digging into a little bit is you have a lot of existing customers with, you know, a very strong legacy. There's all these new trends, and you threw out lots of, you know, really interesting data. You know, the IOT with 269 times greater data than the datacenter, ah, how do you balance, kind of, helping customers, you know, get more out of what they have but bringing them along, showing them the vision, you know, helping them along that path to the future? Because, you know, change is difficult. >> It is, but you know, I have to say, and I think Mike Palmer said this as well, at one point, actually, when I've visited customers, I've been in, this year, I've been to Australia, I've been to France, been to Germany, London, Singapore, all over in the US, and talking to a lot of our existing customers, and what they're telling us is really that: we want your help in moving forward. So, we really embrace our existing customers. We're not in the business of trying to go around them. But they're our best advocates, and I think as a marketer, it's really key to understand that, is your existing customers are your best advocates. So we're helping them understand what we're doing for them today and also helping them learn how they can be advocates and heroes maybe to other parts of the business with some of these new technologies. >> Yeah, that's a great point. I'd love for you to expand on, you know, in IT it was always: up, the admin for my product is kind of where I'm selling, and how do I get up to the C-suite? Conversations we've been having this week, there's a lot of the, you know, cloud strategy, the GDPR, you know, digitization. It's, you know, the person who might have boughten that backup is pulling in other members of the team. Talk to us a little bit about, you know, the dynamics inside the company, where Veritas is having those conversations. >> Yeah, I think actually you brought up GDPR, and that's a perfect example. So GDPR is a regulation that is going to impact any company that is holding data about a European Union citizen, and it's an area that Veritas can really solve problems in, but we didn't know a lot of the legal and compliance buyers, which often are the ones making the purchase decisions in this case. We have been so thrilled to see that our existing advocates in the backup space have been bringing us into conversations and in Europe, what we've done so successfully now is actually bring the two groups together in roundtables and have our current customers bring us into conversations with legal and compliance. And it's creating, for them, stronger connections within the business, and that makes them more relevant to their bosses and those other lines of business, and there's a lot of proactive or positive feedback around that, that I think is what marketers and sales should be thinking about. It's not about how to go around, it's about how do I bring you with me. >> So, as you go around the world, I wonder if, again, another marketing, marketing to me, is very challenging; you've got a hard job. Marketers, I don't have the marketing DNA. But you want to maintain your relevance. You're a 30-plus year old company. Take something like GDPR. How do you think about the content that you serve up your audience? You can scare 'em to death, you know? That's what a lot of people are doing. You can educate them, but it's kind of deep and wonky. How are you thinking about that transfer of knowledge, you know, for the benefit of customers and obviously, ultimately, for the benefit of Veritas? >> So the way I think about that is B to H. Business to Human. So at the end of the day, you know, we talk about B to B marketing or B to C marketing. It's B to H, now, and what I mean by that is: at the end of the day, we're all human, individuals, we have a lot coming at us, as you've pointed out, with information and data, so what we've done is definitely not a scare tactic. Yes, GDPR is coming. But I think that in marketing, my philosophy is: let's work on how we can help you in the positive. I don't believe in the fear, uncertainty and doubt. And what we've done is approach it as we would hope to be approached, which is: let's give you some practical information simply, in amounts that you can absorb. And let's face it, I think Josie was the one that said this, our attention span is about that of a goldfish. I can't remember if it was plus or minus one second. And so, what we've actually gotten great feedback on is that we've broken the GDPR regulation down into very simple parts, and we've said: hey, here are the five parts. Here's how we're relevant and can help you. And we've done that in pieces that are as simple as a one-page infographic. We can obviously go a lot more complex, but at the beginning, when you're researching a topic, you're not looking for the 40-page white paper anymore. You're looking for what we call "snackable" pieces of content that get you interested. >> Yeah, that was good. I remember that infographic from the session yesterday. It was sort of, you know, discover and then four other steps and then, you know, made it sound simple. Even though we know it's more complicated, but at least it allows a customer to frame it. Okay, I think I can now get my arms around these. I understand there's a lot of depth beneath each of them, but it helps me at least begin to clock it. Another topic we want to talk about is women in tech. We had a great conversation with Alicia Johnson from Accenture about WAVE, which is Women and Veritas Empowered. Right? Talk about, again, the relevance of those programs generally and I want to ask you some follow-up questions. >> Sure, so I'm a big believer in those types of programs. We want to sponsor those here and bring together our own Veritas female engineering community, but also our customers that are here. I think that while we would all like it to be a world where we were at a neutral, bias-free, we're not quite there yet. And I think programs that bring people together, whether it's gender or any other dimension, are important to get people to connect in a community, share with each other, learn from each other, and so, I do hope one day for my daughter, who's 11, perhaps that this is a non-topic, but until it isn't, I think the power of sharing is important, and so I'm really pleased to have WAVE. It's our second year having WAVE. It was a bigger program with Accenture sponsoring it. And we look forward to continuing to do that. Veritas also will have a big presence at the Anita Borg Institute, which is coming up next month, as well. >> Yeah, and The Cube will be there, of course. It'll be our, what, fourth year there, Stu? So it's a big show for us and we're obviously big supporters of the topic; we tend to talk about it a lot. And I think, you know, Lynn, your point is right. Hopefully by the time our daughters are grown up, we won't be talking about it, but I think it's important to talk about now. >> Lynn: It is. >> And one of the things that Accenture laid out is that, by 2025, their objective is to have 50 percent, you know, women on staff, and I think it was 25 percent women in leadership positions. I was impressed and struck, and I wonder if you can comment as a C-level executive, struck by the emphasis on P&L management, which, you know, tends to be a man's world. But, thoughts on that and you, as a C-level executive, you know, women in that position? >> Yeah, and again, it's one of these things where I'll have to say it's a little both uncomfortable, but obviously I feel that it is still important to talk about because I wish we were at a place where we didn't have to. I'm really proud of Veritas, because we have myself and Michelle Vanderhar on Bill's staff. So Bill has been a promoter of having diversity on his own direct staff, and I think that top down approach is super important in Silicon Valley and any business that there's real support for that. And Michelle Vanderhar is our chief council, which has, in many cases, not been a position where you would have seen a lady leading that. So we work on that at Veritas, and I personally believe it and I think Mr. Branson said that, as well, in his keynote as well this morning. When we have diversity, we have a breadth of ideas that makes it just a better place to work, and frankly, I think, leads to better innovation in whatever field that you're in. >> Lynn, last question I wanted to ask you, the tagline of the conference is: the truth in information. So much gets talked about, you know, what's real news? You know, what's fake? What do you want people, as the takeaway for Veritas and the show? The truth in information is our rallying cry, and you're right, I think it couldn't be more timely. We're not here to take a particular political stance, but what we find is in the business world, the companies are struggling with: where do I find what's really relevant? Let me give you a story. I was in France earlier this year, sitting with a CIO of one of the very largest oil and gas companies in France. Happens to be a lady who was formerly the chief data officer and she'd moved from that position into the CIO position. And when we talk about the truth in information, the example that she gave us which was so striking is that they've been doing the scans of the Earth, and actually the streets of Paris, for 50, 60 years, to understand the infrastructure, what they may have, and so forth, and at this point, with all of that data, they literally are having a hard time understanding what, out of all of these pieces of information, these topographical scans that they have, is relevant anymore. And this is the same story that I've heard in pharmaceutical companies that are doing drug tests. This is the same story that you would hear in, frankly, media companies that are doing filming, and are trying and all of this is digitized. So, when we talk about that with our customers, it really resonates, is that with so much coming at us, it's hard, in business as well as it is in our consumer lives, to really know: what do I have that's relevant? And I think the opportunity Veritas has is to help customers with a single data management platform, start to get a handle on that and be able to be much more efficient and productive. >> Alright, Lynn Lucas, we have to leave it there. Thanks so much for coming on The Cube. We really appreciate it. >> Thank you! I really enjoyed my first time. I can't wait to be back on again, and hope to have you guys here next year, Vision 2018. >> We'd love to be here. Alright, bringing you the truth, from Veritas Vision, this is The Cube. We'll be right back. (uptempo musical theme)