>> Narrator: It's theCUBE covering Sapphire Now 2017 brought to you by SAP Cloud Platform and HANA Enterprise Cloud. >> Welcome back everyone to our special Sapphire Now 2017 coverage in our Palo Alto Studios. We have folks on the ground in Orlando. It's the third day of Sapphire Now and we're bringing our friends and experts inside our new 4500 square foot studio where we're starting to get our action going and covering events anywhere they are from here. If we can't get there we'll do it from here in Palo Alto. Our next guest is Satyen Sangani, CEO of Alation. A hot start-up funded by Custom Adventures, Catalyst Data Collective, and I think Andreessen Horowitz is also an investor? >> Satyen: That's right. >> Satyen, welcome to the cube conversation here. >> Thank you for having me. >> So we are doing this special coverage, and I wanted to bring you in and discuss Sapphire Now as it relates to the context of the biggest wave hitting the industry, with waves are ones cloud. We've known that for a while. People surfing that one, then the data wave is coming fast, and I think this is a completely different animal in the sense of it's going to look different, but be just as big. Your business is in the data business. You help companies figure this out. Give us the update on, first take a minute talk about Alation, for the folks who aren't following you, what do you guys do, and then let's talk about data. >> Yeah. So for those of you that don't know about what Alation is, it's basically a data catalog. You know, if you think about all of the databases that exist in the enterprise, stuff on Prem, stuff in the cloud, all the BI tools like Tableau and MicroStrategy, and Business Objects. When you've got a lot of data that sits inside the enterprise today and a wide variety of legacy and modern tools, and what Alation does is, it creates a catalog, crawling all of those systems like Google crawls the web and effectively looks at all the logs inside of those systems, to understand how the data is interrelated and we create this data social graph, and it kind of looks >> John: It's a metadata catalog? >> We call you know, we don't use the word metadata because metadata is the word that people use when you know that's that's Johnny back in the corner office, Right? And people don't want to talk about metadata if you're a business person you think about metadata you're like, I don't, not my thing. >> So you guys are democratizing what data means to an organization? That's right. >> We just like to talk about context. We basically say, look in the same way that information, or in the same way when you're eating your food, you need, you know organic labeling to understand whether or not that's good or bad, we have on some level a provenance problem, a trust problem inside of data in the enterprise, and you need a layer of you know trust, and understanding in context. >> So you guys are a SAS, or you guys are a SAS solution, or are you a software subscription? >> We are both. Most of this is actually on Prem because most of the people that have the problem that Alation solves are very big complicated institutions, or institutions with a lot of data, or a lot of people trying to analyze it, but we do also have a SAS offering, and actually that's how we intersect with SAP Altiscale, and so we have a cloud base that's offering that we work with. >> Tell me about your relation SAP because you kind of backdoored in through an acquisition, quickly note that we'll get into the conversation. >> Yeah that's right, So Altiscale to big intersections, big data, and then they do big data in the cloud SAP acquired them last year and what we do is we provide a front-end capability for people to access that data in the cloud, so that as analysts want to analyze that data, as data governance folks want to manage that data, we provide them with a single catalog to do that. >> So talk about the dynamics in the industry because SAP clearly the big news there is the Leonardo, they're trying to create this framework, we just announced an alpha because everyone's got these names of dead creative geniuses, (Satyen laughs) We just ingest our Nostradamus products, Since they have Leonardo and, >> That's right. >> SAP's got Einstein, and IBM's got Watson, and Informatica has got Claire, so who thought maybe we just get our own version, but anyway, everyone's got some sort of like bot, or like AI program. >> Yep. >> I mean I get that, but the reality is, the trend is, they're trying to create a tool chest of platform re-platforming around tooling >> Satyen: Yeah. >> To make things easier. >> Satyen: Yeah. >> You have a lot of work in this area, through relation, trying to make things easier. >> Satyen: Yeah. >> And also they get the cloud, On-premise, HANA Enterprise Cloud, SAV cloud platform, meaning developers. So the convergence between developers, cloud, and data are happening. What's your take on that strategy? You think SAP's got a good move by going multi cloud, or should they, should be taking a different approach? >> Well I think they have to, I mean I think the economics in cloud, and the unmanageability, you know really human economics, and being able to have more and more being managed by third-party providers that are, you know, effectively like AWS, and how they skill, in the capability to manage at scale, and you just really can't compete if you're SAP, and you can't compete if your customers are buying, and assembling the toolkits On-premise, so they've got to go there, and I think every IT provider has to >> John: Got to go to the cloud you mean? >> They've got to go to the cloud, I think there's no question about it, you know I think that's at this point, a foregone conclusion in the world of enterprise IT. >> John: Yeah it's pretty obvious, I mean hybrid cloud is happening, that's really a gateway to multi-cloud, the submission is when I build Norton, a guest in latency multi-cloud issues there, but the reality is not every workloads gone there yet, a lot of analytics going on in the cloud. >> Satyen: Yeah. >> DevTest, okay check the box on DevTest >> Satyen: That's right. >> Analytics is all a ballgame right now, in terms of state of the art, your thoughts on the trends in how companies are using the cloud for analytics, and things that are challenges and opportunities. >> Yeah, I think there's, I think the analytics story in the cloud is a little bit earlier. I think that the transaction processing and the new applications, and the new architectures, and new integrations, certainly if you're going to build a new project, you're going to do that in the cloud, but I think the analytics in a stack, first of all there's like data gravity, right, you know there's a lot of gravity to that data, and moving it all into the cloud, and so if you're transaction processing, your behavioral apps are in the cloud, then it makes sense to keep the data in an AWS, or in the cloud. Conversely you know if it's not, then you're not going to take a whole bunch of data that sits on Prem and move it whole hog all the way to the cloud just because, right, that's super expensive, >> Yeah. >> You've got legacy. >> A lot of risks too and a lot of governance and a lot of compliance stuff as well. >> That's exactly right I mean if you're trying to comply with Basel II or GDPR, and you know you want to manage all that privacy information. How are you going to do that if you're going to move your data at the same time >> John: Yeah. >> And so it's a tough >> John: Great point. >> It's a tough move, I think from our perspective, and I think this is really important, you know we sort of say look, in a world where data is going to be on Prem, on the cloud, you know in BI tools, in databases and no SQL databases, on Hadoop, you're going to have data everywhere, and in that world where data is going to be in multiple locations and multiple technologies you got to figure out a way to manage. >> Yeah. I mean data sprawls all over the place, it's a big problem, oh and this oh and by the way that's a good thing, store it to your storage is getting cheaper and cheaper, data legs are popping out, but you have data links, for all you have data everywhere. >> Satyen: That's right. >> How are you looking at that problem as a start-up, and how a customer's dealing with that, and what is this a real issue, or is this still too early to talk about data sprawl? >> It's a real issue, I mean it, we liken it to the advent of the Internet in the time of traditional media, right, so you had you had traditional media, there were single sort of authoritative sources we all watched it may be CNN may be CBS we had the nightly news we had Newsweek, we got our information, also the Internet comes along, and anybody can blog about anything, right and so the cost of creating information is now this much lower anybody can create any reality anybody can store data anywhere, right, and so now you've got a world where, with tableau, with Hadoop, with redshift, you can build any stack you want to at any cost, and so now what do you do? Because everybody's creating their own thing, every Dev is doing their own thing, everybody's got new databases, new applications, you know software is eating the world right? >> And data it is eating software. >> And data is eating software, and so now you've got this problem where you're like look I got all this stuff, and I don't know I don't know what's fake news, what's real, what's alternative fact, what doesn't make any sense, and so you've got a signal and noise problem, and I think in that world you got to figure out how to get to truth, right, >> John: Yeah. And what's the answer to that in your mind, not that you have the answer, if you did, we'd be solving it better. >> Yeah. >> But I mean directionally where's the vector going in your mind? I try to talk to Paul Martino about this at bullpen capital he's a total analytics geek he doesn't think this big data can solve that yet but they started to see some science around trying to solve these problems with data. What's your vision on this? >> Satyen: Yeah you know so I believe that every I think that every developer is going to start building applications based on data I think that every business person is going to have an analytical role in their job because if they're not dealing with the world on the certainty, and they're not using all the evidence, at their disposable, they're not making the best decisions and obviously they're going to be more and more analysts and so you know at some level everybody is an analyst >> I wrote a post in 2008, my old blog was hosted on WordPress, before I started SilicionANGLE, data is the new developer kid. >> That's right. >> And I saw that early, and it was still not as clear to this now as obvious as least to us because we're in the middle, in this industry, but it's now part of the software fabric, it's like a library, like as developer you'd call a library of code software to come in and be part of your program >> Yeah >> Building blocks approach, Lego blocks, but now data as Lego blocks completely changes the game on things if you think of it that way. Where are we on that notion of you really using data as a development component, I mean it seems to be early, I don't, haven't seen any proof points, that says, well that company's actually using the data programmatically with software. >> Satyen: Yeah. well I mean look I think there's features in almost every software application whether it's you know 27% of the people clicked on this button into this particular thing, I mean that's a data based application right and so I think there is this notion that we talked a lot about, which is data literacy, right, and so that's kind of a weird thing, so what does that exactly mean? Well data is just information like a news article is information, and you got to decide whether it's good or it's bad, and whether you can come to a conclusion, or whether you can't, just as if you're using an API from a third-party developer you need documentation, you need context about that data, and people have to be intelligent about how they use it. >> And literacies also makes it, makes it addressable. >> That's right. >> If you have knowledge about data, at some point it's named and addressed at some point in a network. >> Satyen: Yeah. >> Especially Jada in motion, I mean data legs I get, data at rest, we start getting into data in motion, real-time data, every piece of data counts. Right? >> That's exactly right. And so now you've got to teach people about how to use this stuff you've got to give them the right data you got to make that discoverable you got to make that information usable you've got to get people to know who the experts are about the data, so they can ask questions, you know these are tougher problems, especially as you get more and more systems. >> All right, as a start up, you're a growing start-up, you guys are, are lean and mean, doing well. You have to go compete in this war. It's a lot of, you know a lot of big whales in there, I mean you got Oracle, SAP, IBM, they're all trying to transform, everybody is transforming all the incumbent winners, potential buyers of your company, or potentially you displacing this, as a young CEO, they you know eat their lunch, you have to go compete in a big game. How are you guys looking at that compass, I see your focus so I know a little bit about your plan, but take us through the mindset of a start-up CEO, that has to go into this world, you guys have to be good, I mean this is a big wave, see it's a big wave. >> Yeah. Nobody buys from a start-up unless you get, and a start-up could be even a company, less than a 100-200 people, I mean nobody's buying from a company unless there's a 10x return to value relative to the next best option, and so in that world how do you build 10x value? Well one you've got to have great technology, and then that's the start point, but the other thing is you've got to have deep focus on your customers, right, and so I think from our perspective, we build focus by just saying, look nobody understands data in your company, and by and large you've got to make money by understanding this data, as you do the digital transformation stuff, a big part of that is differentiating and making better products and optimizing based upon understanding your data because that helps you and your business make better decisions, >> John: Yeah. >> And so what we're going to do is help you understand that data better and faster than any other company can do. >> You really got to pick your shots, but what you're saying, if I hear you saying is as a start-up you got to hit the beachhead segment you want to own. >> Satyen: That's right. >> And own it. >> Satyen: That's exactly. >> No other decision, just get it, and then maybe get to a bigger scope later, and sequence around, and grow it that way. >> Satyen: You can't solve 10 problems >> Can't be groping for a beachhead if you don't know what you want, you're never going to get it. >> That's right. You can't solve 10 problems unless you solve one, right, and so you know I think we're at a phase where we've proven that we can scalably solved one, we've got customers like, you know Pfizer and Intuit and Citrix and Tesco and Tesla and eBay and Munich Reinsurance and so these are all you know amazing brands that are traditionally difficult to sell into, but you know I think from our perspective it's really about focus and just helping customers that are making that digital analytical transformation. Do it faster, and do it by enabling their people. >> But a lot going on this week for events, we had Informatica world this week, we got V-mon. We had Google I/O. We had Sapphire. It's a variety of other events going on, but I want to ask you kind of a more of a entrepreneurial industry question, which is, if we're going through the so-called digital transformation, that means a new modern era an old one movie transformed, yet I go to every event, and everyone's number one at something, that's like I was just at Informatica, they're number one in six squadrons. Michael Dell we're number in four every character, Mark Hurr at the press meeting said they're number one in all categories, Ross Perot think quote about you could be number one depends on how you slice the market, seems to be in play, my point is I kind of get a little bit, you know weirded out by that, but that is okay, you know I guess theCUBE's number one in overall live videos produced at an enterprise event, you know I, so we're number one at something, but my point is. >> Satyen: You really are. >> My point is, in a new transformation, what is the new scoreboard going to look like because a lot of things that you're talking about is horizontally integrated, there's new use cases developing, a new environment is coming online, so if someone wanted to actually try to keep score of who number one is and who's winning, besides customer wins, because that's clearly the one that you can point to and say hey they're winning customers, customer growth is good, outside of customer growth, what do you think will be the key requirements to get some sort of metric on who's really doing well these are the others, I mean we're not yet there with >> Yeah it's a tough problem, I mean you know used to be the world was that nobody gets fired for choosing choosing IBM. >> John: Yeah. >> Right, and I think that that brand credibility worked in a world where you could be conservative right, in this world I think, that looking for those measures, it is going to be really tough, and I think on some level that quest for looking for what is number one, or who is the best is actually the sort of fool's errand, and if that's what you're looking for, if you're looking for, you know what's the best answer for me based upon social signal, you know it's kind of like you know I'm going to go do the what the popular kids do in high school, I mean that could lead to you know a path, but it doesn't lead to the one that's going to actually get you satisfaction, and so on some level I think that customers, like you are the best signal, you know, always, >> John: Yeah, I mean it's hard, it's a rhetorical question, we ask it because, you know, we're trying to see not mystical with the path of fact called the fashion, what's fashionable. >> Satyen: Yeah. >> That's different. I mean talk about like really a cure metro, in the old days market share is one, actually IDC used a track who had market shares, and they would say based upon the number of shipments products, this is the market share winner, right? yeah that's pretty clean, I mean that's fairly clean, so just what it would be now? Number of instances, I mean it's so hard to figure out anyway, I digress. >> No, I think that's right, I mean I think I think it's really tough, that I think customers stories that, sort of map to your case. >> Yeah. It all comes back down to customer wins, how many customers you have was the >> Yeah and how much value they are getting out of your stuff. >> Yeah. That 10x value, and I think that's the multiplier minimum, if not more and with clouds and the scale is happening, you agree? >> Satyen: Yeah. >> It's going to get better. Okay thanks for coming on theCUBE. We have Satyen Sangani. CEO, co-founder of Alation, great start-up. Follow them on Twitter, these guys got some really good focus, learning about your data, because once you understand the data hygiene, you start think about ethics, and all the cool stuff happening with data. Thanks so much for coming on CUBE. More coverage, but Sapphire after the short break. (techno music)

>> Announcer: From San Jose, California, it's The Cube, covering Big Data Silicon Valley 2017. >> Welcome back everyone. We are at Big Data Silicon Valley, running in conjunction with Strata + Hadoop World in San Jose. I'm George Gilbert and I'm joined by Raymie Stata, and Raymie was most recently CEO and Founder of Altiscale. Hadoop is a service vendor. One of the few out there, not part of one of the public clouds. And in keeping with all of the great work they've done, they got snapped up by SAP. So, Rami, since we haven't seen you, I think on The Cube since then, why don't you catch us up with all that, the good work that's gone on between you and SAP since then. >> Sure, so the acquisition closed back in September, so it's been about six months. And it's been a very busy six months. You know, there's just a lot of blocking and tackling that needs to happen. So, you know, getting people on board. Getting new laptops, all that good stuff. But certainly a huge effort for us was to open up a data center in Europe. We've long had demand to have that European presence, both because I think there's a lot of interest over in Europe itself, but also large, multi-national companies based in the US, you know, it's important for them to have that European presence as well. So, it was a natural thing to do as part of SAP, so kind of first order of business was to expand over into Europe. So that was a big exercise. We've actually had some good traction on the sales side, right, so we're getting new customers, larger customers, more demanding customers, which has been a good challenge too. >> So let's pause for a minute on, sort of unpack for folks, what Altiscale offered, the core services. >> Sure. >> That were, you know, here in the US, and now you've extended to Europe. >> Right. So our core platform is kind of Hadoop, Hive, and Spark, you know, as a service in the cloud. And so we would offer HDFS and YARN for Hadoop. Spark and Hive kind of well-integrated. And we would offer that as a cloud service. So you would just, you know, get an account, login, you know, store stuff in HDFS, run your Spark programs, and the way we encourage people to think about it is, I think very often vendors have trained folks in the big data space to think about nodes. You know, how many nodes am I going to get? What kind of nodes am I going to get? And the way we really force people to think twice about Hadoop and what Hadoop as a service means is, you know, they don't, why are you asking that? You don't need to know about nodes. Just store stuff, run your jobs. We worry about nodes. And that, you know, once people kind of understood, you know, just how much complexity that takes out of their lives and how that just enables them to truly focus on using these technologies to get business value, rather that operating them. You know, there's that aha moment in the sales cycle, where people say yeah, that's what I want. I want Hadoop as a service. So that's been our value proposition from the beginning. And it's remained quite constant, and even coming into SAP that's not changing, you know, one bit. >> So, just to be clear then, it's like a lot of the operational responsibilities sort of, you took control over, so that when you say, like don't worry about nodes, it's customer pours x amount of data into storage, which in your case would be HDFS, and then compute is independent of that. They need, you spin up however many, or however much capacity they need, with Spark for instance, to process it, or Hive. Okay, so. >> And all on demand. >> Yeah so it sounds like it's, how close to like the Big Query or Athena services, Athena on AWS or Big Query on Google? Where you're not aware of any servers, either for storage or for compute? >> Yeah I think that's a very good comparable. It's very much like Athena and Big Query where you just store stuff in tables and you issue queries and you don't worry about how much compute, you know, and managing it. I think, by throwing, you know, Spark in the equation, and YARN more generally, right, we can handle a broader range of these cases. So, for example, you don't have to store data in tables, you can store them into HDFS files which is good for processing log data, for example. And with Spark, for example, you have access to a lot of machine learning algorithms that are a little bit harder to run in the context of, say, Athena. So I think it's the same model, in terms of, it's fully operated for you. But a broader platform in terms of its capabilities. >> Okay, so now let's talk about what SAP brought to the table and how that changed the use cases that were appropriate for Altiscale. You know, starting at the data layer. >> Yeah, so, I think the, certainly the, from the business perspective, SAP brings a large, very engaged customer base that, you know, is eager to embrace, kind of a data-driven mindset and culture and is looking for a partner to help them do that, right. And so that's been great to be in that environment. SAP has a number of additional technologies that we've been integrating into the Altiscale offering. So one of them is Vora, which is kind of an interactive sequel engine, it also has time series capabilities and graph capabilities and search capabilities. So it has a lot of additive capabilities, if you will, to what we have at Altiscale. And it also integrates very deeply into HANA itself. And so we now have that for a technology available as a service at Altiscale. >> Let me make sure, so that everyone understands, and so I understand too, is that so you can issue queries from HANA and they can, you know, beyond just simple sequel queries, they can handle the time series, and predictive analytics, and access data sort of seamlessly that's in Hadoop, or can it go the other way as well? >> It's both ways. So you can, you know, from HANA you can essentially federate out into Vora. And through that access data that's in a Hadoop cluster. But it's also the other way around. A lot of times there's an analyst who really lives in the big data world, right, they're in the Hadoop world, but they want to join in data that's sitting in a HANA database, you know. Might be dimensions in a warehouse or, you know, customer details even in a transactional system. And so, you know, that Hadoop-based analyst now has access to data that's out in those HANA databases. >> Do you have some Lighthouse accounts that are working with this already? >> Yes, we do. (laughter) >> Yes we do, okay. I guess that was the diplomatic way of saying yes. But no comment. Alright, so tell us more about SAPs big data stack today and how that might evolve. >> Yeah, of course now, especially that now we've got the Spark, Hadoop, Hive offering that we have. And then four sitting on top of that. There's an offering called Predictive Analytics, which is Spark-based predictive analytics. >> Is that something that came from you, or is that, >> That's an SAP thing, so this is what's been great about the acquisition is that SAP does have a lot of technologies that we can now integrate. And it brings new capabilities to our customer base. So those three are kind of pretty key. And then there's something called Data Services as well, which allows us to move data easily in and out of, you know, HANA and other data stores. >> Is it, is this ability to federate queries between Hadoop and HANA and then migration of the data between the stores, does that, has that changed the economics of how much data people, SAP customers, maintain and sort of what types of apps they can build on it now that they might, it's economically feasible to store a lot more data. >> Well, yes and no. I think the context of Altiscale, both before and after the acquisition is very often there's, what you might call a big data source, right. It could be your web logs, it could be some IOT generated log data, it could be social media streams. You know, this is data that's, you know, doesn't have a lot of structure coming in. It's fairly voluminous. It doesn't, very naturally, go into a sequel database, and that's kind of the sweet spot for the big data technologies like Hadoop and Spark. So, those datas come into your big data environment. You can transform it, you can do some data quality on it. And then you can eventually stage it out into something like HANA data mart, where it, you know, to make it available for reporting. But obviously there's stuff that you can do on the larger dataset in Hadoop as well. So, in a way, yes, you can now tame, if you will, those huge data sources that, you know, weren't practical to put into HANA databasing. >> If you were to prioritize, in the context of, sort of, the applications SAP focuses on, would you be, sort of, with the highest priority use case be IOT related stuff, where, you know, it was just prohibitive to put it in HANA since it's mostly in memory. But, you know, SAP is exposed to tons of that type of data, which would seem to most naturally have an afinity to Altiscale. >> Yeah, so, I mean, IOT is a big initiative. And is a great use case for big data. But, you know, financial-to-financial services industry, as another example, is fairly down the path using Hadoop technologies for many different use cases. And so, that's also an opportunity for us. >> So, let me pop back up, you know, before we have to wrap. With Altiscale as part of the SAP portfolio, have the two companies sort of gone to customers with a more, with more transformational options, that, you know, you'll sell together? >> Yeah, we have. In fact, Altiscale actually is no longer called Altiscale, right? We're part of a portfolio of products, you know, known as the SAP Cloud Platform. So, you know, under the cloud platform we're the big data services. The SAP Cloud Platform is all about business transformation. And business innovation. And so, we bring to that portfolio the ability to now bring the types of data sources that I've just discussed, you know, to bear on these transformative efforts. And so, you know, we fit into some momentum SAP already has, right, to help companies drive change. >> Okay. So, along those lines, which might be, I mean, we know the financial services has done a lot of work with, and I guess telcos as well, what are some of the other verticals that look like they're primed to fall, you know, with this type of transformational network? >> So you mentioned one, which I kind of call manufacturing, right, and there tends to be two kind of different use cases there. One of them I call kind of the shop floor thing. Where you're collecting a lot of sensor data, you know, out of a manufacturing facility with the goal of increasing yield. So you've got the shop floor. And then you've got the, I think, more commonly discussed measuring stuff out in the field. You've got a product, you know, out in the field. Bringing the telemetry back. Doing things like predictive meetings. So, I think manufacturing is a big sector ready to go for big data. And healthcare is another one. You know, people pulling together electronic medical records, you know trying to combine that with clinical outcomes, and I think the big focus there is to drive towards, kind of, outcome-based models, even on the payment side. And big data is really valuable to drive and assess, you know, kind of outcomes in an aggregate way. >> Okay. We're going to have to leave it on that note. But we will tune back in at I guess Sapphire or TechEd, whichever of the SAP shows is coming up next to get an update. >> Sapphire's next. Then TechEd. >> Okay. With that, this is George Gilbert, and Raymie Stata. We will be back in few moments with another segment. We're here at Big Data Silicon Valley. Running in conjunction with Strata + Hadoop World. Stay tuned, we'll be right back.

(smooth electronic music) >> Hello, everyone, welcome to theCUBE here in Palo Alto covering Mobile World Congress 2017, #MWC17. I'm John Furrier. We are here with Dan Lahl who's the Vice President of Product Marketing at SAP. SAP HANA Cloud now named SAP Cloud. Dan, thanks for coming in and talking about Mobile World Congress. >> You bet and I'm happy to talk about SAP Cloud Platform. That's what we're talking about. >> So the big news is a lot of stuff going on with Mobile World Congress but let's get down from SAP's perspective. You guys have changed the name from SAP HANA Cloud Platform to SAP Cloud Platfrom >> [Dan] Yeah that's right. >> So why that nuance there? What's the specific point there? >> It's way more than just dropping a word from the name of the product. It's really about repositioning where SAP is. So SAP has been an application company for forever. But as companies move to now from mode one, which is kind of application running, to mode two, which is doing more about agility, optimizing their enterprise, digital transformation, we have to have an offer in that second place. That's where the SAP Cloud Platform fits. Things like IoT services, and integration services, and over 40 services we offer on the platform. We're now helping companies become more agile by being very easy and able to personalize any SAP asset, any SAP app. So you have S/4HANA, you want to personalize it, customize it? You use Cloud Platform to do that. You want to integrate success factors in with your on premise apps SAP or otherwise? You use Cloud Platform to do that. >> A lot of change over the past year. At Sapphire last year, we talked about this at theCUBE. In Orlando I interviewed you specifically about the cloud momentum. One of the things that was striking me, and we talked specifically about SAP had this installed based customer set, which you guys have some of the biggest names in business from powering by SAP. Then new sets of developers onboarding and significant was the Apple announcement where you guys were partnering with Apple Computer and Apple doesn't usually go up on stage with many partners. >> That's right. >> It's very rare. They were onstage with you guys. This was really a seminal moment because this kind of brings two worlds together. It brings the existing SAP software world and the Apple world. So a lot's changed there. I know the news that's hitting around Apple's GA, general availability, of the iOS kit. But also it's the growth of the cloud within SAP and the SaaSification that you guys are going through that journey. Give us an update on those two fronts. The iOS news, that general availability, what does that mean? Two, how is the SaaSification of SAP inside the entire, across the business? >> You bet, you bet. So really exciting with the Apple SDK. When we met last year, I sat on the edge of the bed and told you how great it's going to be, okay? We really hadn't defined exactly what was going to be in the SDK. We already had the all the parts, and pieces to be able to take an iPhone device, and pull it back in to access SAP applications. But we really didn't have much native work that we had thought through with Apple on the deliver side on the mobile device. So we've added a number of controls that Apple is actually adding in to their system into the iOS 10. We're actually creating applications, taking advantage of these new controls. As enterprise applications work in a little bit more complex way than let's say playing Candy Crush on your iPhone, right? We've come up with new controls to make it more easy for someone like a project manager to do project management over their day. Or a service technician to do how they look at their appointments, how they're going to look at parts and pieces they need to put into different service appointments. It's been a really great collaboration. Then the other thing we're doing is we're adding SAP Academy or iOS Academy. The iOS Academy will be aimed at training a million SAP developers and 10 million Apple developers on how to use this SDK, how to think about delivering enterprise apps using this native iOS environment. >> What's the impact to the customer? Because Apple essentially, it's their phone, so you're talking about a mobile native app. >> [Dan] Yes, exactly. >> Taking a software cloud model to the phone. Is that kind of the key point? >> Yeah. SAP has been awesome at business processes and really funky at how it's displayed on screens. I mean I know when I started work at SAP, every screen I had to look for where the next key was. Apple is just the opposite. They're awesome at the UI but not known for the greatest business processes. So we're marrying those two things together. >> Bill McDermott has always been high on the Apple. I remember four Sapphires ago he was holding up the iPad saying-- >> That's right. >> "This is going to power our analytics business." >> Which it is. >> He was right on that. >> He's driven us to make that happen. Apple's come along which has been really great. Again, now we're delivering. >> How was the SaaSification going on because workloads as a service is a theme that comes up a lot. You see hybrid cloud certainly driving a lot of that momentum. Hybrid cloud is not as sexy as AI and autonomous vehicles. But certainly it's a lot of brute force action going on. People are really moving to the hybrid cloud. >> That's right. Hybrid cloud is going to be with us for at least 10 years. Everybody thought okay, the cloud is going to be awesome. As an LOB, I'm just going to pick my app whether that's CRM, or HCM, or whatever. I'm going to have this awesome app that I'm just going to be able to run in my business. Then they figure out oh, as a line of business, this is hard to manage. I'm going to give it back to IT. IT says, "Wow, the HCM guys are not "tied in with workforce management." There's nothing between how we're managing our people and how we're managing our workforce. Or how we're doing our pipeline with how we're managing our supply chain. The SaaSification, what we're providing with Cloud Platform is the ability to tie those things together. So native integration services to be able to tie things like success factors or, believe it or not, Salesforce into SAP delivery systems, supply chain systems, bringing ecosystems together using SAP Cloud Platform. So the personalization of the SaaS apps, integration of the SaaS apps into the enterprise, and then actually working with customers to create ecosystem hubs believe it or not. So we've got customers that have actually said, "Hey, I'm a manufacturer but I've got a lot of information "about what's going on in the manufacturing process "and how my customers are using my products. "I'm going to build a hub on the Cloud Platform "and get all my customers and partners "working together on that hub. "Now I'm actually selling information "that'll allow me to sell more of my product." So we see that happening too. >> We're with Dan Lahl, the Vice President of Product Marketing with SAP, breaking down the Mobile World Congress 17 coverage. I'm John Furrier here in theCUBE. Dan, I want you to take a minute to just lay out all the news and the key announcements that's happening this week for SAP at Mobile World Congress. In context of the backdrop of the key things that are happening in terms of the trends at the show. >> Yeah so I'll talk mostly about the Cloud Platform content. So there's some other things happening with SAP. But from a Cloud Platform perspective, it really is the shift to Cloud Platform as a strategic platform for the company in the cloud. So that's really big. Along with that, the iOS SDK, we've already talked about. We're going into beta on our IoT services. So we've now got over 40 protocols that we're supporting. We've got device management, device provisioning, dashboards for monitoring and managing those. The IoT services, which will be the foundation for our portfolio of apps that we deliver, is all going to be on Cloud Platform. We're delivering that service. They're going to announce some things in the Leonardo portfolio, which is our IoT applications. Those work together hand in glove. Some other things, some other bits and bites. We're opening data centers in Japan and China. We're hitting the Asia Pacific market pretty hard allowing customers to take their-- >> Those are SAP data centers? >> SAP data centers. >> Cloud, for SAP Cloud. >> To run SAP cloud in Japan and China with backup and recover, disaster recovery, HA, in between those data centers. Then also we're providing the capability for customers to bring their own applications onto our cloud if they want to run them closed to their cloud applications or SAP Cloud applications. So a VM style of service that we bring. But we're not going to compete against AWS in that. But if you want to bring that next to an SAP app, boom, you can do that very easily. >> I want to ask you about some of the hot trends that we're tracking on (mumbles) on thCUBE and certainly looking at the data. It's pretty obviously that IoT is the hottest, I would call tangible, trend. AI is the hottest hyped trend. >> Coming trend, yeah. >> Well I mean I think AI is legit and I'm a big fan of AI. But I think it gives people a more of a mental model than IoT. IoT's like oh, industrial, internet of things. It's kind of esoteric to the mainstream. AI is robots, flying drones, flying saucers, flying cars. So it gives people a kind of a feel for kind of what machine learning and IoT can point to. So I want you to talk about what you guys got going on there. The other thing that comes up from a customer standpoint, I want to get your thoughts and commentary on, is the number one thing that comes up besides topic on IoT is integration. Integration points is critical. So open cloud is something that you guys have promoted. IoT kind of brings that to the table. How do I bridge IoT into the cloud? How do I integrate either my on parameter clouds? These are the kind of the threads that are being discussed right now. >> You forgot big data. You forgot that one too. So hey, I worked for an AI company in the 90s after AI was dead, okay? AI was hot in the 80s. I worked for an AI company in the 90s. It was dead until today. >> It's back again. >> I'm just shocked that it's back. So the AI piece-- >> By the way, machine learning hasn't really changed much since 10, 20 years ago either. >> Exactly either as well. But we're building all of our AI and machine learning capabilities using SAP Cloud as the base. We're bringing in some open source technology from Google and others. But we're going to be building services on top of Cloud Platform that will allow you to build machine learning AI apps as well as delivering bespoke applications like matching invoices and some other things that makes sense for SAP. >> Well the IoT thing you bring up, in joking about AI, I think the reality is that AI's been around for a long time as you mentioned, as well as machine learning. But I think that the trend that comes up that makes it so peaked for real time right now is cloud horsepower is awesome, almost infinite compute power available, and the tsunami of data. So you combine the fact that, all those new data sources, with horsepower, and now with 5G dropping on main stage with Intel's announcement, you're seeing a confluence of a new fabric being kind of weaved together. That's interesting because now you have the compute, that's not a bottleneck anymore. So overhead whether it's security encryption, and/or security techniques, machine learning, goes away. AI can now do other things. So this is an interesting-- >> It's an interesting area. You kind of named it. You have to have the ability to ingest all this stuff through an IoT type of streaming capability. You got to be able to analyze it in real time, that's our in-memory capability. We talked about the AI, analyze it in real time. The one thing we haven't talked about is you have to have a big data repository to be able to troll through months and years of data. We've actually added the Altiscale company to our portfolio. So now Altiscale is part of SAP. We're renaming that Big Data Services. But it'll be basically Altiscale. So now you've got Hadoop in the cloud. So you've got an IoT, you've got your in-memory capability through HANA in the cloud. You've got your Hadoop in the cloud. All of that is one piece of cloth to us. You can apply IoT against that. You can apply AI against that. You can apply machine learning against that. And guess what? Blockchain against that as well. That's a little bit early for us. But that is-- >> It's on the horizon for sure. >> [Dan] Exactly. >> This is basically talking about where you process the data and now see the IoT edge is something that we keep our own research team. Our team's been actively pursuing. So I want to ask you to explain a little bit about this IoT service you guys announced. What is that about? I mean how would you describe that capability in SAP Cloud? >> Well it's funny. IoT is all about streaming data if you think about. I've been in streaming data since 2008 'cause we were heavy into financial services and understanding the transaction. So we were running algorithmic trading back in 2008 and we bought a couple of companies that did that. You would say, "Streaming data," to people and they would go like this, right? But now with the iPhone, and people understanding that their iPhone is a sensor device, and people now finally get that well data streaming is a big deal. >> Autonomous vehicle's a highlight set big time. >> Exactly. You kind of hit the nail on the head when you said you have to have not only an analysis inside the data center, in the cloud, but you have to push as much as can of that out to the edge. So part of what we're delivering as IoT services is a whole edge set of components that will actually do some of the analytics out at the edge in the hubs. Like what Intel provides, or Huawei, or Dell, or other companies with these gateway hubs. As well as capturing streaming data, doing store and forward of that data. So it's pushing IoT out to the edge for real time decision making, bringing it back into the data center for maybe a little bit more real time deeper analysis, and then connecting it to a big data source so you can actually troll through that over time, and say over the last six months, "Here's the supplier that's doing great. "Here's the supplier that's giving me not so great parts." All of those pieces for customers at the end of the day is really important. Making them more agile in the IoT environment. Making them more connected in the IoT environment and big data environment. Connecting the enterprise to that. So it's all helping customers from our view. >> Congratulations on the news. Well first the name change I think symbolizes a cloud centric philosophy company wide, which is great. SaaSification of SAP, which is huge for your customer base. But also the Apple news I've always been bullish on because that brings an opportunity for developers to work with you and vice versa. The monetization for developers to play in your ecosystem certainly is a great opportunity. Those are the two big news. >> Just think about that Apple piece. They can now take a process, they can build a set of controls, build a new app, and then monetize that in the App center. That will be very cool. Monetizing enterprise applications or extensions to enterprise applications. Pretty cool. >> Well that's one of the reasons why the enterprise is super hot right now. 'Cause the consumer market is (mumbles) you've seen those unicorns you see Airbnb, you see Uber, all the examples we talk about. Netflix, Amazon, enabling all that good stuff, and others. But now the enterprise is sexy one, because there's some real transformation going on from the network to the Apple Air. But there's business to be done, there's actual opportunities for people to have their work of art, the developers if you will, be monetized. >> If you put IoT, and big data, and AI behind all of that, and then make it look beautiful on the device, that's beautiful. >> IoT is a real trend. I mean that-- >> It's real. >> It's definitely happening right now and I think that's where the meat on the bone is in my mind. Okay Dan, final question for you. For the folks watching and our paying attention to Mobile World Congress in general and in the world, what is the key thing that you think they should walk away with about SAP Cloud now? With the new name, with the Apple news, all this good stuff happing at Mobile World Congress. What is the key walk away message that you'd like to send to folks to know the current state of SAP Cloud? What's the key message? >> So I would say the key message is we've talked about it but now we're delivering. SAP is all in on the cloud. We're not only delivering the SAP Cloud Platform but also S/4HANA, cloud as well. Tons of apps being built using SAP Cloud Platform. SAP is all in on the cloud, all in in mode two computing to help our customers. That's the big news. >> Dan Lahl, Vice President of Product Marketing at SAP Cloud. I'm John Furrier. You're watching a special two day coverage of Mobile World Congress 2017 here in the studios of Palo Alto covering it from Silicon Valley. We've got folks on the ground bringing you more action after this short break. (smooth electronic music) (light electronic music)